d very shortly the tale of
their adventures, of the fate that had menaced them, and their narrow
escape. In return he learned that the Frenchmen were virtually
prisoners.

"They have taken our equipage, cursed dogs!" Augustin explained,
refraining with difficulty from a dance of rage. "The rudder, the
sails, they are not, see you! They have locked all in the house on
shore, that we may not go by night, you understand. And by day the ship
of war beyond, Spanish it is possible, pirate for certain, goes about
to sink us if we move! Ah, _sacre nom_, that I had never seen this land
of swine!"

"Have they a guard over the rudder and the sails?" Colonel John asked,
pausing to speak with the food half way to his mouth.

"I know not. What matter?"

"If not, it were not hard to regain them," Colonel John said, with an
odd light in his eyes.

"And the ship of war beyond? What would she be doing?"

"While the fog lies?" Colonel John replied. "Nothing."

"The fog?" Augustin exclaimed. He clapped his hand to his head, ran up
the companion and as quickly returned. A skipper is in a low way who,
whatever his position, has no eye for the weather; and he felt the
tacit reproach. "Name of Names!" he cried. "There is a fog like the
inside of Jonah's whale! For the ship beyond I snap the finger at her!
She is not! Then forward, _mes braves_! Yet tranquil! They have taken
the arms!"

"Ay?" Colonel John said, still eating. "Is that so? Then it seems to me
we must retake them. That first."

"What, you?" Augustin exclaimed.

"Why not?" Colonel John responded, looking round him, a twinkle in his
eye. "The goods of his host are in a manner of speaking the house of
his host. And it is the duty--as I said once before."

"But is it not that they are--of your kin?"

"That is the reason," Colonel John answered cryptically, and to the
skipper's surprise. But that surprise lasted a very short time. "Listen
to me," the Colonel continued. "This goes farther than you think, and
to cure it we must not stop short. Let me speak, and do you, my
friends, listen. Courage, and I will give you not only freedom but a
good bargain."

The skipper stared. "How so?" he asked.

Then Colonel John unfolded the plan on which he had been meditating
while the waves lapped his smarting chin, while the gorse bushes
pricked his feet, and the stones gibed them. It was a great plan, and
before all things a bold one; so bold that Augustin gasped as it
unfolded