p to the charcoal fire and lit
the small lantern he carried in his belt; it was evident that the hut
was quite empty.

"Which way did they go?" asked Chauvelin.

"I could not tell, citoyen," said the sergeant; "they went straight down
the cliff first, then disappeared behind some boulders."

"Hush! what was that?"

All three men listened attentively. In the far, very far distance, could
be heard faintly echoing and already dying away, the quick, sharp splash
of half a dozen oars. Chauvelin took out his handkerchief and wiped the
perspiration from his forehead.

"The schooner's boat!" was all he gasped.

Evidently Armand St. Just and his three companions had managed to creep
along the side of the cliffs, whilst the men, like true soldiers of the
well-drilled Republican army, had with blind obedience, and in fear of
their own lives, implicitly obeyed Chauvelin's orders--to wait for the
tall Englishman, who was the important capture.

They had no doubt reached one of the creeks which jut far out to see
on this coast at intervals; behind this, the boat of the DAY DREAM must
have been on the lookout for them, and they were by now safely on board
the British schooner.

As if to confirm this last supposition, the dull boom of a gun was heard
from out at sea.

"The schooner, citoyen," said Desgas, quietly; "she's off."

It needed all Chauvelin's nerve and presence of mind not to give way to
a useless and undignified access of rage. There was no doubt now, that
once again, that accursed British head had completely outwitted him.
How he had contrived to reach the hut, without being seen by one of
the thirty soldiers who guarded the spot, was more than Chauvelin could
conceive. That he had done so before the thirty men had arrived on the
cliff was, of course, fairly clear, but how he had come over in Reuben
Goldstein's cart, all the way from Calais, without being sighted by the
various patrols on duty was impossible of explanation. It really seemed
as if some potent Fate watched over that daring Scarlet Pimpernel, and
his astute enemy almost felt a superstitious shudder pass through him,
as he looked round at the towering cliffs, and the loneliness of this
outlying coast.

But surely this was reality! and the year of grace 1792: there were no
fairies and hobgoblins about. Chauvelin and his thirty men had all heard
with their own ears that accursed voice singing "God save the King,"
fully twenty minutes AFTER they had