At that moment, a sailor of the Red Band entered the shop and asked to be shaved. Pierre tried not to look surprised as he set about the task. Once, when he stood with his razor in the air, I saw the fellow’s cheek go white as the lather itself. Perhaps he was thinking of what might happen if Pierre suspected what had really brought him into the shop. A person while being shaved is in an ill position to defend himself if the barber is murderously inclined. For all that, I set the fellow down as a bully and a coward. The change in his face convinced me beyond a doubt that he had come there to spy. It confirmed what Pierre had said a moment before concerning the watchfulness of the Red Band; and it was not to be long before I should have another example of their alert interest in my affairs. When Pierre had finished shaving his customer, the man arose and adjusted his neckband slowly. Then he tossed a coin into the corner. I soon saw that this was but a ruse to get Pierre out of the way for the visitor had a word to say to me. Pierre went after the coin, which rolled into the farthest corner. The sailor, as he passed me on the way to the door, said in a low voice, “The Red Band is not asleep. Beware.” “Ay, beware!” I flung back into his teeth as he went out of the shop. “I told you it would not do,” said Pierre, when I informed him of this little episode. He put the coin into his mouth and bit it. “This is good money. That is more than I expected. Now what do you intend to do?” I confessed that I was wholly at a loss and should depend upon his judgment this time. “Then I shall help you out. I have the very thing you want up stairs.” “Why did you not say so at first?” Pierre laughed. “You said that I must go out and buy it and I wanted to convince you that you were wrong first.” It was now my turn to laugh at Pierre’s manner of doing things. I bade him take his own way of procuring what I wanted. He wrapped up some clothes and a couple of pistols in a bundle, telling me that, as a rule, sailors did not wear cutlasses when they came ashore. The custom was falling out of use now that the laws against the buccaneers had become so strict. “The Red Band always wear swords,” added Pierre. “That is another reason why I wouldn’t if I were you.”