"Captain Levasseur, this is an outrage for which you shall be made
to answer. What do you seek aboard my ship?"
"At first I sought only that which belongs to me, something of
which I am being robbed. But since you chose war and opened fire
on me with some damage to my ship and loss of life to five of my
men, why, war it is, and your ship a prize of war."
From the quarter rail Mademoiselle d'Ogeron looked down with glowing
eyes in breathless wonder upon her well-beloved hero. Gloriously
heroic he seemed as he stood towering there, masterful, audacious,
beautiful. He saw her, and with a glad shout sprang towards her.
The Dutch master got in his way with hands upheld to arrest his
progress. Levasseur did not stay to argue with him: he was too
impatient to reach his mistress. He swung the poleaxe that he
carried, and the Dutchman went down in blood with a cloven skull.
The eager lover stepped across the body and came on, his countenance
joyously alight.
But mademoiselle was shrinking now, in horror. She was a girl upon
the threshold of glorious womanhood, of a fine height and nobly
moulded, with heavy coils of glossy black hair above and about a face
that was of the colour of old ivory.
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