And don't you yet realize where you stand--in the power of this beast, of this cur born in a kennel and bred in thieving and murder ?" He might have said more but that Levasseur struck him across the mouth.
Levasseur, you see, cared as little as another to hear the truth about himself.
Mademoiselle suppressed a scream, as the youth staggered back under the blow.

He came to rest against a bulkhead, and leaned there with bleeding lips.

But his spirit was unquenched, and there was a ghastly smile on his white face as his eyes sought his sister's.
"You see," he said simply.

"He strikes a man whose hands are bound." The simple words, and, more than the words, their tone of ineffable disdain, aroused the passion that never slumbered deeply in Levasseur.
"And what should you do, puppy, if your hands were unbound ?" He took his prisoner by the breast of his doublet and shook him.

"Answer me! What should you do?
Tchah! You empty windbag! You...." And then came a torrent of words unknown to mademoiselle, yet of whose foulness her intuitions made her conscious.
With blanched cheeks she stood by the cabin table, and cried out to Levasseur to stop.