“Give me a platter of that mess and a bottle of your best wine, and I will tell you all about it,” said Pierre Gaudet. William Thornton turned round and sat down, and commenced satisfying his appetite, listening attentively, nevertheless, to what Pierre Gaudet said. “There are more men in the kitchen,” whispered our hero, “for I can hear the murmur of their voices; though the captain of the privateer’s is by far the loudest.” Having recounted the history of the taking of the Vengeance, the captain then told of their re-taking it; and how he and the mate of the Bon-Citoyen seized and fastened down, in the cabin of the privateer, one of the officers and a seaman. “And why, Pierre Gaudet,” said Dame Moret, evidently in a surprised tone, “did you treat a brave officer, though an enemy, in that cruel way?” “Ah! sacre! how tender-hearted you are, dame,” savagely laughed the privateer’s man; “why you must know it was the cursed young devil that shot my brother-in-law through the head, and thus won the schooner, one of the fastest and best boats in the line; and when Jacques Boussain would have knocked the fiery young diable on the head, that vile seaman we secured at the same time, drove his cutlass into him, and left him for dead. I swore when I heard this, for we in the Vengeance escaped in the fog, that if ever it was in my power, I’d take a bloody revenge on those two men; and, sacre tonnerre de Dieu, when I had them, I gloried in the revenge I intended to take. However, I’ll find them yet; if they escaped out of the Vengeance, and they must have done so, for else how could she have run ashore where she did, and the wind a side one? But where is your son, dame? I want him and his crew to go round with the next tide to where the vessel is; the wind is off shore now—something may be saved out of her, or her hull got off.” “He went down in the lugger with the ebb tide,” said Dame Moret; “for we heard at daylight of a craft on fire being ashore at Caux point; but they did not get out to sea, for they were late on the ebb and grounded. You will find them a mile or two down the creek, waiting for the flood tide.” “Sacre! that’s lucky! Then we will be off and join them. Come, my lads, finish your grub, and let us join Moret and his crew; we may get her off and into the creek; the tide’s rising, and the water’s smooth.” There was then a murmuring of several voices, the laugh of some female, and the party left the house.