"Ha, shipmate," says he, motioning to a chair, "you be something earlier than I expected. Suffer me to make an end o' this business--sit ye, comrade, sit! As for you, Bo'sun, have up a flask o' the Spanish wine--the black seal!"
"Aye, cap'n!" says he, and seizing a fistful of hair above his eyebrow, strode away, closing the door behind him.
Now beholding Penfeather as he bent to his writing--the lean, aquiline face of him so smooth and youthful in contrast to his silver hair--I was struck by his changed look; indeed he seemed some bookish student rather than the lawless rover I had thought him, despite the pistols at his elbow and the long rapier that dangled at his chair-back; moreover there was about him also an air of latent power I had not noticed ere this.
At length, having made an end of his writing, he got up and stretched himself: "So, shipmate, art ready to swear the blood-fellowship wi' me?"
"Aye!" says I. "When do we sail?" At this he glanced at me swiftly from the corners of his eyes: "So ho!" he murmured, pinching his chin. "The wind's changed it seems, you grow eager--and wherefore?"
"'Tis no matter!"
"Shipmate," says he, shaking his head, "an we sail as brothers and comrades there must be never a secret betwixt us--speak!"
"As ye will!" quoth I, leaning back in my chair. "I learn then you are sailing as master in a ship bound for the Main in quest of Sir Richard Brandon lost off Hispaniola two years agone. Sir Richard Brandon is the man I have sought ever since I broke out of the hell he sold me into. Now look'ee, Adam Penfeather," says I, springing to my feet and grasping his arm, "look'ee now--put me in the way of meeting this man, aid me to get my hand on this man and I am yours--aye, body and soul--to the end o' things, and this I swear!"
While I spake thus, my voice hoarse with passion, my fingers clutching his arm, Penfeather stood pinching his chin and watching me beneath his black brows; when I had ended he turned and falls a-pacing to and fro across the room as it had been the narrow poop of a ship.
"Ah--I know you now, my lord!" says he, pausing suddenly before me. "As the sailor-man who watched you as you lay a-groaning in your sleep outside the Conisby Arms, I guessed you one o' the Conisby breed by your ring, and as one born and bred here in Kent I mind well the adage, 'To hate like a Brandon and revenge like a Conisby,' and by God, my lord, you are a true Conisby, it seemeth! Vengeance!" says he, his thin features grown sharp and austere, "Ah! I have seen much and overmuch of it aboard lawless craft and among the wild islands of the Caribbees. I have seen the devilish cruelties of Spaniard, Portugal, and the red horrors of Indian vengeance--but, for cold, merciless ferocity, for the vengeance that dieth not, biding its time and battening on poisonous hate, it needeth your man o' noble birth, your gentleman o' quality!" Here he turned his back and paced slowly to the end of the room; when he faced me again his austere look was gone, in its stead was the grimly whimsical expression of the mariner, as I had seen him first.