about; like a
cork.

"Hadn't you better come below, Rodd?" said the doctor.

"No, uncle; don't ask me. I couldn't sleep, and I want to look at the
storm. It's so grand."

"Grand? Well, yes," said the doctor; "but we could have dispensed with
its grandeur, and it seems very unlucky that after all these weeks of
glorious weather it should have turned like this. Ah, here's Captain
Chubb. Well, captain," he continued, "where are we making for? Mount's
Bay?"

"No. Give it up. Nasty rocky bit about there, so I laid her head for
Plymouth; but we shan't get in there to-night."

"Where then?" asked the doctor. "Wouldn't it be better to run for the
open sea?"

"No," said the skipper shortly. "This wind's come to stay, and we must
get into port for a bit. We don't want to get into the Bay of Biscay O
with weather like this. It's going to be a regular sou'-wester."

"What port shall we make for, then?" asked the doctor, while Rodd caught
all he could of the conversation, as the wind kept coming in gusts and
seemed to snatch the words and carry them overboard in an instant.
"Havre," grunted the captain laconically. There was silence for some
time, for it became too hard work to talk, but in one of the intervals
between two gusts, a few words were spoken, the doctor asking the
skipper if he was satisfied with the behaviour of the schooner.

"Oh yes," He grunted; "she's right enough."

"You are not disappointed, then?"

"No. Bit too lively. Wants some more cargo or ballast to give her
steadiness; but she'll be all right." All the same this was an
experience very different from anything that Rodd had had before, and it
was not without a severe buffeting that in the early dawn of the morning
Captain Chubb had succeeded in laying the little vessel's head off
Havre, so that, taking advantage of a temporary sinking of the wind, he
was able to run her safely into the French port, and this at a time when
it was a friendly harbour, the British arms having triumphed everywhere,
the French king being once more upon the throne, and he who had been
spoken of for so long as the Ogre of Elba now lying duly watched and
guarded far away to the south, within the rockbound coast of Saint
Helena.

CHAPTER TWELVE.

PRIVATE EARS.

The schooner was run safely into port, but just before she cleared the
harbour mouth, down came a tremendous squall of wind as if from round
the corner of some impossible solid cloud behind