"Observe their course, and learn where they are likely to be at
nightfall. There will probably be none. All I fear is that they may
intercept the Torche. Farewell, my friend, and let your sense of duty
subdue the small sufferings of temper."

CHAPTER LIX

NEAR OUR SHORES

"This is how it is," said Captain Tugwell, that same day, to Erle
Twemlow: "the folk they goes on with a thing, till a man as has any
head left twists it round on his neck, with his chin looking down his
starn-post. Then the enemy cometh, with his spy-glass and his guns, and
afore he can look round, he hath nothing left to look for."

"Then you think, Tugwell, that the danger is not over?--that the French
mean business even now, when every one is tired of hearing of it? I have
been away so long that I know nothing. But the universal opinion is--"

"Opinion of the universe be dashed!" Master Zebedee answered, with a
puff of smoke. "We calls ourselves the universe, when we be the rope
that drags astarn of it. Cappen, to my mind there is mischief in the
wind, more than there hath been for these three years; and that's why
you see me here, instead of going with the smacks. Holy Scripture saith
a dream cometh from the Lord; leastways, to a man of sense, as hardly
ever dreameth. The wind was so bad again us, Monday afternoon, that we
put off sailing till the Tuesday, and Monday night I lay on my own bed,
without a thought of nothing but to sleep till five o'clock. I hadn't
taken nothing but a quart of John Prater's ale--and you know what his
measures is--not a single sip of grog; but the Hangel of the Lord he
come and stand by me in the middle of the night. And he took me by the
hand, or if he didn't it come to the same thing of my getting there, and
he set me up in a dark high place, the like of the yew-tree near Carne
Castle. And then he saith, 'Look back, Zeb'; and I looked, and behold
Springhaven was all afire, like the bottomless pit, or the thunder-storm
of Egypt, or the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. And two figures was
jumping about in the flames, like the furnace in the plain of Dura, and
one of them was young Squire Carne, and the other was my son Daniel, as
behaveth below his name. And I called out, 'Daniel, thou son of Zebedee
and Kezia Tugwell, come forth from the burning fiery furnace'; but he
answered not, neither heeded me. And then Squire Darling, Sir Charles is
now the name of him, out he come from his Round-house, and by the wh