"Little fool, do you
think I should be acting as your friend to make terms with this
blackguard pirate?"
"Steady, my young cockerel!" Levasseur laughed. But his laugh was
not nice.
"Don't you perceive your wicked folly in the harm it has brought
already? Lives have been lost - men have died - that this monster
might overtake you. And don't you yet realize where you stand - in
the power of this beast, of this cur born in a kennel and bred in
thieving and murder?"
He might have said more but that Levasseur struck him across the
mouth. Levasseur, you see, cared as little as another to hear the
truth about himself.
Mademoiselle suppressed a scream, as the youth staggered back under
the blow. He came to rest against a bulkhead, and leaned there
with bleeding lips. But his spirit was unquenched, and there was
a ghastly smile on his white face as his eyes sought his sister's.
"You see," he said simply. "He strikes a man whose hands are bound."
The simple words, and, more than the words, their tone of ineffable
disdain, aroused the passion that never slumbered deeply in
Levasseur.
Pages:
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269