“Here we have it,” said Cuffe, opening the important document as soon has he and his brother captains were again in the cabin.  “Approved—­ordered that the sentence be carried into execution on board His Majesty’s ship the Proserpine, Captain Cuffe, to-morrow, between the hours of sunrise and sunset.”

Then followed the date, and the well-known signature of “Nelson and Bronte.”  All this was what Cuffe both wished and expected, though he would have preferred a little more grace in carrying out the orders.  The reader is not to suppose from this that our captain was either vengeful or bloody-minded; or that he really desired to inflict on Raoul any penalty for the manner in which he had baffled his own designs and caused his crew to suffer.  So far from this, his intention was to use the sentence to extort from the prisoner a confession of the orders he had given to those left in the lugger, and then to use this confession as a means of obtaining his pardon, with a transfer to a prison-ship.  Cuffe had no great veneration for privateersmen, nor was his estimate of their morality at all unreasonable, when he inferred that one who served with gain for his principal object would not long hesitate about purchasing his own life by the betrayal of a secret like that he now asked.  Had Raoul belonged even to a republican navy, the English man-of-wars-man might have hesitated about carrying out his plan; but, with the master of a corsair, it appeared to be the most natural thing imaginable to attempt its execution.  Both Sir Frederick and Lyon viewed the matter in the same light; and, now that everything was legally done that was necessary to the design, the capture of the lugger was deemed more than half accomplished.

“It is somewhat afflicting, too, Cuffe,” observed Sir Frederick, in his drawling, indolent way; “it is somewhat afflicting, too, Cuffe, to be compelled to betray one’s friends or to be hanged!  In parliament, now, we say we’ll be hanged if we do, and here you say you’ll be hanged if you don’t.”

“Poh, poh!  Dashwood; no one expects this Raoul Yvard will come to that fate, for no one thinks he will hold out.  We shall get the lugger, and that will be the end of it.  I’d give a thousand pounds to see that d—­d Few-Folly at anchor within pistol-shot of my stern at this blessed moment.  My feelings are in the matter.”

“Five hundred would be a high price,” observed Lyon, dryly.  “I much doubt if the shares of us three come to as much as a hundred apiece, even should the craft fall into our hands.”

“By the way, gents,” put in Sir Frederick, gaping—­“suppose we toss up or throw the dice to see which shall have all, on supposition we get her within the next twenty-four hours, timing the affair by this ship’s chronometers.  You’ve dice on board, I dare say, Cuffe, and we can make a regular time of it here for half an hour, and no one the wiser.”

“Your pardon, Captain Dashwood; I can suffer no such amusement.  It is unmilitary and contrary to regulations; and, then, hundreds are not as plenty with Lyon and myself as they are with you.  I like to pocket my prize-money first and sport on it afterward.”