g beyond
the thin wooden partition.

Master Lionel nodded, nervously fingering the jewel in his ear, his eyes
shifting from their consideration of the seaman's coarse, weather-tanned
and hairy countenance.

"I did," he said. "But Sir Oliver is headstrong. He will not stir."

"Will he not?" The captain stroked his bushy red beard and cursed
profusely and horribly after the fashion of the sea. "Od's wounds! He's
very like to swing if he bides him here."

"Ay," said Lionel, "if he bides." He felt his mouth turn dry as he
spoke; his heart thudded, but its thuds were softened by a slight
insensibility which the liquor had produced in him.

He uttered the words in so curious a tone that the sailor's dark eyes
peered at him from under his heavy sandy eyebrows. There was alert
inquiry in that glance. Master Lionel got up suddenly.

"Let us take a turn outside, captain," said he.

The captain's eyes narrowed. He scented business. There was something
plaguily odd about this young gentleman's manner. He tossed off the
remains of his sack, slapped down the pot and rose.

"Your servant, Master Tressilian," said he.

Outside our gentleman untethered his horse from the iron ring to which
he had attached the bridle; leading his horse he turned seaward and
strode down the road that wound along the estuary towards Smithick.

A sharp breeze from the north was whipping the water into white peaks
of foam; the sky was of a hard brightness and the sun shone brilliantly.
The tide was running out, and the rock in the very neck of the haven was
thrusting its black crest above the water. A cable's length this side of
it rode the black hull and naked spars of the Swallow--Captain Leigh's
ship.

Lionel stepped along in silence, very gloomy and pensive, hesitating
even now. And the crafty mariner reading this hesitation, and anxious to
conquer it for the sake of such profit as he conceived might lie in the
proposal which he scented, paved the way for him at last.

"I think that ye'll have some matter to propose to me." said he slyly.
"Out with it, sir, for there never was a man more ready to serve you."

"The fact is," said Lionel, watching the other's face with a sidelong
glance, "I am in a difficult position, Master Leigh."

"I've been in a many," laughed the captain, "but never yet in one
through which I could not win. Strip forth your own, and haply I can do
as much for you as I am wont to do for myself."

"Why, it is this wise