“But wasn’t he a clergyman, you said?” asked Emily.

But duels, it appeared, did not come amiss to this priest. He fought thirteen altogether in his life, the mate told them: and on one occasion, while waiting for the seconds to reload, he went up to his opponent, suggested “just a little something to fill in time, good sir”⁠—and knocked him flat with his fist.

This time, however, his enemy lay low: so he fitted out a second schooner, and took command of her, weekdays, himself. His first quarry was an apparently harmless Spanish merchantman: but she suddenly opened fourteen masked gun-ports and it was he who had to surrender. All his crew were massacred but himself and his carpenter, who hid behind a water-cask all night.

“But I don’t understand,” said Margaret: “was he a pirate?”

“Of course he was!” said Otto the mate.