That night the weather fell thick, and, the wind freshening suddenly, the ship dropped anchor. Captain Eliphalet Wrye was not so familiar with the reefs and tides of Fundy that he cared to navigate her waters in the dark. This we considered very favourable to our enterprise; for the tide running strongly, and the wind against it, kicked up a pother that made the hold re?cho.

The time agreed upon was toward three, when those asleep are heaviest. I think that most of our men slept, but with that consciousness of events impending which would bring them wide awake on the instant. Marc, I know, lay sleeping like a child. But for me no sleep, no sleep indeed. I could not spare a minute from the delight of thinking and dreaming. Here I lay in irons, a captive, an exile,—but my beloved had come.

“She has come, my beloved!” I kept saying over and over to myself.

269Then I tried planning for our future; but the morrow promised her presence, and for the time I could not get my thoughts past that. There was no need to discount future joy by drawing bills of dear anticipation. But it was tonic to my brain to look back upon the hopeless despair in which I had lain weltering so few hours before. Now they seemed years away—and how I blessed their remoteness, those sick hours of anguish! Yes, though I had not given up my purpose, I had surely given up the hope that kept it alive. Then Mother Pêche’s soothsaying over the lines of my palm came back to me: “Your heart’s desire is nigh your death of hope!”

Wonderful old woman! How came such wisdom to your simple heart, with no teachers but herbs, and dews, and stillnesses of the open marsh, and hill-whispers, and the unknown stars? Out of some deep truth you spoke, surely; for even as my hope died, had not my heart’s desire come? And I said to myself, “It is but a narrow and shallow heart that expects to understand all it believes. Do we not walk as men blindfolded in the citadel of mystery? What seem to us the large things and unquestionable may, the half of them, be vain—and small, derided things an uninterpreted message of truth!”

My revery was broken by Marc laying free hands upon mine.

270“Are you awake?” he whispered. “The time has come. See! This is the way to open them.” And very easily, as it seemed, he slipped the iron from my wrists.

“Feel!” he went on, in the same soft whisper. I followed his fingers in the dimness. There was no light but the murk of a smoky lanthorn some way off, where the guards sat dejectedly smoking,—and I caught the method of unlocking the spring. “Free your next neighbour, and pass the word along,” continued Marc; and I did so. It was all managed with noiseless precision.

In a very few minutes—which seemed an hour—there was a sneeze from the furthermost corner of the hold, beyond the place where the guards sat. It was not the most natural and easy sneeze in the world, but it served. It was answered by another from the opposite corner. The shrill, silly sound was yet in the air when the ominous form of long Philibert Trou loomed high behind the sitting guards and fell upon one of them like fate; while at the same moment, like a springing cat, the lithe figure of La Mouche shot up at the other’s throat.

For such skilled hands it was but a moment’s work, and no noise about it. Like the rising of an army of spectres, every man came silently to his feet. Seizing the musket of the nearest guard, where he lay motionless, I glided to the hatch, 271just far enough ahead of Marc to get my foot first on the ladder.

As I reached the deck the sentry, not three paces distant, was just turning. With a yell to warn his comrades he sprang at me. Nimbly I avoided his bayonet thrust, and the butt of my musket brought him down. I had reserved my fire for the possibility of a more dangerous encounter.

There were shouts along the deck—and shots—and I saw sailors running up, and then more soldiers—and I sprang to meet them. But already Marc was at my side, and a dozen, nay, a score, of my fellow-captives. In a breath, as it were, the score doubled and trebled—the hold seemed to spout them forth, so hotly they came.

There were but few shots, and a fall or two with groans. The thing was over before it was well begun, so perfect had been the surprise. We had all who were on deck in irons, save for three slain and one grievously wounded. Those who had been asleep in their bunks when the alarm was given now promptly gave themselves up, soldiers and sailors alike, being not mad enough to play out a lost game. Handcuffs were abundant, which made our work the simpler.

As I went forward, wondering where Shafto was this while, I was met by La Mouche and two others leading a prisoner. It was Captain Eliphalet, with 272blood on his face, sorely dazed, but undaunted. Indignation and reproach so struggled within him that he could not for the moment find speech.

“Pardon, I beseech you, Captain Wrye,” I made haste to say, “the need which has compelled me to make such rude return for your courtesy. This,” and I tapped his irons with my finger, “is but for an hour or two at most, till we get things on our ship fitly ordered. Then, believe me, you will find that this is merely a somewhat abrupt reversal of the positions of host and guest.”

I fear that Captain Eliphalet’s reply was going to be a rude one, but if so it was quenched at his lips. The door of the cabin opened, a bright light streamed forth, and down it glided Yvonne in her white gown, the black lace over her head.

“Oh, Paul, what has happened? Are you—are you safe?” she asked breathlessly, ‘twixt laughing and tears. The shooting and shouting had aroused her roughly.

“Quite safe, my dearest,” I whispered. “And—the ship is ours.”

All that this meant flashed upon her, and her face flushed, her eyes dilated. But before she found voice to welcome the great news, her glance fell upon Captain Eliphalet’s blood-stained countenance, and her joy faded into compassion.

“Oh!” she cried, “you are not wounded, 273surely, surely!” And she pressed her handkerchief pitifully to the blood-spots.

“It is nothing, nothing, mademoiselle, but a mere scratch, or bruise, rather,” stammered Captain Eliphalet. Then she saw that his hands were fettered.

“Paul!” she exclaimed, turning upon me a face grown very white and grave. “And he was so kind to me! How could you!”

“As a matter of fact, I didn’t, Yvonne,” said I. “But this is what I am going to do.”

Slipping off the irons I tossed them into the sea.

“Captain Wrye,” said I to him, with a bow, “I have much ............