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The tall, lean man, with the shaven and more sinister face, introduced himself abruptly as Brundage, Tom Combe's new manager; adding: "We've come for a settlement!"

"You are scoundrels!" Seibert shouted, standing up in dazed wrathfulness. "I know you, you Brundage fellow!"

"And we know you," Brundage replied coldly.

"You are a scoundrel, too, like that Waller was!"

"Quiet!" the other man said, with a sharpness as startling as the unexpected discharge of a gun.

Seibert for the first time gave him a careful look, and recognised him, partly from descriptions, and perhaps partly because inter-island rumour frequently connected Brundage's name with Captain Williams, who was a sort of pirate, greatly disliked by planters owing to his practice of taking what he needed in the way of stores and equipment from "blackbirders"—recruiters that furnished labour for plantations. Nearly all the plantations winked encouragement to rascals that sailed under the American, or German, or French flag, so they would not have to obey British labour recruiting laws. Williams was said to have caught recruiters and made them even put their black cargoes back on the beach; it was also said that he was mad; that he hated white men; that he had been more or less casually hunted and chased so many years without success because cannibals everywhere regarded him as a friend, and he could safely stop in remote bays and be supplied with food, water, and wood where only a heavily armed vessel would have dared to drop anchor.