maids of honour, but adventuresses in the pay of great men to advance
their interest with the king, and riffraff women whose names history
hath done well to forget. To these toasts Colonel Blood and Pierre
Radisson and I sat with inverted glasses.

While the inn was ringing to the shouts of the revellers, the
freebooter leaned across to Pierre Radisson.

"Gad's name if they like you," he mumbled drunkenly.

"Who?" asked Radisson.

"Fur Company," explained Blood. "They hate you! So they do me! But
if the king favours you, they've got to have you," and he laughed to
himself.

"That's the way with me," he whispered in drunken confidence to M.
Radisson. "What a deuce?" he asked, turning drowsily to the table.
"What's my boy doing?"

Young Lieutenant Blood was to his feet holding a reaming glass high as
his head.

"Gentlemen, I give you the sweet savage!" he cried, "the Diana of the
snows--a thistle like a rose--ice that burns--a pauper that spurns--"

"Curse me if he doesn't mean that saucy wench late come from your north
fort," interrupted the father.

My hands were itching to throw a glass in the face of father or son,