“Señor, what you say may be true,” said the patriarch who had sought to defend himself, “but not all who bear the warrant of the King of England have so honest a notion of warfare in these waters. What proof have we of your integrity?” Bras-de-Fer tossed his head with a touch of the old hauteur. He looked past the gray-beard to the casement window, where the last glimmer of the western light was burnishing her hair to gold. He saw only the fair head of the woman who had discredited him, scorned and spurned him as though he had been as low as the very thing he now appeared. The lips grew together in a hard line that had in it a touch of cruelty. “It is not the custom of officers of the King,” he said, “to give proofs of integrity to prisoners of war. I offer no proof but my word. I shall do with you as I see fit to do.” And stationing two pikemen at the door of the cabin, he went upon the deck, filled with the thought which almost drove from his mind the serious business of bringing the wreck to rights and mending his own affairs. There was much to be done before the _Sally_ and her huge captive could be brought out into the safety of the broad ocean, away from this dangerous proximity to the Havana. But Bras-de-Fer set himself resolutely to the task, and, putting beside him all but the matter in hand, with a fine, seaman-like sense brought order out of the tangle and wreck of rigging both upon his own vessel and the Spaniard. The night had come on apace, and with it a rising wind which ground the vessels together in a manner which threatened to make them the more vulnerable to the assaults of the sea. The business of shifting the valuable part of the cargo was going swiftly forward under great flares and ship’s lanterns, which were stuck in the bulwarks and hung from the chains and rigging. Bras-de-Fer, a black shade against the lurid glow, stood with folded arms and downcast eyes at a commanding eminence upon the poop, watching the struggling, dusky, gnomelike figures below him. A hoarse order rang from his lips now and then, which was echoed down into the bowels of his own vessel and mingled with the cries and oaths of the fellows below. Blocks creaked above, and the swaying bales and chests, growing for a moment into fiery patches against the sooty darkness behind them, swept over the bulwarks and into gray shadow again, when they were speedily borne down into the gaping black maws of the brig.