"Did her father, Captain Noble, say anything during the time you were guarding him—while you, or whoever else it was, stood watch over him?"
"Ay, a deal more than my memory carries, sir. Yet it was nothing but calling names—nothing in the way of explaining matters. It was 'The infernal villain!—The brutal wretch!—Who are these scoundrels?—Are you pirates, you ruffians?—You speak English; you are English; will you help these two Spaniards, English as I reckon you to be, to kidnap an Englishwoman from her father's home in England?' But if that had been all! Butler, he flourished his cutlass and threatened to give the old gent a tap over the head if he didn't belay his jaw. Pirates we wasn't! We was ashore helping a gentleman to his rights. Captain Dopping told us that the law was on our side, and there's ne'er a pirate as can say that of his calling."
I continued to pace the deck a while musing on this man's version of the adventure. The morning opened wide and brilliant as the sun soared. Soon after daybreak the breeze freshened, and the waters were now streaming and arching into little heads of foam as they ran with it. Mariana came out of the cabin and was trudging forward when I called to him:
"How is the lady?"
Instead of responding he shrugged his shoulders till the lobes of his long yellow ears rested upon them, proceeded to the galley and lighted the fire. I went a little way forward and called to the seamen, who at daybreak had risen from their squatting postures and now hung together talking in low voices. They approached me. There were four of them, Trapp, South, Butler, and Tubb; Scott still grasped the tiller till he should be relieved at four bells—that is to say, at six o'clock.
"Men," said I, "Don Christoval has asked me to take charge of this schooner. You may have heard him say so when he came aboard this morning."
"I heard him, sir," said Andrew Trapp.
"I shall want a mate," said I. "Butler, you filled that post under Captain Dopping. Will you take it afresh?"
"If I must, I must, sir," he answered gloomily. "No extra pay goes to the job, I suppose?"