@

154 FOR THE FLAG

corner on the right is a toilet table with the usual ac-
cessories, Everything is very clean,

Fresh fish, preserved meat, good bread, ale and whisky,
such was the menu of the first meal. I could scarcely
eat. I was quite unnerved.

It is necessary, however, that I should regain complete
control of myself, that I should be calm in mind and soul,
with all my mental faculties on the alert; for I want to
discover the secret of this handful of men entombed in
the bowels of a mountain—and I will discover it.

So it is under the carapace of Backcup that Count
d’Artigas resides. This cavity, whose existence no one
suspects, is his homé when the £déa is not bearing him
along the coast of the New World, or, perhaps, as far as
the shores of the Old World! This is the unknown
retreat which he has discovered, and it is reached by a
submarine entrance, a water-door that opens twenty or
thirty feet below the ocean surface.

Why has he separated himself from the world? What
is there in this man’s past? If the name D’Artigas, his
title of Count, are only assumed, as I imagine, what is his
motive for hiding his identity? Is he an outlaw, an exile,
who prefers this place of banishment to any other? Am
I not rather in the company of a malefactor, anxious to
secure impunity for his crimes? I can do nothing but
suppose; concerning this suspicious stranger I suppose
everything.

Then returned to my mind that question which I have
not yet answered satisfactorily. Why was Thomas Roch