“At first I sought only that which belongs to me, something of which I am being robbed.  But since you chose war and opened fire on me with some damage to my ship and loss of life to five of my men, why, war it is, and your ship a prize of war.”

From the quarter rail Mademoiselle d’Ogeron looked down with glowing eyes in breathless wonder upon her well-beloved hero.  Gloriously heroic he seemed as he stood towering there, masterful, audacious, beautiful.  He saw her, and with a glad shout sprang towards her.  The Dutch master got in his way with hands upheld to arrest his progress.  Levasseur did not stay to argue with him:  he was too impatient to reach his mistress.  He swung the poleaxe that he carried, and the Dutchman went down in blood with a cloven skull.  The eager lover stepped across the body and came on, his countenance joyously alight.

But mademoiselle was shrinking now, in horror.  She was a girl upon the threshold of glorious womanhood, of a fine height and nobly moulded, with heavy coils of glossy black hair above and about a face that was of the colour of old ivory.  Her countenance was cast in lines of arrogance, stressed by the low lids of her full dark eyes.

In a bound her well-beloved was beside her, flinging away his bloody poleaxe, he opened wide his arms to enfold her.  But she still shrank even within his embrace, which would not be denied; a look of dread had come to temper the normal arrogance of her almost perfect face.

“Mine, mine at last, and in spite of all!” he cried exultantly, theatrically, truly heroic.

But she, endeavouring to thrust him back, her hands against his breast, could only falter:  “Why, why did you kill him?”

He laughed, as a hero should; and answered her heroically, with the tolerance of a god for the mortal to whom he condescends:  “He stood between us.  Let his death be a symbol, a warning.  Let all who would stand between us mark it and beware.”

It was so splendidly terrific, the gesture of it was so broad and fine and his magnetism so compelling, that she cast her silly tremors and yielded herself freely, intoxicated, to his fond embrace.  Thereafter he swung her to his shoulder, and stepping with ease beneath that burden, bore her in a sort of triumph, lustily cheered by his men, to the deck of his own ship.  Her inconsiderate brother might have ruined that romantic scene but for the watchful Cahusac, who quietly tripped him up, and then trussed him like a fowl.

Thereafter, what time the Captain languished in his lady’s smile within the cabin, Cahusac was dealing with the spoils of war.  The Dutch crew was ordered into the longboat, and bidden go to the devil.  Fortunately, as they numbered fewer than thirty, the longboat, though perilously overcrowded, could yet contain them.  Next, Cahusac having inspected the cargo, put a quartermaster and a score of men aboard the Jongvrow, and left her to follow La Foudre, which he now headed south for the Leeward Islands.