othing but the last, Captain Lyon; but we have the
disagreeable duty of trying a spy and a deserter before us. You will
return to your ships, gentlemen, and follow us in to an anchorage. I
intend to bring up at a single anchor under the shore at Capri, where we
can lie during the calm and get through with our courts. The cases will
be clear and not detain us long, and we can send lookouts up on the
heights to examine the sea and the coast outside. In the mean time, we
must be busy lest we lose the breeze. You will attend to the signal for
the court."

At this order the two visitors got into their boats, and the Proserpine
again filled. The three vessels now made the best of their way toward
the point of destination, anchoring off the town or village in the
island of Capri, just as two bells struck. Ten minutes later, the
Proserpine fired a gun, and ran up the flag which denotes the sitting of
a court-martial.

Although it has not been deemed necessary to relate them, the reader
will understand that all the details required by the law had been
observed as regards these trials; the promptitude of the proceedings
being partly characteristic of the decision of the admiral, but more in
consequence of a wish to use the charges against the delinquents as a
means of seizing the true hero of our tale, the little Feu-Follet. While
a mistaken, not to say a mawkish, philanthropy is unsettling so many of
the ancient land-marks of society, and, among other heresies, is
preaching the doctrine that "the object of punishment is the reformation
of the criminal," it is a truth which all experience confirms that
nothing renders justice so terrible, and consequently so efficient, as
its promptitude and certainty. When all its requirements are observed,
the speediest exercise of its functions is the most conducive to the
protection of society, the real motive for the existence of all human
regulations of this nature; and it is a great merit of the much-abused
English ordinances, that the laws are rarely made stalking-horses for
the benefit of the murderer or the forger; but that once fairly tried
and convicted, the expiation of their crimes awaits the offenders with a
certainty and energy that leave the impression on the community that
punishments were intended to produce. That this people has done well in
liberating itself from many of their inherited usages and laws, is as
certain as that one age has interests different from another; one