The lieutenant remained silent, as though he had lost all interest and there had been no such thing as an English man-of-war within a mile. But all the time he was thinking hard. He had been told confidentially of a certain piece of service to be performed on instructions received from Paris. Not an operation of war, but service of the greatest importance. The risk of it was not so much deadly as particularly odious. A brave man might well have shrunk from it; and there are risks (not death) from which a resolute man might shrink without shame.
“Have you ever tasted of prison, Peyrol?” he asked suddenly, in an affectedly sleepy voice.
It roused Peyrol nearly into a shout. “Heavens! No! Prison! What do you mean by prison?... I have been a captive to savages,” he added, calming down, “but that’s a very old story. I was young and foolish then. Later, when a grown man, I was a slave to the famous Ali-Kassim. I spent a fortnight with chains on my legs and arms in the yard of a mud fort on the shores of the Persian Gulf. There was nearly a score of us Brothers of the Coast in the same predicament ... in consequence of a shipwreck.”
“Yes....” The lieutenant was very languid indeed.... “And I dare say you all took service with that bloodthirsty old pirate.”
“There was not a single one of his thousands of blackamoors that could lay a gun properly. But Ali-Kassim made war like a prince. We sailed, a regular fleet, across the gulf, took a town on the coast of Arabia somewhere, and looted it. Then I and the others managed to get hold of an armed dhow, and we fought our way right through the blackamoors’ fleet. Several of us died of thirst later. All the same, it was a great affair. But don’t you talk to me of prisons. A proper man if given a chance to fight can always get himself killed. You understand me?”
“Yes, I understand you,” drawled the lieutenant. “I think I know you pretty well. I suppose an English prison....”
“That is a horrible subject of conversation,” interrupted Peyrol in a loud, emotional tone. “Naturally, any death is better than a prison. Any death! What is it you have in your mind, lieutenant?”
“Oh, it isn’t that I want you to die,” drawled Réal in an uninterested manner.
Peyrol, his entwined fingers clasping his legs, gazed fixedly at the English sloop floating idly in the Passe while he gave up all his mind to the consideration of these words that had floated out, idly too, into the peace and silence of the morning. Then he asked in a low tone:
“Do you want to frighten me?”