"Ah! they're a cruel, merciless lot," interjected Captain S--; "but I think you are getting excited, Farquarson, so you better cease talking about them."
"It is time I was getting up to the city. They are rattling it into her. She'll be loaded in a jiffy, and I've much to do."
"Very well," said the bluff skipper, "get away. And it's understood that mum's the word; but mind you're not through the wood yet. What do you say, Yaunie?"
"I say you no speak so loud or so much. It is better not."
"Very well, old skin-the-goat," said Farquarson playfully; "I suppose I am a bit noisy."
He then jumped aboard his vessel, and invited the trusty pilot to follow him so that they might work out a scheme that would thwart any possibility of a raid being made on the _Claverhouse_. He prided himself on being fertile in strategy, and certainly his notions were not those of an ordinary person. His confidences were given to Yaunie without any reserve. First, he suggested inveigling the raiders from S----'s vessel to his own, getting them down below and filling them full of champagne or whisky, whichever they preferred; and in the event of their remaining on board his friend's ship, they were to be made drunk there, and that being accomplished, the vessel was to be unmoored and taken to sea with them aboard, and they were to be landed or cast adrift in an open boat. The recital of these dare-devil propositions caused Yaunie's face to wear a careworn look, and when asked what he thought of it he said--
"Well, I try to tink, bit it is impossible. You speak what cannot happen. If you do what you say, how can you come back here? No, no; that must not be. I have better plan. No trouble, no get drunk, no run off with officers, no put him in boat; but leave it me: I settle everyting, suppose trouble come."
"Agreed again, old cockaloram. I'm only saying what I'd do. As I said before, you can do as you like, but I prefer giving these fellows 'what cheer!' I says again, what business have they to interfere with Englishmen carryin' on their business in their own way? I say they had no right to put a blockade on, and England should see that her subjects are duly protected."
This eloquent pronouncement of patriotism, with comic gesture added, excited the fiery dissent of the critical Levantine.