“You—­you—­mean coward!  I’ve a mind to knock you into the sea!”

“Grow bigger first, little billycock,” taunts Ben.

By the next day I was big enough.

Mistress Hortense Hillary was down on the beach with M. Picot’s blackamoor, who dogged her heels wherever she went; and presently comes Rebecca Stocking to shovel sand too.  Then Ben must show what a big fellow he is by kicking over the little maid’s cart-load.

“Stop that!” commands Jack Battle, springing of a sudden from the beach.

For an instant, Ben was taken aback.

Then the insolence that provokes its own punishment broke forth.

“Go play with your equals, jack-pudding!  Jailbirds who ape their betters are strangled up in Quebec,” and he kicked down Rebecca’s pile too.

Rebecca’s doll-blue eyes spilled over with tears, but Mistress Hortense was the high-mettled, high-stepping little dame.  She fairly stamped her wrath, and to Jack’s amaze took him by the hand and marched off with the hauteur of an empress.

Then Ben must call out something about M. Picot, the French doctor, not being what he ought, and little Hortense having no mother.

“Ben,” said I quietly, “come out on the pier.”  The pier ran to deep water.  At the far end I spoke.

“Not another word against Hortense and Jack!  Promise me!”

His back was to the water, mine to the shore.  He would have promised readily enough, I think, if the other monkeys had not followed—­Rebecca with big tear-drops on both cheeks, Hortense quivering with wrath, Jack flushed, half shy and half shamed to be championed by a girl.

“Come, Ben; ’fore I count three, promise——­”

But he lugged at me.  I dodged.  With a splash that doused us four, Ben went headlong into the sea.  The uplift of the waves caught him.  He threw back his arms with a cry.  Then he sank like lead.

The sailor son of the famous captain could not swim.  Rebecca’s eyes nigh jumped from her head with fright.  Hortense grew white to the lips and shouted for that lout of a blackamoor sound asleep on the sand.

Before I could get my doublet off to dive, Jack Battle was cleaving air like a leaping fish, and the waters closed over his heels.

Bethink you, who are not withered into forgetfulness of your own merry youth, whether our hearts stopped beating then!

But up comes that water-dog of a Jack gripping Ben by the scruff of the neck; and when by our united strength we had hauled them both on the pier, little Mistress Hortense was the one to roll Gillam on his stomach and bid us “Quick!  Stand him on his head and pour the water out!”

From that day Hortense was Jack’s slave, Jack was mine, and Ben was a pampered hero because he never told and took the punishment like a man.  But there was never a word more slurring Hortense’s unknown origin and Jack’s strange wrist marks.