eir
posts in the darkness, could hear:

"My lads," he cried, "the lady is safe with us after all. Who shall
say that your skipper is not still Lucky Smith? Thank you, my good
fellows! Now we have yet to bring her safe the other side.
Meanwhile--no cheering, lads, you know why--there is a hundred guineas
more among you the hour we make St. Malo. Stand to, every man. Up with
those topsails!"

Scarcely had the last words been spoken when, from the offing, on the
wings of the wind, came a long-drawn hail, faint through the distance,
but yet fatally distinct: "Ahoy, what schooner is that?"

Molly, who had not withdrawn her hand, felt a shock pass over Captain
Jack's frame. He turned abruptly, and she could see him lean and
strain in the direction of the voice.

The call, after an interval, was repeated. But the outlook was
impenetrable, and it was weird indeed to feel that they were seen yet
could not see.

Molly, standing close by his side, knew in every fibre of her own body
that this man, to whom she seemed in some inexplicable fashion already
linked, was strongly moved. Nevertheless she could hardly guess the
extremity of the passion that shook him. It was the frenzy of the
rider who feels his horse about to fail him within a span of the
winning post; of the leader whose men waver at the actual point of
victory. But the weakness of dismay was only momentary. Calm and
clearness of mind returned with the sense of emergency. He raised his
night-glass, with a steady hand this time, and scanned the depth of
blackness in front of him: out of it after a moment, there seemed to
shape itself the dim outline of a sail, and he knew that he had waited
too long and had fallen in again with the preventive cutter. Then
glancing aloft, he understood how it was that the _Peregrine_ had been
recognised.

The overcast sky had partly cleared to windward during the last
minutes; a few stars glinted where hitherto nothing but the most
impenetrable pall had hung. In the east, the rays of a yet invisible
moon, edging with faint silver the banks of clouds just above the
horizon, had made for the schooner a tell-tale background indeed.

On board no sound was heard now save the struggle of rope and canvas,
the creaking of timber and the swift plashing rush of water against
her rounded sides as she sped her course.

"Madeleine," he said, forcibly controlling his voice, and bringing, as
he spoke, his face close to Molly's to peer anxiousl