“The same.  You see the fellow’s well protected.  It’s a piece of news I gathered in St. Nicholas.  I am not sure that I welcome it, for I am not sure that it makes any easier a task upon which my kinsman, Lord Sunderland, has sent me hither.  But there it is.  You didn’t know?”

She shook her head without replying.  She had averted her face, and her eyes were staring down at the gently heaving water.  After a moment she spoke, her voice steady and perfectly controlled.

“But surely, if this were true, there would have been an end to his piracy by now.  If he... if he loved a woman and was betrothed, and was also rich as you say, surely he would have abandoned this desperate life, and....”

“Why, so I thought,” his lordship interrupted, “until I had the explanation.  D’Ogeron is avaricious for himself and for his child.  And as for the girl, I’m told she’s a wild piece, fit mate for such a man as Blood.  Almost I marvel that he doesn’t marry her and take her a-roving with him.  It would be no new experience for her.  And I marvel, too, at Blood’s patience.  He killed a man to win her.”

“He killed a man for her, do you say?” There was horror now in her voice.

“Yes — a French buccaneer named Levasseur.  He was the girl’s lover and Blood’s associate on a venture.  Blood coveted the girl, and killed Levasseur to win her.  Pah!  It’s an unsavoury tale, I own.  But men live by different codes out in these parts....”

She had turned to face him.  She was pale to the lips, and her hazel eyes were blazing, as she cut into his apologies for Blood.

“They must, indeed, if his other associates allowed him to live after that.”

“Oh, the thing was done in fair fight, I am told.”

“Who told you?”

“A man who sailed with them, a Frenchman named Cahusac, whom I found in a waterside tavern in St. Nicholas.  He was Levasseur’s lieutenant, and he was present on the island where the thing happened, and when Levasseur was killed.”

“And the girl?  Did he say the girl was present, too?”

“Yes.  She was a witness of the encounter.  Blood carried her off when he had disposed of his brother-buccaneer.”

“And the dead man’s followers allowed it?” He caught the note of incredulity in her voice, but missed the note of relief with which it was blent.  “Oh, I don’t believe the tale.  I won’t believe it!”

“I honour you for that, Miss Bishop.  It strained my own belief that men should be so callous, until this Cahusac afforded me the explanation.”

“What?” She checked her unbelief, an unbelief that had uplifted her from an inexplicable dismay.  Clutching the rail, she swung round to face his lordship with that question.  Later he was to remember and perceive in her present behaviour a certain oddness which went disregarded now.

“Blood purchased their consent, and his right to carry the girl off.  He paid them in pearls that were worth more than twenty thousand pieces of eight.”  His lordship laughed again with a touch of contempt.  “A handsome price!  Faith, they’re scoundrels all - just thieving, venal curs.  And faith, it’s a pretty tale this for a lady’s ear.”