“Oh, Excellency,” he moaned, “I am the most miserable of men.”
“Yes, you are. I admit that, and, furthermore, unless you tell the truth you are in some danger of your life at this moment.”
“My life,” he went on,—and I knew he spoke truly enough,—“is already forfeited. My family and my kinsmen are all in the hands of the Emperor. Their heads will fall if I do not bring back the white woman whom the Emperor has chosen for his mate.”
“But how in Heaven’s name would it have brought back the white woman if you had run us down and drowned us all?”
“We have expert swimmers aboard,” he said, “divers brought for the purpose, who would have saved the white woman, and indeed,” he added hurriedly, “would have saved you all, but the white woman we would have brought back with us.”
“What a hairbrained scheme!” I cried.
“Yes, Excellency, it is not mine. I but do what I am ordered to do. The Emperor wished to sink the war-vessel of the American King so that he might not invade our coasts.”
“Is it true that the Empress has been murdered?”
“Ah, not murdered, Excellency; she died of a fever.”
“She looked anything but feverish when I saw her the day before,” I insisted.