"I cannot lift a hand against my country, monsieur."
"Place him under arrest," he said quietly, to the man who had brought me there. "I will see to him later;" and I had but exchanged one imprisonment for another.
That was as dismal a night as ever I spent, with no ray of hope to lighten my darkness, and only the feeling that I could have done no other, to keep me from breaking down entirely.
What the result would be I could not tell, but from the captain's point of view I thought he would be justified in shooting me, and would probably do so as a warning to the rest. He evidently did not believe a word I said, and I could not greatly blame him.
I thought of them all at home, but mostly of my mother and of Carette. I had little expectation of ever seeing them again, but I was sure they would not have had me act otherwise. It was what my grandfather would have done, placed as I was, and no man could do better than that. Most insistently my thoughts were of Carette and those bright early days on Sercq, and black as all else was, those remembrances shone like jewels in my mind. And when at times I thought of Torode and his stupendous treachery, my heart was like to burst with helpless rage. I scarcely closed my eyes, and in the morning felt old and weary.
About midday they came for me, and I was content that the end had come. They led me to the waist of the ship, where the whole company was assembled, and there they stripped me to the waist and bound my wrists to a gun carriage.
It was little relief to me to know that I was to be flogged, for the lash degrades, and breaks a man's spirit even more than his body. Even if undeserved, the brand remains, and can never be forgotten. It seemed to me then that I would as lief be shot and have done with it.
The captain eyed me keenly.
"Well," he asked, "you are still of the same mind? You still will not fight?"
"Not against my own country—not though you flog me to ribbons, monsieur."