plague, with the gallows preparing for me at cock-crow. But in the
night some friends o' mine came into the bay, and I had the solemn joy
of stepping out of yon cell over the corp of the Almirante. I've been
mad with fever, and jumped into the Palmas River among the alligators,
and not one of them touched me, though I was swimming about crying that
the water was burning oil. And then a lad in a boat gave me a clout on
the head that knocked the daftness out of me, and in a week I was
marching on my own deck, with my bonnet cocked like a king's captain.
I've been set by my unfriends on a rock in the Florida Keys, with a keg
of dirty water and a bunch of figs, and the sun like to melt my brains,
and two bullet holes in my thigh. But I came out of the pickle, and
lived to make the men that put me there sorry they had been born. Ay,
and I've seen my grave dug, and my dead clothes ready, and in a week I
was making napkins out of them. There's a wonderful kindness in
Providence to mettled folk."

"Ay, Ringan, but that was only the risk of your own neck. I think I
could endure that. But was there ever another you liked far better than
yourself, that you had to see in deadly peril?"

"No. I'll be honest with you, there never was. I grant you that's the
hardest thing to thole. But you'll keep a stiff lip even to that,
seeing you are the braver of the two of us."

At that I cried out in expostulation, but Ringan was firm.

"Ay, the braver by far, and I'll say it again. I'm a man of the dancing
blood, with a rare appetite for frays and forays. You are the sedate
soul that would be happier at home in the chimney corner. And yet you
are the most determined of the lot of us, though you have no pleasure