The next day passed without any happening, and I lay racking my brain for reasons why one spot of sea should not be as good as another for dropping a man’s body into.

But on the day after that, Torode came suddenly in on me in the afternoon, and looking down on me as I lay, he said roughly—­

“Listen, you, Carre!  By every reason possible you should die, but—­well, I am going to give you chance of life.  It is only a chance, but your death will not lie at my door, as it would do here.  Now here is my last word.  You know more than is good for me.  If ever you disclose what you know, whether you come back or not, I will blot out all you hold dear in Sercq from top to bottom, though I have to bring the Frenchmen down to do it.  You understand?”

“I understand.”

“Be advised, then, and keep a close mouth.”

I was blindfolded and carried out and laid in a waiting boat, which crossed to another vessel, and I was passed up the side, and down a gangway, amid the murmur of many voices.

When my eyes and bonds were loosed I found myself among a rough crowd of men in the ’tween decks of a large ship.  The air was dim and close.  From the row of heavy guns and great ports, several of which were open, I knew her to be a battleship and of large size.  From the gabble of talk all round me I knew she was French.

After the first minute or two no one paid me any attention.  All were intent on their own concerns.  I sat down on the carriage of the nearest gun and looked about me.

The company was such as one would have looked for on a ship of the Republic—­coarse and free in its manners, and loud of talk.  They were probably most of them pressed men, not more than one day out, and looked on me only as a belated one of themselves.  There was—­for the moment at all events—­little show of discipline.  They all talked at once, and wrangled and argued, and seemed constantly on the point of blows; but it all went off in words, and no harm was done.  But to me, who had barely heard a spoken word for close on twenty days, the effect was stunning, and I could only sit and watch dazedly, while my head spun round with the uproar.

Food was served out presently—­well-cooked meat and sweet coarse bread, and a mug of wine to every man, myself among the rest.  There was no lessening of the noise while they ate and drank, and I ate with the rest, and by degrees found my thoughts working reasonably.

I was at all events alive, and it is better to be alive than dead.

I was on a French ship of war, and that, from all points of view, save one, was better than being on a King’s ship.

The one impossible point in the matter was that I was an Englishman on a ship whose mission in life must be to fight Englishmen.  And that I never would do, happen what might, and it seemed to me that the sooner this matter was settled the better.

Discipline on a ship under the Republican flag was, I knew, very different from that on our own ships.  The principles of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, if getting somewhat frayed and threadbare, still tempered the treatment of the masses, and so long as men reasonably obeyed orders, and fought when the time came, little more was expected of them, and they were left very much to themselves.