Peyrol did not answer. He was thinking that Réal had got his sign, but whether it meant death from starvation or disease on board an English prison hulk, or in some other way, it was impossible to say. This naval officer was not a man he could trust; to whom he could, for instance, tell the story of his prisoner and what he had done with him. Indeed, the story was altogether incredible. The Englishman commanding that corvette had no visible, conceivable or probable reason for sending a boat ashore to the cove of all places in the world. Peyrol himself could hardly believe that it had happened. And he thought: “If I were to tell that lieutenant he would only think that I was an old scoundrel who had been in treasonable communication with the English for God knows how long. No words of mine could persuade him that this was as unforeseen to me as the moon falling from the sky.”
“I wonder,” he burst out, but not very loud, “what made you keep on coming back here time after time!” Réal leaned his back against the wall and folded his arms in the familiar attitude of their leisurely talks.
“Ennui, Peyrol,” he said in a faraway tone. “Confounded boredom.”
Peyrol also, as if unable to resist the force of example, assumed the same attitude, and said:
“You seem to be a man that makes no friends.”
“True, Peyrol. I think I am that sort of man.”
“What, no friends at all? Not even a little friend of any sort?”
Lieutenant Réal leaned the back of his head against the wall and made no answer. Peyrol got on his legs.
“Oh then, it wouldn’t matter to anybody if you were to disappear for years in an English hulk. And so if I were to give you my tartane you would go?”
“Yes, I would go this moment.”
Peyrol laughed quite loud, tilting his head back. All at once the laugh stopped short and the lieutenant was amazed to see him reel as though he had been hit in the chest. While giving way to his bitter mirth, the rover had caught sight of Arlette’s face at the open window of the lieutenant’s room. He sat heavily on the bench and was unable to make a sound. The lieutenant was startled enough to detach the back of his head from the wall to look at him. Peyrol stooped low suddenly and began to drag the stable fork from its concealment. Then he got on his feet and stood leaning on it, glaring down at Réal, who gazed upwards with languid surprise. Peyrol was asking himself, “Shall I pick him up on that pair of prongs, carry him down and fling him in the sea?” He felt suddenly overcome by a heaviness of arms and a heaviness of heart that made all movement impossible. His stiffened and powerless limbs refused all service. … Let Catherine look after her niece. He was sure that the old woman was not very far away. The lieutenant saw him absorbed in examining the points of the prongs carefully. There was something queer about all this.
“Hallo, Peyrol! What’s the matter?” he couldn’t help asking.
“I was just looking,” said Peyrol. “One prong is chipped a little. I found this thing in a most unlikely place.”
The lieutenant still gazed at him curiously.
“I know! It was under the bench.”
“H’m,” said Peyrol, who had recovered some self-control. “It belongs to Scevola.”
“Does it?” said the lieutenant, falling back again.
His interest seemed exhausted, but Peyrol didn’t move.
“You go about with a face fit for a funeral,” he remarked suddenly in a deep voice. “Hang it all, lieutenant, I have heard you laugh once or twice, but the devil take me if I ever saw you smile. It is as if you had been bewitched in your cradle.”
Lieutenant Réal got up as if moved by a spring. “Bewitched,” he repeated, standing very stiff: “in my cradle, eh? … No, I don’t think it was so early as that.”
He walked forward with a tense still face straight at Peyrol as though he had been blind. Startled, the rover stepped out of the way and, turning on his heels, followed him with his eyes. The lieutenant paced on, as if drawn by a magnet, in the direction of the door of the house. Peyrol, his eyes fastened on Réal’s back, let him nearly reach it before he called out tentatively: “I say, lieutenant!” To his extreme surprise, Réal swung round as if to a touch.
“Oh yes,” he answered, also in an undertone. “We will have to discuss that matter tomorrow.”
Peyrol, who had approached him close, said in a whisper which sounded quite fierce: “Discuss? No! We will have to carry it out tomorrow. I have been waiting half the night just to tell you that.”
Lieutenant Réal nodded. The expression on his face was so stony that Peyrol doubted whether he had understood. He added:
“It isn’t going to be child’s play.” The lieutenant was about to open the door when Peyrol said: “A moment,” and again the lieutenant turned about silently.
“Michel is sleeping somewhere on the stairs. Will you just stir him up and tell him I am waiting outside. We two will have to finish our night on board the tartane, and start work at break of day to get her ready for sea. Yes, lieutenant, by noon. In twelve hours’ time you will be saying goodbye to la belle France.”
Lieutenant Réal’s eyes, staring over his shoulder, seemed glazed and motionless in the moonlight like the eyes of a dead man. But he went in. Peyrol heard presently sounds within of somebody staggering in the passage and Michel projected himself outside headlong, but after a stumble or two pulled up scratching his head and looking on every side in the moonlight without perceiving Peyrol, who was regarding him from a distance of five feet. At last Peyrol said:
“Come, wake up! Michel!
