, I stepped quickly out; and after
two or three turns and windings, found myself in a street which I
remembered passing through before.

The rain was still pouring down in torrents, and not a soul was to be
seen in any direction, nor a sound heard; and if any one had seen me
flitting noiselessly along the silent and deserted street, I should
assuredly have been taken for a washed-out ghost, for I had left my
boots behind, and my feet gave only a faint, scarcely audible, pit-pat
on the flooded causeway.

Half an hour of sharp walking brought me down to the harbour; and I at
once proceeded to the slipway where I had moored the boat on the
previous night. The previous night? Ay; it was only some twenty-four
hours since I had entered Bastia; but it seemed as though I had been
there at least a month.

The boat was still there, with several others; and as my own safety was
just then of more importance to me than any one else's convenience, I
did not hesitate, on finding a much smaller and lighter boat among them,
to help myself to her.

Casting the little craft adrift, I shipped the oars and paddled
leisurely down the harbour until I approached the pierheads, when,
noiselessly laying in my oars, I shipped one of them in the notch at the
stern; and, sheering close in under the walls of the pier from which I
had been hailed on the previous night, I sculled gently out to the open
sea. I almost held my breath until I had gone far enough to lose sight
of the pier altogether in the darkness, when I once more shipped my oars
and pulled steadily out toward a line of twinkling lights which
indicated the position of the fleet.

The dawn was just breaking, grey, cheerless, and chill, as I reached the
cutter and stepped in on deck over her low bulwarks, wet to the skin,
nerveless from exhaustion and hunger, and with my feet, elbows, and
knees lacerated and bleeding from my battle with the rough stone walls
of my prison.

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE.

LE NARCISSE.

My first act on regaining the cutter was to rouse Bob and the boy who
officiated as cook on board the "Mouette;" with the object of obtaining
from the former any news he might have to impart, and from the latter as
substantial a breakfast as the resources of the cutter would permit.

I listened to Bob's story while engaged upon the highly necessary
operation of cleansing my person and encasing it once more in "the
uniform proper to my rank." Bobby had very little to