“Again you misapprehend me,” cried Lord Julian, between concern and indignation.  “That is not intended.  Your followers will be included in your commission.”

“And d’ ye think they’ll go with me to hunt their brethren — the Brethren of the Coast?  On my soul, Lord Julian, it is yourself does the misapprehending.  Are there not even notions of honour left in England?  Oh, and there’s more to it than that, even.  D’ye think I could take a commission of King James’s?  I tell you I wouldn’t be soiling my hands with it — thief and pirate’s hands though they be.  Thief and pirate is what you heard Miss Bishop call me to-day — a thing of scorn, an outcast.  And who made me that?  Who made me thief and pirate?”

“If you were a rebel...?” his lordship was beginning.

“Ye must know that I was no such thing — no rebel at all.  It wasn’t even pretended.  If it were, I could forgive them.  But not even that cloak could they cast upon their foulness.  Oh, no; there was no mistake.  I was convicted for what I did, neither more nor less.  That bloody vampire Jeffreys — bad cess to him! — sentenced me to death, and his worthy master James Stuart afterwards sent me into slavery, because I had performed an act of mercy; because compassionately and without thought for creed or politics I had sought to relieve the sufferings of a fellow-creature; because I had dressed the wounds of a man who was convicted of treason.  That was all my offence.  You’ll find it in the records.  And for that I was sold into slavery:  because by the law of England, as administered by James Stuart in violation of the laws of God, who harbours or comforts a rebel is himself adjudged guilty of rebellion.  D’ye dream man, what it is to be a slave?”

He checked suddenly at the very height of his passion.  A moment he paused, then cast it from him as if it had been a cloak.  His voice sank again.  He uttered a little laugh of weariness and contempt.

“But there!  I grow hot for nothing at all.  I explain myself, I think, and God knows, it is not my custom.  I am grateful to you, Lord Julian, for your kindly intentions.  I am so.  But ye’ll understand, perhaps.  Ye look as if ye might.”

Lord Julian stood still.  He was deeply stricken by the other’s words, the passionate, eloquent outburst that in a few sharp, clear-cut strokes had so convincingly presented the man’s bitter case against humanity, his complete apologia and justification for all that could be laid to his charge.  His lordship looked at that keen, intrepid face gleaming lividly in the light of the great poop lantern, and his own eyes were troubled.  He was abashed.

He fetched a heavy sigh.  “A pity,” he said slowly.  “Oh, blister me — a cursed pity!” He held out his hand, moved to it on a sudden generous impulse.  “But no offence between us, Captain Blood!”

“Oh, no offence.  But...  I’m a thief and a pirate.”  He laughed without mirth, and, disregarding the proffered hand, swung on his heel.