with the smile that sat so strangely upon
his frank lips; "that the goods I have to deliver, I cannot deliver.
For if there is any meaning in symbols, by the wave of that tricolour
yonder the country has changed rulers again. My dealings were to be
with the king's men, and as they are not here, at least, no longer in
power--how could they be under that rag?--I must even trot the cargo
home again. Not a word to the men, Curwen, but give the order to sheer
off! We have lowered the blue, white and red too often, have not we?
to risk a good English ship, unarmed, under the nozzles of those
Republican or Imperial guns."

The man grinned. The two could trust each other. Molly turned away and
moved seawards, for she knew that the joy upon her face was not to be
hidden. Captain Jack fell to pacing the deck with bent head, and long,
slow steps.

Absorbed in dovetailing the last secret arrangements of his venture,
and more intent still, during his very few hours of idleness, on the
engrossing thought of love, he had had no knowledge of the
extraordinary challenge to fate cast by Bonaparte, of that challenge
which was to end in the last and decisive clash of French and English
hosts. He had not even heard of the Corsican's return to France with
his handful of grenadiers, for newspapers were scarce at Scarthey. But
even had he heard, like the rest of the world, he would no doubt have
thought no more of it than as a mad freak born of the vanquished
usurper's foolhardy restlessness.

But the conclave of plenipotentiaries assembled at Vienna were not
more thunderstruck when, on that very 19th of March, the semaphore
brought them news of the legitimate King of France once more fled, and
of his country once more abandoned to the hated usurper, than was
Captain Jack as he watched the distant flagstaff in the sunrise, and
saw, when the morning port gun had vomited forth its white cloud on
the ramparts of St. Malo, the fatal stripes run up the slender line in
lieu of the white standard.

But Jack Smith's mind, like his body, was quick in action. The sun had
travelled but a degree or two over the wide undulating land, the mists
were yet rising, when suddenly he halted, and called the mate in those
commanding tones that had, from the first time she had heard them,
echoed in Molly's heart:

"Bring her alongside one of those smacks yonder, the furthest out to
sea."

Thereupon followed Curwen's hoarse bellow, an ordered stampede upon
t