before they sailed. It was no use trying to "gammon the skipper," though. They had discovered that already, and they lent their aid with a will, when they found it must be so, to place their future comrades in the same predicament as themselves.
The whole affair was managed so quietly that, even had the harbour-guard, a brandy-faced veteran of sixty, remained wide-awake and perfectly sober, he might have been excused for its escaping his vigilance. Bob himself, standing with his empty cart on the quay, could hardly hear the dip of the oars as his late guests were pulled cautiously away. He did not indeed remain there very long to listen. He had done with them one and all—for was not the score paid? and it behoved him to return home and prepare for fresh arrivals. He turned, therefore, with a well-satisfied glance towards the light in the foretop of the brigantine, and wished 'The Bashful Maid' a good voyage, while at the same moment Beaudésir stumbled awkwardly up her side. To the latter this was, indeed, a new and startling phase of life, but it was full of excitement, and consequently very much to his taste. Captain George, taking him below, and pointing out a couch in his cabin on which to pass the rest of the night, though he had seen a good deal of worse material for a privateer's-man, or even a pirate, than this pale gentle young adventurer, late of the Grey Musketeers.
Covered by a boat-cloak, and accommodated with two or three cushions, Eugène's bed was quite as comfortable as that which he occupied at the Fox and Fiddle. It was long past sunrise when he awoke, and realising his position he ran on deck with a landsman's usual conviction that he was already miles out at sea. It was startling, and a little disappointing, to observe the quay, the straggling buildings of the town, the lighthouse, and other well-known objects within musket-shot, and to find that the brigantine, in spite of her lively motions, still rode at anchor, not half a cable's length from a huge, smooth, red buoy, which was dancing and dipping in the morning sun as if it were alive. There was a fresh breeze off shore, and a curl on the green sparkling water that, far away down Channel, beyond the point, swelled into a thousand varying lines of white, while a schooner in the offing might be observed standing out to
