“Will you release me from the business and get someone else to take my place?”
Sagesse rapped out a laugh, took his seat at the table, folded his arms and, leaning over his folded arms, stared at his companion.
He did not speak for a moment. He seemed trying to read Gaspard’s innermost thoughts. Then “No,” he cried, “a hundred times no, you are part of the business, you gave your word, and now you want to back out—I find this morning my plans betrayed to this cursed Seguin. I say nothing about that; but this I say, you come with me or I will take you along with a member of La Garde Royale, we will hunt for the remains of a gentleman who was killed—we will look for his clothing and his bones. We will—” Sagesse stopped as Gaspard, leaving the bulkhead, took a seat at the table right opposite to him.
“You will do a lot,” said Gaspard, “if I take you by the throat and drag you out on deck and fling you into the harbour like the carrion you are. I have given you my word to go with you, on your cursed expedition, and go I will. Let no more be said. You talk of hunting for bones, you will find them. Skeleton Island ought to be the name of that place and if you don’t leave your own skeleton there you will be lucky.”
“Threats!” cried Sagesse, making as if to rise from the table.
“Threats—I never threaten and I am not threatening you now. I say you will be lucky if you don’t leave your bones behind you for the place is cursed—see you here—”
He leaned across the table facing Sagesse, and, lowering his voice—“See you here, I told you how I fought with a man out there and how, by accident, I killed him; well, I did not tell you all—after he was dead things happened.”
“Yes?”
“Even before he was dead I did not like the place, that ship down in the water seemed to me the devil’s own ship, no one ever saw a ship like that before, she was like an old drowning corpse and then all of a sudden just at sundown, she came to life, lit up as though she were hung with lamps—”
“Phosphorus,” said Sagesse.