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"I speak the truth," answered Albinik. "I'll prove it to you. That Irishman knows as well as I the dangers attendant upon entering the bay he has just left. I shall ask him to go before us, as pilot, and in advance I shall trace for you the route he will take.
But no matter how softly they come, or how cunningly they hide themselves, no one can approach the cloth from the outside to listen to us, without our seeing, through that gap, the feet of the spy," and he pointed out to his wife the circular space left between the earth and the lower rim of the tent cloth. "Do you think, then, Albinik, that Caesar has any suspicions?
Albinik felt certain that the suspicions of the Roman general, if he had any, had just been allayed by the interpreter's report, and that the moment had come when he was to learn the mission with which they wished to charge him. Accordingly, he prepared to leave the tent, and Meroë with him, when the interpreter said to the young woman, stopping her with a gesture: "You may not accompany us.
He could not have been prouder of his three sons Guilhern the field-laborer, Michael the armorer, and Albinik the mariner; or of his daughter Hena, the Virgin of the Isle of Sen a now deserted island that, at this moment, looking out at the window, I see yonder, far away, almost in the open sea, veiled in mist. No!
In the bag on my horse I have a little harpoon head of iron that I forged for him; I shall place it to-morrow on the pyre of you two " "And you must tell Armel," added the mariner smiling, "that he went away too soon; his friends Albinik and Meroë would have told him their last experience at sea."
From this place they could not see the Gallic fleet, anchored at the furthest part of the bay at almost two leagues' distance, and screened from all eyes by a lofty promontory. "Now," said Albinik to the interpreter, "We now run only one danger; it is a great one. Before us are shifting sandbanks, occasionally displaced by the high tides; the galleys might ground there.
Caesar, before whom Albinik and Meroë cast down their eyes for fear of betraying their hatred, had exchanged his armor for a long robe of richly broidered silk. His head was bare, nothing covered his large bald forehead, on each side of which his brown hair was closely trimmed.
"You are the best and most courageous pilot I have ever met with, I, who have in my life traveled so much on the sea," said Caesar to Albinik when he had regained dry land, and, with Meroë, had left the boat. "To-morrow, if the weather is fair, you will guide an expedition, the destination of which you will know at the moment of setting sail."
Arrived within the tent of Caesar, the scourge of Gaul, Albinik and Meroë were freed of their bonds. Despite their souls' being stirred with hatred for the invader of their country, they looked about them with a somber curiosity.
If the Irishman executes this manoeuvre from point to point, will you still suspect me?" "No, by Jupiter!" answered the interpreter. "It would then be absurd to entertain the least doubt of your good faith." "Judge me then," said Albinik, and he addressed a few words to the Irishman, who consented to pilot the ships. His manoeuvring tallied exactly with what Albinik had foretold.
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