t while our hand was in; and so we did, but trained it too
high in our excitement and did no damage beyond knocking a hole in
her mainsail. And our ears hadn't lost the noise of it before a man
put his head over the cliff above and spoke to us very politely in
Corsican.

"He seemed to be asking the way down; for Sir John pointed to the way
we had come. Whereby he laughed and shook his head. And a dozen
others that had gathered beside him looked down too and laughed and
waved their hands to us. By-and-by they went off, still waving, to
look for a better way down: but they took a good twenty minutes to
reach us, and before this the gunboat had drifted close upon the
rocks and no hope for it but to surrender to the party marching along
the beach and now close at hand.

"Well, sirs, the upshot was that this party, which had marched out
for a forlorn hope, took the gunboat and her crew as easily as a man
gathers mushrooms. And the rest of the boats, dispirited belike,
sheered off after another hour's banging and left the roadstead in
peace. But, while this was happening, the party on the cliffs had
worked their way down to our rock by a sheep-track on the western
side, and the first man to salute us was the man who had first spoken
to us from the top of the cliff: and this, let me tell you, was no
less a person than the General himself."

"The General?" exclaimed my uncle.

"The General Paoli, sir: a fresh-complexioned man and fairer-skinned
than any Corsican we had met on our travels; tall, too, and
upstanding; dressed in green-and-gold, with black spatter-dashes, and
looking at one with an eye like a hawk's. Compliments fly when
gentlefolks meet. Though as yet I didn't know him from Adam, 'twas
easy to mark him for a person of quality by the way he lifted his hat
and bowed. Sir John bowed back, though more stiffly; and the more
compliments the General paid him, the stiffer he grew and the shorter
his answers, till by-and-by he said in English, 'I think you know a
little of my language, sir: enough, at any rate, to take my meaning?'

"The General bowed again at this, still keeping his smile.
'You do not wish my men to overhear? Yes, yes, I speak the English--
a very little--and can understand it, if you will be so good as to
speak slowly.'

"'Very well, then, sir,' said Sir John; 'if I and my man here have
been of some small service to you to-day I reckon myself happy to
have obliged so noble a patriot as