ease with every step we took towards salt water. For so great had
been the waste of life in the war that the fleets were short-handed, and
anything in the shape of a man was pounced on by the pressgangs as soon as
seen, and flung aboard ship to be licked into shape to be shot at.

Le Marchant urged, with some reason, that on the longer tramp to the south
his presence with me would introduce a danger which would be absent if I
were alone. For his English was not fluent, and he spoke it with an accent
that would betray him at once. He even suggested our parting, if we ever
did succeed in getting out--he to take his chance eastward, while I went
south, lest he should prove a drag on me. But this I would not hear of, and
the matter was still undecided when our chance came suddenly and
unexpectedly.

CHAPTER XXV

HOW WE SAID GOOD-BYE TO AMPERDOO

We were well into the summer by the time Le Marchant was fully fit to
travel, and we had planned and pondered over that outer stockade till our
brains ached with such unusual exercise, and still we did not see our way.
For the outer sentries were too thickly posted to offer any hopes of
overcoming them, and even if we succeeded in getting past any certain one,
the time occupied in scaling the outer palisades would be fatal to us.

Then our chance came without a moment's warning, and we took it on the
wing.

It was a black oppressive night after a dull hot day. We had been duly
counted into our long sleeping-room, and were lying panting in our
hammocks, when the storm broke right above us. There came a blinding blue
glare which lit up every corner of the room, and then a crash so close and
awful that some of us, I trow, thought it the last crash of all. For
myself, I know, I lay dazed and breathless, wondering what the next minute
would bring.

It brought wild shouts from outside and the rush of many feet, the hurried
clanging of a bell, the beating of a drum, and then everything was drowned
in a furious downpour of rain which beat on the roof like whips and flails.

What was happening I could not tell, but there was confusion without, and
confusion meant chances.

I slipped out of my hammock, unhitched it, and stole across to Le Marchant.

"Come! Bring your hammock!" I whispered, and within a minute we were
outside in the storm, drenched to the skin but full of hope.

One of the long wooden houses on the other side of the enclosure was
ablaze, but whether from th