ed to do, and then set to work with my teeth upon his bonds,
gnawing away for dear life. When my teeth first came into contact with
the firm hard rope I thought I should never be able to do it--at least
not in time to save us--but a man never knows what he can do until he
tries in earnest, as I did then; and I actually succeeded, and in a few
minutes too, in eating my way through one turn of the lashings. The man
then strained and tugged until he managed to free himself, after which
it was the work of a few minutes only to liberate the rest of us. We
then hastily collected together such materials as we could first lay our
hands on, and with them constructed the raft off which you took us. It
was a terribly crazy affair, but we had no time to make a better one.
And of course, as the ship was by that time a mass of fire fore and aft,
it was impossible for us to secure an atom of provisions of any kind, or
a single drop of water."

"What a story of fiendish cruelty!" I ejaculated when Richards had
finished his story. "By the by," I suddenly added, moved by an impulse
which I could neither analyse nor account for, "of what nationality was
the leader of the pirates? Do you think he was a _Frenchman_?"

"Yes, sir, I believe he _was_, although he addressed his men in
Spanish," answered Richards in some surprise. "Why do you ask, sir?
Have you ever fallen in with such a man as I have described him to be?"

"Well, ye--that is, not to my knowledge," I replied hesitatingly. The
fact is that Richards' description of the pirate leader had somehow
brought vividly before my minds' eye the personality of Monsieur Le
Breton, the first lieutenant of the French gun-brig _Vestale_; and it
was this which doubtless prompted me to put the absurd question to my
companion as to the nationality of the man who had so inhumanly treated
him. Not, it must be understood, that I seriously for a single instant
associated Monsieur Le Breton or the _Vestale_ with the diabolical act
of piracy to the account of which I had just listened. We had at that
time no very great love of or respect for the French, it is true; but
even the most bigoted of Englishmen would, I think, have hesitated to
hint at the possibility of a French man-of-war being the perpetrator of
such a deed.

The mere idea, the bare suggestion of such a suspicion, was so absurd
that I laughed at myself for my folly in allowing it to obtrude itself,
even in the most intangible f