ad Blue Beard, by the intermediation of the filibustering captain,
instructed the buccaneer to act in this manner if he should encounter
the chevalier? Was this hunter's carelessness genuine or feigned? This
is what we cannot yet tell the reader. The situation of Croustillac was
none the less delicate and difficult; in spite of his audacity he did
not know how to begin the conversation. Finally recovering himself, he
said to the buccaneer, advancing toward him, "Are you blind, comrade?"

"Answer, Peter, some one speaks to you," said Rend-your-Soul,
carelessly.

"No, it is to you I speak," said the Gascon impatiently.

"No," said the buccaneer.

"How so?" replied the chevalier.

"You said 'comrade;' I am not your comrade; my servant is, perhaps."

"Zounds!"

"I am a master buccaneer; you are not; it is only my brother-hunters who
are my comrades," said Rend-your-Soul, interrupting Croustillac.

"And how is one to address you in order to have the honor of a reply?"
said the chevalier, angrily.

"If you come to purchase skins or buccaneer supplies, address me as you
will; if you come to see the station, look about you; if you are hungry,
when the boar is cooked, eat."

"They are regular brutes, true savages," thought the chevalier; "it
would be folly in me to resent their stupidities; I am dying with
hunger, I am lost; the animal can give me a dinner, and if I carry
myself wisely will point out to me the road to Devil's Cliff. Let us
eat." Then, looking at the man, half barbarian that he was, with his
garments stained with blood, Croustillac said to himself, shrugging his
shoulders, "And it is to such a boor that they give the beautiful, the
adorable Blue Beard. Zounds! she must be like him herself."

Peter, finding the boar cooked to a turn, busied himself in removing the
cover; he placed on the earth, under the trees, a number of large
leaves, fresh and green, to serve as a tablecloth. He then picked a
large leaf, made four holes at its edge, and passed a creeper through
them, and thus formed a species of cup in which he squeezed the juice
of a number of lemons which he had picked, and with which he mixed salt
and spices crushed between two stones. The sauce was called pimentade,
was extremely strong, and was used generally by buccaneers and
filibusters. Opposite this sauce and in another leaf, he put yams cooked
in the ashes; their skins, a little burned, had split open and showed a
pulp yellow as amber.