structed by Colonel Bishop upon the
matter of how to handle the pirates.

His air, as he stepped into the waist of the Arabella, was haughty,
truculent, and disdainful.

Blood, the King's commission now in his pocket, and Lord Julian standing
beside him, waited to receive him, and Captain Calverley was a little
taken aback at finding himself confronted by two men so very different
outwardly from anything that he had expected. But he lost none of his
haughty poise, and scarcely deigned a glance at the swarm of fierce,
half-naked fellows lounging in a semicircle to form a background.

"Good-day to you, sir," Blood hailed him pleasantly. "I have the honour
to give you welcome aboard the Arabella. My name is Blood--Captain
Blood, at your service. You may have heard of me."

Captain Calverley stared hard. The airy manner of this redoubtable
buccaneer was hardly what he had looked for in a desperate fellow,
compelled to ignominious surrender. A thin, sour smile broke on the
officer's haughty lips.

"You'll ruffle it to the gallows, no doubt," he said contemptuously.
"I suppose that is after the fashion of your kind. Meanwhile it's your
surrender I require, my man, not your impudence."

Captain Blood appeared surprised, pained. He turned in appeal to Lord
Julian.

"D'ye hear that now? And did ye ever hear the like? But what did I tell
ye? Ye see, the young gentleman's under a misapprehension entirely.
Perhaps it'll save broken bones if your lordship explains just who and
what I am."

Lord Julian advanced a step and bowed perfunctorily and rather
disdainfully to that very disdainful but now dumbfounded officer. Pitt,
who watched the scene from the quarter-deck rail, tells us that his
lordship was as grave as a parson at a hanging. But I suspect this
gravity for a mask under which Lord Julian was secretly amused.

"I have the honour to inform you, sir," he said stiffly, "that Captain
Blood holds a commission in the King's service under the seal of my Lord
Sunderland, His Majesty's Secretary of State."

Captain Calverley's face empurpled; his eyes bulged. The buccaneers in
the background chuckled and crowed and swore among themselves in their
relish of this comedy. For a long moment Calverley stared in silence
at his lordship, observing the costly elegance of his dress, his air of
calm assurance, and his cold, fastidious speech, all of which savoured
distinctly of the great world to which he belonged.

"And who the