“To seek the Lascar, and enter into a compact with him to sell the dispatch.”
Ethan turned white; his eyes blazed and he struggled desperately with the stout ropes that bound him.
“If I were free,” he gasped, “I’d make you regret those words.”
“Oh, spare me any heroics,” sneered the British spy. “I know that both you and that Scottish renegade, John Paul Jones, profess a most lofty patriotism. But neither of you can deceive me.”
“That,” cried Longsword, who had not been able to speak before, so great was his astonishment, “is the most bla’guardly accusation I ever heard in me life, so it is. D’ye mean to say that this lad whom I held in me two arms as a babe, would sell his country to your mad old king?”
“If the price of his treachery were sufficient, of course he would,” jeered Danvers. “It was the end of country and all else when he knew that ten thousand pounds would be gained by the delivery of the dispatch. I have met many men; and I am a fair judge of these little things, believe me.”
“If I were as sharp as you,” growled the Irish trooper, “I’d be afraid to associate wid meself, so I would.”
“I was here when the Lascar came,” said Danvers to Ethan, and ignoring Longsword. “I saw him meet the earl; I overheard what they said.”
“Ah!” said Ethan, with an eagerness that he was unable to conceal.
“The fellow told the earl of the paper; he said that it was then in the possession of another. I met him afterward in the road; it was after dark, and I was soon squeezing his story from his throat.”
“He told me how he sailed from France in the Ranger; how you were now leagued with him, and Jones, also; and you, he said, were the person who had the paper.”
“I understand the matter now,” said Ethan. “He told you what it suited him to have you believe.”
“Oh, don’t try to throw the dust in my eyes like that,” he said. “I’m too old a hand for that sort of thing.”
Ethan at once saw that it would be the merest folly to attempt to convince the man of the Lascar’s deception, so he said nothing more.
“Our friend, Siki,” said Danvers, “is now safe on board the frigate, Drake, which is lying at Carrickfergus; she was in these waters at the time of my capture of him, and I had him sent aboard for safe keeping.”