Master Jensen?'

You should have seen how, just for a moment, he glared at me. He was
armed, of course, and I think at that moment that he was sorely minded
to take my life. But I had a pistol on the table, and my hand lay on the
pistol, and the muzzle pointed across the table very straightly in the
direction of Cornelys Jensen. Then the angry look fell away from his
face, and he broke into long, low laughter, moving his head slowly up
and down, and fixing me very keenly with his bright eyes.

'You are a smart lad,' he said at last. 'What the plague have you to do
with my black flag?'

'What have you to do with it were a question more to the point,' I
answered him, and I make no doubt now that in speaking as I did I was
doing a very foolish thing. But I was only a boy, and inexperienced, and
indeed all my life I have been given to blurting out things that mayhap
I had better have kept to myself.

He laughed again.

'Nay,' he said, 'it is one of my most treasured possessions. I hauled it
down with mine own hands from a pirate ship in my youth, when we
captured the bark of that nefarious sea rover Captain Anthony. I have
carried it with me for luck ever since, and it has always brought me
luck--always till now.' Then he nodded his head again slowly twice or
thrice. 'I will give it to you if you wish, Master Ralph,' he said; 'I
will give it to you for luck.'

'I do not want it,' I said angrily, being somewhat confused with the
turn things had taken. 'I am not superstitious for luck.'

Which indeed was not true, for I never met a seaman yet who was not
superstitious; but I was wrathful, and I knew not what to say.

'Very well,' he said, 'very well. But you are welcome to it if you
wish.'

Then he went out of the cabin without another word and drew the door
behind him. I sat still for some seconds listening to the sound of his
departing footstep.

Now I was bitterly vexed with myself. I had done a vain thing. I had put
Jensen upon his guard by showing him that I knew something at least of
his purposes, and I had put it into his power to offer a very ready
explanation of suspicious circumstances. Indeed, how was I to know that
what he said was not true? There was nothing whatever on the face of it
unlikely, and if he told such a story to Captain Marmaduke, why, it was
ten chances to one that Captain Marmaduke would implicitly believe in
him. For there was no doubt about it, Captain Marmaduke had a great
regard fo