Page:War Drums (1928).pdf/64

 and affixed the date; then, when the ink had dried, folded the paper, addressed and sealed it.

He sat, then, for a while considering what he had done.

Why had he written this letter? And why, he asked himself, was he about to venture his life for this girl whose loveliness was not for him because it was already pledged to another?

He was fully cognizant of the risk he would run. He was not unacquainted with danger. At Tallasee in the country of the Muskogees his training in wilderness warfare had begun early. Nor had his student life in Charles Town been wholly studious. There had been occasions when his skill with a gentleman's weapons had stood him in good stead—a tavern brawl or two; a bloodless but thoroughly business-like affair of honour with an officer from one of His Majesty's sloops of war; a meeting, by no means bloodless, with a bullying soldier of fortune from New York, which had ended only when he had run his man through the shoulder.

He was aware, without conceit, of his own coolness, his quickness of wit. But in the game of wits that he planned to play that night the odds would be heavily against him. If his deception were discovered, what chance would he have alone on Falcon's brig, with that crew of cutthroats? He believed himself—thanks to Mr. O'Sullivan, his Irish teacher—to be one of the best swordsmen in the New World. But one rapier could not withstand forty cutlasses.