"What is the matter with you, Willem?" asked Carew, knowing well what was about to happen. "This is the mate I have engaged for the yacht." "Dat--dat man!" cried the Dutchman, finding his voice with difficulty. "You know who dat man is?" "I do. He has just left the court-house. He was unjustly accused of murder, and has been found innocent." "Vat--you take dat man for mate! Oh, den I go--I go at vonce! I not stay on board vid dat man." The usually stolid Dutchman trembled with excitement, and his broad face was scarlet with indignation. After a few minutes, finding that Carew was obdurate and would insist on engaging the most loathed man in all Rotterdam as mate, Willem rolled up his scanty luggage into a bundle, demanded and received the few guilders that were owing to him, and hurried on shore, grumbling uncouth Dutch oaths to himself as he went. Then the Frenchman, who had been observing the scene with a cynical smile, laughed bitterly. "Had I been the fiend himself that fat idiot could not have been much more terrified at the sight of me. Ah, how they love me--these worthy people of Rotterdam!" For a moment there was a troubled look upon Carew's face. With his usual inconsistency he half regretted, when it was too late, that honest Willem had left him. It seemed to him that he had now broken the last tie between himself and the world of law-abiding men. He felt a vague sense of something lost to him for ever; as if his guardian angel, despairing of him, had forsaken him. But he quickly shook off the feeling as a foolish fancy, and turned his attention to the business he had on hand. "Now, Baptiste," he said, "we must find your two comrades. Do you know where they are?" "I think I can find them. Anticipating a separation, we arranged a rendezvous. But I dare not walk through the streets to look for them; I should be recognised and murdered." "Nonsense! we will soon disguise you. Shave off your moustache and put on a suit of clothes that I will lend you, and your own mother would not know you." The Frenchman obeyed these instructions, and was so satisfied with the change effected in his appearance by a hairless lip and a suit of poor Allen's clothes that he no longer hesitated to go forth in search of his two shipmates.