'To what home?' cried Jackman.
'To the home you stole her from!' shouted Conway.
'She has a home of her own!' exclaimed Captain Jackman, drawing himself up with the gravity and dignity of an earl who talks of a belt and acres. 'As you are accompanying us, you shall visit us in that home, and judge if your daughter is not perfectly comfortable.'
With that he turned scornfully on his heel, and crossed the deck to speak to Mrs. Jackman.
Meanwhile, those who noticed anything had observed that the cutter lying in shore had loosed her mainsail and was getting her anchor. The evening gathered. The cutter was manifestly giving chase. The brig floated in lofty and silent contempt through the wide reaches. At seven o'clock the captain, followed by Ada, came out of the cabin, and found the commander pacing the deck smoking a pipe. Captain Jackman, slightly raising his hat, went up to him, and said—
'Since, sir, you are deliberately a guest of the brig's, you will allow me to force her hospitality upon you.'
'Oh, presently! A biscuit, that will do, thank you,' answered the commander, in his gruffest notes. 'I am an old sailor.'
The captain, making no answer, crossed into the gloom, where, he perceived, stood the burly shape of Bill Hoey.
'Summon all hands aft; I have something to say to them,' said he, and then rejoined his wife, who had remained silently watching her father pacing the deck, and trying in vain to imagine what he intended to do.
There came aft, on the quarter-deck, a large number of men for so small a craft, despite that vessels went very liberally handled in those days. They filled the waist and all about the mainmast; and the commander, poising his pipe at his mouth, stood watching them in something of a posture of astonishment. The dusk rendered faces and figures imperfect. It might be seen, however, that, in addition to her batteries of guns, and stern and bow chasers, she carried a crew as powerful almost as a man-of-war of small rating would have entered.