be up to. If you like I
will take a score of my men and cross the island this afternoon, and
to-morrow will examine the whole line of shore. If there are only one
or two places they can land at we may be able to defend them; but if
there are four or five places far apart our force won't be sufficient
to hold them all, for they could land two hundred and fifty men from
those two ships, perhaps a hundred more."

"That is the best thing to be done, Vipon. Of course you will send us
word across directly you see how the land lies. If we find that they
can land in a good many places, there will be nothing for us to do but
try and make a bolt for it. Keeping close in under the cliffs at night
we may manage to give them the slip, or in any case one if not two of
us may get away. Better that than to run the risk of being all caught
like rats in a trap here."

An hour afterward the captain of the Belle Marie started for the other
side of the island with twenty picked men, carrying with them their
arms, axes, and two days' provisions. The rest of the crews were
employed during the day in filling up the three vessels with the most
valuable portion of the booty in the storehouses, care being taken not
to fill the vessels so deeply as would interfere seriously with their
sailing powers. An arrangement had been made between the captains that
the Belle Marie should transfer her cargo to the first vessel worth
sending to France that she captured, receiving as her share one-third
of its value if it reached port safely.

The captain of the Belle Marie was well content with this arrangement,
for the storehouses contained the spoils of upward of twenty ships,
and his share would therefore be a considerable one, and he would only
have to carry the cargo till he fell in with an English merchantman.
All speculation as to the British schooner's whereabouts was put an
end to the next morning, by a message from Captain Vipon saying she
had been discovered lying close in under the cliffs at the back of the
island, and that her boats were already examining the shore. An hour
later the captain himself arrived.

"It is as I feared," he said when he joined the other captains; "there
are three bays about two miles apart and at all of these a landing
could be easily effected. The land slopes gradually down to the edge
of the sea. They might land at any of them, and of course the guns of
the schooner would cover the landing if we opposed it."

"St