Cahusac was disposed to be ill-humoured.  The risk they had run in taking the Dutch brig and doing violence to members of the family of the Governor of Tortuga, was out of all proportion to the value of their prize.  He said so, sullenly, to Levasseur.

“You’ll keep that opinion to yourself,” the Captain answered him.  “Don’t think I am the man to thrust my neck into a noose, without knowing how I am going to take it out again.  I shall send an offer of terms to the Governor of Tortuga that he will be forced to accept.  Set a course for the Virgen Magra.  We’ll go ashore, and settle things from there.  And tell them to fetch that milksop Ogeron to the cabin.”

Levasseur went back to the adoring lady.

Thither, too, the lady’s brother was presently conducted.  The Captain rose to receive him, bending his stalwart height to avoid striking the cabin roof with his head.  Mademoiselle rose too.

“Why this?” she asked Levasseur, pointing to her brother’s pinioned wrists — the remains of Cahusac’s precautions.

“I deplore it,” said he.  “I desire it to end.  Let M. d’Ogeron give me his parole....”

“I give you nothing,” flashed the white-faced youth, who did not lack for spirit.

“You see.”  Levasseur shrugged his deep regret, and mademoiselle turned protesting to her brother.

“Henri, this is foolish!  You are not behaving as my friend.  You....”

“Little fool,” her brother answered her — and the “little” was out of place; she was the taller of the twain.  “Little fool, do you think I should be acting as your friend to make terms with this blackguard pirate?”

“Steady, my young cockerel!” Levasseur laughed.  But his laugh was not nice.

“Don’t you perceive your wicked folly in the harm it has brought already?  Lives have been lost — men have died — that this monster might overtake you.  And don’t you yet realize where you stand — in the power of this beast, of this cur born in a kennel and bred in thieving and murder?”

He might have said more but that Levasseur struck him across the mouth.  Levasseur, you see, cared as little as another to hear the truth about himself.

Mademoiselle suppressed a scream, as the youth staggered back under the blow.  He came to rest against a bulkhead, and leaned there with bleeding lips.  But his spirit was unquenched, and there was a ghastly smile on his white face as his eyes sought his sister’s.

“You see,” he said simply.  “He strikes a man whose hands are bound.”

The simple words, and, more than the words, their tone of ineffable disdain, aroused the passion that never slumbered deeply in Levasseur.

“And what should you do, puppy, if your hands were unbound?” He took his prisoner by the breast of his doublet and shook him.  “Answer me!  What should you do?  Tchah!  You empty windbag!  You....”  And then came a torrent of words unknown to mademoiselle, yet of whose foulness her intuitions made her conscious.