Commodore Miller answered for the Americans.
"Little need be said to what you tell us, Captain Cottrell. We stand under a deep debt of gratitude to Mr. Norcot, for his generous and disinterested effort on our behalf; and our failure to make good escape will not unnaturally be punished by a withdrawal of the privilege of parole. One other point only of your remarks challenges my comment, and that I would willingly avoid, since it is no wish of ours to quarrel personally with any man in authority. But when you say that those who would break prison would break parole, I declare that you speak for yourself, and not for these gentlemen, or for me. We are honourable men and the prisoners of an honourable country, but you—by these words you have proclaimed yourself a mean and base soul, not worthy either to have the control of gentlemen, or to mingle with them."
The Commodore spoke with calm self-restraint, and upon the silence that followed his rebuke struck Stark with somewhat less careful choice of words.
"Every man has a right to regain his liberty at any cost; but no man has a right to tell a lie and break a solemn oath. You are much to be pitied, Commandant, in that you, who call yourself an officer and a gentleman, can confuse such widely different issues."
The soldier gnawed his moustache and grew red.
"I stand corrected," he said. "So many of your countrymen have committed this crime of breaking their parole, that I assumed the issues were not regarded as opposite in the American mind. Commodore Miller, I pray that you will accept my apologies, and I shall be very happy after the war is ended, to give you every satisfaction."
"It is enough," said Miller. "I would that you could extend your ready sense of justice to the parole now tended to us by authority; but that, of course, is a question for your personal judgment."
"In that connection no apology is needed nor will be offered," returned the other. "Had you escaped, the onus of the achievement must have fallen upon my shoulders. I had possibly been cashiered."
"Since we are on it, Captain Cottrell," said Stark, "may I, as a sportsman and in good faith, inquire how you discovered our enterprise and knew so punctually both when and where we should endeavour to depart?"
"What! the informer's name? Surely you know that informers are sacred in this world, whatever may be their fate in the next?"