essive
swells against the smooth beach.

What was there in all this to fix the attention of the fugitives--for it
had? The seething flood seemed only to hiss at their despair!

And yet almost on the instant after suspending their flight, they had
turned their faces towards it--as if some object of interest had
suddenly shown itself in the surf. Object there was none--nothing but
the flakes of white froth and the black vitreous waves over which it was
dancing.

It was not an object, but a purpose that was engaging their attention--a
resolve that had suddenly sprung up within their minds--almost as
suddenly to be carried into execution. After all, their old home was not
to prove so inhospitable. It would provide them with a place of
concealment!

The thought occurred to all three almost at the same instant of time;
though Terence was the first to give speech to it.

"By Saint Patrick!" he exclaimed, "let's take to the wather! Them
breakers'll give us a good hiding-place. I've hid before now in that
same way, when taking a moonlight bath on the coast of owld Galway. I
did it to scare my schoolfellows--by making believe I was drowned. What
say ye to our trying it?"

His companions made no reply. They had scarce even waited for the
wind-up of his harangue. Both had equally perceived the feasibility of
the scheme; and yielding to a like impulse, all three started into a
fresh run, with their faces turned towards the sea.

In less than a score of seconds, they had crossed the strip of strand;
and in a similarly short space of time were plunging--thigh
deep--through the water; still striding impetuously onward, as if they
intended to wade across the Atlantic!

A few more strides, however, brought them to a stand--just inside the
line of breakers--where the seething waters, settling down into a state
of comparative tranquillity, presented a surface variegated with large
clouts of floating froth.

Amidst this mottling of white and black, even under the bright
moonlight, it would have been difficult for the keenest eye to have
detected the head of a human being--supposing the body to have been kept
carefully submerged; and under this confidence, the mids were not slow
in submerging themselves.

Ducking down, till their chins touched the water, all three were soon as
completely out of sight--to any eye looking from the shore--as if
Neptune, pitying their forlorn condition, had stretched forth his
trident with a bunch