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should be feeling shocked, angry, and perhaps insulted that a pirate should use her home, and yet she felt none of these emotions which much surprised her.
    When a few minutes later the Pirate joined her on the verandah she thought that he would have been more at home in the Drawing-Rooms and Ball-Rooms of London.
    He was somehow too elegant and certainly too smart for the verandah with its over-grown vines and the dirty neglected windows behind them.
    There was a table made of native wicker-work and two chairs and before the Frenchman could speak, the servants, Abe and his own man, appeared carrying a white table-cloth with which they covered the table and placed on it a silver tray containing two cups and saucers.
    They were the ones her mother kept for best, Grania noticed, and now there was the aroma of coffee and the servants set down a pot and beside it a plate of croissants warm from the oven, a pat of butter, and a glass dish filled with honey.
    “ Petit dejeuner est servi, Monsieur ,” the Frenchman’s servant announced and then he and Abe vanished.
    Grania looked at the pirate. He seemed about to speak, then suddenly she laughed.
    “I do not believe this is happening,” she said. “You cannot really be a pirate.”
    “I assure you that I am.”
    “But I always imagined they were evil, dirty, greasy men who used rough oaths; men from whom women hid in terror.”
    “You are thinking of one of your own countrymen—Wicken.”
    “We are lucky he did not discover Secret Harbour,” Grania said. “I heard last night that he was pillaging further down the coast.”
    “I have heard many things about him,” the Frenchman replied, “but may I suggest that the coffee is waiting?”
    “Yes, of course.”
    She sat down by instinct in front of the coffee-pot and as he seated himself opposite her she asked:
    “Shall I pour out your coffee, or would you prefer to do it for yourself?”
    “I should be honoured for you to act as my hostess.”
    She tried to smile at him, but there was something about him that made her feel a little shy.
    So instead she busied herself by filling his cup and passing it to him.
    “You must have brought your croissants with you,” she said.
    “My servant brought them,” the Frenchman replied. “They are baked fresh every day.”
    Grania gave a little laugh.
    “So even a pirate if he is French, worries about his food!”
    “But of course,” the Pirate replied. “Food is an art, and the worst hardship of being perpetually at sea is eating what I have to instead of procuring what I like to eat.”
    Grania laughed again. Then she asked:
    “Why are you a pirate? It seems ... or perhaps I am being impertinent ... a strange occupation for you.”
    “It is a long story,” the Frenchman replied. “But may I first ask why you are here, and where is your father?”
    “I am here,” Grania explained, “because a revolution has broken out in Grenville.”
    The Frenchman was suddenly tense, staring at her across the table.
    “A revolution?”
    “Yes. It started several nights ago, but we arrived only yesterday evening at Mr. Maigrin’s house. Then in the middle of the night Abe learnt that the revolutionaries had taken over Grenville and killed a number of Englishmen.”
    “It cannot be possible!” the Frenchman said as if he spoke to himself. “But if there is a revolution it will have been started by Julien Fedor.”
    “How do you know that?”
    “I heard that he was preaching sedition amongst the French slaves.”
    “So you think the revolution is serious?”
    “I am afraid it will be,” the Pirate replied.
    “But surely you want the French to be the victors and take over this island again as they did twelve years ago?”
    He shook his head.
    “If the French take it over it will be with ships and soldiers, and not by a rebellion amongst the slaves. They may be successful for a short while, but English soldiers will eventually arrive to attack them and there will be a