He greeted Bransome with familiar ease, and not only Bransome, but Sproat, the boatswain. From the bulwarks he stood surveying the rafts below with their silent crews of naked Caribs and noisily directing French overseers. He called down to them--Major Sands assumed it to be some French ribaldry--and set them laughing and answering him with raucously merry freedom. He said something to the hands about the hatchway, and had them presently all agrin. Then, when the trader Lafarche came climbing to the deck, mopping himself, and demanding rum, there was de Bernis supporting the demand, and thrusting Bransome before him to the after gangway, whilst himself he followed, bringing Lafarche with him, an arm flung carelessly about the villainous old trader's shoulder.
'A raffish fellow, without dignity or sense of discipline,' was the Major's disgusted comment.
Miss Priscilla looked at him sideways, and a little frown puckered her brow at the root of her daintily chiselled nose.
'That is not how I judge him.'
'No?' He was surprised. He uncrossed his plump legs, took his elbows from the poop-rail, and stood up, a heavy figure rendered the more ponderous by an air of self-sufficiency.
'Yet seeing him there, so very much at ease with that riff-raff, how else should he be read? I should be sorry to see myself in the like case. Stab me, I should.'
'You stand in no danger of it.'
'I thank-you. No.'
'Because a man needs to be very sure of himself before he can condescend so far.' It was a little cruel. But his sneering tone of superiority had annoyed her curiously.
Astonishment froze him. 'I...I do not think I understand. Stab me if I do.'
She was as merciless in her explanation, unintimidated by his frosty tone.
'I see Monsieur de Bernis a man placed by birth and experience above the petty need of standing upon his dignity.'
The Major collected the wits that had been scattered by angry amazement. After a gasping moment, he laughed. Derision he thought was the surest corrosive to apply to such heresies.
'Lord! Here's assumption! And birth, you say. Fan me, ye winds! What tokens of birth do you perceive in the tawdry fellow?'
'His name; his bearing; his...'
But the Major let her get no further. Again he laughed. 'His name? The "de," you mean. Faith, it's borne by many who have long since lost pretensions to gentility, and by many who never had a right to it. Do we even know that it is his name? As for his bearing, pray consider it. You saw him down there, making himself one with the hands, and the rest. Would a gentleman so comport himself?'
'We come back to the beginning,' said she coolly. 'I have given you reason why such as he may do it without loss. You do not answer me.'
He found her exasperating. But he did not tell her so. He curbed his rising heat. A lady so well endowed must be humoured by a prudent man who looks to make her his wife. And Major Sands was a very prudent man.
'But, dear Priscilla, it is because you will not be answered. You are a little obstinate, child.' He smiled to humour her. 'You should trust to my riper judgement of men. You should so, stab me.' And then he changed his tone. 'But why waste breath on a man who tomorrow or the next day will have gone, and whom we shall never see again?'
She sighed, and gently waved her fan. It may be that her next words were uttered merely to plague and punish him. 'I take no satisfaction in the thought. We meet so few whom we are concerned ever to meet again. To me Monsieur de Bernis is one of those few.'
'In that case,' said he, holding himself hard to keep his voice cool and level, 'I thank God the gentleman is so soon to go his ways. In these outlandish settlements you have had hale chance, my dear, of learning--ah--discrimination in the choice of associates. A few months in England will give you a very different outlook.'
'Yes. That is probable,' said she, with a sweet submissiveness. 'Until now I have been compelled to accept the associations which circumstance has thrust upon me. In England it will be mine to choose.'
This was a little devastating in its ambiguity. If he was left in doubt of her real meaning, he was in no doubt that, before England was reached and the choice afforded her, he would have placed her beyond the need of exercising it in so far as a husband was concerned.
But she had not yet completed her task of chastening his superciliousness.
'As for Monsieur de Bernis, it yet might be possible to persuade him to make the voyage with us. Good company upon a voyage is not to be disdained. The time can he monstrous tedious.'
He stared at her, his florid face inflamed. She smiled up at him over the edge of her fan, very sweetly.
'Will you try to persuade him, Bart?'
'I? Persuade him?' He spoke in horror. 'Stab my vitals! Persuade him? I? You jest, Of course.'
She laughed a trilling little enigmatic laugh, and was content to leave the matter there.
Later, whilst still they lingered on the quarter, they were sought by Monsieur de Bernis. He came laden with a basket woven of palmetto, containing fresh oranges and limes. He brought it as an offering to Miss Priscilla, announcing that he had sent Pierre, his half-caste servant, ashore to gather the fruit for her that morning. Graciously she accepted, thanking him. He waved the thanks aside.
'A very trifling gift.'
'In gifts, sir, it is the thought that counts.'
The Major was left considering that he must practise thoughtfulness in future. He remained silent and brooding, whilst Monsieur de Bernis hung there in talk with Miss Priscilla. The Frenchman was gay, witty, and amusing, and to the Major it seemed that Miss Priscilla was very easily moved to laughter. His stolidity leaving him little skill in the lighter social arts, he became increasingly uneasy. What if this French adventurer, growing too conscious of Miss Priscilla's attractions, were after all to decide to make the voyage to Europe on the Centaur? What if Miss Priscilla, whose laughter and general manner seemed in the Major's jaundiced eyes to be almost tinged with wantonness, should so far forget her dignity as, herself, to invite de Bernis to such a course?
Major Sands, inwardly cursing the delays resulting from these loadings of hides, was surly and uneasy all that day. His chance, however, and his revenge upon the man who had occasioned him these pangs was unexpectedly to be vouchsafed him that evening at supper.
CHAPTER 3.
BRANSOME'S PRAYER
The Centaur left Dominica a little before sunset, and with the wind on her starboard quarter set a westerly course for the Isle of Ayes, so as to give a wide berth to Guadeloupe.
Having conned the ship, the Captain went below to supper, and came in high good-humour to the spacious cabin, flanked to port and starboard by the lesser cabins which his passengers were now occupying.
The great horn windows in the stem stood wide to the air and to the green receding mass of the island, which Captain Bransome announced without a sigh that he would never see again. His good-humour was rooted in the fact that his last call made and his cargo safely stowed, he was now definitely setting his face towards home and the serene ease in the bosom of a family that scarcely knew him. Nevertheless, he went in confidence that, like himself, this family looked forward joyously to his retirement from the sea and to assisting him in garnering the reward for all these years of labour bravely shouldered and for all the perils and hardships confronted without shrinking.
Contentment made him more than ordinarily loquacious, as he sat there in shirt and drawers, a burly, jovial figure at the head of his own table, with Sam, the white-jacketed Negro steward, in attendance and Monsieur de Bernis' servant lending him assistance. A feast was spread that evening. There was fresh meat and turtle