But that which caused most my wonderment was that he was speaking in the French--which I had very well myself.
"What brings you here, Grandmont?" he asked, his eyes, of a cold grey, fixed on me.
"So," thinks I, "you are not out of your fever yet, to call me by a name I never heard of." But aloud, I answered:
"I have taken passage the same as you yourself. And we travel the same road--toward Cadiz."
Meanwhile the negro was a-hushing of him--or trying to--saying: "Master, master, you wander. Grandmont is not here. This gentleman is not he"; and angered me, too, even as he said it, by a scornful kind of laugh he gave, as though to signify: "Not anything like him, indeed."
But the old man took no heed of him--pushing him aside with a strength in the white coarse hand which you would not have looked to see in one so spent--and leaned a little over the side of the berth, and went on:
"Have you heard of it, yet, Grandmont?"
Not knowing what to do, nor what answer to make, I shook my head--whereon he continued: "Nineteen years of age now, if a day. Four years old then--two hundred crowns' worth of good wood burnt,--all burnt--a mort o' money! But we have enough left and to serve, 'tis true. A plenty o' money--though 'tis soaked in blood. Nineteen years old, and like to be a devil--like yourself, Grandmont!"
"Grandmont is dead," the negro muttered. "Drownded dead, master. You know."
This set the old man off on another tack, doubtless the words "drownded dead" recalling something to him; and once more he began his chantings--going back to the English--which were awful to hear, and brought to my mind the idea of a corpse a-singing: