Life, life, I beseech--I
beseech--beseech you!"

"Back a moment!" the Admiral commanded.

Jude was carried once more into the candle-light.

"Who is the Repentigny you say you know?"

"The officer--of the King's--Bodyguard."

"What do you know about him?"

"I lived in the same house at Versailles--the Hotel de Noailles."

"Then you are an aristocrat?"

"Oh, no, sir; do not accuse me--only a servant--one of the people--and I
was dismissed."

"A reader, you said. Well, what of this Repentigny?"

"I could inform you concerning all his movements were you only to
release me."

The Admiral looked away and reflected several minutes. His sinister
countenance was watched with terrible constancy by Jude. At length the
victim caught what he took for a relaxation of the cruel look on the
face of the Admiral, who rose and tapped upon the box on which the
candle stood.

"Ragmen," he said. The spy's breath stopped in his suspense. "Ragmen,
carry him back."

It was a terrific blow to Jude, who still, however, retained
consciousness, though now incapable of even hiss or contortion. He was
held over the trap again, and the leader once more commenced speaking.
"Spy," he said, "you have been condemned by the Galley-on-Land to the
death which now yawns beneath you. Men, lift him up till I give my final
order." He paused a time; it seemed an eternity to Jude.

"Monsieur Spy," continued he. "Are you ready, in return for your life,
to serve the Galley-on-Land, of which I am Admiral, before all other
masters; to go where I bid you, to do what I command, to inform me of
whatever will protect us; to succour a ragman before every other
consideration!"

"All," the prisoner gurgled, with his last strength.

"Then live."

They hurried him back and laid him down on the floor unconscious.

"Yes, the order must be reversed: Repentigny first, this one
afterwards," mused the Admiral, who could do nothing without indulging
his turn for brutal melodrama.

CHAPTER XXVIII

ANOTHER DUEL

Lecour's temper gave out at the irreconcilability of Louis during the
duel, and as soon as he reached the quarters he commenced to return
insult for insult. He exclaimed among his companions that _Lery_, as he
called him, and his family were petty skin-merchants of Quebec and kept
a shop in their house; that his father had acquired some contemptuous
favour with the British Governors on account of his having been the
first Canadian to turn