er I'll cleave him to the chine! Caitiffs!
varlets! hounds! dare ye threaten me? Ods-bodikins, I like it well! By
our lady, ye are a merry set of mariners who draw your blades upon a man
who is come upon this deck to tell ye how to fill your pockets with old
gold! Back there, every man of ye, and put up your knives, ere I split
your heads and toss ye into the sea!'

"As I spoke these words my voice and tones were so loud and terrible
that I almost frightened myself. The crew fell back as I advanced a step
or two, and every man of them sheathed his knife. Even the stock-broker
seemed to be overawed by my tremendous voice and my fierce appearance."

"John Gayther," said the Daughter of the House, who had been listening
very eagerly, "what made you talk like that, and strut about, and pound
the deck? That's not like you. I would not have supposed that you ever
could have acted so."

"You will understand it all, miss," said the gardener, "when you
remember that for nearly two hours I had been breathing the atmosphere
of the sixteenth century. That atmosphere was the air which for two
hundred years had been fastened up in those empty hogsheads. I had drawn
it into my lungs; it had gone into my blood, my nerves, my brain. I was
as a man who swash-buckles--a reckless mariner of the olden time. I
longed to take my cutlass in my teeth and board a Spaniard. As I looked
upon the villainous stock-broker before me, I felt as if I could take
him by the throat, plunge down with him to the deck of the Spanish
galleon, and shut him up fast and tight in the room with that manacled
Spaniard who could not have been Columbus. I thrilled with a fierce
longing for combat. It was the air of the sixteenth century which had
permeated my every pore.

"Now I fixed upon the stock-broker a terrible glare and stepped toward
him. 'Money miscreant!' I yelled, 'you it was who tried first to murder
me, and then to turn the hearts of all these good men against me!' I
raised my capstan-bar in the air. 'Aroint thee, fiend!' I yelled. 'Get
thee below; and if anon I see thee I will break thy dastardly skull!'

"At this the stock-broker, frightened nearly out of his wits, and with
his hands still tied and the rope around his neck, made a dive for the
companionway, and disappeared below. I stood up very bold; I threw out
my chest, and gazed around in triumph. The air of the sixteenth century
had saved me! Those men would have no more dared to attack me, as