"Halloo," shouted Captain Tabor, and two more men came running to

the side, then more still, till it was overhung by a whole row of

red English faces.

"Halloo!" shouted I.

"What d'ye lack? What's afoot? Halloo!"

"Send a boat, for God's sake," I shouted back. "News, news; keep

where ye be. Do not land. Send a boat!"

"Is it the convict tutor, Wingfield?" shouted the captain.

I called back yes, and repeated my demand that he send a boat for

God's sake.

Then I saw a great running hither and thither, and presently a boat

touched water from the side of the Golden Horn with a curious

lapping dip, and I was off my horse and tied him fast to a tree on

the bank, with loose rein that he might crop his fill of the sweet

spring herbage, and when the boat touched bank was in her and

speedily aboard the ship.

Captain Tabor was leaning over the bulwarks, and his ruddy face was

pale, and his look of devil-may-care gayety somewhat subdued.

When I gained the deck forward he came and grasped me by the arm,

and led me into his own cabin, having first shouted forth to his

mate an order to drop anchor and keep the ship in midstream.

"Now, in the name of all the fiends, what is afoot?" he cried out,

though with a cautious cock of his eyes toward the deck, for English

sailors are not black slaves when it comes to discussing matters of

weight.

"There is a plot afoot against His Majesty King Charles, and you but

yesterday, that being also a day on which it is unlawful to unload a

ship, discharged a portion of your cargo, toward its furtherance and

abetting," said I.

"Hell and damnation!" he cried out, "when I trust a woman's tongue

again may I swing from my own yard-arms. What brought that

fair-faced devil into it, anyway? Be there not men enough in this

colony?"

"And you keep not a civil tongue in your head when you speak of

Mistress Mary Cavendish; you will find of a surety that there be one

man in this colony, sir," said I.

He laughed in that mocking fashion of his which incensed me still

further. Then he spoke civilly enough, and said that he meant no

disrespect to one of the fairest ladies whom he had ever had the

good fortune to see, but that it was so well known as to be no more

slight in mentioning than the paint and powder wherewith a woman

enhanced her beauty, that a woman's tongue could not be trusted like

a man's, and that it were a pity that money, which were much better

spent by her for pretty follies, should be put to such grim uses,

and where were the gallants of Virginia that they suffered it, but

did not rather empty their own purses?




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