t knowing that it might be hours before
they started, he waited--and waited--and waited.

There is an old French proverb which says, _Tout vient a point a qui
sait attendre_, and this may be roughly interpreted, "Everything comes
to the man who waits." Let's suppose that it comes to the boy.

CHAPTER TWO.

BRAVO, BOY!

The dim evening gave place to a dark night. The _Tonans_ had for some
two or three hours been stealing along very slowly not far from land,
and that something important was on the way was evident from the
captain's movements, and the sharp look-out that was being kept up, and
still more so from the fact that no lights were shown.

The gunboat's cutter had been swung out ready for lowering down at a
moment's notice, the armed crew stood waiting, and one man was in the
stern-sheets whose duty it was to look after the lantern, which was kept
carefully shaded.

Fitz, who was the readiest of the ready, had long before noted with
intense interest the fact that they showed no lights, and his interest
increased when the lieutenant became so far communicative that he stood
gazing out through the darkness side by side with his junior, and said
softly--

"I am afraid we shall miss her, my lad. She'll steal by us in the
darkness, and it will all prove to be labour in vain."

Fitz waited to hear more, but no more came, for the lieutenant moved off
to join the captain.

"I wish he wouldn't be so jolly mysterious," said the midshipman to
himself. "I am an officer too, and he might have said a little more."

But it was all waiting, and no farther intercourse till close upon eight
bells, when Fitz, feeling regularly tired out, said to himself--

"Bother! I wish I hadn't asked leave to go. I should have been
comfortably asleep by now."

He had hardly thought this when there was a quick movement behind him,
and simultaneously he caught sight of a dim light off the starboard-bow.
An order was given in a low tone, and with a silence and method learned
on board a man-of-war, the boat's crew, followed by their officers, took
their places in the cutter, and in obedience to another command the boat
was lowered down, kissed the water, the hooks were withdrawn, she was
pushed off, the oars fell on either side, and away they glided over the
dancing waters in the direction of the distant light.

"Now we are off, Fitz," said the lieutenant eagerly, speaking almost in
a whisper, but without the slightest neces