would soon take him out of the rogue's nest in which
he had been dwelling.

CHAPTER XIV.

FAREWELL TO AUREATALAND.

The night came on, fair and still, clear and star-lit; but there was
no moon and, outside the immediate neighborhood of the main streets,
the darkness was enough to favor our hope of escaping notice without
being so intense as to embarrass our footsteps. Everything, in fact,
seemed to be on our side, and I was full of buoyant confidence as I
drank a last solitary glass to the success of our enterprise, put my
revolver in my pocket, and, on the stroke of midnight, stole from my
lodgings. I looked up toward the bank and dimly descried three or four
motionless figures, whom I took to be sentries guarding the treasure.
The street itself was almost deserted, but from where I stood I could
see the Piazza crowded with a throng of people whose shouts and songs
told me that the colonel's hospitality was being fully appreciated.
There was dancing going on to the strains of the military band, and
every sign showed that our good citizens intended, in familiar phrase,
to make a night of it.

I walked swiftly and silently down to the jetty. Yes, the boat was all
right! I looked to her fires, and left her moored by one rope ready
to be launched into the calm black sea in an instant. Then I strolled
along by the harbor side. Here I met a couple of sentries. Innocently
I entered into conversation with them, condoling on their hard fate
in being kept on duty while pleasure was at the helm in the Piazza.
Gently deprecating such excess of caution, I pointed out to them the
stationary lights of _The Songstress_ four or five miles out to sea,
and with a respectful smile at the colonel's uneasiness, left the seed
I had sown to grow in prepared soil. I dared do no more, and had to
trust for the rest to their natural inclination to the neglect of
duty.

When I got back to the bottom of Liberty Street, I ensconced myself in
the shelter of a little group of trees which stood at one side of
the roadway. Just across the road, which ran at right angles to the
street, the wood began, and a quarter of an hour's walk through its
shades would bring us to the jetty where the boat lay. My trees made
a perfect screen, and here I stood awaiting events. For some time
nothing was audible but an ever-increasing tumult of joviality from
the Piazza. But after about twenty minutes I awoke to the fact that a
constant dribble of men, si