"Living! living! captain!" cried some highly exalted soldiers, "they must be taken living!"
"Well, yes—living," said the captain. Then turning toward the Bretons, "Your lives are all safe, my friends!" cried he, "except the Chevalier d'Herblay."
Aramis started imperceptibly. For an instant his eye was fixed upon the depths of the ocean enlightened by the last flashes of the Greek fire, flashes which ran along the sides of the waves, played upon their crests like plumes, and rendered still more dark, more mysterious and more terrible the abysses they covered.
"Do you hear, monseigneur?" said the sailors.
"Yes."
"What are your orders?"
"Accept!"
"But you, monseigneur?"
Aramis leaned still more forward, and played with the ends of his long white fingers with the green water of the sea, to which he turned smiling as to a friend.
"Accept!" repeated he.