tly smile on
his white face as his eyes sought his sister's.

"You see," he said simply. "He strikes a man whose hands are bound."

The simple words, and, more than the words, their tone of ineffable
disdain, aroused the passion that never slumbered deeply in Levasseur.

"And what should you do, puppy, if your hands were unbound?" He took his
prisoner by the breast of his doublet and shook him. "Answer me! What
should you do? Tchah! You empty windbag! You...." And then came a
torrent of words unknown to mademoiselle, yet of whose foulness her
intuitions made her conscious.

With blanched cheeks she stood by the cabin table, and cried out to
Levasseur to stop. To obey her, he opened the door, and flung her
brother through it.

"Put that rubbish under hatches until I call for it again," he roared,
and shut the door.

Composing himself, he turned to the girl again with a deprecatory smile.
But no smile answered him from her set face. She had seen her beloved
hero's nature in curl-papers, as it were, and she found the spectacle
disgusting and terrifying. It recalled the brutal slaughter of the Dutch
captain, and suddenly she realized that what her brother had just said
of this man was no more than true. Fear growing to panic was written on
her face, as she stood there leaning for support against the table.

"Why, sweetheart, what is this?" Levasseur moved towards her. She
recoiled before him. There was a smile on his face, a glitter in his
eyes that fetched her heart into her throat.

He caught her, as she reached the uttermost limits of the cabin, seized
her in his long arms and pulled her to him.

"No, no!" she panted.

"Yes, yes," he mocked her, and his mockery was the most terrible thing
of all. He crushed her to him brutally, deliberately hurtful because she
resisted, and kissed her whilst she writhed in his embrace. Then, his
passion mounting, he grew angry and stripped off the last rag of hero's
mask that still may have hung upon his face. "Little fool, did you
not hear your brother say that you are in my power? Remember it, and
remember that of your own free will you came. I am not the man with whom
a woman can play fast and loose. So get sense, my girl, and accept what
you have invited." He kissed her again, almost contemptuously, and flung
her off. "No more scowls," he said. "You'll be sorry else."

Some one knocked. Cursing the interruption, Levasseur strode off to
open. Cahusac stood before him. The