"You are a mariner, you say!" resumed the interpreter. "You used to command a merchantman?"
"Yes."
"And—are you a good seaman?"
"I am five and twenty years old. From the age of twelve I have traveled on the sea; for four years I have commanded a vessel."
"Do you know well the coast between Vannes and the channel which separates Great Britain from Gaul?"
"I am from the port of Vannes, near the forest of Karnak. For more than sixteen years I have sailed these coasts continuously."
"Would you make a good pilot?"
"May I lose all the limbs which the Chief of the Hundred Valleys has left me, if there is a bay, a cape, an islet, a rock, a sand-bank, or a breaker, which I do not know from the Gulf of Aquitaine to Dunkirk."
"You are vaunting your skill as a pilot. How can you prove it?"
"We are near the shore. For him who is not a good and fearless sailor, nothing is more dangerous than the navigation of the mouth of the Loire, going up towards the north."