efforts and partly by pushings and jostlings, he had been got
on to the witness stand with two jailers on either side of him. "Who
is he?"

"He is, my lord," the _procureur du roi_ said, "the man who is charged
with deserting his ship at La Hogue and fleeing to Paris. He says,
however, he can give evidence against the _galerien_ here which will
also go far to absolve him of his desertion--if your lordships will
hear him."

"Ay," said De Rennie, "we will hear him very willingly. But," he said,
addressing the sailor, "tell no lies, fellow, in hope of escaping your
own punishment. Understand that! And understand, also, that you must
justify your own desertion."

"I need tell no lies," the man replied, a rough, bull faced and
throated man, with every mark of a seaman about him, "to justify
myself. And there was no desertion. _Mon Dieu!_ was Tourville a
deserter when he went ashore from L'Ambitieux? If so, then I am one,
for I went with him."

"Tell your tale," De Rennie exclaimed angrily, the man's utter want
of respect irritating him, "and speak no slander against the king's
officers."

"Slander!" the sailor repeated--"slander! How slander? I am
Tourville's own coxswain; acted under his orders----"

"Go on!" roared the judge. "Your evidence against the prisoner. Your
evidence!"

Briefly the man's evidence was this--and as he told it all in the
court knew that the fate of the prisoner was sealed. After that
nothing could save him.

The man _was_ Tourville's coxswain--he produced a filthy, water-soaked
paper from his breast to prove it--had been with him in Le Soleil
Royal, had gone with the admiral when he transferred his flag to
L'Ambitieux, had taken that flag from the lieutenant's hands and, with
his own, hauled it up on the latter vessel.

"But," continued the man, "it was not for long. The English had got us
in shoal water, their fireships and attenders came at us and burned
us; their boarding parties came in two hundred boats--we could do
nothing after the first resistance! And among those boarding
parties"--and he lifted his finger and pointed at the prisoner in the
dock--"was one in command of that man--that, standing there in the
dock."

"Fellow!" exclaimed the judge, "this is a Frenchman. Beware!--no
lies."

"I tell no lies. It is the truth. Ask him. He was on the deck of
L'Ambitieux with a dozen other boat crews; we could not resist; their
whole fleet came over our sides; the admiral and I left i