This man, in spite of his oily aspect, had several bloody crimes in his life history.  He was a worthy superintendent of the group of adventurers inflamed by patriotic enthusiasm who were forwarding supplies to the submarines in the Spanish Mediterranean.  They all knew Captain Ferragut, because of the affair at Marseilles, and they were talking about his person with gloomy reticence.

“Through them I learned of your arrival,” she continued.  “They are spying upon you, waiting for a favorable moment.  Who knows if they have not already followed you here?...  Ulysses, flee; your life is seriously threatened.”

The captain again shrugged his shoulders with an expression of disgust.

“Flee, I repeat it!...  And if you can, if I arouse in you a little compassion, if you are not completely indifferent to me ... take me with you!...”

Ferragut began to wonder if all this preamble was merely a prelude to this final request.  The unexpected demand produced an impression of scandalized amazement.  Was he to flee with her, with the one who had done him so much harm?...  Again unite his life to hers, knowing her as he now knew her!...

The proposition was so absurd that the captain smiled sardonically.

“I am just as much in danger as you are,” continued Freya with a despairing accent.  “I do not know exactly what the danger is that threatens me, nor whence it may come.  But I suspect it, I foresee it hanging over my head....  I am of absolutely no use to them now; I no longer have their confidence, and I know too many things.  Since I possess too many secrets for them to give me up, leaving me in peace, they have agreed to suppress me; I am sure of that.  I can read it in the eyes of the one who was my friend and protector....  You cannot abandon me, Ulysses.  You will not desire my death.”

Ferragut waxed indignant before these supplications, finally breaking his disdainful silence.

“Comedienne!...  All a lie!...  Inventions to entangle yourself with me, making me intervene again in the network of your life, compromising me again in your work of detestable surveillance!...”

He was now taking the right path.  His desire for vengeance had placed him among Germany’s adversaries.  He was lamenting his former blindness and was satisfied with his new interests.  He was making no secret of his conduct.  He was serving the Allies.

“And that is the reason you are hunting me up; that is the reason that you have arranged this interview, probably at the instigation of your friend, the doctor.  You wish to employ me for a second time as the secret instrument of your espionage.  ’Captain Ferragut is such an enamored simpleton,’ you have said to one another.  ’We have nothing to do but to make an appeal to his chivalry....’  And you wish to live with me, perhaps to accompany me on my voyages, to follow my existence in order to reveal my secrets to your compatriots that I may again appear as a traitor.  Ah, you hussy!...”