f a bird of prey.

Rutler, a faithful and resolute man, served his master with blind
devotion. William of Orange had testified his confidence in him by
intrusting to him a mission as difficult as it was dangerous, the nature
of which we shall know later on. The sailor who accompanied the colonel
was slight but vigorous, active and determined.

The colonel said to him in English, after a moment's silence, "Are you
sure, John, that there is a passage leading from here?"

"The passage exists, colonel, be easy on that score."

"But I do not perceive any----"

"By and by, colonel, when your view shall have become accustomed to this
half light, like that of the moon, you will lay yourself down flat on
your stomach, and there, at the right, at the end of a long natural
passage in which one cannot advance except by crawling, you will
perceive the light of day which penetrates through a crevasse in the
rock."

"If the road is sure, it certainly is not easy."

"So far from easy, colonel, that I defy the captain of the brigantine
who brought you to the Barbadoes, with his great stomach, to enter the
passage which remains for us to travel. It is as much as I could do
heretofore to glide through; it is the size of the tunnel of a chimney."

"And it leads?"

"To the bottom of a precipice which forms a defense for Devil's Cliff;
three sides of this precipice are a peak, and it is as impossible to
descend as to ascend it; but as to the fourth side, it is not
inaccessible, and with the help of the jutting rocks one can reach by
this road the limits of the park of Blue Beard."

"I understand--this subterranean passage will conduct us to the bottom
of the abyss above which towers Devil's Cliff?"

"Exactly, colonel; it is as if we were at the bottom of a moat, one of
whose sides is perpendicular and the other sloping. When I say sloping,
that is simply a figure of speech, for in order to reach the summit of
the peak, one must more than once hang suspended by some vine between
heaven and earth. But when there, we find ourselves at the edge of the
park of Devil's Cliff--once there, we can hide ourselves in some place
and wait our opportunity----"

"And this opportunity is not far distant; come, come, you, who know so
much, must, at one time, have been in the service of Blue Beard!"

"I told you, colonel, I came from the coast with her and her first
husband; at the end of three months, they sent me back; then I left for
San Do