Meanwhile it's your surrender I require, my man, not your impudence." Captain Blood appeared surprised, pained.

He turned in appeal to Lord Julian.
"D'ye hear that now?
And did ye ever hear the like?
But what did I tell ye?
Ye see, the young gentleman's under a misapprehension entirely.
Perhaps it'll save broken bones if your lordship explains just who and what I am." Lord Julian advanced a step and bowed perfunctorily and rather disdainfully to that very disdainful but now dumbfounded officer.

Pitt, who watched the scene from the quarter-deck rail, tells us that his lordship was as grave as a parson at a hanging.

But I suspect this gravity for a mask under which Lord Julian was secretly amused.
"I have the honour to inform you, sir," he said stiffly, "that Captain Blood holds a commission in the King's service under the seal of my Lord Sunderland, His Majesty's Secretary of State." Captain Calverley's face empurpled; his eyes bulged.

The buccaneers in the background chuckled and crowed and swore among themselves in their relish of this comedy.