As soon as the steward told him that the ladies had left their cabin he ran down again.
"My dear Peter," the baroness began.
"You must really defer your thanks for the present, madame, especially as you have by no means made your escape yet. We are going to have a bout with two gunboats behind us. No doubt they were sent off from Marseilles as soon as that mob of scoundrels returned there."
"But you will beat them off, will you not, Peter?" Melanie said confidently.
"Well, I shall try my best," Peter replied. "I fancy that we have every chance of doing so. My gunner is a capital shot, and it will be very hard if he does not cripple one of them, and I think that we shall be men enough to thrash the other. Besides, I think it very likely that the Tartar will be along this morning. She was going to convoy a prize we took, and it is about time for her to be back again, and you may be sure that the gunboats will make off as fast as they can if they see her coming. I am going to breakfast with you," he went on—"in the first place, because I want breakfast; and in the second place, because very likely you would eat next to nothing if I were not here with you."
"We saw you come along at eleven o'clock yesterday morning," Julie said. "We were able to get a view of the sea between our guards. We saw you sail away from the shore, and it cheered us very much, for we felt sure that you would try to do something."
"I was close to you an hour later, Julie. I landed in disguise directly I saw your signal and the smoke rising from the lower windows, and stayed an hour talking with those wretches. Of course what one wanted to learn was the time at which they would start with you for Marseilles. As soon as I had learned that, I got on board again at once. Everything worked well. We came back after dark, set an ambush on the road, carried you off, and took you on board. How about the jewels?"
"We buried them at the spot that we agreed on," Julie said; "ours and mother's."