“There be gold on the high seas for the taking,” vouched Jack.  “An your fine gentlemen grow rich that way, why mayn’t I?”

“Jack,” I warned, thinking of Ben Gillam’s craft rigged with sails of as many colours as Joseph’s coat, “Jack—­is it a pirate-ship?”

“No,” laughed the sailor lad sheepishly, “’tis a pirateer,” meaning thereby a privateer, which was the same thing in those days.

“Have a care of your pirateers—­privateers, Jack,” said I, speaking plain.  “A gentleman would be run through the gullet with a clean rapier, but you—­you—­would be strangled by sentence of court or sold to the Barbadoes.”

“Not if the warden o’ the court owns half the ship,” protested Jack, smiling queerly under his shaggy brows.

“Oh—­ho!” said I, thinking of Rebecca’s father, and beginning to understand who supplied money for Ben Gillam’s ventures.

“I’m tired o’ being a kick-a-toe and fisticuff to everybody.  Now, if I’d been rich and had a ship, I might ‘a’ sailed for M. Picot.”

“Or Mistress Hortense,” I added, which brought red spots to the sailor lad’s cheeks.

Off he went unanswering, leaving me at gaze across an unbroken sea with a heart heavy as lead.

“Poor fellow!  He will get over it,” said I.

“Another hath need o’ the same medicine,” came a voice.

I wheeled, expecting arrest.

A tall, wiry man, with coal-black hair and deep-set eyes and a scar across his swarth skin, smiled pleasantly down at me.

“Now that you have them safely off,” said he, still smiling, “better begone yourself.”

“I’ll thank you for your advice when I ask it, sir,” said I, suspicious of the press-gang infesting that port.  Involuntarily I caught at my empty sword-belt.

“Permit me,” proffered the gentleman, with a broader smile, handing out his own rapier.

“Sir,” said I, “your pardon, but the press-gang have been busy of late.”

“And the sheriffs may be busy to-day,” he laughed.  “Black arts don’t open stone walls, Ramsay.”

And he sent the blade clanking home to its scabbard.  His surtout falling open revealed a waistcoat of buckskin.  I searched his face.

“M. de Radisson!”

“My hero of rescues,” and he offered his hand.  “And my quondam nephew,” he added, laughing; for his wife was a Kirke of the English branch, and my aunt was married to Eli.

“Eli Kirke cannot know you are here, sir—­”

“Eli Kirke need not know,” emphasized Radisson dryly.

And remembering bits of rumour about M. Radisson deserting the English Fur Company, I hastened to add:  “Eli Kirke shall not know!”

“Your wits jump quick enough sometimes,” said he.  “Now tell me, whose is she, and what value do you set on her?”

I was speechless with surprise.  However wild a life M. Radisson led, his title of nobility was from a king who awarded patents to gentlemen only.