At last in extreme vexation, I lowered my head and rushed blindly for his chest.  Something like the sails of a windmill smote me on the jaw, and I felt myself falling into a pit of great darkness where little lights twinkled.

The next I knew I was sitting propped against the tent-pole with a cold bandage round my forehead, and Ringan with a napkin bathing my face.

“Cheer up, man,” he cried; “you’ve got off light, for there’s no a scratch on your lily-white cheek, and the blood-letting from the nose will clear out the dregs of Moro’s hocus.”

I blinked a little, and tried to recall what had happened.  All my ill-humour had gone, and I was now in a hurry to set myself right with my conscience.  He heard my apology with an embarrassed face.

“Say no more, Andrew.  I was as muckle to blame as you, and I’ve been giving myself some ill names for that last trick.  It was ower hard, but, man, the temptation was sore.”

He elbowed me to the open air.

“Now for the questions you’ve a right to ask.  We of the Brethren have not precisely a chief, as you call it, but there are not many of them would gainsay my word.  Why? you ask.  Well, it’s not for a modest man to be sounding his own trumpet.  Maybe it’s because I’m a gentleman, and there’s that in good blood which awes the commonalty.  Maybe it’s because I’ve no fish of my own to fry.  I do not rob for greed, like Calvert and Williams, or kill for lust, like the departed Cosh.  To me it’s a game, which I play by honest rules.  I never laid finger on a bodle’s worth of English stuff, and if now and then I ease the Dons of a pickle silver or send a Frenchman or two to purgatory, what worse am I doing than His Majesty’s troops in Flanders, or your black frigates that lie off Port Royal?  If I’ve a clear conscience I can more easily take order with those that are less single-minded.  But maybe the chief reason is that I’ve some little skill of arms, so that the lad that questions me is apt to fare like Cosh.”

There was a kind of boastful sincerity about the man which convinced me.  But his words put me in mind of my own business.

“I came seeking you to ask help.  Your friends have been making too free with my belongings.  I would never complain if it were the common risk of my trade, but I have a notion that there’s some sort of design behind it.”  Then I told him of my strife with the English merchants.

“What are your losses?” he asked.

“The Ayr brig was taken off Cape Charles, and burned to the water.  God help the poor souls in her, for I fear they perished.”

He nodded.  “I know.  That was one of Cosh’s exploits.  He has paid by now for that and other things.”

“Two of my ships were chased through the Capes and far up the Tidewater of the James not two months back,” I went on.

He laughed.  “I did that myself,” he said.

Astonishment and wrath filled me, but I finished my tale.