“Ramsay?”

“Yes?”

“You think—­it’s—­it’s—­all right?”

“What?”

“What I done about a mate?”

“Right?” I reiterated.  “Here’s my hand to you—­blessing on the voyage,
Captain Jack Battle!”

“Ah,” smiled Jack, “you’ve been to the wilderness—­you understand! 
Other folks don’t!  That is the way it happens out there!”

He lingered as of old when there was more to come.

“Ramsay?”

“Sail away, captain!”

“Have you seen Hortense?” he asked, looking straight at me.

“Um—­yes—­no—­that is—­I have and I haven’t.”

“Why haven’t you?”

“Because having become a grand lady, her ladyship didn’t choose to see me.”

Jack Battle turned on his heel and swore a seaman’s oath. 
“That—­that’s a lie,” said he.

“Very well—­it’s a lie, but this is what happened,” and I told him of the scene in the theatre.  Jack pulled a puzzled face, looking askance as he listened.

“Why didn’t you go round to her box, the way M. Radisson did to the king’s?”

“You forget I am only a trader!”

“Pah,” says Jack, “that is nothing!”

“You forget that Lieutenant Blood might have objected to my visit,” and I told him of Blood.

“But how was Mistress Hortense to know that?”

Wounded pride hugs its misery, and I answered nothing.

At the door he stopped.  “You go along with Radisson to Oxford,” he called.  “The court will be there.”

CHAPTER XXVI

AT OXFORD

Rioting through London streets or playing second in M. Radisson’s games of empire, it was possible to forget her, but not in Oxford with the court retinue all about and the hedgerows abloom and spring-time in the air.  M. Radisson had gone to present his reports to the king.  With a vague belief that chance might work some miracle, I accompanied M. Radisson till we encountered the first belaced fellow of the King’s Guard.  ’Twas outside the porter’s lodge of the grand house where the king had been pleased to breakfast that morning.

“And what might this young man want?” demanded the fellow, with lordly belligerence, letting M. Radisson pass without question.

Your colonial hero will face the desperate chance of death; but not the smug arrogance of a beliveried flunkey.

“Wait here,” says M. Radisson to me, forgetful of Hortense now that his own end was won.

And I struck through the copse-wood, telling myself that chance makes grim sport.  Ah, well, the toughening of the wilderness is not to be undone by fickle fingers, however dainty, nor a strong life blown out by a girl’s caprice!  Riders went clanking past.  I did not turn.  Let those that honoured dishonour doff hats to that company of loose women and dissolute men!  Hortense was welcome to the womanish men and the mannish women, to her dandified lieutenant and foreign adventuresses and grand ambassadors, who bought English honour with the smiles of evil women.  Coming to a high stone wall, I saw two riders galloping across the open field for the copse wood.