ought it prudent not to
disturb the admiral after dinner, as great men are apt to be very
choleric during the progress of digestion.

The consequence was, that when, the next morning, Mr Vanslyperken
called upon the admiral, the intelligence had been received from the
cave, and all the parties had absconded. Mr Vanslyperken told his own
tale, how he had been hailed by a boat, purporting to have a messenger
on board, how they had boarded him and beat down himself and his crew,
how he and his crew had fought under hatches and beat them on deck, and
how they had been forced to abandon the cutter. All this was very
plausible, and then Vanslyperken gave the despatches opened by Ramsay.

The admiral read them in haste, gave immediate orders for surrounding
and breaking into the house of the Jew Lazarus, in which the military
found nobody but an old tom-cat, and then desired Mr Vanslyperken to
hold the cutter in readiness to embark troops and sail that afternoon:
but troops do not move so fast as people think, and before one hundred
men had been told off by the sergeant with their accoutrements,
knapsacks, and sixty pounds of ammunition, it was too late to embark
them that night, so they waited until the next morning. Moreover, Mr
Vanslyperken had orders to draw from the dock-yard three large boats for
the debarkation of the said troops; but the boats were not quite ready,
one required a new gunwale, another three planks in the bottom, and the
third having her stern out, it required all the carpenters in the yard
to finish it by the next morning. Mr Vanslyperken's orders were to
proceed to the cave, and land the troops, to march up to the cave, and
to cover the advance of the troops, rendering them all the assistance in
his power in co-operating with the major commanding the detachment; but
where the cave was, no one knew, except that it was thereabouts.

The next morning, at eight o'clock, the detachment, consisting of one
hundred men, were embarked on board of the cutter, but the major
commandant, finding that the decks were excessively crowded, and that he
could hardly breathe, ordered section first, section second, and section
third, of twenty-five men each, to go into the boats and be towed.
After which there was more room, and the cutter stood out for St.
Helen's.

CHAPTER FORTY EIGHT.

IN WHICH THERE IS A GREAT DEAL OF CORRESPONDENCE, AND THE WIDOW IS
CALLED UP VERY EARLY IN THE MORNING.

We must now retu