"Ah no, sir, rope! As I warned you no later since than yesterday. Ay, I warned you. Yet this morning you thrust yourself upon me, adventuring here to put me to proof. Well, you shall find me man of my word, though indeed you should have known I should certainly keep such promise."
"Sir," answered Adam, "I am so aware o' this that, being an extreme cautious, not to say timid, man, I have taken due precaution."
"Ah?" murmured Bartlemy rising. "May I enquire precisely what?"
"My ship!" answered Adam, rising also. "You will observe, if you'll trouble yourself to look, she now lies to command yours with her whole broadside. I have but to give the awaited signal and your Lady's Delight will cease to be. My guns are heavy and may rake you fore and aft."
Black Bartlemy looked and, seeing this was so, nodded.
"Ah but," he enquired, "would your men sink me with their captain aboard?"
"They would certainly heed my command, sir. I am obeyed on my ship."
"Then why a plague are ye here?"
"To say I will sail with you against San' Domingo."
"So! You've changed your tune then. May I ask why?"
"Captain Troy is my friend."
"Ha,—you would storm the prison whiles we sack the town?"
"Precisely. And shall claim my share o' plunder thereafter."
"And suppose I also have changed my mind, and given over all thought o' such expedition?"
"Then I shall sail alone."
"You know the place, its defences?"
"Ay, I do."
"Then you will agree that any man who would attempt such place alone, is a fool."
"Or a friend!" said Adam, turning away.
"What, Sir Buccaneer, will you depart?"
"Ay, I've told you my mind."
"But I've not told mine."
"No matter," answered Adam, coming to the poop ladder, "when you have decided, ay or no, you may send me word."
"Ha, the devil I may!"
"Howbeit, Black Bartlemy, 'tis still no matter. I were wiser to have no truck with Iniquity. So, I take my leave of you, Sir Roguery!"
"By God!" exclaimed Bartlemy, between white teeth, "I'll watch you dance the Tyburn hornpipe yet, the yard-arm jig!"
"Or I shall see you bleed——"
"Ah—ah!" smiled Bartlemy. "This minds me to humbly enquire—pray how is your wounded arm? Not too painful, I hope?"
"And sufficiently able, I thank you," Adam retorted, dropping left hand suggestively on rapier hilt. "Though I came on serious business."
"Oho, and be damned! Do I infer that to cross steel with me is but merest pastime, a bagatelle, as the French say?"
"No," answered Adam, gravely, "a pleasure. I find unholy joy in single combat, more especially with this noblest of weapons the rapier, and more truly so if my opponent prove skilled or with method other than mine. Alas, 'tis pleasure I deny myself often, lest it grow on me and become a ruling vice."
"Well now, let me burn if I ever heard or met the like of you, Captain Adam."
"'Tis well to be individual, sir. And so, good-bye t' ye."
"Nay, where's your hurry?"
"Nowhere. Only I prefer the more spaciousness of my own ship."
"That bedizened, lubberly galleon o' yours!"
"Indeed she is both, but, as I say, spacious."
"If you would sail with me on this expedition, you were wiser to sell such hugeous, clumsy hulk and get you a ship of speed and power more suitable."
"But the Santissima Trinidad suits me very well. There is no more powerful ship afloat, and as to speed, I've found her fast enough ere now."
"Meaning you'll keep her."
"Indeed. And, now returning to her, I take my leave of you."
"Then hearkee, sir! Should I determine on this venture against Santo Domingo, and there is most delicious reason that I should,—I cannot assemble my consorts under at the least ... nine or say eight weeks ... nay, it must be ten."
"Too long!" said Adam. "For the reason that takes me thither, is a friend's life."
"You mean Absalom Troy?"
"Ay, I do. He lieth in prison of the Inquisition in peril of torture now, and death by fire in the next murderous Auto-da-Fé. This I know."
"True!" nodded Bartlemy. "But I also know Absalom Troy, and to my cost,—and can now assure you on my word, or oath—if you'll credit these, which you won't,—that Troy is in no least danger of torment or death, now or hereafter. You will demand how I know this so certainly, and I answer,—from my secret agents. I have spies everywhere, ay, even in the Holy Office itself,—one Grand Inquisitor and a host of lesser fry,—as saintly fathers and ghostly familiars. For in this world, as doubtless you have proved, money can buy what you will. And I, sir, have vast deal of money—as perchance you may have heard?"
"Ay, I have. But here take issue with you anent its power. Money cannot buy honour, truth, justice, the sun, the stars o' heaven, or any of the great, simple realities."
"Yet, sir, it can buy their similitudes, their likeness and seeming,—and this suffices me."
"Ay, but," retorted Adam, "you are so merely Bartlemy the Black!"
Bartlemy simpered and bowed.
"Oh, sir," he murmured, "your very deeply obliged!"
"Well now," Adam demanded, "why is Troy, though a prisoner, exempt from harms and safe from immediate danger?"
"Purely because he is—Absalom Troy! 'Tis very wily gentleman of flexible morals and no beliefs to plague him; a fighting man bold as lion in battle yet no fool martyr to peril body for any snivelling creed or canting religiosity."
"You are suggesting he is renegade and turncoat?"
"Captain Adam, I inform you how Troy, careless of any religion hitherto, is now professed Catholic to save his skin,—being no fool martyr, as I say. Believe me or not, sir, this is precisely the news of him as I had it lately from one of my most holy, yet trustworthy, secret agents."
Adam stood musing with his troubled gaze on the distance so long that Bartlemy smiled, saying:
"'Twould almost seem you credit my word and actually believe me. If so, indeed, then you will perceive there is no need for your so passionate haste or burning anxiety on Troy's behalf. Therefore, since despite my better judgment I permit your oddity to exercise odd attraction upon me, I now give you rendezvous ten weeks hence at Dead Man's Key, which lies in latitude——"
"I know it, sir, having careened there."
"Well, there will we convene in ten weeks' time. Is it agreed, Captain Penfeather?"
"It is!" nodded Adam. "Ten weeks hence I shall be there. Till then, Black Bartlemy, ay, and thereafter, I pray God preserve you from—Black Bartlemy." Having said which, he turned and went down to his boat, leaving Black Bartlemy staring on the distance, in his turn, and with very sombre, brooding gaze.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
HOW THEY HAD TIDINGS OF ABSALOM TROY
"Cap'n Adam, sah, de lady Perrow she in her ladyship's cabin berry extremious busy, sah, and singing so sweetsome as any bootiful bird in de tree and—wid de door locked, sah!"
"And how should you know this, Jimbo?"
"Why first I hears it lock, sah, den berry tendersome I tries it and finds it am locked, and so den it am as I hears her singing like——" He paused and gaped, he flashed his teeth, bobbed his woolly head and vanished; then Adam, glancing round, very nearly gaped also at the radiant vision smiling on him so wistfully; a splendid woman shyly conscious of her beauty and yet troubled also. Pearls shimmered on her round, white throat that rose from deep collar of lace, a broidered gown, girt by jewelled girdle, clung about her shapeliness,—she was one with the splendours around her.
"Oh, Adam!" she sighed. "Now indeed I am decked like a queen... this glory of jewels! These silks and laces! This cannot be just ... only me! I feel like a ... a walking dream."