"It--it--it was not all a lie, Ramsay," she stammered. "The bung was
hard--and--and--and I didn't hasten----"

"Dear comrade--good-bye, forever!" I called from the dark-of the step.

"Forever?" asked the faint voice of a forlorn figure black in the
doorway.

Dear, snowy, self-sacrificing spirit--'tis my clearest memory of her
with the thin, grieved voice coming through the dark.

I ran to the wharf hard as ever heels nerved by fear and joy and
triumph and love could carry me. The passage I easily engaged from the
ship's mate, who dinned into my unlistening ears full account of the
north sea, whither Captain Gillam was to go for the Fur Company, and
whither, too, Master Ben was keen to sail, "a pirateer, along o' his
own risk and gain," explained the mate with a wink, "pirateer or
privateer, call 'em what you will, Mister; the Susan with white sails
in Boston Town, and Le Bon Garçon with sails black as the devil himself
up in Quebec, ha--ha--and I'll give ye odds on it, Mister, the devil
himself don't catch Master Ben! Why, bless you, gentlemen, who's to
jail 'im here for droppin' Spanish gold in his own hold and poachin'
furs on the king's preserve o' the north sea, when Stocking, the
warden, 'imself owns 'alf the Susan and Cap'en Gillam, 'is father, is
master o' the king's ship?"

"They do say," he babbled on, "now that Radisson, the French
jack-a-boots, hath given the slip to the King's Company, he sails from
Quebec in ship o' his own. If him and Ben and the Capiten meet--oh,
there'll be times! There'll be times!"