Page:The Dark Frigate (Hawes).djvu/162

tell because this pink that late became our prize is small and of little worth, though we got from her eleven brave fellows who shall be worth a store of fine gold.” He looked from one of his men to another, for they were all there, — Martin and the cook, and Philip Marsham and Will Canty, and Paul Craig and Joe Kirk, the one-eyed carpenter and the rest, — and his thin face settled into the many wrinkles that had got him his name. There was none of them, unless it might be Harry Malcolm or Old Jacob, who could say surely at one time or another what thoughts were uppermost in Tom Jordan’s shrewd head.

“Come, now, my hearts of gold,” he cried, “let us have an end of such folly. Said I not that these northern fisheries were meat for crows? And that we must go south to find prey for eagles? We will choose a fine harbour by some green island where there’s rich fruit for the picking and fat fish for the catching, and we will build there a town of our own. We will take toll from the King of Spain’s ships; we will take us wives and women and gold and wine from the dons of the islands and the main. Yea, we will lay up a great store of riches and live in fullness of bread and abundance of idleness.”

Some were pleased, but some doubted still, which the Old One perceiving, for he read their faces, cried, “Nay, speak up, speak up! Let us have no fair-protesting friends with hollow and undermining hearts.”

“Yea, it is a fair tale,” cried one, in a surly voice, “but thus far we have blows to show for our pains — blows and a kettle of fish.”

“And methinks," another growled, “we shall see more of salt fish and buccaned meat, than of fine wines and gold and handsome women.”