As they were on their way home Kate's eyes were bright, and her step lighter than it had been of late. "Now, uncle," said she, "you know we shall not wait for any chance ship which may take the Governor's despatch. We shall engage a swift vessel ourselves, by which the orders may be carried. And, uncle, when that ship sails I must go in her."
"You!" cried Mr. Delaplaine, "you go in search of the Badger and Captain Vince? That can never--"
"But remember, uncle," cried Kate, "it is just as likely that I shall meet my father's ship as any other, and then we can snap our fingers at all orders and all captains. My father shall be brought here and the good Governor will make him safe, and free him, as he best knows how, from the terrible straits into which his disturbed reason has led him."
Her uncle would not darken Kate's bright hopes, ill-founded though he thought them. To look into those sparkling eyes again was a joy of which he would not deprive himself, if he could help it.
"Suppose he should capture our vessel," she exclaimed; "what a grand thing it would be for him, all unknowing, to spring upon our deck and instantly be captured by me. After that, there would be no more pirate's life for him!"
When Dame Charter heard what had happened at the Governor's house and had listened to the recital of Kate's glowing schemes, her eyes did not immediately glisten with joy.
"If you go, Mistress Kate," said she, "in search of your father or that wicked Captain Vince, I go with you, but I cannot go without my Dickory.
It is full time to expect his return, although, as he was to depend upon so many chances before he could come back, his absence may, with good reason, continue longer, and I could not have him come back and find his mother gone, no man knows where. For in such a quest, what man could know?"
"Oh, Dickory will be here soon!" cried Kate; "any ship which comes sailing towards the harbour may bring him."
The Governor of Jamaica was a man of great experience, and with a fairly clear insight into the ways of the wicked. When Kate and her uncle had left him and he paced the floor, with the memory of the beautiful eyes of the pirate's daughter as they had been uplifted to his own, he felt assured that he could see rightly into the designs of the unscrupulous Captain Vince. Of what avail would it be for him to kill the father of the girl who had rejected him? It would be an atrocious but temporary triumph scarcely to be considered. But to capture that father; to disregard the laws of the service and the orders of his superiors, which he had already proposed to do; to communicate with Kate and to hold up before her terror-stricken eyes the life of her father, to be ended in horror or enjoyed in peace as she might decide--that would be Vince, as the Governor knew him.