itself, and the seamen, who, with the freedom of foreign
sailors in a ship of fortune, crowded the foot of the companion, opened
their eyes.

Augustin smacked his lips. "It is what you call _magnifique_!" he said.
"But," he shrugged his shoulders, "it is not possible!"

"If the fog holds?"

"But if it--what you call--lifts? What then, eh?"

"Through how many storms have you ridden?" the Colonel answered. "Yet
if the mast had gone?"

"We had gone! _Vraiment!_

"That did not keep you ashore."

Augustin cogitated over this for a while. Then, "But we are eight
only," he objected. "Myself, nine."

"And two are eleven," Colonel John replied.

"We do not know the ground."

"I do."

The skipper shrugged his shoulders.

"And they have treated you--but you know how they have treated you,"
Colonel John went on, appealing to the lower motive.

The group of seamen who stood about the door growled seamen's oaths.

"There are things that seem hard," the Colonel continued, "and being
begun, pouf! they are done while you think of them!"

Captain Augustin of Bordeaux swelled out his breast. "That is true," he
said. "I have done things like that."

"Then do one more!"

The skipper's eyes surveyed the men's faces. He caught the spark in
their eyes. "I will do it," he cried.

"Good!" Colonel John cried. "The arms first!"

CHAPTER XIII

A SLIP

Flavia McMurrough enjoyed one advantage over her partners in
conspiracy. She could rise on the morning after the night of the
bonfires with a clear head and an appetite undiminished by punch; and
probably she was the only one at Morristown of whom this could be said.
The morning light did not break for her on aching eyelids and a brain
at once too retentive of the boasts of the small hours and too
sensitive to the perils of the day to come. Colonel John had scarcely
passed away under guard, old Darby had scarcely made his first
round--with many an ominous shake of the head--the slatternly
serving-boys had scarcely risen from their beds in the passages, before
she was afoot, gay as a lark, and trilling like one; with spirits
prepared for the best or the worst which the day might bring
forth--though she foresaw only the best--and undepressed even by the
blanket of mist that shrouded lake and hills and all the world from
view.

If the past night, with its wassail and its mirth, its toasts and its
loud-voiced bragging, might be called "the great night of Morristown,"