“That ship is a marvel.”
“She has been built by French shipwrights,” said old Peyrol bitterly.
This was the last sound for a long time. Then the lieutenant said in an indifferent tone: “You are very positive about that. How do you know?”
“I have been looking at her for a month, whatever name she might have had or whatever name the English call her by now. Did you ever see such a bow on an English-built ship?”
The lieutenant remained silent, as though he had lost all interest and there had been no such thing as an English man-of-war within a mile. But all the time he was thinking hard. He had been told confidentially of a certain piece of service to be performed on instructions received from Paris. Not an operation of war, but service of the greatest importance. The risk of it was not so much deadly as particularly odious. A brave man might well have shrunk from it; and there are risks (not death) from which a resolute man might shrink without shame.
“Have you ever tasted of prison, Peyrol?” he asked suddenly, in an affectedly sleepy voice.
It roused Peyrol nearly into a shout. “Heavens! No! Prison! What do you mean by prison? … I have been a captive to savages,” he added, calming down, “but that’s a very old story. I was young and foolish then. Later, when a grown man, I was a slave to the famous Ali-Kassim. I spent a fortnight with chains on my legs and arms in the yard of a mud fort on the shores of the Persian Gulf. There was nearly a score of us Brothers of the Coast in the same predicament … in consequence of a shipwreck.”
“Yes. …” The lieutenant was very languid indeed. … “And I dare say you all took service with that bloodthirsty old pirate.”
“There was not a single one of his thousands of blackamoors that could lay a gun properly. But Ali-Kassim made war like a prince. We sailed, a regular fleet, across the gulf, took a town on the coast of Arabia somewhere, and looted it. Then I and the others managed to get hold of an armed dhow, and we fought our way right through the blackamoors’ fleet. Several of us died of thirst later. All the same, it was a great affair. But don’t you talk to me of prisons. A proper man if given a chance to fight can always get himself killed. You understand me?”
“Yes, I understand you,” drawled the lieutenant. “I think I know you pretty well. I suppose an English prison. …”
“That is a horrible subject of conversation,” interrupted Peyrol in a loud, emotional tone. “Naturally, any death is better than a prison. Any death! What is it you have in your mind, lieutenant?”
“Oh, it isn’t that I want you to die,” drawled Réal in an uninterested manner.
Peyrol, his entwined fingers clasping his legs, gazed fixedly at the English sloop floating idly in the Passe while he gave up all his mind to the consideration of these words that had floated out, idly too, into the peace and silence of the morning. Then he asked in a low tone:
“Do you want to frighten me?”
The lieutenant laughed harshly. Neither by word, gesture nor glance did Peyrol acknowledge the enigmatic and unpleasant sound. But when it ceased the silence grew so oppressive between the two men that they got up by a common impulse. The lieutenant sprang to his feet lightly. The uprising of Peyrol took more time and had more dignity. They stood side by side unable to detach their longing eyes from the enemy ship below their feet.
“I wonder why he put himself into this curious position,” said the officer.
“I wonder?” growled Peyrol curtly. “If there had been only a couple of eighteen-pounders placed on the rocky ledge to the left of us, we could have unrigged her in about ten minutes.”
“Good old gunner,” commented Réal ironically. “And what afterwards? Swim off, you and I, with our cutlasses in our teeth and take her by boarding, what?”
This sally provoked in Peyrol an austere smile. “No! No!” he protested soberly. “But why not let Toulon know? Bring out a frigate or two and catch him alive. Many a time have I planned his capture just to ease my heart. Often I have stared at night out of my window upstairs across the bay to where I knew he was lying at anchor, and thinking of a little surprise I could arrange for him if I were not only old Peyrol, the gunner.”
“Yes. And keeping out of the way at that, with a bad note against his name in the books of the Admiralty in Toulon.”
“You can’t say I have tried to hide myself from you who are a naval officer,” struck in Peyrol quickly. “I fear no man. I did not run. I simply went away from Toulon. Nobody had given me an order to stay there. And you can’t say I ran very far either.”
“That was the cleverest move of all. You knew what you were doing.”
“Here you go again, hinting at something crooked like that fellow with big epaulettes at the Port Office that seemed to be longing to put me under arrest just because I brought a prize from the Indian Ocean, eight thousand miles, dodging clear of every Englishman that came in my way, which was more perhaps than he could have done. I have my gunner’s warrant signed by Citizen Renaud, a chef d’escadre. It wasn’t given me for twirling my thumbs or hiding in the cable tier when the enemy was about. There were on board our ships some patriots that weren’t above doing that sort of thing, I can tell you. But republic or no republic, that kind wasn’t likely to get a gunner’s warrant.”
“That’s all right,” said Réal, with his eyes fixed on the English ship, the head of which was swung to the northward now. … “Look, she seems to have lost
