He smiled gravely, and held out his hand; but Humphrey did not take it, and they remained gazing at each other for some few minutes in silence. "Have you thought better of my proposals, Captain Armstrong?" said the buccaneer at last. "Are we to be friends?" "It is impossible, sir," replied Humphrey, quietly. "After what has passed I grieve to have to reject your advances; but you must see that it can never be." "I can wait," said the buccaneer, patiently. "The time will come." Humphrey shook his head. "Is there anything you want?" "Yes," said Humphrey, sharply. "Liberty." "Take it. It is in my hand." "Liberty chained to you, sir! No. There, place me under no further obligations, sir. I will not fight against you; but pray understand that what you ask can never be." "I can wait," said the buccaneer again, quietly, as he let his eyes rest for a few moments upon his prisoner's face, and then left the room. Humphrey sprang up impatiently, and was about to pace the chamber like a wild beast in a cage when he heard voices in the corridor, and directly after Dinny entered. The man looked troubled and stood listening, then he stole to the curtain and went down the corridor, to stay away for quite a quarter of an hour before he returned. "He's gone, sor, safe enough. Faix, captain, dear, I fale as if I ought to be hung." "Hung, Dinny?" "Yis, sor, for threachery to as good a friend as I iver had." "What do you mean, Dinny?" cried Humphrey, eagerly. "Mane, sor! Why, that all the grate min in the world, from Caesar down to Pater Donovan, have had their wake side. I've got mine, and I'm a fallen man." "Speak out plainly," cried Humphrey, flushing. "That's just what I'm doing, sor," said Dinny, with a soft smile. "It's Nature, sor. She was bad enough, and thin you helped her. Oh, there's no foighting agen it! It used to be so in Oireland. She says to the little birds in the spring--choose your partners, darlin's, she says, and they chose 'em; and she said the same to human man, and he chooses his." "Oh, Dinny, if you hadn't quite such a long tongue!" cried Humphrey. "Faix, it's a regular sarpint, sor, for length, and just as desaving; but as I was saying, what Nature says in owld Oireland in the spring she says out here in this baste of a counthry where there's nayther spring, summer, autumn, nor winther--nothing but a sort of moshposh of sunshine and howling thunderstorms." "And--" "Yis, sor, that's I'm a fallen man." "And will you really help me to escape!" "Whisht, sor! What are ye thinking about? Spaking aloud in a counthry where the parrots can talk like Christians and the threes is full of ugly little chaps, who sit and watch ye and say nothing, but howld toight wid their tails, and thin go and whishper their saycrets to one another, and look as knowing as Barny Higgins's pig." "Dinny, will you speak sensibly?"