the after-deck Michel was keeping a lookout. He had carried out the orders he had received by the well. Besides being secured by the very obvious padlock, the cabin door was shored up by a spar which made it stand as firm as a rock. The thundering noise seemed to issue from its immovable substance magically. It ceased for a moment, and a sort of distracted continuous growling could be heard. Then the thundering began again. Michel reported: “This is the third time he starts this game.”
“Not much strength in this,” remarked Peyrol gravely.
“That he can do it at all is a miracle,” said Michel, showing a certain excitement. “He stands on the ladder and beats the door with his fists. He is getting better. He began about half an hour after I got back on board. He drummed for a bit and then fell off the ladder. I heard him. I had my ear against the scuttle. He lay there and talked to himself for a long time. Then he went at it again.” Peyrol approached the scuttle while Michel added his opinion: “He will go on like that for ever. You can't stop him.”
“Easy there,” said Peyrol in a deep authoritative voice. “Time you finish that noise.”
These words brought instantly a death-like silence. Michel ceased to grin. He wondered at the power of these few words of a foreign language.
Peyrol himself smiled faintly. It was ages since he had uttered a sentence of English. He waited complacently until Michel had unbarred and unlocked the door of the cabin. After it was thrown open he boomed out a warning: “Stand clear!” and, turning about, went down with great deliberation, ordering Michel to go forward and keep a lookout.
Down there the man with the bandaged head was hanging on to the table and swearing feebly without intermission. Peyrol, after listening for a time with an air of interested recognition as one would to a tune heard many years ago, stopped it by a deep-voiced:
“That will do.” After a short silence he added: “You look bien malade, hein? What you call sick,” in a tone which if not tender was certainly not hostile. “We will remedy that.”
“Who are you?” asked the prisoner, looking frightened and throwing his arm up quickly to guard his head against the coming blow. But Peyrol's uplifted hand fell only on his shoulder in a hearty slap which made him sit down suddenly on a locker in a partly collapsed attitude and unable to speak. But though very much dazed he was able to watch Peyrol open a cupboard and produce from there a small demijohn and two tin cups. He took heart to say plaintively: “My throat's like tinder,” and then suspiciously: “Was it you who broke my head?”
“It was me,” admitted Peyrol, sitting down on the opposite side of the table and leaning back to look at his prisoner comfortably.
“What the devil did you do that for?” inquired the other with a sort of faint fierceness which left Peyrol unmoved.
“Because you put your nose where you no business. Understand? I see you there under the moon, penché, eating my tartane with your eyes. You never hear me, hein?”
“I believe you walked on air. Did you mean to kill me?”
“Yes, in preference to letting you go and make a story of it on board your cursed corvette.”
“Well then, now's your chance to finish me. I am as weak as a kitten.”
“How did you say that? Kitten? Ha, ha, ha!” laughed Peyrol. “You make a nice petit chat.” He seized the demijohn by the neck and filled the mugs. “There,” he went on, pushing one towards the prisoner — “it's good drink — that.”
Symons' state was as though the blow had robbed him of all power of resistance, of all faculty of surprise and generally of all the means by which a man may assert himself except bitter resentment. His head was aching, it seemed to him enormous, too heavy for his neck and as if full of hot smoke. He took a drink under Peyrol's fixed gaze and with uncertain movements put down the mug. He looked drowsy for a moment. Presently a little colour deepened his bronze; he hitched himself up on the locker and said in a strong voice:
“You played a damned dirty trick on me. Call yourself a man, walking on air behind a fellow's back and felling him like a bullock?”
Peyrol nodded calmly and sipped from his mug.
“If I had met you anywhere else but looking at my tartane I would have done nothing to you. I would have permitted you to go back to your boat. Where was your damned boat?”
“How can I tell you? I can't tell where I am. I've never been here before. How long have I been here?”
“Oh, about fourteen hours,” said Peyrol.
“My head feels as if it would fall off if I moved,” grumbled the other. . . . “You are a damned bungler, that's what you are.”
“What for — bungler?”
“For not finishing me off at once.”
He seized the mug and emptied it down his throat. Peyrol drank too, observing him all the time. He put the mug down with extreme gentleness and said slowly:
“How could I know it was you? I hit hard enough to crack the skull of any other man.”
“What do you mean? What do you know about my skull? What are you driving at? I don't know you, you white-headed villain, going about at night knocking people on the head from behind. Did you do for our officer, too?”
“Oh yes! Your officer. What was he up to? What trouble did you people come to make here, anyhow?”
“Do you think they tell a boat's crew? Go and ask our officer. He went up the gully and our coxswain got the jumps. He says to me: `You are light-footed, Sam, says he; `you just creep round the head of the cove and see if our boat can be seen across from the other side. Well, I couldn't see anything. That was all right. But I thought 1 would climb a little higher amongst the rocks . . . .”
He paused drowsily.
“That was a silly thing to do,” remarked Peyrol in an encouraging voice.
“I would've sooner expected to see an elephant inland than a craft lying in a pool that seemed no bigger than my hand. Could not understand how she got there. Couldn't help going down to find out — and the next thing I knew 1 was lying on my back with my head tied up, in a bunk in this kennel of a cabin here. Why couldn't you have given me a hail and engaged me properly, yardarm to yardarm? You would have got me all the same, because all I had in the way of weapons was the clasp-knife which you have looted off me.”
“Up on the shelf there,” said Peyrol, looking round. “No, my friend, I wasn't going to take the risk of seeing you spread your wings and fly.”
“You need not have been afraid for your tartane. Our boat was after no tartane. We wouldn't have taken your tartane for a gift. Why, we see them by dozens every day — those tartanes.”
Peyrol filled the two mugs again. “Ah,” he said, “I daresay you see many tartanes, but this one is not like the others. You a sailor — and you couldn't see that she was something extraordinary.”
“Hellfire and gunpowder!” cried the other. “How can you expect me to have seen anything? I just noticed that her sails were bent before your club hit me on the head.” He raised his hands to his head and groaned. “Oh lord, I feel as though I had been drunk for a month.”
Peyrol's prisoner did look somewhat as though he had got his head broken in a drunken brawl. But to Peyrol his appearance was not repulsive. The rover preserved a tender memory of his freebooter's life with its lawless spirit and its spacious scene of action, before the change in the state of affairs in the Indian Ocean, the astounding rumours from the outer world, made him reflect on its precarious character. It was true that he had deserted the French flag when quite a youngster; but at that time that flag was white; and now it was a flag of three colours. He had known the practice of liberty, equality and fraternity as understood in the haunts open or secret of the Brotherhood of the Coast. So the change, if one could believe what people talked about, could not be very great.