CHAPTER I.

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      It is September 9th, 1831. The captain left his cabin at six o’clock. The sun is rising, or to speak more exactly, its light is illuminating the lower clouds in the east, for its disk is still below the horizon. A long luminous effluence plays over the surface of the sea, which is broken into gentle waves by the morning breeze.

      After a calm night there is every promise of a fine day—one of those September days in which the temperate zone occasionally rejoices at the decline of the hot season.

      The captain rests against the skylight on the poop, places the telescope to his right eye, and sweeps the horizon.

      Lowering the telescope he approaches the man at the wheel—a grey-bearded, keen-sighted old man—who blinks as he looks at him.

      “When did you come on duty?”

      “At four o’clock, sir.”

      The two men speak a language that no European would understand unless he had sailed in the Levant. It is a dialect of Turkish and Syriac.

      “Nothing new?”

      “Nothing, sir.”

      “And you have sighted no ship since the morning?”

      “Only one—a large three-master, which would have crossed us on the opposite tack, and I luffed a point so as to leave her as far off as possible.”

      “You did well. And now?”

      The captain looked searchingly round the horizon.

      “Ready about,” he shouted loudly.

      The men on watch ran to their stations. The helm was put down, the sheets were shortened in, the ship came up in the wind and went off on the opposite tack towards the north-west.

      She was a brigantine of four hundred tons, a merchant vessel used as a yacht. The captain had under his orders a mate and fifteen men, whose jacket and cap and wide trousers and sea-boots were those of the mariners of Eastern Europe.

      There was no name on the brigantine, either under the counter or at the bow. There was no flag. To avoid any salute the brigantine changed her course whenever the look-out reported a sail in sight.

      Was she then a pirate—for pirates were not unknown in those days in these parts—which feared pursuit?