But one of them looked at him curiously and earnestly.  “The deuce,” he murmured to the man nearest him, “who the dickens is it that French soldier’s like?”

The French soldier heard, and, with the cigar in his teeth, moved away quickly.  He was uneasy in the city—­uneasy lest he should be recognized by any passer-by or tourist.

“I need not fear that, though,” he thought with a smile.  “Ten years!—­why, in that world, we used to forget the blackest ruin in ten days, and the best life among us ten hours after its grave was closed.  Besides, I am safe enough.  I am dead!”

And he pursued his onward way, with the red glow of the cigar under the chestnut splendor of his beard, and the black eyes of veiled women flashed lovingly on his tall, lithe form, with the scarlet undress fez set on his forehead, fair as a woman’s still, despite the tawny glow of the African sun that had been on it for so long.

He was “dead”; therein had lain all his security; thereby had “Beauty of the Brigades” been buried beyond all discovery in “Bel-a-faire-peur” of the 2nd Chasseurs d’Afrique.  When, on the Marseilles rails, the maceration and slaughter of as terrible an accident as ever befell a train rushing through the midnight darkness, at headlong speed, had left himself and the one man faithful to his fortunes unharmed by little less than a miracle; he had seen in the calamity the surest screen from discovery or pursuit.

Leaving the baggage where it was jammed among the debris, he had struck across the country with Rake for the few leagues that still lay between them and the city, and had entered Marseilles as weary foot travelers, before half the ruin on the rails had been seen by the full noon sun.

As it chanced a trading yawl was loading in the port, to run across to Algiers that very day.  The skipper was short of men, and afraid of the Lascars, who were the only sailors that he seemed likely to find to fill up the vacant places in his small crew.

Cecil offered himself and his comrade for the passage.  He had only a very few gold pieces on his person, and he was willing to work his way across, if he could.

“But you’re a gentleman,” said the skipper, doubtfully eyeing him, and his velvet dress, and his black sombrero with its eagle’s plume.  “I want a rare, rough, able seaman, for there’ll like to be foul weather.  She looks too fair to last,” he concluded, with a glance upward at the sky.

He was a Liverpool man, master and owner of his own rakish-looking little black-hulled craft, that, rumor was wont to say, was not averse to a bit of slaving, if she found herself in far seas, with a likely run before her.

“You’re a swell, that’s what you are,” emphasized the skipper.  “You bean’t no sort of use to me.”

“Wait a second,” answered Cecil.  “Did you ever chance to hear of a schooner called ’Regina’?”

The skipper’s face lighted in a moment.