'Don't mislead the gentleman, Ada,' exclaimed her father. 'There is no booty. I would not give the value of this button,' said he, fingering one of his coat-buttons, 'for the whole of the booty that you shall find deliberately left, never more to be fetched by these free-traders.'
'I had hoped,' said Ada, whose eyes shone over her mounted colour, 'that you were going to submit a romantic project; I am very romantic myself. I could die for a lovely young man.'
The commander grinned.
'If he was worth dying for. Must he be lovely?' said Captain Jackman, pushing his chair from the table and nursing his knee, and regarding her with obstinate pleasure, for he not only found her a handsome woman; she had saved his life at the risk of her own.
'I had thought,' continued the girl, from the interest you take in these caves, and by your accent, which is slightly American——'
'Ho!' cried the captain, 'that's news to me.'
'That you were going to fit out your brig with some romantic reference to these holes in the rocks. Strange ideas enter one's head.'
'They do indeed, madam.'
They rose from the table. The captain, turning to the commander, said, putting all the graceful bows and courtesy of that age into his demeanour—