"He comes from you know who," replied the mate.
"Nonsense!" returned the captain. "What are your eyes good for if they can't tell the difference between the cut of a young fellow of twenty and an old hulk like that?"
"I am not Monsieur de la Logerie, that's a fact," said Courtin. "I am only his farmer and confidential man."
"Very good; that's something, but not all."
"He has ordered me--"
"In the name of all the porpoises! I don't ask what he ordered you, you miserable land-lubber," cried the captain, squirting a black jet of saliva,--an action which somewhat hindered the explosion of his evident wrath. "I tell you that's something, but not all."
Courtin looked at the captain with an amazed air.
"Don't you understand,--yes or no?" demanded the latter. "If no, say so at once, and you shall be put ashore with the honors you deserve,--and that's a good taste of the cat-o'-nine-tails round your loins."
Courtin now perceived that in all probability Madame de la Logerie had agreed with the captain of the "Jeune Charles" on a password, or sign of recognition; that sign he did not know. He felt he was lost; all his plans crumbled to naught, his hopes vanished; besides which, caught in a trap like a fox, he would appear in the young master's eyes when he came aboard for what he really was. His only way of escape from the luckless position he had put himself into was to pretend that simplicity of a peasant which sometimes amounts to idiocy and to empty his face of all intelligence.
"Hang it, my dear gentleman," he said, "I don't know a thing more, myself. My good mistress said to me, says she: 'Courtin, my good friend, you know the young baron is condemned to death. I've arranged with a worthy sailor to get him out of France; but we've been denounced by some traitor. Go and tell this to the captain of the "Jeune Charles," which you'll find at anchor opposite Couéron, behind the islands!' and I came just as hard as I could, and that's all I know."