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Rh consular authorities got wind of it and prepared to act.

They had squeezed him dry like an orange. But to believe them he had not yet paid his debts. But he had become compromising, and it became necessary to get rid of him. For fear that he would speak and have them caught they hid him in a hovel outside the fortifications.

Finally they bartered the poor human merchandise, so greatly wronged, for a last time, to an unscrupulous captain, and, under cover of a dark night, a runner, always ready for risky jobs, the same runner who had cajoled and intoxicated him on board the Dolphin, loaded the poor rebel on a skiff and quietly conducted him on board the smuggler.

Hardly returned to his element, to his rude labor, the sailor no longer thought of the vicissitudes of his last harbor. The memory of recent humiliations was drowned by the wind of the open sea.

So thoroughly that after a prolonged trip the poor devil, all ready to begin his disastrous experience all over again, would give himself body and soul to the evil Tritons of the banks of the Scheldt.

In short, there was no one but these pressers to offer him absolute refreshment!

At the ports of call in the Antipodes, in those vehement climates, in those fiery lands peopled by beings with lemonish flesh, reptilian women and effeminate men, among populations as yellow and as feline as their fevers, Europeans hold their lust in leash, or lend themselves to vice only with the repugnance of an apoplectic who has a pallet of blood drawn from him. Or they go to the brothel as a danger, drunkenly, with an air of bravado, and urged to stay there,