They lost count of time, and it may have been an hour or two hours before the sliding panel in the alley opened and a face showed in the cabin door. A hand switched on the light. They saw a man slightly over the middle height, wearing sea-boots and a seaman’s jersey — a man who did not look like a sailor, for he had a thin, shaven, pallid face, a scar on his forehead, and eyebrows that made a curious arch over weak, blinking eyes. When he spoke it was with a foreign accent in a hoarse, soft voice. ‘You will come with me, please,’ he said. ‘M. le Capitaine would speak with you.’
The sight of the man sent a spasm of sharp fear through Peter John’s dull misery. For he knew him — knew him at least by hearsay. Sandy at Laverlaw had taken some pains to describe to us the two members of the old
