self-sufficient tones, Colonel Bishop
delivered himself.

"I have sent for you, Captain Blood, because of certain news that has
just reached me. I am informed that yesterday evening a frigate left the
harbour having on board your associate Wolverstone and a hundred men of
the hundred and fifty that were serving under you. His lordship and I
shall be glad to have your explanation of how you came to permit that
departure."

"Permit?" quoth Blood. "I ordered it."

The answer left Bishop speechless for a moment. Then:

"You ordered it?" he said in accents of unbelief, whilst Lord Julian
raised his eyebrows. "'Swounds! Perhaps you'll explain yourself? Whither
has Wolverstone gone?"

"To Tortuga. He's gone with a message to the officers commanding the
other four ships of the fleet that is awaiting me there, telling them
what's happened and why they are no longer to expect me."

Bishop's great face seemed to swell and its high colour to deepen. He
swung to Lord Julian.

"You hear that, my lord? Deliberately he has let Wolverstone loose upon
the seas again--Wolverstone, the worst of all that gang of pirates after
himself. I hope your lordship begins at last to perceive the folly of
granting the King's commission to such a man as this against all my
counsels. Why, this thing is... it's just mutiny... treason! By God!
It's matter for a court-martial."

"Will you cease your blather of mutiny and treason and courts-martial?"
Blood put on his hat, and sat down unbidden. "I have sent Wolverstone
to inform Hagthorpe and Christian and Yberville and the rest of my lads
that they've one clear month in which to follow my example, quit piracy,
and get back to their boucans or their logwood, or else sail out of the
Caribbean Sea. That's what I've done."

"But the men?" his lordship interposed in his level, cultured voice.
"This hundred men that Wolverstone has taken with him?"

"They are those of my crew who have no taste for King James's service,
and have preferred to seek work of other kinds. It was in our compact,
my lord, that there should be no constraining of my men."

"I don't remember it," said his lordship, with sincerity.

Blood looked at him in surprise. Then he shrugged. "Faith, I'm not to
blame for your lordship's poor memory. I say that it was so; and I
don't lie. I've never found it necessary. In any case ye couldn't have
supposed that I should consent to anything different."

And then the Deputy-Governor expl