That's what I've done."
"But the men?" his lordship interposed in his level, cultured voice.
"This hundred men that Wolverstone has taken with him?"
"They are those of my crew who have no taste for King James's
service, and have preferred to seek work of other kinds. It was
in our compact, my lord, that there should be no constraining of
my men."
"I don't remember it," said his lordship, with sincerity.
Blood looked at him in surprise. Then he shrugged. "Faith, I'm
not to blame for your lordship's poor memory. I say that it was
so; and I don't lie. I've never found it necessary. In any case
ye couldn't have supposed that I should consent to anything different."
And then the Deputy-Governor exploded.
"You have given those damned rascals in Tortuga this warning so
that they may escape! That is what you have done. That is how you
abuse the commission that has saved your own neck!"
Peter Blood considered him steadily, his face impassive. "I will
remind you," he said at last, very quietly, "that the object in view
was - leaving out of account your own appetites which, as every one
knows, are just those of a hangman - to rid the Caribbean of
buccaneers.
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