He slept where he sat.  All night four men remained on guard, although from what he heard they had no fear whatever of being overtaken.  In the morning his arms were unbound, and they stripped off his tunic and shirt.  They had evidently respect for his strength, for before loosing his arms they tightly fastened his ankles together.  The removal of his shirt exposed Claudia’s gift to view.

“Take that from him and give it to me,” the captain said.  As the two men approached, Gervaise seized one in each hand, dashed them against each other, and hurled them on the deck.  But the exertion upset his equilibrium, and after making a vain effort to recover it, he fell heavily across them.  The captain stooped over him, and, before he could recover himself, snatched the chain from his neck.

“You are a stout fellow,” he said, laughing, “and will make a fine slave.  What have you got here that you are ready to risk your life for?” He looked at the little chain and its pendant with an air of disappointment. “’Tis worth but little,” he said, showing it to his mate.  “I would not give five ducats for it in the market.  It must be a charm, or a knight would never carry it about with him and prize it so highly.  It may be to things like this the Christians owe their luck.”

“It has not brought him luck this time,” the mate observed with a laugh.

“Even a charm cannot always bring good luck, but at any rate I will try it; " and he put it round his neck just as Gervaise had worn it.  The latter was now unbound, and permitted to move about the deck.  The strength he had shown in the struggle on shore, and the manner in which he had hurled, bound as he was, two of their comrades to the deck, had won for him the respect of his captors, and he was therefore allowed privileges not granted to the seamen of the vessel that had had the ill fortune to be cast on shore so close to the spot where the corsair was hiding.  These had been seized, driven to the ship, and having been stripped of the greater portion of their clothes, shut down in the hold.

Although angry that but one out of the four who landed had been captured, the captain was in a good humour at having tricked his redoubtable foes, and was disposed to treat Gervaise with more consideration than was generally given to captives.  The latter had not spoken a word of Turkish from the time he was captured, and had shaken his head when first addressed in that language.  No suspicion was therefore entertained that he had any knowledge of it, and the Turks conversed freely before him.

“Where think you we had better sell him?” the mate asked the captain, when Gervaise was leaning against the bulwark watching the land, a short quarter of a mile away.  “He ought to fetch a good ransom.”