"Father! Father! Do not hurt these young warrior maids. Their chief has protected me. She was taking me to Paris, back to you! She is charged with a pacific mission," and standing up in the middle of the _holker_, Anne the Sweet extended her arms to Eidiol. "Guy! Rustic! Drop your arms," the old man cried. "Anne, my dear child, is in the vessel of the warrior maids!" Still under the excitement of the interrupted battle, Shigne ordered her virgins to lay down their weapons, while Anne, with her arms still extended towards Eidiol, cried out: "Bless this warrior maid! Oh, my father! Thanks to her I have escaped being outraged by the pirates!" "How sorry I am for having shot that arrow at you!" Guyrion was at the same moment saying to Gaëlo, whom he saw endeavoring to extract the arrow that had struck him in the arm. "I now recognize you, worthy pirate! It was you who opened the doors of our cells in the abbey of St. Denis!" Still with his cutlass in his hand and contemplating Simon, who was making wry faces while holding his hand to one side of his bleeding head, "I also regret to have cut off half the ear of this Northman, but it stuck out clean beyond his casque!" exclaimed Rustic the Gay. "Another meeting," cried Simon Large-Ears, shaking his fist at Rustic, "it is that insolent tongue of yours that I mean to cut out, by the faith of Simon!" "Why, you are as little of a Northman as myself, honest pirate!" exclaimed Rustic as he recognized his countryman. "My regret is then only all the deeper for leaving you in so ridiculous a state. I should have clipped off both your ears. But that can still be done." Simon made no answer to the renewed joke. He was kept busy stanching the flow of blood from his wound, which he washed with fresh water that he dipped up from the river with his casque, while his friend Robin Jaws tried to console him saying: "If we only had here some fire; I would heat the point of my sword red, and would quickly burn your wound dry."