"But before you pass out I've a word to say to you about that map."
His eye gave a signal. Before I could stir for resistance even if I had been so minded, George Fleming and Gallagher pinned my back to the table. Bothwell stepped forward and looked down at me.
A second time I glimpsed the Slav behind his veneer of civilization. Opaque and cruel eyes peered into mine through lids contracted to slits. Something in me stronger than fear looked back at him steadily.
His voice was so low that none, I think, except me caught the words. In his manner was an extraordinary bitterness.
"You're the rock I've split on from the first. You stole the map from me—and you tried to steal her. By God, I wipe the slate clean now!"
"I've only one thing to say to you. I'd like to see you strung up, you damned villain!" I replied.
"The last time I asked you for that map your friend from Arizona blundered in. He's not here now. I'm going to find out all you know. You think you can defy me. Before I've done with you I'll make you wish you'd never been born. There are easy deaths and hard ones. You shall take your choice."
With that fiend's eyes glittering into mine it was no easy thing to keep from weakening. I confess it, the blood along my spine was beginning to freeze. Fortunately I have a face well under control.
"You have a taste for dramatics, Captain Kidd." I raised my voice so that all might hear plainly. "You threaten to torture me. You forget that this is the year 1913. The inquisition is a memory. You are not in Russia now. American sailors—even mutineers—will draw the line at torture."
His face was hard as hammered iron.