The Governor of Jamaica was a man of great experience, and with a fairly
clear insight into the ways of the wicked. When Kate and her uncle had
left him and he paced the floor, with the memory of the beautiful eyes
of the pirate's daughter as they had been uplifted to his own, he felt
assured that he could see rightly into the designs of the unscrupulous
Captain Vince. Of what avail would it be for him to kill the father of
the girl who had rejected him? It would be an atrocious but temporary
triumph scarcely to be considered. But to capture that father; to
disregard the laws of the service and the orders of his superiors, which
he had already proposed to do; to communicate with Kate and to hold up
before her terror-stricken eyes the life of her father, to be ended in
horror or enjoyed in peace as she might decide--that would be Vince, as
the Governor knew him.

The Governor knew well his man, and those were the designs and
intentions of Captain Christopher Vince of his Majesty's corvette the
Badger.

CHAPTER XVI

A QUESTION OF ETIQUETTE

Proudly sailed the Revenge and her attendant bark into the waters of
Honduras Gulf, and proudly stood Captain Stede Bonnet upon his
quarter-deck, dressed in a handsome uniform which might have been that
of a captain or admiral in the royal navy; one hand caressed his ornate
sword-hilt, while the other was thrust into the bosom of his
gilt-embroidered coat. A newly fashioned Jolly Roger, in which the
background was very black and the skull and cross-bones ghastly white,
flew from his masthead.

As night came on there could be seen, twinkling far away upon the
horizon, a beacon light, which in those days was kept burning for the
benefit of the piratical craft which made a rendezvous of the waters off
Belize, then the commercial centre for the vessels of the "free
companions." Having supposed, in his unnautical mind, that his entrance
into the Gulf of Honduras meant the end of his present voyage, and not
wishing to lower his own feeling of importance by asking too many
questions of his inferiors, Captain Bonnet had bedecked himself a day
too soon, and there were some jeers and sneers among his crew when he
descended to his cabin to take off his fine clothes. But his
self-complacency was well armoured, and he did not hear the jokes of
which he was the subject, especially by the little clique of which Black
Paul was the centre. But the sailing-master knew his business, and the