“Yes. What next?”
“You have on board Lieut. Champcey of the navy?”
Daniel, who had been a silent witness of the scene, now stepped forward, very much puzzled.
“I am Lieut. Champcey, sir,” he said. “What do you desire?”
But, instead of replying, the “gentleman” raised his hands to heaven in a perfect ecstasy of joy, and said in an undertone,—
“We triumph at last!”
Then, turning to Daniel and the captain, he said,—
“But come, gentlemen, come! I must explain my conduct; and we must be alone for what I have to tell you.”
Pale, and with every sign of seasickness in his face, when he had first appeared on deck, the man now seemed to have recovered, and, in spite of the rolling of the vessel, followed the captain and Daniel with a firm step to the quarter-deck. As soon as they were alone, he said,—
“Could I be here, if I had not used a stratagem? Evidently not. And yet I had the most powerful interest in boarding ‘The Saint Louis’ before she should enter port; therefore I did not hesitate.”