"What are you going to do now?" asked Mordaunt, rising also. He looked hard at Case.
"Shiver my sides, cap'n, if I don't need another drink," replied the sailor.
"You have had enough. Come upstairs with me," said Mordaunt.
"Easy with your hatch, cap'n," grinned Case. "I want to drink with that ther' Injun killer. I've had drinks with buccaneers, and bad men all over the world, and I'm not going to miss this chance."
"Come on; you will get into trouble. You must not annoy these gentlemen," said Mordaunt.
"Trouble is the name of my ship, and she's a trim, fast craft," replied the man.
His loud voice had put an end to the convention. Men began to crowd in from the bar-room. Metzar himself came to see what had caused the excitement.
The little man threw up his cap, whooped, and addressed himself to
Jonathan:
"Injun-killer, bad man of the border, will you drink with a jolly old tar from England?"
Suddenly a silence reigned, like that in the depths of the forest. To those who knew the borderman, and few did not know him, the invitation was nothing less than an insult. But it did not appear to them, as to him, like a pre-arranged plot to provoke a fight.