accordance even with the most
optimistic philosophy, Sir Adrian himself at other times might have
doubted. But he was tender in thought this stormy night, with the
grateful relaxation that a happy break brings in the midst of
long-drawn melancholy.

Everything had been working towards this end--that he should be the
light-keeper of Scarthey on the day when out of the raging waters
Cecile would rise and knock and ask for succour at his chamber.

Cecile! pshaw!--raving again.

Well, the child! Where was she on the day of the last engagement of
that pugnacious _Porcupine_, in the year 1805, when England was freed
from her long incubus of invasion? She was then twelve.

It had seemed if nothing short of a wholesale disaster could terminate
that incongruous existence of his.

The last action of the frigate was a fruitless struggle against
fearful odds. After a prolonged fight with an enemy as dauntless as
herself, with two-thirds of her ship's company laid low, and commanded
at length by the youngest lieutenant, she was tackled as the sun went
low over the scene of a drawn battle, by a fresh sail errant; and, had
it not been for a timely dismasting on board the new-comer, would have
been captured or finally sunk then and there. But that fate was only
held in reserve for her. Bleeding and disabled, she had drawn away
under cover of night from her two hard-hit adversaries, to encounter a
squall that further dismantled her, and, in such forlorn conditions,
was met and finally conquered by the French privateer _Espoir de
Brest_, that pounced upon her in her agony as the vulture upon his
prey.

Among the remainder of the once formidable crew, now seized and
battened down under French hatches, was of course Adrian Landale--he
bore a charmed life. And for a short while the only change probable in
his prospects was a return to French prisons, until such time as it
pleased Heaven to restore peace between the two nations.

But the fortune of war, especially at sea, is fickle and fitful.

The daring brig, lettre de marque, _L'Espoir de Brest_, soon after her
unwonted haul of English prisoners, was overtaken herself by one of
her own species, the _St. Nicholas_ of Liverpool, from whose swiftness
nothing over the sea, that had not wings, could hope to escape if she
chose to give the chase.

Again did Adrian, from the darkness among his fellow-captives, hear
the familiar roar and crash of cannon fight, the hustling and the thu