"I know that a man's will, and not a college of heralds, makes him what
he is," said Ferne. "I have known churls in honorable houses and true
knights in the common camp. And I submit not my destinies to that
gamester Luck: as I deserve and as God wills, so run my race!"

"Oh, every man of us knows our Captain's deserving!" quoth Baldry.
"Well, gentlemen, on that occasion of which I was speaking, the devil's
own luck being with me, I sunk both the carrack and the galley, and
headed the _Star_ for the castle of Paria."

On went the wondrous tale, with no further interruption from Sir
Mortimer, who sat at the head of the table, playing the part of host to
Captain Robert Baldry, listening with cold patience to the adventurer's
rhodomontade. When spurred by wine there was wont to awaken in Baldry a
certain mordant humor, a rough wit, making straight for the mark and
clanging harshly against an adversary's shield, a lurid fancy dully
illuminating the subject he had in hand. The wild story that he was
telling caught the attention of the more thoughtless sort at table; they
leaned forward, encouraging him from flight to flight, laughing at each
sally of boatswain's wit, ejaculating admiration when the _Star_ and her
Captain fairly left the realm of the natural. One splendid lie followed
another, until Baldry was caught by his own words, and saw himself thus,
and thus, and thus!--a sea-dog confessed, a gatherer of riches, a dealer
of death from the poop of the _Star_! In his mind's eye the lost bark
swelled to a phantom ship, gigantic, terrible, wrapped with the mist of
the sea; while he himself--ah! he himself--

"He struck the mainmast with his hand,
The foremast with his knee--"