“Hate him?  Lord!  What a thought!  I don’t regard the fellow at all.”

“Then ye should, ma’am.”  His lordship spoke his thought frankly.  “He’s worth regarding.  He’d be an acquisition to the King’s navy — a man that can do the things he did this morning.  His service under de Ruyter wasn’t wasted on him.  That was a great seaman, and — blister me! — the pupil’s worthy the master if I am a judge of anything.  I doubt if the Royal Navy can show his equal.  To thrust himself deliberately between those two, at point-blank range, and so turn the tables on them!  It asks courage, resource, and invention.  And we land-lubbers were not the only ones he tricked by his manoeuvre.  That Spanish Admiral never guessed the intent until it was too late and Blood held him in check.  A great man, Miss Bishop.  A man worth regarding.”

Miss Bishop was moved to sarcasm.

“You should use your influence with my Lord Sunderland to have the King offer him a commission.”

His lordship laughed softly.  “Faith, it’s done already.  I have his commission in my pocket.”  And he increased her amazement by a brief exposition of the circumstances.  In that amazement he left her, and went in quest of Blood.  But he was still intrigued.  If she were a little less uncompromising in her attitude towards Blood, his lordship would have been happier.

He found the Captain pacing the quarter-deck, a man mentally exhausted from wrestling with the Devil, although of this particular occupation his lordship could have no possible suspicion.  With the amiable familiarity he used, Lord Julian slipped an arm through one of the Captain’s, and fell into step beside him.

“What’s this?” snapped Blood, whose mood was fierce and raw.  His lordship was not disturbed.

“I desire, sir, that we be friends,” said he suavely.

“That’s mighty condescending of you!”

Lord Julian ignored the obvious sarcasm.

“It’s an odd coincidence that we should have been brought together in this fashion, considering that I came out to the Indies especially to seek you.”

“Ye’re not by any means the first to do that,” the other scoffed.  “But they’ve mainly been Spaniards, and they hadn’t your luck.”

“You misapprehend me completely,” said Lord Julian.  And on that he proceeded to explain himself and his mission.

When he had done, Captain Blood, who until that moment had stood still under the spell of his astonishment, disengaged his arm from his lordship’s, and stood squarely before him.

“Ye’re my guest aboard this ship,” said he, “and I still have some notion of decent behaviour left me from other days, thief and pirate though I may be.  So I’ll not be telling you what I think of you for daring to bring me this offer, or of my Lord Sunderland — since he’s your kinsman for having the impudence to send it.  But it does not surprise me at all that one who is a minister of James Stuart’s should conceive that every man is to be seduced by bribes into betraying those who trust him.”  He flung out an arm in the direction of the waist, whence came the half-melancholy chant of the lounging buccaneers.