"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 daresay 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 Englishmen 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 her way at last," he remarked parenthetically to Peyrol, who also glanced that way and nodded. . . . "That's all right. But it's on record that you managed in a very short time to get very thick with a lot of patriots ashore. Section leaders. Terrorists. . . ."
"Why, yes. I wanted to hear what they had to say. They talked like a drunken crew of scallywags that had stolen a ship. But at any rate it wasn't such as they that had sold the Port to the English. They were a lot of bloodthirsty landlubbers. I did get out of town as soon as I could. I remembered I was born around here. I knew no other bit of France, and I didn't care to go any further. Nobody came to look for me."
"No, not here. I suppose they thought it was too near. They did look for you, a little, but they gave it up. Perhaps if they had persevered and made an admiral of you we would not have been beaten at Aboukir."
At the mention of that name Peyrol shook his fist at the serene Mediterranean sky. "And yet we were no worse men than the English," he cried, "and there are no such ships as ours in the world. You see, lieutenant, the republican god of these talkers would never give us seamen a chance of fair play."
The lieutenant looked round in surprise. "What do you know about a republican god?" he asked. "What on earth do you mean?"
"I have heard of and seen more gods than you could ever dream of in a long night's sleep, in every corner of the earth, in the very heart of forests, which is an inconceivable thing. Figures, stones, sticks. There must be something in the idea. . . . And what I meant," he continued in a resentful tone, "is that their republican god, which is neither stick nor stone, but seems to be some kind of lubber, has never given us seamen a chief like that one the soldiers have got ashore."
Lieutenant Réal looked at Peyrol with unsmiling attention, then remarked quietly, "Well, the god of the aristocrats is coming back again and it looks as if he were bringing an emperor along with him. You've heard something of that, you people in the farmhouse? Haven't you?"
"No," said Peyrol. "I have heard no talk of an emperor. But what does it matter? Under one name or another a chief can be no more than a chief, and that general whom they have been calling consul is a good chief – nobody can deny that."
After saying those words in a dogmatic tone, Peyrol looked up at the sun and suggested that it was time to go down to the farmhouse "pour manger la soupe." With a suddenly gloomy face Réal moved off, followed by Peyrol. At the first turn of the path they got the view of the Escampobar buildings with the pigeons still walking on the ridges of the roofs, of the sunny orchards and yards without a living soul in them. Peyrol remarked that everybody no doubt was in the kitchen waiting for his and the lieutenant's return. He himself was properly hungry. "And you, lieutenant?"
The lieutenant was not hungry. Hearing this declaration made in a peevish tone, Peyrol gave a sagacious movement of his head behind the lieutenant's back. Well, whatever happened, a man had to eat. He, Peyrol, knew what it was to be altogether without food; but even half-rations was a poor show, very poor show for anybody who had to work or to fight. For himself he couldn't imagine any conjuncture that would prevent him having a meal as long as there was something to eat within reach.