ase before one of the heads as I thought needful to my purpose.
He laughed at me; the yacht _La France_ was known to him as the
property of an eccentric American millionaire, and he could not
conceive that anyone might be in danger aboard her. As there was no
hope from him, I took a fiacre and drove to the Embassy, where one of
the clerks heard my whole story; and while inwardly laughing at my
fears, as I could see, promised to telegraph to a friend in Calais, and
get my message delivered.

I had done all in my power, and I returned to the Hotel Scribe; but the
others had left for the station. Thither I followed them, instructing a
servant to come to me at the Gare du Nord if any telegram should be
sent; and so reached the train, and the saloon. It was not, however,
until the very moment of our departure that a messenger raced to our
carriage, and thrust a paper at me; and then I knew that my warning had
come too late. The paper said: "_La France_ has sailed, and your friend
with her."

CHAPTER IV.

A STRANGE SIGHT ON THE SEA.

It was on the morning of the second day; three bells in the watch; the
wind playing fickle from east by south, and the sea agold with the
light of an August sun. Two points west of north to starboard I saw the
chalky cliffs of the Isle of Wight faint through the haze, but away
ahead the Channel opened out as an unbroken sea. The yacht lay without
life in her sails, the flow of the swell beating lazily upon her, and
the great mainsail rocking on the boom. We had been out twenty-four
hours, and had not made a couple of hundred miles. The delay angered
every man aboard the _Celsis_, since every man aboard knew that it was
a matter of concern to me to overtake the American yacht, _La France_,
and that a life might go with long-continued failure.

As the bells were struck, and Piping Jack, our boatswain--they called
him Piping Jack because he had a sweetheart in every port from Plymouth
to Aberdeen, and wept every time we put to sea--piped down to
breakfast, my captain betrayed his irritation by an angry sentence. He
was not given to words, was Captain York, and the men knew him as "The
Silent Skipper"; but twenty-four hours without wind enough to "blow a
bug," as he put it, was too much for any man's temper.

"I tell you what, sir," he said, sweeping the horizon with his glass
for the tenth time in ten minutes, "this American of yours has taken
the breeze in his pocket, and may it blow