“Undoubtedly!  He has made himself known.”

“Better perhaps than you imagine, monsieur.  The merchants of Havre and Cherbourg will thank you for this that I tell you now.  Torode to the English, Main Rouge to the French—­he lives on Herm, the next isle to Sercq, where I myself live.  He is the most successful privateer in all these waters.  And why?  I will tell you, monsieur.  It is because he robs French ships as an English privateer, and English ships as a French privateer.  He changes his skin as he goes and plunders under both flags.”

“Really!  That is a fine fairy tale.  On my word it is worthy almost of La Fontaine himself.  And what proof do you offer of all this, my man?”

“Truly none, monsieur, except myself—­that I am here for knowing it.”

“And Main Rouge knew that you knew it?”

“That is why I am here, monsieur.”

“And alive!  Main Rouge is no old woman, my man.”

“It is a surprise to me that I still live, monsieur, and I cannot explain it.  He has had me in confinement for three weeks, expecting to die each day, since he sank our schooner and shot our men in the water as they swam for their lives.  Why, of all our crew, I live, I do not know.”

“It is the strongest proof we have that what you tell me is untrue.”

“And yet I tell it at risk of more than my life, monsieur.  Torode’s last words to me were that if I opened my mouth he would smite my kin in Sercq till not one was left.”

“And he told me you were such an inveterate liar and troublesome fellow that he had had enough of you, and only did not kill you because of your people, whom he knows,” he said, with a knowing smile.

Torode’s forethought staggered me somewhat, but I looked the captain squarely in the face and said, “I am no liar, monsieur, and I have had no dealings with the man save as his prisoner.”  But I could not tell whether he believed me or not.

“And your mind is made up not to obey orders?” he asked, after a moment’s thought.

“I cannot lift a hand against my country, monsieur.”

“Place him under arrest,” he said quietly, to the man who had brought me there.  “I will see to him later;” and I had but exchanged one imprisonment for another.

That was as dismal a night as ever I spent, with no ray of hope to lighten my darkness, and only the feeling that I could have done no other, to keep me from breaking down entirely.

What the result would be I could not tell, but from the captain’s point of view I thought he would be justified in shooting me, and would probably do so as a warning to the rest.  He evidently did not believe a word I said, and I could not greatly blame him.

I thought of them all at home, but mostly of my mother and of Carette.  I had little expectation of ever seeing them again, but I was sure they would not have had me act otherwise.  It was what my grandfather would have done, placed as I was, and no man could do better than that.  Most insistently my thoughts were of Carette and those bright early days on Sercq, and black as all else was, those remembrances shone like jewels in my mind.  And when at times I thought of Torode and his stupendous treachery, my heart was like to burst with helpless rage.  I scarcely closed my eyes, and in the morning felt old and weary.