If
he announced his intention of withdrawing from the band, his enraged
companions would probably kill him. Consequently a friendly separation
between himself and his buccaneer followers was a thing not to be
thought of, and she did not even propose it.
Her idea was a very different one. Just as soon as possible, that very
night, de Lussan was to slip quietly out of the town, and make his way
into the surrounding country. She would furnish him with a horse, and
tell him the way he should take, and he was not to stop until he had
reached a secluded spot, where she was quite sure the buccaneers would
not be able to find him, no matter how diligently they might search.
When they had entirely failed in every effort to discover their lost
captain, who they would probably suppose had been killed by wandering
Indians,--for it was impossible that he could have been murdered in the
town without their knowledge,--they would give him up as lost and press
on in search of further adventures.
When the buccaneers were far away, and all danger from their return had
entirely passed, then the brave and polite Frenchman, now no longer a
buccaneer, could safely return to the town, where the young widow would
be most happy to marry him, to lodge him in her handsome house, and to
make over to him all the large fortune and estates which had been the
property of her late husband.
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