Joan had been accommodated with a seat by the tiller, and protected from wind and water by a tarpaulin, out of which her bonny face peeped white in the moonlight.
“You have no work for me, sir?” she asked, as the lieutenant came up.
“None, madam; and even less for your good father than we feared might be the case. He has found the bullet, and ’twill be an easy matter to extract it, so he says; and after that, ’tis a mere matter of a few days’ quiet to set the poor fellow on his legs again. So the rascals escaped murder this time; not that one crime more or less would sit hard on the conscience of such villains!”
For a moment Joan said nothing. Then she hazarded, in a very dry, demure voice—
“But, sir, by what I heard, your side went as near committing murder as the other. The man who brought us hither spoke of a bullet in the leg of one of the fishermen.”
“Fishermen! Odds my life, madam, but that’s a very pretty way of putting it! I hope you han’t the same kindness for the rascals that seems to be strong among the country-folk here! Nay, I won’t do you the injustice to suppose you could hold their villainies in aught but abhorrence.”
“Whatever is villainous I hope I abhor very properly,” answered Joan with spirit. “And the shooting down of one’s fellow-men I do hold one of the greatest villainies of all.”
“When ’tis done by smugglers and plunderers of wrecks, no doubt you mean,” retorted the lieutenant tartly.
“Plunderers of wrecks we have none in these parts, or at least none that do the vile things that were done in times past,” said she quickly. “And if you and the soldiers that are come to Rye had had but the punishment of murderers and wreckers in your eye, you would have met with more sympathy than is like to be the case if you mean to repress what they call in these parts free-trade.”
“Well, madam, ’tis in truth the repression of ‘free-trade’ that we have in our minds, and that we intend to carry out by the strength of our arms. And I own I’m amazed to hear a gentlewoman of your sense and spirit speak so leniently of a pack of thievish persons that live by robbing his Majesty, and, indeed, the whole nation to which they belong. I can but trust you speak in more ignorance than you imagine, and that the doings of such ruffians as one Jem Bax, and another wretch called Gardener Tom, of Long Jack and Bill Plunder, Robin Cursemother and Ben the Blast have never come to your ears.”