“Certain. Ah! they are a bad lot to entertain. I do not like them at all, but”—he shrugged his shoulders—“I am here, and what am I to do!”
“Do the Arabs trouble you?”
“Not at all,” answered Leronge. “They are peaceable, so are the pilgrims. When they come, little money I get out of them. Poor—live on rice and lobscouth, which is a kind of Bouilabaise, which we have at Marseilles. Those I am afraid of are the pirates, but you know them.”
He looked at Jack suspiciously.
The “Catamaran” was well known to him.
He had seen Young Jack landed from it.
“My acquaintance with them has been an expensive one,” replied Jack.
“Ah! Do you not belong to them?”
“Far from it.”
“Mon ami, will you tell me your story?”