f the blocks, fore and aft.

"All clear!" he shouted. "Now, go on board, everybody. Light the fuse,
Robert, and come on board as soon as possible."

"Ay, ay, sir," answered Bob from the not very distant battery.

A tiny spark of light appeared for an instant in the darkness high up on
the face of the rock as our hero struck a match, and in another couple
of minutes he was running nimbly up the steep plank leading from the
rocks beneath to the schooner's deck.

"Kick down that plank, Robert, my lad, and see that it falls clear of
everything," said Lance. "Are we all clear fore and aft?"

"All clear, sir," came the hearty reply from various parts of the deck.

"Are you ready with the axe forward there, Kit?"

"All ready, sir."

"_Then cut_."

A dull _cheeping_ thud of the axe was immediately heard, accompanied by
a sharp _twang_ as the tautly strained line parted; then followed the
sound of the shores falling to the ground; there was a gentle jar, and
the schooner began to move.

"She moves!--she moves!" was the cry. "Hurrah! Now she gathers way."

"Yes," shouted Lance, joyously. "She's going. Success to the
_Petrel_"--as he shivered to pieces on the stem-head a bottle of wine
which the steward, anxious that the launch should be shorn of none of
its honours, had brought up from the cabin and hastily thrust into his
hand. "Three cheers for the saucy _Petrel_, my lads--hip, hip, hip,
hurrah!"

The three cheers rang lustily out upon the still air of the breathless
night as the schooner shot with rapidly increasing velocity down the
ways and finally plunged into the mirrorlike waters of the bay, dipping
her stern deeply and ploughing up a smooth glassy furrow of water
fringed at its outer edge with a coruscating border of vivid
phosphorescent light.

"The boats--the boats again!" suddenly shouted Bowles, as the schooner,
now fairly afloat, shot rapidly stern-foremost away from the rock--"Good
God! they are right in our track; we shall cut them in two."

"That is their look-out," grimly responded Captain Staunton; "if they
had been wise they would have accepted their defeat and retired to the
shore; as, however, they have not done so, they must take the
consequences. Remember, lads, not a man of them must be suffered to
come on board."

A warning shout from the helmsman of the pinnace announced his sudden
discovery of the danger which threatened the boats, and he promptly
jammed his helm hard a-star