There was a pause; I looked out across the sun-lit ocean, taking time to arrange the order of the few questions which I had to ask.
“Come to the point, m’sieu,” he said, dryly. “We have struck palms.”
Spite of my training, spite of the caution which experience brings to the most unsuspicious of us, I had a curious confidence in this tattered rascal’s loyalty to a promise. And apparently without reason, too, for there was something wrong with his eyes—or else with the way he used them. They were wonderful, vivid blue eyes, well set and well shaped, but he never looked at anybody directly except in moments of excitement or fury. At such moments his eyes appeared to be lighted up from behind.
“Lizard,” I said, “you are a poacher.”
His placid visage turned stormy.
“None of that, m’sieu,” he retorted; “remember the bargain! Concern yourself with your own affairs!”
“Wait,” I said. “I’m not trying to reform you. For my purposes it is a poacher I want—else I might have gone to another.”
“That sounds more reasonable,” he admitted, guardedly.
“I want to ask this,” I continued: “are you a poacher from necessity, or from that pure love of the chase which is born in even worse men than you and I?”
“I poach because I love it. There are no poachers 235 from necessity; there is always the sea, which furnishes work for all who care to steer a sloop, or draw a seine, or wield a sea-rake. I am a pilot.”