ned here.

He cast one more look at De Roquemaure lying with his head upon the
locker. At last he was done for! He would never cross his path again.
If he himself could live, if he could escape out of this burning
pandemonium, could again stand a free man on an English deck, he would
have to contend with him no more. There would be but one thing further
to do then--to stand face to face with Aurelie de Roquemaure, to ask
her if this charge against her was true--as St. Georges never
doubted!--to demand his child, and, if she would not restore it to
him, to--to--what? His mind was full of deeds of savagery now; the
last few days, filled with slaughter and spent amid the arousal of
men's fiercest passions, had made him fierce too. At this moment if
Aurelie could appear before him he knew that he should slay her--send
her to join her brother and all the other victims of his own aroused
passions. It would be dangerous for her if she were face to face with
him at this moment and refused to acknowledge where she had hidden
Dorine.

She was not there, however; at the present moment he had to take steps
to free himself, to escape from the burning transport. "'Twill be time
enough," he muttered, "to tax her with her perfidy when I stand once
more before her to punish her for it. And my own hour is too near, may
be too close at hand, for me to think of that. But when it comes,
then----"

He heard an explosion in another part of the vessel--he knew another
tier of guns had been reached by the flames; he was tarrying too long.
The magazine must be close to the cabin in which he was, might be,
indeed, beneath the cabin floor--at any moment he risked being blown
to atoms. He must lose no time. To be caught there was death, instant
and certain!

Lying at the door of the main cabin where he had been slain was one of
the officers of the transport; near him another man of lower rank, the
one shot through the back the other cut down by Rooke's sailors as he
fled into the cabin; and as his eye rested on them a thought struck
him. None of Bellefonds and James's forces on land could say who were
or were not officers of the transports--what was there to prevent him
from being one for the time being? All was fair in war!--and he was as
much French as any who might come out from the forts or batteries to
the sinking and exploding ships--if any dared to come at all. Once in
the garb of either of these lying here, officer or petty officer, an