But on the day before the court martial was to meet Mr. Benbow sent for me, and ordered me to cruise along the north shore in search of the pirate vessel. He did not give me a ship of war for this purpose, thinking that this would only serve to warn the buccaneers, who no doubt had spies in the principal ports. But the brig in which we had brought Mistress Lucy being still in the harbor, the admiral instructed me to fit her out as a trader, and send her to sea with a dummy captain and a skeleton crew, and then to join her secretly with some thirty picked men from the queen's ships. This mark of his confidence gave me very great pleasure, and I set about my preparations with zeal, being busy with them during the days of the trial. Knowing how strongly attached I was to Joe Punchard, Mr. Benbow insisted that he should accompany me, declaring with only too much truth that he himself had little need of Punchard's services while he was fixed to his bed. I had, of course, paid a visit to Mistress Lucy immediately on reaching port. She took me very severely to task for leaving the port without a word of farewell, and seemed to find it a demerit in me that I had returned without a wound, praising Dick Cludde very warmly for the part he had taken in the fight. I answered with some heat that if I was not wounded 'twas from no shirking of duty, and I would have desired nothing better than that we should board one of the French vessels; 'twas no pleasure for a man to stand idle on deck while guns were shot off. And being now wrought to a certain degree of anger, I reminded her that I had given proof that I was no coward, and hoped the queen would not show herself so ungrateful to those who served her well as some other ladies I could name. This outburst (foreign to my wonted mildness of temper) brought a color to her cheeks and a gleam to her eyes, and in quite a changed voice she said: "Indeed, and I am not ungrateful, Mr. Bold." And then I craved her pardon (for which, as I learned, Mistress Lucetta Gurney called me a fool), and inquired how her own affairs were prospering. Mr. McTavish, she told me, had gone back to her estate as steward, she heard from him every week, and he gave excellent reports of the plantations. I asked her whether anything had been heard of Vetch, and whether any vessel conveying her produce from Dry Harbor had been molested by the buccaneers. She said she had no news of either the one or the other, and I inclined to believe that Vetch had accepted his defeat and vanished out of her life for ever. When I told her of the commission intrusted to me by Mr. Benbow she looked a little troubled, and besought me to have a care of myself--a departure from her former indifference that surprised me. I could only answer that I would not court danger, and that as for taking care of myself I must do my duty and leave the rest to Providence.