“Make haste,” the captain said to the men carrying Gervaise.

“They are lowering their boats; we must be under way before they come up.”

In a minute or two Gervaise was set down on his feet, the cords round his legs were cut, and he was made to hurry along with his captors.  In a short time an inlet was reached, and here Gervaise saw, to his mortification, the pirate craft for which the Santa Barbara had in vain been searching.  As soon as the party were all on board, the ropes by which she was moored to two trees were thrown off; the great sails hoisted, and she sailed boldly out.  Although the gale had entirely abated, there was still a brisk wind blowing, and it was evident to the captain of the corsair that under such circumstances he could outsail the galley that had long been searching for him; when, therefore, the Santa Barbara came in sight, just as he and his crew had finished stripping the wreck of its contents, the idea had occurred to him to attempt to entice some of the knights to land.

As soon as the vessel was under way he abused his followers hotly for not having obeyed his orders to capture the knights without bloodshed; but they pleaded that it was as much as they had been able to do to capture Gervaise in that way, and that they could never have overcome the four together, before the boats would have had time to come from the ship.

Gervaise had been told to sit down with his back to a mast and in this position he could, when the vessel heeled over to the breeze, obtain a view of the sea.  It was with a feeling of bitter mortification and rage that he saw the galley lying but half a mile away, as the corsair issued from the inlet.  A moment later he heard a gun fired, and saw the signal hoisted to recall the boats.

“If the wind had been favourable,” the captain said to his mate, “we would have borne down upon her, and could have reached and captured her before the boats got back, for you may be sure that they have landed almost all their men.  However, we can’t get there against the wind, and we will now say goodbye to them.”

Gervaise knew well that at the pace they were running through the water the galley would have no chance whatever of overtaking her, and that, ere the knights came on board again, she would be already two or three miles away.  A point of land soon concealed the galley from view, and when he caught sight of her, as she rounded the point, she was but a speck in the distance.

They passed several islands in the course of the day, changing their direction to a right angle to that which they had at first pursued, as soon as they were hidden from the sight of the galley by an intervening island.  As night came on they anchored in a little bay on the coast of the Morea.  The sails being furled, the sailors made a division of the booty they had captured on the island, and of the portable property found on board the wreck.  A gourd full of water was placed to Gervaise’s lips by one of the men of a kinder disposition than the rest.  He drank it thankfully, for he was parched with thirst excited by the pain caused by the tightness with which he had been bound.