"Dinner, uncle!" cried the lad indignantly. "Who's going to stop for
dinner when there are boats out yonder full of men going to board and
take a ship?"

"Humph! Well," grunted Uncle Paul, "I suppose it would be rather
exciting, and we shall be able to see; but I don't know, though.
There'll be firing, and who knows which way the bullets will fly?"

"Oh, they; won't hit us, uncle. Come on."

Uncle Paul was rapidly growing as excited as his nephew, while the
waiter, if it were possible, was as full of eagerness as both together,
and forgetting all his duties and the dinner that he had ordered to be
prepared, he cried--

"Ze rain is ovare; you come vith me. I take you out ze back way and
down ze little rue which take us to the quay."

That was enough for Rodd, and the next minute they were following the
waiter down the big staircase through the great kitchen once more, which
was now quite deserted, and out into a walled yard to a back gateway,
beyond which, mingling with the roaring of the wind, they could hear the
trampling of many feet.

"Zis way; zis way!" the bare-headed waiter kept crying, as he put his
serviette to quite a new use, battling with the wind as he folded it
diagonally and then turned it into a cover for his head by tying the
corners under his chin.

"Here, I say," cried Rodd, as the man kept on at a trot; "I want to get
to the harbour."

"_Oui_, _oui_; zis way!" panted their guide, who nearly put the visitors
out of patience by turning off two or three times at right angles and
apparently taking them quite away from where they wished to go. "Zis
way! Zis way!" he kept on crying, till at last the trio were alone,
others who had been hurrying onward having taken different directions.

Bang went another gun from the fort, a report which seemed to be sent
back instantly from the harbour walls, apparently close at hand.

"Yes, zis way; zis way!" shouted the man. "I show you before zey sink
ze sheep."

And now he suddenly turned into a narrow alley formed by two towering
warehouses so close together that there was not room for two people to
walk comfortably abreast; but "Zis way, zis way," shouted the guide,
"and you shall be zere upon ze field--_sur le champ, sur le champ_. Ah
ha!" he cried directly after, as he suddenly issued from out of the
darkness of the alley into the comparative light of a narrow wharf
encumbered with casks, just beyond which was the dripping stone edge of
the