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What would she do if she came on deck? And what was he to do if his treatment of her had driven her mad? It seemed like all the world to a very little, for here was this one man in conflict with really stupendous circumstances brought about by himself. Upon his hands was the girl of his heart, the most adorable of women in his opinion, as mad—if he was to trust the evidence of his own senses and the report of his steward—as any howling, grimacing, jibbering inmate of a lunatic asylum. Upon his hands, too, was the ship with a crowd of sailors, the ship to be feloniously sold, the sailors to be fraudulently got rid of: and much must depend upon the reception accorded him and his friend Dick, if it ever should come to[Pg 316] the Minorca's safe arrival at Rio de Janeiro, by the intelligent scoundrel whom he had named in his letter as Don José Zamovano y Villa.,

"Why, yes, sir, course I do. But I never should ha' thought it. Why of all the young ladies——",

Mrs. Wilson held out her hand. "Harry O'Dule," she said, her voice unsteady, "I always knowed you had the makin's of a man in you. I'm gladder than I kin say.",

Mr Lawrence rushed back to his cabin, whence he took from a shelf a telescope of uncommon power for those times, the gift of no less a man than Captain Acton after intelligence had been brought to him of a particular heroic piece of behaviour on the part of Mr Lawrence. With this telescope he sprang on to the deck, and levelling it at the sea over the lee bow, viewed in the lenses the picture of a large man-of-war with two white bands broken by gun-ports. She was far away, yet not so distant but that a[Pg 292] hand's breadth of her black side could be seen shivering in mirage betwixt the lower white band and the wool-white tremble of water running aft. All the men of the Minorca were on deck at work here and there. They looked at Mr Lawrence as with levelled telescope he stood on the quarterdeck viewing the distant battleship. They all belonged to Old Harbour Town; all had heard of him, and a few knew him by sight. They were members of a group of inhabitants who felt that the presence amongst them of a man whose sea story though brief was brilliant did them and Old Harbour Town honour, and they regarded him as he stood with the glass at his eye, as though they should say, "Yon's a man-o'-war, and she may be a Johnny; but there's the Jack who will know what to do with her." And, may be, some of those who thus reflected cast their eyes upon the figure of Mr Eagle, who stood near enough to the Captain to enable the sight to master the details of a very striking contrast.

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"Sir," he answered, "I am much sneered at in this town and district. I am very well aware that few have a kind word for me. If you, sir, or Admiral Lawrence condescend to bestow a nod upon me as I respectfully pass you in the street, it has the character of the recognition with which you would honour something you disdain, which you are compelled to see, and by that nod acknowledge the existence of. Your beautiful daughter, Miss Lucy, on the other hand, has always been gracious and kind to me. In the light and sweetness of her presence I am sensible of the warmth and glow which make me feel that I am human and a man. There is no office I would not discharge to oblige her. I make money by lending it, but I would[Pg 217] give her money—much if she needed it, for the delight I take in her sympathetic, tender and generous nature. When I read the letter you hold, sir, I did not believe that Mr Lawrence would have the power or the art to carry out his scheme of kidnapping your daughter, and I was only assured that his base plot, as you term it, had proved triumphant by the calling of the bell-man, and by the letterpress on the placards which they are pasting about the place. Then I was determined that you should be instantly apprised through the medium of Mr Lawrence's own letter of what had become of your daughter. Otherwise, sir, the loss of your ship by an act of piracy must be nothing to me. Mr Lawrence promises in his letter that he will repay all his creditors, of which I am one to the extent of three hundred pounds. And as I am of opinion that this is his honest intention in order to enable him to dwell in England at liberty, I resolved to keep my own counsel and to await the receipt of my money.",

"What did he say to you?" repeated the lawyer, and the wretched man on the rack answered hopelessly: "He told me that if I didn't give the will up to Stanhope he would have me arrested and sent to the pen.",

"This is the yarn, Fellowes," said the Admiral, who, it had been pre-arranged, was[Pg 422] to tell the story. "My friend Acton is the owner of this schooner; he is also the owner of another ship, called the Minorca. Now, this ship, of which my friend was good enough to give the command to my son——",

He was seated on a stump in the new clearing which sloped to Levee Creek, fingers locked about one knee, battered felt hat pulled over his eyes. The green slope at his feet lay half in the sunlight, half in the shadow. Across from a patch of golden-rod, the cock bird of a fox-scattered quail-covey whistled the "All's Well" call to the birds in hiding. Ordinarily Billy would have answered that call, would have drawn the brown, scuttling birds close about him with the low-whistled notes he could produce so well: but today he was oblivious to all save his thoughts.