“Simon Serpente.”
“Yes, in the last few hours I have discovered whose ship that is lying there in the water, and whose money that was we found in the belt. I told you there was a skeleton by the money; well, see here, the skull wasn’t bigger than that.” He held his hands together as if clasping lightly the head of a child, “and it was not a right skull, why, I said to Yves, ‘Well, he must have been a beauty, the fellow this belonged to,’ then the bones were not the bones of an ordinary man, the minute I set eyes on that picture of Serpente, I said to myself, ‘I have seen that thing before, but where?’ It wasn’t till Monsieur Jaques told me his story, that I recognised the truth of the thing and that the skeleton was the skeleton of Serpente.”
“Rubbish,” replied Sagesse, “you are full up of fo’csle fancies; Serpente—I don’t believe myself a quarter I have heard about the chap—you talk like some old Creole woman. If Serpente ever lived, he died in some grog shop, like the rest of his sort, filled with balloon juice; or got knocked on the head in some fight down a back alley—”
“One moment—I shewed you the belt and the pouch which I brought from the island; on the buckle of the belt two letters were scratched, you examined them yourself—what were they?”
Sagesse started in his chair. He had cast his memory back.
“Cordieu!” cried he, “I remember now.”
“What were the letters?”
“By my faith, it’s strange, S. S. It would be the fellow’s initials.”
“Just so.”
“Simon Serpente.”