rty had sent requests
to the governor to take immediate action against the buccaneers,
which he was unable to do until Mr. Benbow's return, Rear Admiral
Whetstone not thinking himself justified in diminishing his own
squadron with risk to the general safety of the island.

But on the day before the court martial was to meet Mr. Benbow sent
for me, and ordered me to cruise along the north shore in search of
the pirate vessel. He did not give me a ship of war for this
purpose, thinking that this would only serve to warn the
buccaneers, who no doubt had spies in the principal ports. But the
brig in which we had brought Mistress Lucy being still in the
harbor, the admiral instructed me to fit her out as a trader, and
send her to sea with a dummy captain and a skeleton crew, and then
to join her secretly with some thirty picked men from the queen's
ships.

This mark of his confidence gave me very great pleasure, and I set
about my preparations with zeal, being busy with them during the
days of the trial. Knowing how strongly attached I was to Joe
Punchard, Mr. Benbow insisted that he should accompany me,
declaring with only too much truth that he himself had little need
of Punchard's services while he was fixed to his bed.

I had, of course, paid a visit to Mistress Lucy immediately on
reaching port. She took me very severely to task for leaving the
port without a word of farewell, and seemed to find it a demerit in
me that I had returned without a wound, praising Dick Cludde very
warmly for the part he had taken in the fight. 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