, facing the west unprofitably, with a shallow
slope of brown sand, and a scour of tide, and no pleasant moorings.
Jotted as the coast was all along (whereon dry batteries grinned
defiance, or sands just awash smiled treachery) with shallow transports,
gun-boats, prames, scows, bilanders, brigs, and schooners, row-galleys,
luggers, and every sort of craft that has a mast, or gets on without
one, and even a few good ships of war pondering malice in the safer
roadsteads, yet here the sweep of the west wind, and the long roll
from the ocean following, kept a league or two, northward of the mighty
defences of Boulogne, inviolate by the petty enmities of man. Along the
slight curve of the coast might be seen, beyond Ambleteuse and Wimereux,
the vast extent of the French flotilla, ranged in three divisions,
before the great lunette of the central camp, and hills jotted with
tents thick as limpets on a rock.

Carne (whose dealings were quite unknown to all of the French
authorities save one, and that the supreme one) was come by appointment
to meet his commander in a quiet and secluded spot. It was early
February now, and although the day was waning, and the wind, which was
drawing to the north of west, delivered a cold blow from the sea, yet
the breath of Spring was in the air already, and the beat of her pulse
came through the ground. Almost any man, except those two concerting
to shed blood and spread fire, would have looked about a little at the
pleasure of the earth, and felt a touch of happiness in the goodness of
the sky.

Caryl Carne waited in the shelter of a tree, scarcely deserving to be
called a tree, except for its stiff tenacity. All the branches were
driven by the western gales, and scourged flat in one direction--that in
which they best could hold together, and try to believe that their life
was their own. Like the wings of a sea bird striving with a tempest,
all the sprays were frayed alike, and all the twigs hackled with the
self-same pile. Whoever observes a tree like this should stop to wonder
how ever it managed to make itself any sort of trunk at all, and how
it was persuaded to go up just high enough to lose the chance of ever
coming down again. But Carne cared for nothing of this sort, and heeded
very little that did not concern himself. All he thought of was how he
might persuade his master to try the great issue at once.

While he leaned heavily against the tree, with his long sea-cloak
flapping ro