"Ah! Vraiment!" The polite Captain seemed incredulous and as if weary. "Are you a seaman? In what sense, pray?" We were talking French and he used the term homme de mer.
Again Mills interfered quietly. "In the same sense in which you are a military man." (Homme de guerre.)
It was then that I heard Captain Blunt produce one of his striking declarations. He had two of them, and this was the first.
"I live by my sword."
It was said in an extraordinary dandified manner which in conjunction with the matter made me forget my tongue in my head. I could only stare at him. He added more naturally: "2nd Reg. Castille Cavalry." Then with marked stress in Spanish, "En las filas legitimas."
Mills was heard, unmoved, like Jove in his cloud: "He's on leave here."
"Of course I don't shout that fact on the housetops," the Captain addressed me pointedly, "any more than our friend his shipwreck adventure. We must not strain the toleration of the French authorities too much! It wouldn't be correct—and not very safe either."
I became suddenly extremely delighted with my company. A man who "lived by his sword," before my eyes, close at my elbow! So such people did exist in the world yet! I had not been born too late! And across the table with his air of watchful, unmoved benevolence, enough in itself to arouse one's interest, there was the man with the story of a shipwreck that mustn't be shouted on housetops. Why?
I understood very well why, when he told me that he
