r's intense satisfaction.

"Look," said the Captain, pointing to the sky behind them, which was
now illumined by a broad scarlet glare.

"What is that?"

"One of the ships on fire."

"Then I am better off where I am."

"Did you doubt it?"

"I was beginning to. . . . How much farther must we ride?"

"Two leagues."

Tristram groaned, and they set off again, but more slowly, for the
road now was paved with bricks instead of the loose sand over which
they had travelled hitherto, and moreover it ran, without fence or
parapet, along the top of a formidable dyke, the black waters of
which far beneath him caused Tristram the most painful apprehension.
Captain Salt, guessing this, slackened the pace to a walk. The glare
still reddened the sky behind: but either the firing had ceased or
they had passed beyond sound of it. At any rate, they heard only the
water lapping in the dykes and the wind that howled over the wastes
around.

Tristram had long since lost his hat, and his nose was bleeding from
a sharp blow against his horse's neck. He was trying to stanch the
flow when the chimes of a clock pealed down the wind from somewhere
ahead and upon his right. His father halted again, and after
scanning the gloom for a minute uttered again the three calls that
were like the wailing of a gull.

Again the signal was answered, this time from their left, and the
spark of a lantern appeared. "Dismount, my son," said the Captain,
setting the example and leading his horse by the bridle towards the
light; "we leave our horses here."

"For others?"

"No, for a canal-boat."

"This country may be flat," thought Tristram; "but decidedly the
travelling is not monotonous."

As he drew near the lantern, he saw indeed that they were on the edge
of a canal, wherein lay a long black barge, with a boy on horseback
waiting on the tow-path, a little ahead of it. On the barge's deck
by the tiller an immensely fat boatman leant and smoked his pipe,
which he withdrew placidly from his lips as Captain Salt gave the
password to the man with the lantern and handed over the smoking
horses.

"_Modena!_"

The fat man spat, stood upright and prepared for business as the
passengers stumbled on board. Not a word more was spoken until
Tristram found himself in a long, low cabin divided into two parts by
a deal partition. By the light of a swinging lamp he saw that a
bench ran along the after-compartment, and asked if he might stretch
h