orm, for a single moment on my mind. And
yet, such is the perversity of the human intellect, I could not, in
spite of myself, quite get rid of the extravagant idea that Monsieur Le
Breton was in some inexplicable way cognisant of the outrage; nor could
I forbear sketching, for Richards' benefit, as accurate a word-portrait
as I could of the French lieutenant; and--I suppose on account of that
same perversity--I felt no surprise whatever when he assured me that I
had faithfully described to him the arch-pirate who had left him and his
crew to perish in the flames. Indeed, in my then contradictory state of
mind I should have been disappointed had he said otherwise. The man's
conduct--his stealthy but searching scrutiny of the ship; his endeavour,
as I regarded it, to mislead us with his broken English; and his
excessive curiosity, as hinted at by Captain Vernon, had struck me as
peculiar, to say the least of it, on the occasion of his visit to the
_Daphne_. I had suspected _then_ that he was not altogether and exactly
what he pretended to be; and _now_ Richards' identification of him from
my description seemed to confirm, in a great measure, my instinctive
suspicions, unreasonable, extravagant, and absurd as I admitted them to
be. My first impulse--and it was a very strong one--was to take Mr
Austin into my confidence, to unfold to him my suspicions and the
circumstances which had given rise to them, frankly admitting at the
same time their apparent enormity, and then to put the question to him
whether, in his opinion, there was the slightest possibility of those
suspicions being well-founded.

So strongly, so unaccountably was I urged to do this, that I had
actually set out to find the first lieutenant when reflection and common
sense came to my aid and asked me what was this thing that I was about
to do. The answer to this question was, that with the self-sufficiency
and stupendous conceit which my father had especially cautioned me to
guard against, I was arrogating to myself the possession of superhuman
sagacity, and (upon the flimsy foundation of a wild and extravagant
fancy, backed by a mere chance resemblance, which after all might prove
to be no resemblance at all if Richards could once be confronted with
Monsieur Le Breton) was about to insinuate a charge of the most
atrocious character against an officer holding a responsible and
honourable position--a man who doubtless was the soul of honour and
rectitude