“Yes,” I said, and I tried to keep my voice calm, “yes, I think you’re right. I think I can almost prove you’re right. I think I can prove it from what I’ve noticed about her myself, and from a trick she played on a certain friend of mine, and from several things Nathaniel let fall. I’m glad to be able to tell you what I picked up from Nathaniel, because it shows Nathaniel doesn’t know what she’s up to. If he’d had any hand in what she was doing, he’d never have told me the things he did. You can’t condemn Nathaniel if you know Marie de Sabrevois.”

There was an uncomfortable silence. It was Nason who broke it. “We’re always glad to make allowances for our friends, but your brother—–”

“Nathaniel’s our friend!” I broke in. “He’s not fighting against us, and he thinks he’s going to be in a position to help us. He’s misguided—he’s made a mistake—he’s in love. You’ve got to understand about Nathaniel—you’ve got to do it! He’s done what every man in the world has done, and may do again tomorrow: he’s made a mistake; and there isn’t a man alive that hasn’t, because of his own folly, hovered a score of times on the brink of disaster, and been saved an equal number of times by the merest chance.”

“Yes,” Nason said, “but your brother’s with the British!”

I tried hard to remember exactly what Cap Huff had told me, long ago, about Nason and his one-time infatuation for Marie de Sabrevois. “Wait,” I told him. “Wait! Nathaniel’s not so much with the British as with the woman he loves. I’m glad it’s you I’m talking to. You’re a man of experience. You can understand what it must mean to be in love with a woman who’s no better than she should be. You can understand, probably, how a woman like that can seem the most beautiful, the kindest and the most innocent woman in all the world. Probably you know that a man in love with such a woman won’t allow a word to be said against her, no matter what she is. Probably you know she could have a dozen lovers; and still the deluded fool infatuated with her believes her incapable of looking at any man but himself.”

Cap Huff coughed, a tremendous, racking, affected cough. Nason, his tanned face as red as a brick, eyed him morosely.

“That’s the way of it with Nathaniel,” I said. “He hasn’t fought against us yet; and if I’m any judge of men, he never will. Yet it’s not because he’s afraid to fight, as you men here well know. You saw him try to take back the Royal Savage with Captain Hawley, and you saw him stand up to his guns on the Congress galley until a round shot came close to knocking him into eternity.”

“Nobody could have fought better, Cap’n Peter,” Tom Bickford said.