but I made the passage across in a French
smuggling lugger, the _Lucille_. I suppose I ought to feel indebted to
them, for they brought me across without asking for any passage-money;
but they have played me a dirty trick here, for they have handed me over
to the authorities, as far as I can understand the matter, as a
man-of-war sailor they have picked up."

"What were you doing on board?" another sailor asked. "Did you have to
leave England in a hurry?"

"I left in a hurry because I could not help it. Going across the hills I
came quite accidentally upon one of the smugglers' hiding-places, and
was seized before I had time to say a word. There was a little
discussion among themselves as to what they would do with me, and I
should have had my throat cut if an Englishman among them had not known
that I was friends with most of the fishermen there, and had been
present once or twice when a cargo was run. So they finally made up
their minds to bring me over here, and as they feared I might, if I
returned, peach as to their hiding-place, they trumped up this story
about me, and handed me over to the French to take care of."

"Well, that story will do just as well as another," one of the sailors
laughed. "As to their taking care of you, beyond looking sharp that you
don't get away, the care they give you ain't worth speaking of. We are
pretty nigh starved, and pretty nigh frozen. Well, there is one thing,
we shall get out of it in two or three days, for we hear that we are all
to be marched off somewhere. A batch generally goes off once a
fortnight."

"Are you mostly men-of-war's men?"

"None of us, at least not when we were taken, though I reckon most of us
have had a spell at it one time or other. No; we all belong to two ships
that were captured by a couple of their confounded privateers. The one I
belonged to was bound for Sicily with stores for some of the troops
stationed there; the other lot were on their way to the Tagus. They
caught us off Finisterre within a couple of days of each other. We both
made a fight of it, and if we had been together when they came up, we
might have beaten them off; but we had not any chance single-handed
against two of them, for they both carried much heavier metal than we
did. I don't think we should have resisted if we had not thought that
the noise of the guns might have brought one of our cruisers up. But we
had no such luck, and so here we are."

"I suppose, lad, you haven't