rd the
French coast, that Captain Leicester fully realised his situation. In
less than ten minutes his ship had been taken from him, and himself
confined in his own cabin, a prisoner. Had he not been on deck at the
time of the occurrence, he would certainly have considered it an
avoidable misfortune, to be accounted for only by the most gross
carelessness; but as it was, he was fully able to understand that it was
entirely due to the extreme darkness of the night, and the circumstance
of the lugger and the barque stumbling over each other, as it were. But
that made matters no better for him; he had lost his ship--his all--and
now there loomed before him the immediate prospect of a dreary
confinement--for many years perhaps--in a French prison. The thought
goaded him almost to madness, and he sprang impatiently to his feet, and
began to pace moodily to and fro over the narrow limits of the cabin
floor.

Meanwhile the second mate--who had started out of his berth at the first
shock of contact between the two vessels, and had made a rush for the
deck, only to be confronted and driven back by a Frenchman with a drawn
cutlass--was seated on the lockers alongside Mr Bowen, listening to
that individual's gloomy recital of the details of the capture.

The low murmur of the two men's voices annoyed George in his then
irritable frame of mind, and, to avoid it, he retired into his own
state-room. The night being close and sultry, all the stern-ports were
open, and as he entered the cabin the sound of a hail from to leeward
came floating in through the ports. It was answered from the deck, and,
kneeling upon the sofa-locker and thrusting his body well out of the
port, the skipper became aware that the lugger was parting company, and
that the hail he had heard was the voice of the French captain shouting
his parting instructions to the officer he had left in charge of the
prize. Looking away to leeward, in the direction from which the sounds
had come, he was just able to distinguish the dark outline of the
lugger, as she bore up and pursued her _way once more to_ the eastward.
After this a considerable amount of excited jabbering took place on
deck, the word "Cherbourg" being so often repeated that George had no
doubt it was to that port that the barque was to be taken; but in about
half an hour all this died away, and perfect silence reigned on board
once more.

From the moment that the lugger parted company a confused id