ews. Her attendant, Transita, was about following her mistress,
when Tom Jones, who had no suspicion that there were more than one
"young gentleman" concerned in effecting the escape of his shipmates,
or about taking passage in the ship, laid his huge hand upon her
shoulder, exclaiming,

"Halloa! shipmate, where are you bound to, if the wind stands?"

"What are you about there, Jones?" shouted Morton from the boat,
"she--he, I mean, is to go off with us. Take him through the surf."

"Ay, ay, sir; come, Mr. She--he, just get upon my shoulders, if you
please; come, bear a hand before it snows--there, stow yourself away in
the starn-sheets--there, that's the time of day--shove her bows off,
Sam, and jump aboard--so, pull round your larboard oars--now give way
together."

Their oars being all muffled, they glided, silently and swiftly, towards
the offing, edging away a little to the south, or farther side of the
bay, to avoid the possibility of observation from the shore. They had
proceeded swiftly for some minutes, and had passed the point on which
the battery stands without speaking a word, when the silence was broken
by Morton,--

"Where is the ship, Jones? do you see any thing of her?"

The boatswain desisted rowing, and, holding his head down as near the
water as possible, looked long and anxiously to the western horizon.

"I don't see her," said he, "unless that's her, here on our starboard
bow."

"No, that's the rock."

By this time the other boats had come up, and all agreed that nothing
could be seen of the ship. After a brief consultation, it was decided
that their safest plan was to continue rowing to the westward, and that
they would be sure of seeing the ship at day-break; whereas if daylight
found them in the bay, they would most assuredly be seen, and chased by
the boats from the shore.

Isabella, whom most powerful excitement had supported from the prison to
the point of embarkation, had since then, reclining on the stern-sheets
of the boat, and supported by her lover's arms, been in a state of
stupor and silence; her thoughts were in a complete whirl, almost
amounting to delirium; the kind and soothing voice of Morton she
scarcely heard, and she only awoke to consciousness during the short
deliberation just mentioned. In an agony of terror at the doubt and
uncertainty that she heard expressed around her, she uttered the wildest
exclamations, and struggled with Morton and her attendant, who
ende