This was quite a luxuriously furnished place for the cabin of a man-of-war, as the pirate ship seemed in a small way to be. An Axminster carpet was on the floor, and blue satin damask curtains before the berths; blue satin damask coverings on the chairs and sofas. A marble-topped round table stood in the center. A marble-topped sideboard, with silver stands for decanters and glasses, stood at the end opposite the companion way.
Le drew chairs around the table and invited his friends to be seated.
Then he went to the sideboard and brought forth a bottle of old port wine, with wineglasses, and a box of choice Havana cigars, with wax tapers, and putting them on the table, exclaimed, for the fourth time:
“What a surprise! I shall never get over this surprise!”
“You talk of surprises, Le!” said Mr. Force, when they had all had a glass of wine around, and had lighted their cigars. “You talk of surprises; but you ought to have grown hardened to them by this time! No one could ever have had a greater one than you had when you found in the pirate captain and his mate your old enemy, Angus Anglesea, and your old friend, Roland Bayard!”
“You may well say that, uncle! But I do believe it was the sight of my old foe that put the devil in me that day and made me utterly reckless of my life in that fight.”
“We have all read of your heroism in action, Le, my dear boy, and we are proud of you,” said the squire.
“It wasn’t heroism, uncle! It was diabolism! If ever the devil got into mortal man he did into me that day! And it was all at the sight of Anglesea.”
“No matter, the papers are full of the brilliant action, and you are the hero of the hour.”
“Of the hour. You are right, uncle! Of the hour! In these days of heroes—on both sides, mind, uncle—no one man, whatever his deeds, could expect to hold public attention for a longer time. But, indeed—and there is no mock modesty in what I say—I have no merit. I was more mad than brave in that action.”