“What on earth do you want of me!”

“To keep your oath,” said Salterne, clutching his arm, and looking up into his face with searching eyes.

“My oath!  How did you know that I had one?”

“Ah! you were well ashamed of it, I suppose, next day!  A drunken frolic all about a poor merchant’s daughter!  But there is nothing hidden that shall not be revealed, nor done in the closet that is not proclaimed on the house-tops.”

“Ashamed of it, sir, I never was:  but I have a right to ask how you came to know it?”

“What if a poor fat squinny rogue, a low-born fellow even as I am, whom you had baffled and made a laughing-stock, had come to me in my loneliness and sworn before God that if you honorable gentlemen would not keep your words, he the clown would?”

“John Brimblecombe?”

“And what if I had brought him where I have brought you, and shown him what I have shown you, and, instead of standing as stiff as any Spaniard, as you do, he had thrown himself on his knees by that bedside, and wept and prayed, sir, till he opened my hard heart for the first and last time, and I fell down on my sinful knees and wept and prayed by him?”

“I am not given to weeping, Mr. Salterne,” said Amyas; “and as for praying, I don’t know yet what I have to pray for, on her account:  my business is to work.  Show me what I can do; and when you have done that, it will be full time to upbraid me with not doing it.”

“You can cut that fellow’s throat.”

“It will take a long arm to reach him.”

“I suppose it is as easy to sail to the Spanish Main as it was to sail round the world.”

“My good sir,” said Amyas, “I have at this moment no more worldly goods than my clothes and my sword, so how to sail to the Spanish Main, I don’t quite see.”

“And do you suppose, sir, that I should hint to you of such a voyage if I meant you to be at the charge of it?  No, sir; if you want two thousand pounds, or five, to fit a ship, take it!  Take it, sir!  I hoarded money for my child:  and now I will spend it to avenge her.”

Amyas was silent for a while; the old man still held his arm, still looked up steadfastly and fiercely in his face.

“Bring me home that man’s head, and take ship, prizes—­all!  Keep the gain, sir, and give me the revenge!”

“Gain?  Do you think I need bribing, sir?  What kept me silent was the thought of my mother.  I dare not go without her leave.”

Salterne made a gesture of impatience.

“I dare not, sir; I must obey my parent, whatever else I do.”

“Humph!” said he.  “If others had obeyed theirs as well!—­But you are right, Captain Leigh, right.  You will prosper, whoever else does not.  Now, sir, good-night, if you will let me be the first to say so.  My old eyes grow heavy early now-a-days.  Perhaps it’s old age, perhaps it’s sorrow.”

So Amyas departed to the inn, and there, to his great joy, found Cary waiting for him, from whom he learnt details, which must be kept for another chapter, and which I shall tell, for convenience’ sake, in my own words and not in his.