“As for that, you may do as you please,” returned the sailor, “you may arrest those that are passengers in the Ca-Ira, but, morbleu! you’re not going, surely, to have up her captain and crew for making a good bargain for the use of their craft. I, for one, won’t turn against an old comrade.”
“Diable! what do we want with the Ca-Ira?” said Augustine Vadier, “or her crew? they will not be touched. We only intend arresting her passengers, for that Louis Lebeau you see with Pierre Leveque is comrade to the Englishman who cut out the Vengeance.”
“Sacre diable! is that the case?” said the privateer’s man; “I would rather have a shot at those blustering Englishmen than a quarter’s pay.”
He was right in his conjecture.
“Ah!” said Vadier, as he and his comrade crept along the hedge, and watched the movements of the two young men, “a boat is pulling to shore from the chasse-mare, you will see they will go on board.” For the two men in sailors’ attire were Louis Lebeau and Pierre Eveque.
“We may now pull back to the Etoile,” remarked Vadier, “I am satisfied; the fog is getting thick on the river, and we shall have to keep a sharp look-out that the vessel does not pass us in the mist.”
It was dusk by the time the boat got back to the Etoile. Augustine Vadier, getting on board, proceeded to the cabin, where he found Bertram Gramont, the captain of the Etoile, Guillaume, Yves Obet, and Captain Pierre Gaudet, late of the Vengeance. Augustine Vadier went by a false name. None of the party in the cabin knew him only as a friend of Monsieur Gramont.
“Well,” said Bertram Gramont, “where did they anchor?”
“Oh, just where we suspected,” said Augustine Vadier, “off the village of Eure, and then we saw this pretended Louis Lebeau and one Pierre Eveque, one of the crew of the Ca-Ira, who has been away from his vessel these last three or four days, go on board the chasse-mare in their boat.”
“Just as I expected,” said Bertram Gramont.