ur services. They
will be repaid you by the Lord God, who, I hope, reserves trials and
troubles for me alone."

Monk followed Keyser, and his son embarked with them. D'Artagnan came
after, muttering to himself,--"Poor Planchet! poor Planchet! I am very
much afraid we have made a bad speculation."

CHAPTER 30. The Shares of Planchet and Company rise again to Par

During the passage, Monk only spoke to D'Artagnan in cases of urgent
necessity. Thus, when the Frenchman hesitated to come and take his
meals, poor meals, composed of salt fish, biscuit, and Hollands gin,
Monk called him, saying,--"To table, monsieur, to table!"

This was all. D'Artagnan, from being himself on all great occasions
extremely concise, did not draw from the general's conciseness a
favorable augury of the result of his mission. Now, as D'Artagnan had
plenty of time for reflection, he battered his brains during this time
in endeavoring to find out how Athos had seen King Charles, how he had
conspired his departure with him, and lastly, how he had entered Monk's
camp; and the poor lieutenant of musketeers plucked a hair from his
mustache every time he reflected that the horseman who accompanied Monk
on the night of the famous abduction must have been Athos.

At length, after a passage of two nights and two days, the patron Keyser
touched at the point where Monk, who had given all the orders during the
voyage, had commanded they should land. It was exactly at the mouth of
the little river, near which Athos had chosen his abode.

Daylight was waning, a splendid sun, like a red steel buckler, was
plunging the lower extremity of its disc beneath the blue line of the
sea. The felucca was making fair way up the river, tolerably wide
in that part, but Monk, in his impatience, desired to be landed, and
Keyser's boat set him and D'Artagnan upon the muddy bank, amidst the
reeds. D'Artagnan, resigned to obedience, followed Monk exactly as a
chained bear follows his master; but the position humiliated him not
a little, and he grumbled to himself that the service of kings was a
bitter one, and that the best of them was good for nothing. Monk walked
with long and hasty strides; it might be thought that he did not yet
feel certain of having reached English land. They had already begun to
perceive distinctly a few of the cottages of the sailors and fishermen
spread over the little quay of this humble port, when, all at once,
D'Artagnan cried out,--"God