I had, of course, paid a visit to Mistress Lucy immediately on reaching port.  She took me very severely to task for leaving the port without a word of farewell, and seemed to find it a demerit in me that I had returned without a wound, praising Dick Cludde very warmly for the part he had taken in the fight.  I answered with some heat that if I was not wounded ’twas from no shirking of duty, and I would have desired nothing better than that we should board one of the French vessels; ’twas no pleasure for a man to stand idle on deck while guns were shot off.  And being now wrought to a certain degree of anger, I reminded her that I had given proof that I was no coward, and hoped the queen would not show herself so ungrateful to those who served her well as some other ladies I could name.

This outburst (foreign to my wonted mildness of temper) brought a color to her cheeks and a gleam to her eyes, and in quite a changed voice she said: 

“Indeed, and I am not ungrateful, Mr. Bold.”

And then I craved her pardon (for which, as I learned, Mistress Lucetta Gurney called me a fool), and inquired how her own affairs were prospering.

Mr. McTavish, she told me, had gone back to her estate as steward, she heard from him every week, and he gave excellent reports of the plantations.  I asked her whether anything had been heard of Vetch, and whether any vessel conveying her produce from Dry Harbor had been molested by the buccaneers.  She said she had no news of either the one or the other, and I inclined to believe that Vetch had accepted his defeat and vanished out of her life for ever.  When I told her of the commission intrusted to me by Mr. Benbow she looked a little troubled, and besought me to have a care of myself—­a departure from her former indifference that surprised me.  I could only answer that I would not court danger, and that as for taking care of myself I must do my duty and leave the rest to Providence.

Long afterwards I learned that she sent privately for Joe Punchard, and extorted from him a solemn promise that he would watch over me day and night, see that I did not take a chill or expose myself to danger, and bring me back unscathed, on pain of her lasting displeasure.

“I had to promise,” said Joe when I taxed him with it.  “I couldn’t help it.  I would ha’ sworn black was white, the mistress have got that way with her.  Thinks I to myself, ’Mr. Bold beant a baby, nor I beant a nurse; but I’ll commit black perjury to make her happy,’ and so I would, sir.”

And having taken my leave of her, and of Mr. Benbow, and Cludde, and other my friends, I left the harbor in a boat at sunset on October twelfth and joined the brig off Bull Bay, where she had lain awaiting me.

Chapter 31:  The Cockpit.

The brig, whose name was the Tartar (a very fitting name for one that had been a privateer) was manned with thirty able seamen whom I had myself been permitted to pick from the man-of-war’s men in the harbor.  As lieutenant I had a quartermaster named Fincham, a very excellent officer.  We sailed with a fair wind until we reached Port Antonio on the northeast side of the island, but then the wind fell contrary, and we had to beat up along the north coast at a creeping pace that vexed me sorely.