I answered with some
heat that if I was not wounded 'twas from no shirking of duty, and
I would have desired nothing better than that we should board one
of the French vessels; 'twas no pleasure for a man to stand idle on
deck while guns were shot off. And being now wrought to a certain
degree of anger, I reminded her that I had given proof that I was
no coward, and hoped the queen would not show herself so ungrateful
to those who served her well as some other ladies I could name.
This outburst (foreign to my wonted mildness of temper) brought a
color to her cheeks and a gleam to her eyes, and in quite a changed
voice she said:
"Indeed, and I am not ungrateful, Mr. Bold."
And then I craved her pardon (for which, as I learned, Mistress
Lucetta Gurney called me a fool), and inquired how her own affairs
were prospering.
Mr. McTavish, she told me, had gone back to her estate as steward,
she heard from him every week, and he gave excellent reports of the
plantations. I asked her whether anything had been heard of Vetch,
and whether any vessel conveying her produce from Dry Harbor had
been molested by the buccaneers. She said she had no news of either
the one or the other, and I inclined to believe that Vetch had
accepted his defeat and vanished out of her life for ever. When I
told her of the commission intrusted to me by Mr. Benbow she looked
a little troubled, and besought me to have a care of myself--a
departure from her former indifference that surprised me.
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