CHAPTER XI.

FIVE WEEKS IN BACK CUP.

The situation is plain.  Ker Karraje knows who I am.  He knew who I was when he kidnapped Thomas Roch and his attendant.

How did this man manage to find out what I was able to keep from the staff of Healthful House?  How comes it that he knew that a French engineer was performing the duties of attendant to Thomas Roch?  I do not know how he discovered it, but the fact remains that he did.

Evidently he had means of information which must have been costly, but from which he has derived considerable profit.  Besides, men of his kidney do not count the cost when they wish to attain an end they have in view.

Henceforward Ker Karraje, or rather Engineer Serko, will replace me as attendant upon Thomas Roch.  Will he succeed better than I did?  God grant that he may not, that the civilized world may be spared such a misfortune!

I did not reply to Ker Karraje’s Parthian shot, for I was stricken dumb.  I did not, however, collapse, as the alleged Count d’Artigas perhaps expected I would.

No!  I looked him straight in the eyes, which glittered angrily, and crossed my arms defiantly, as he had done.  And yet he held my life in his hands!  At a sign a bullet would have laid me dead at his feet.  Then my body, cast into the lagoon, would have been borne out to sea through the tunnel and there would have been an end of me.

After this scene I am left at liberty, just as before.  No measure is taken against me, I can walk among the pillars to the very end of the cavern, which—­it is only too clear—­possesses no other issue except the tunnel.

When I return to my cell, at the extremity of the Beehive, a prey to a thousand thoughts suggested by my situation, I say to myself: 

“If Ker Karraje knows I am Simon Hart, the engineer, he must at any rate never know that I am aware of the position of Back Cup Island.”

As to the plan of confiding Thomas Roch to my care, I do not think he ever seriously entertained it, seeing that my identity had been revealed to him.  I regret this, inasmuch as the inventor will indubitably be the object of pressing solicitations, and as Engineer Serko will employ every means in his power to obtain the composition of the explosive and deflagrator, of which he will make such detestable use during future piratical exploits.  Yes, it would have been far better if I could have remained Thomas Roch’s keeper here, as in Healthful House.

For fifteen days I see nothing of my late charge.  No one, I repeat, has placed any obstacles in the way of my daily peregrinations.  I have no need to occupy myself about the material part of my existence.  My meals are brought to me regularly, direct from the kitchen of the Count d’Artigas—­I cannot accustom myself to calling him by any other name.  The food leaves nothing to be desired, thanks to the provisions that the Ebba brings on her return from each voyage.