"Georges St. Georges."
The name conveyed nothing to any on board the frigate; the rank he had borne, when stated by him, stirred them all. They knew one thing, however—namely, that the cavalry officers of France were all gentlemen of birth, and many of great position. Could this be true, or if true was it possible that the man before them had not perpetrated some hideous crime? Louis had the reputation of encouraging and treating good officers well; surely no man of that position could have been condemned to this awful existence but for some great sin. Rooke, however, thought he knew the clew, and continued:
"You are, perhaps, a Protestant? The King of France still wages bitter war against them. Is that your crime?"
"I am a Protestant; but that was not my crime."
He shivered as he spoke, although he stood in the full glare of the July sun, the burnt face whitened beneath its bronze, and the lips became livid and ghastly, then he reeled and staggered against the gun tackle on the poop.
"Take him below," Rooke said, turning to one of the subaltern officers at his side; "let him be seen too and carefully tended and those sores dressed. Also find some proper apparel for him. And—treat him as a gentleman. It is more like that he has been sinned against than sinned himself."
So the fainting man was carried below in the brawny arms of the sailors, a spare cabin was found for him—it had but a few weeks before been occupied by a lieutenant who was killed in the disastrous battle off Beachy Head—and he was put into a clean, comfortable bunk. The release which he had prayed for from the galley's slavery had come, though not in the only way he had dared to hope for.
"So!" exclaimed Rooke as he helped himself to a glass of Calcavella and passed the bottle to the man whose life had been saved—"so the wanton stabbed you in the back just as you had the fellow at your mercy. The deuce is in it that you missed his heart and could only pink him in the arm. But go on—go on. Faith! 'tis a wondrous story of wrong and cruelty."