"Yes. He hears things quickly enough, but you don't know this sort of man, Goffin. You have never come across the breed. I have. A bit of Irish and a bit of French, and a kind of pleasant cynical villainy thrown in. He is the stage rogue off the stage—to the last insolent cock of the rapier. Yet he's no mere actor man in a black doublet and a plumed hat. He'd pistol you before you could say pat, if it were worth his while to do it."
"The linen sounds too dirty, Jeremy! He will make off across the water."
"Yes, and take the girl with him. And perhaps stick a knife into Jasper before he goes."
"Poof, sir, you make the man a monster. I'll not believe it. Your adventures in Spain——"
Jeremy smiled a rather hard smile.
"Good sir, tell me, I have seen the savage, and the passionate side of life—I have. Blood and steel! Good Lord, Goffin; these things are real; they aren't bits of wood and cups of cheap wine. Men lust, and stab, and shoot. They do; I assure you. I suppose it has been so peaceful over the water——"
Goffin grunted.
"Well, what are we wasting precious time for, sir?"
"Ask the impossible monster! I am not going to waste time. I am going to get our men together and draw a leaguer about De Rothan's place. We shall use craft if we can. It will be safer for the girl and for Jasper."
Jeremy was in the saddle before the day was half an hour older. He knew that the news of Villeneuve's defeat would be serious news to De Rothan, and that it would go far toward making him a desperate man. The climax that he had schemed and waited for had vanished. There might still be a vague chance of Villeneuve sailing out of Ferrol and trying to fight his way into the Channel, but Jeremy, unlike the scaremongers, was well content with things as they were. Villeneuve had not shown himself to be the man for a great enterprise. The haunting and inexorable genius of Nelson dogged him, casting a premonition of disaster over the Frenchman's mind.