"Perhaps not, monsieur. I am brave enough in some ways—braver, perhaps, than you would be; but I have not that animal contempt for death that my comrade, El Toro, for instance, possesses. Delicate fibres suffer the most."
"Then you are hardly a fit person to be a ringleader of mutineers. Murderers should have no nerves."
Baptiste Liais was a very calm person when he was not in fear, and he had now entirely recovered his self-possession. He shrugged his shoulders, and replied carelessly, "There are assassins and assassins, monsieur. There is courage and courage. There is the blind bravery of the soldier, who, shrinking not from bloodshed, risks his life in battle; and there is the cool nerve of the educated man, who, in cold blood, removes with poison those who stand in his way. I suppose you allow that this last is also a species of courage?"
"Is that your sort of courage?"
The Frenchman shook his head in a deprecatory way, and exclaimed, in tones of playful remonstrance, as if he were only rebutting a charge of one of those offences which are tolerated, and even fashionable, "But, monsieur, monsieur! you speak of me as if I had been proved to be an assassin. You forget that I was acquitted."
"You say that you are innocent?"
"Certainly. I am sure that I am a very inoffensive fellow." The man spoke with the quiet ease of one gentleman to another. It was plain that he had been used to decent society at some period of his life.
"Were you never on board the Vrouw Elisa?"
"I had never heard of the vessel till they arrested me here."
"And your companions, the two Spaniards?"