He had dressed with unusual care.  Gold braid edged his black doublet, and fine old Mechlin came back over his sleeves in deep ruffs.  And in his eyes the glancing light of steel striking fire.

Bidding the sailors take themselves off, M. Radisson drew his blade from the scabbard and called attention by a sharp rap.

Quick silence fell, and he laid the naked sword across the table.  His right hand played with the jewelled hilt.  Across his breast were medals and stars of honour given him by many monarchs.  I think as we looked at our leader every man of us would have esteemed it honour to sail the seas in a tub if Pierre Radisson captained the craft.

But his left hand was twitching uneasily at his chin, and in his eyes were the restless lights.

“Gentlemen,” says he, as unconcerned as if he were forecasting weather, “gentlemen, I seem to have heard that the crew of my kinsman’s ship have mutinied.”

We were nigh a thousand leagues from rescue or help that day!

“Mutinied!” shrieks La Chesnaye, with his voice all athrill.  “Mutinied?  What will my father have to say?”

And he clapped his tilted chair to floor with a thwack that might have echoed to the fo’castle.

“Shall I lend you a trumpet, La Chesnaye, or—­or a fife?” asks M. Radisson, very quiet.

And I assure you there was no more loud talk in the cabin that day; only the long, low wash and pound and break of the seas abeam, with the surly wail that portends storm.  I do not believe any of us ever realized what a frail chip was between life and eternity till we heard the wrenching and groaning of the timbers in the silence that followed M. Radisson’s words.

“Gentlemen,” continues M. Radisson, softer-spoken than before, “if any one here is for turning back, I desire him to stand up and say so.”

The St. Pierre shipped a sea with a strain like to tear her asunder, and waters went sizzling through lee scuppers above with the hiss of a cataract.  M. Radisson inverts a sand-glass and watches the sand trickle through till the last grain drops.  Then he turns to us.

Two or three faces had gone white as the driving spray, but never a man opened his lips to counsel return.

“Gentlemen,” says M. Radisson, with the fires agleam in his deep-set eyes, “am I to understand that every one here is for going forward at any risk?”

“Aye—­aye, sir!” burst like a clarion from our circle.

Pierre Radisson smiled quietly.

“’Tis as well,” says he, “for I bade the coward stand up so that I could run him through to the hilt,” and he clanked the sword back to its scabbard.

“As I said before,” he went on, “the crew on my kinsman’s ship have mutinied.  There’s another trifle to keep under your caps, gentlemen—­the mutineers have been running up pirate signals to the crew of this ship——­”

“Pirate signals!” interrupts La Chesnaye, whose temper was ever crackling off like grains of gunpowder.  “May I ask, sir, how you know the pirate signals?”