prisoners.

Scudamore saw that he was trapped beyond escape, for no other British
boat was anywhere in hail. His first impulse was to jump overboard and
help his own drowning men, but before he could do so an officer stood
before him, and said, "Monsieur is my prisoner. His men will be safe,
and I cannot permit him to risk his own life. Mon Dieu, it is my dear
friend Captain Scudamore!"

"And you, my old friend, Captain Desportes! I see it is hopeless to
resist"--for by this time a score of Frenchmen were round him--"I can
only congratulate myself that if I must fall, it is into such good
hands."

"My dear friend, how glad I am to see you!" replied the French captain,
embracing him warmly; "to you I owe more than to any man of your nation.
I will not take your sword. No, no, my friend. You shall not be
a prisoner, except in word. And how much you have advanced in the
knowledge of our language, chiefly, I fear, at the expense of France.
And now you will grow perfect, at the expense of England."

CHAPTER XLVII

ENTER AND EXIT

The summer having been fine upon the whole, and a very fair quantity
of fish brought in, Miss Twemlow had picked up a sweetheart, as the
unromantic mothers of the place expressed it. And the circumstances were
of such a nature that very large interest was aroused at once, and not
only so, but was fed well and grew fast.

The most complete of chronicles is no better than a sponge of inferior
texture and with many mouths shut. Parts that are full of suctive power
get no chance of sucking; other parts have a flood of juice bubbling at
them, but are waterproof. This is the only excuse--except one--for
the shameful neglect of the family of Blocks, in any little treatise
pretending to give the dullest of glimpses at Springhaven.

The other excuse--if self-accusation does not poke a finger through
it--is that the Blockses were mainly of the dry land, and never went to
sea when they could help it. If they had lived beyond the two trees and
the stile that marked the parish boundary upon the hill towards London,
they might have been spotless, and grand, and even honest, yet must
have been the depth of the hills below contempt. But they dwelt in the
village for more generations than would go upon any woman's fingers,
and they did a little business with the fish caught by the others, which
enabled it to look after three days' journey as if it swam into town
upon its own fins. The inventions for