assure you, and
not to be so very easily deceived."

"I can well believe it," I answered lightly. "All the same, I am very
much obliged to you for the hint, and will do my best to profit by it."

Whereupon, as I turned on my heel to quit the house, the garrulous
Frenchman's three shipmates fell upon him, figuratively, tooth and nail,
heaping reproaches upon the unhappy man's head for having warned me
against the chief mate's astuteness. I did not wait to hear how the
matter ended, but, leaving the house briskly, as though I were the
bearer of an important message, I hurried across to the wharf and,
dropping into the dinghy, cast off her painter and sculled her across to
_La Belle Estelle_, alongside which I coolly went, and, making fast the
painter, ascended the gangway ladder and stepped in on deck before
anybody condescended to take any notice of me. There were some twenty
men, or thereabout, busying themselves about the deck in a very
leisurely manner, taking off hatches, hauling taut the running rigging,
and so on, under the supervision of a very smart, keen-looking man,
dressed, like the skipper of the ship, in white. This man I took to be
Monsieur Favart, the chief mate; so stepping up to him where he stood,
at the break of the monkey poop, I raised my hat politely and said:

"Have I the pleasure to address Monsieur Favart, the chief mate of this
vessel?"

"Certainly, monsieur," he answered, bringing his piercing black eyes to
bear upon me. "And who may you be, my friend, that you find it
necessary to ask such a question? I thought I had been here often
enough to enable every dweller upon yonder island to at least know Jules
Favart by sight. But I do not seem to remember ever having seen you
before."

"You have not, monsieur," I answered. "I am quite a new recruit, and
only joined just in time to witness the destruction of that pestilent
British man-o'-war, the wreck of which you doubtless observed as you
entered the river."

"We did," he answered; "and we guessed, of course, that it was the wreck
of the _Psyche_. So that affair came off all right, eh? Well, I didn't
very well see how it could possibly fail, for we all had a hand in the
devising and arranging of it, and we chopped and trimmed away at the
plan until I flatter myself that it was as perfect as human ingenuity
could make it. But I take it that you did not come aboard here to
discuss that matter with me?"

"No, indeed," I answered.