"While the fog lies?" Colonel John replied. "Nothing."
"The fog?" Augustin exclaimed. He clapped his hand to his head, ran up the companion and as quickly returned. A skipper is in a low way who, whatever his position, has no eye for the weather; and he felt the tacit reproach. "Name of Names!" he cried. "There is a fog like the inside of Jonah's whale! For the ship beyond I snap the finger at her! She is not! Then forward, mes braves! Yet tranquil! They have taken the arms!"
"Ay?" Colonel John said, still eating. "Is that so? Then it seems to me we must retake them. That first."
"What, you?" Augustin exclaimed.
"Why not?" Colonel John responded, looking round him, a twinkle in his eye. "The goods of his host are in a manner of speaking the house of his host. And it is the duty—as I said once before."
"But is it not that they are—of your kin?"
"That is the reason," Colonel John answered cryptically, and to the skipper's surprise. But that surprise lasted a very short time. "Listen to me," the Colonel continued. "This goes farther than you think, and to cure it we must not stop short. Let me speak, and do you, my friends, listen. Courage, and I will give you not only freedom but a good bargain."
The skipper stared. "How so?" he asked.
Then Colonel John unfolded the plan on which he had been meditating while the waves lapped his smarting chin, while the gorse bushes pricked his feet, and the stones gibed them. It was a great plan, and before all things a bold one; so bold that Augustin gasped as it unfolded itself, and the seamen, who, with the freedom of foreign sailors in a ship of fortune, crowded the foot of the companion, opened their eyes.
Augustin smacked his lips. "It is what you call magnifique!" he said. "But," he shrugged his shoulders, "it is not possible!"