CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT.
PRISONERS, BUT NOT OF WAR.
Michael Ladelle was a good-looking lad, as people judge good looks; but at that moment, as he stood with his hand resting on the bulwarks of _La Belle-Marie_, he was decidedly plain, so blank and semi-idiotic did he seem, with his eyes dilated, his jaw dropped and his brains evidently gone wool-gathering, as people say, so utterly unable was he to comprehend his companion's announcement.
Still it was only a matter of moments before he shut his mouth, and then nearly closed his eyes, wrinkled up his face, and burst into a fit of laughter, which, however, was of so hysterical a nature that for a time he could not check it.

At last, though, he mastered it sufficiently to say,-- "To do what with us ?" "To sell," said Vince again, as he gazed sadly in his companion's face.
"To sell!" cried Mike, growing more calm now; and his voice had a ring of contempt in it as he said,-- "Why, any one would think this was Africa, and we were blacks.

What nonsense!" "It isn't nonsense," said Vince.

"That man will do anything sooner than have it known where his hiding-place is; and he won't kill us--he dares not on account of his men; but he'll get us out of the way so that we shan't be able to tell." "Oh, I won't believe it!" cried Mike angrily.

"Such a thing couldn't be done." "But it has been done over and over again," said Vince: "I've read of it.