And at last, by due caution, we had every thing arranged preliminary to the final start.

Let me say, though, perhaps to the credit of Jarl, that whenever the most strategy was necessary, he seemed ill at ease, and for the most part left the matter to me.

It was well that he did; for as it was, by his untimely straight-forwardness, he once or twice came near spoiling every thing.

Indeed, on one occasion he was so unseasonably blunt, that curiously enough, I had almost suspected him of taking that odd sort of interest in one's welfare, which leads a philanthropist, all other methods failing, to frustrate a project deemed bad; by pretending clumsily to favor it.

But no inuendoes; Jarl was a Viking, frank as his fathers; though not so much of a bucanier..