leather. You have ever some outlandish
reason for jibbing and shying like a hot-blooded, half-broken colt. Yet
I think that I can overcome these strange scruples of yours by a little
persuasion.'

'As to the prisoners, Captain Clarke,' said the seaman, 'I'll be as good
as a father to them. S'help me, I will, on the word of an honest sailor!
If you should choose to lay out a trifle of twenty pieces upon their
comfort, I shall see that their food is such as mayhap many of them
never got at their own tables. They shall come on deck, too, in watches,
and have an hour or two o' fresh air in the day. I can't say fairer!'

'A word or two with you on deck!' said Saxon. He walked out of the cabin
and I followed him to the far end of the poop, where we stood leaning
against the bulwarks. One by one the lights had gone out in the town,
until the black ocean beat against a blacker shore.

'You need not have any fear of the future of the prisoners,' he said,
in a low whisper. 'They are not bound for the Barbadoes, nor will this
skinflint of a captain have the selling of them, for all that he is so
cocksure. If he can bring his own skin out of the business, it will be
more than I expect. He hath a man aboard his ship who would think no
more of giving him a tilt over the side than I should.'

'What mean you, Saxon?' I cried.

'Hast ever heard of a man named Marot?'

'Hector Marot! Yes, surely I knew him well. A highwayman he was, but a
mighty stout man with a kind heart beneath a thief's jacket.'

'The same. He is as you say a stout man and a resolute swordsman, though
from what I have seen of his play he is weak in stoccado, and perhaps
somewhat too much attached to the edge, and doth not give prominence
enough to the point, in which respect he neglects the advice and
teaching of the most noteworthy fencers in Europe. Well, well, folk
differ on this as on every other subject! Yet it seems to me that I
would sooner be carried off the field after using my weapon secundum
artem, than walk off unscathed after breaking the laws d'escrime.
Quarte, tierce, and saccoon, say I, and the devil take your estramacons
and passados!'

'But what of Marot?' I asked impatiently.

'He is aboard,' said Saxon. 'It appears that he was much disturbed in
his mind over the cruelties which were inflicted on the country folk
after the battle at Bridgewater. Being a man of a somewhat stern and
fierce turn of mind, his disapproval did vent itself in a