nel before a fresh westerly wind.
It was true December weather, very raw, and the horizon thick, but I
knew my road well, and whilst the loom of the land showed, I desired
nothing better than this thickness.

But wary sailing delayed us; and it was not till ten o'clock on the
night of the seventh that we hove the schooner to off the shingly beach
of Lydd within sound of the wash of the sea upon it. The bay sheltered
us; we got the boat over; I gave Wilkinson the letter and ten guineas,
bidding him keep them hidden and to use them cautiously with the silver
change he would receive, for they were all guineas of the first George
and might excite comment if he, a poor sailor, ill-clad, should pull
them out and exhibit them. Happily, in the hurry of the time, he did not
think to ask me how I had come by them. He thrust them into his pocket,
shook my hand and dropped into the boat, and the negroes immediately
rowed him ashore.

I stood holding a lanthorn upon the rail to serve them as a guide,
waiting for the boat to return, and never breathed more freely in my
life than when I heard the sound of oars. The two negroes came
alongside, and, clapping the tackles on to the boat, we hoisted her with
the capstan, and then under very small canvas stood out to sea again.

CHAPTER XXXI.

THE END.

I should require to write to the length of this book over again to do
full justice by description to the difficulties and anxieties of the
days that now followed. If it had not been thick weather all the time, I
do not know how I should have fared, I am sure. I was between two fires,
so to say; on the one side the French cruisers and privateers, and on
the other side the ships of my own country, and particularly the revenue
cutters and the sloops and the like cruising after the smugglers. As I
knew that my relative could not be with me under four days, I steered
out of sight of land into the middle of the Channel, betwixt Beachy Head
and the Seine coast, and there dodged about under very small canvas,
heartily grateful for the haze that shrouded the sea to within a mile of
me. I scarcely closed my eyes in sleep, and though my worries were now
of a very different kind from those which had racked me on the ice, they
were, in their way, to the full as tormenting. Every sail that loomed in
the dinginess filled me with alarm. Several ships passed me close, and I
could scarce breathe till they were out of sight. Indeed, I lay skulking