l who
stood around him that this was no common man, no malefactor flung to
the slave ship for an ignoble crime, no wretched printer sent to the
galleys for producing Protestant pamphlets, or chapel clerk for
assisting in a Protestant service.

"You are of gentle blood?" the admiral asked kindly. "Followed,
doubtless, the calling of a gentleman? What are you?"

"I was a cavalry officer of King Louis. But broken and ruined
for--for----" and again he broke off.

"Will you tell me your name?"

"Georges St. Georges."

The name conveyed nothing to any on board the frigate; the rank he had
borne, when stated by him, stirred them all. They knew one thing,
however--namely, that the cavalry officers of France were all
gentlemen of birth, and many of great position. Could this be true, or
if true was it possible that the man before them had not perpetrated
some hideous crime? Louis had the reputation of encouraging and
treating good officers well; surely no man of that position could have
been condemned to this awful existence but for some great sin. Rooke,
however, thought he knew the clew, and continued:

"You are, perhaps, a Protestant? The King of France still wages bitter
war against them. Is that your crime?"

"I am a Protestant; but that was not my crime."

He shivered as he spoke, although he stood in the full glare of the
July sun, the burnt face whitened beneath its bronze, and the lips
became livid and ghastly, then he reeled and staggered against the gun
tackle on the poop.

"Take him below," Rooke said, turning to one of the subaltern officers
at his side; "let him be seen too and carefully tended and those sores
dressed. Also find some proper apparel for him. And--treat him as a
gentleman. It is more like that he has been sinned against than sinned
himself."

So the fainting man was carried below in the brawny arms of the
sailors, a spare cabin was found for him--it had but a few weeks
before been occupied by a lieutenant who was killed in the disastrous
battle off Beachy Head--and he was put into a clean, comfortable bunk.
The release which he had prayed for from the galley's slavery had
come, though not in the only way he had dared to hope for.

* * * * *

"So!" exclaimed Rooke as he helped himself to a glass of Calcavella
and passed the bottle to the man whose life had been saved--"so the
wanton stabbed you in the back just as you had the fellow at your
mercy. The de