The girl began to eye him with a crooked brow, yet with sparkling eyes.
'There is a fortune floating for a man in any one of those craft, and it is my idea, nay, it is my intention, to gut some stately galloon of her precious metal, and retire ashore upon it, living as a fine gentleman with you, Ada.'
'If they catch you, you'll be hanged,' said the girl, bending her dark brows at him. 'For what you propose to attempt is piracy, and the pirate is one of those dangling figures which revolve in irons, and strike horror into the wayfarer.'
'I am aware that they hang pirates. I am also aware,' said Captain Jackman, 'that I must either make my fortune or end my life. I choose the former. It can be done, and easily done, in spite, dearest, of your beautiful staring face of wonder. I intend to equip my brig with certain artillery, which shall lie hidden until we get to sea. We bend sail and reeve all gear in dock, and blow out quietly with a few of the hands. As we sail down the Channel, we touch and pick up portions of the crew which I have engaged or which remain to be engaged. I am now in possession of one of the smartest and fastest brigs afloat, newly coppered to the bends, liberally armed, with boats at her davits and the spare rig of a brigantine upon the booms, which I have contrived by an arrangement of the maintop.'
'And you mean to go to sea in this vessel to plunder ships?' said Ada.
'Yes. Are you shocked?' he exclaimed tenderly.
'Not even if you had resolved to become a smuggler—something surely lower than a pirate.'
'I shall be a pirate for a few days only,' said he, laughing. 'Gentlemen have taken to the road and lived very handsomely upon the purses they have collected. Why should not a gentleman take to the sea, gather together by a like sort of collection from various trading ships such a sum as he might suppose would suffice his wants, and sail away—either home or abroad, according to the needs of his safety?'
'It is quite true,' said the girl, whose surprise was fast fading out of her striking face, and who looked with the eyes of love at the captain as he talked, 'that gentlemen have taken to the road for a living. One got hanged. He had been a squire in Warwickshire. I have heard my father speak of a man who lived as a gentleman—who, indeed, was so; he was discovered to have supported his family of a wife and one or two children by going out upon the highway with a brace of pistols and a mask. He would have been taken; but whilst they were thundering at his door he fell dead of heart disease, through excitement, grief, and shame.'