d I know it from my own eyes too."

"Then, by the Lord in heaven, Morcom, I shall have my revenge at last;
and I shall not stand upon niceties. If I call for the jolly-boat, you
step in. I doubt if either of these will enter."

It was more than a fortnight since the lieutenant had received the
attentions of a barber, and when he returned to his own boat, and
changed her course inshore, he looked most bristly even in the
moonlight. The sea and the moon between them gave quite light enough to
show how gaunt he was--the aspect of a man who can not thrive without
his children to make play, and his wife to do cookery for him.

CHAPTER XXXIV

THE DOVECOTE

With the tiller in his hand, the brave lieutenant meditated sadly. There
was plenty of time for thought before quick action would be needed,
although the Dovecote was so near that no boat could come out of it
unseen. For the pinnace was fetching a circuit, so as to escape the eyes
of any sentinel, if such there should be at the mouth of the cavern, and
to come upon the inlet suddenly. And the two other revenue boats were in
her wake.

The wind was slowly veering toward the east, as the Grimsby man had
predicted, with no sign of any storm as yet, but rather a prospect of
winterly weather, and a breeze to bring the woodcocks in. The gentle
rise and fall of waves, or rather, perhaps, of the tidal flow, was
checkered and veined with a ripple of the slanting breeze, and twinkled
in the moonbeams. For the moon was brightly mounting toward her zenith,
and casting bastions of rugged cliff in gloomy largeness on the mirror
of the sea. Hugging these as closely as their peril would allow,
Carroway ordered silence, and with the sense of coming danger thought:

"Probably I shall kill this man. He will scarcely be taken alive, I
fear. He is as brave as myself, or braver; and in his place I would
never yield. If he were a Frenchman, it would be all right. But I hate
to kill a gallant Englishman. And such a pretty girl, and a good girl
too, loves him with all her heart, I know. And that good old couple who
depend upon him, and who have had such shocking luck themselves! He has
been a bitter plague to me, and often I have longed to strike him down.
But to-night--I can not tell why it is--I wish there were some way
out of it. God knows that I would give up the money, and give up my
thief-catching business too, if the honor of the service let me. But
duty drives me; do it I must