against the planks, but the
boat was tossing and jerking in the short choppy waves and to aim was
impossible. In vain the men tugged and strained at their oars while the
gunner worked like a maniac to relight his linstock and to replace his
priming. The boat had lost its weigh, while the brigantine was flying
along now with every sail bulging and swelling to bursting-point.
Crack! went the carronade at last, and five little slits in the mainsail
showed that her charge of grape had flown high. Her second shot left no
trace behind it, and at the third she was at the limit of her range.
Half an hour afterwards a little dark dot upon the horizon with a golden
speck at one end of it was all that could be seen of the Honfleur
guard-boat. Wider and wider grew the low-lying shores, broader and
broader was the vast spread of blue waters ahead, the smoke of Havre lay
like a little cloud upon the northern horizon, and Captain Ephraim
Savage paced his deck with his face as grim as ever, but with a dancing
light in his gray eyes.

"I knew that the Lord would look after His own," said he complacently.
"We've got her beak straight now, and there's not as much as a dab of
mud betwixt this and the three hills of Boston. You've had too much of
these French wines of late, Amos, lad. Come down and try a real Boston
brewing with a double stroke of malt in the mash tub."

CHAPTER XXV.

A BOAT OF THE DEAD.

For two days the _Golden Rod_ lay becalmed close to the Cape La Hague,
with the Breton coast extending along the whole of the southern horizon.
On the third morning, however, came a sharp breeze, and they drew
rapidly away from land, until it was but a vague dim line which blended
with the cloud banks. Out there on the wide free ocean, with the wind
on their cheeks and the salt spray pringling upon their lips, these
hunted folk might well throw off their sorrows and believe that they had
left for ever behind them all tokens of those strenuous men whose
earnest piety had done more harm than frivolity and wickedness could
have accomplished. And yet even now they could not shake off their
traces, for the sin of the cottage is bounded by the cottage door, but
that of the palace spreads its evil over land and sea.

"I am frightened about my father, Amory," said Adele, as they stood
together by the shrouds and looked back at the dim cloud upon the
horizon which marked the position of that France which they were never
to see