"Ah! So you are a friend of Monsieur le Curé!" he exclaimed. "You would not be Monsieur le Curé's friend if you were not a good shot. Sapristi!" He paused, ran his hand over his rough jowls, and resumed bluntly: "It is something to kill the wild duck; another to kill a man."
"Has war been suddenly declared?" I asked in astonishment.
A gutteral laugh escaped his throat, he shook his grizzled head in the negative.
"A little war of my own," said he, "a serious business, parbleu!"
"Contraband?" I ventured.
The coarse mouth under the bristling moustache, four times the size of Pierre's, closed with a snap, then opened with a growl.
"Sacré mille tonnerres!" he thundered, slamming his fist down on the desk within reach of him. "They are the devil, those Belgians! It is for them my good fellows lose their sleep." Then he stopped, and eyeing me shrewdly added: "Monsieur, you are an outsider and a gentleman. I can trust you. Three nights ago a strange sloop, evidently Belgian, from the cut of her, tried to sneak in here, but our semaphore on the point held her up and she had to run back to the open sea. Bah! Those sacré Belgians have the patience of a fox!"
"She was painted like one of our fishing-smacks," interposed Pierre, now too excited to hold his tongue, "but she did not know the channel."
"Aye, and she'll try it again," growled the brigadier, "if the night be dark. She'll find it clear sailing in, but a hot road out."