Page:George Gibbs--Love of Monsieur.djvu/198

 himself, coldly but with a certain gallantry bowed to the gray-haired Spanish lady who had been the most timorous in her embraces.

“Your fear, señora, pays neither me nor my ship a compliment,” he said, coolly. “Your San Isidro is of a nation that of late has proved itself the enemy of my King upon the sea. I have taken her in honorable battle, and—”

Here Jacquard, leering wickedly, the personification of the very thing the women most feared, with Yan Gratz and a dozen pikes, came rushing in at the door, rendering at naught his amiable intentions, for the women fell to screaming again, and Mistress Clerke raised her pistolet to her breast, it seemed, in the very act of firing. With a hoarse cry Bras-de-Fer quelled the turmoil and sent Jacquard and the men growling back upon the deck; but it was some moments before the qualms of the women were relieved and quiet and order brought out of the tumult.

“Señor, what you say may be true,” said the patriarch who had sought to defend himself, “but not all who bear the warrant of the King 186