er, if I have to run out to sea, and you are to be only
honest fishermen. How long shall I wait in the cove for you?"

"Sail at three o'clock, if I'm not on board! Remember the hail, 'Saint
Malo, Ahoy!'"

"This is dead square, for life and death!" cried Blunt.

"Dead square," echoed the renegade officer. Darkness now doubled its
black folds, and the roar of the surf boomed sullenly upon the rocky
Rozel beach. Crouching in their cave, the two French thugs eagerly
watched the winding path below, and gathered a resentful vulpine
ferocity in their hearts. With knife in one hand, and the heavy
lead-weighted blackjacks in readiness, they cowered upon the path,
waiting for the old soldier, whose thickened eyes were still sullenly
gazing at the dingy clock in the Jersey Arms. He hated to leave the
pretty, white-armed Ann.

Ten o'clock! The red-coated soldiery of Fort Regent and Elizabeth
Castle, the guardians of Mont Orgueil, were all wrapped in slumber, save
the poor, shivering sentinels. Ten o'clock! The drenched tide waiters
at St. Heliers pier anathematized the still distant Stella, whose lights
now blinked feebly, laboring far out at sea. "An hour yet to wait!"
growled the bedraggled customs officers. Ten o'clock! The good burghers
of St. Heliers had given up their whist, and taken their last drop of
"hot and hot." In St. Aubin's Bay, from Corbin's Light, from mansion in
town, and cot among the Druidical rocks, anxious eyes now gazed out on
the wild sea, where Andrew Fraser tried to calm the terrified Nadine
Johnstone.

Mattie Jones was lying senseless, a helpless mass of cowering humanity,
while the anxious captain and pilot vigorously swore, as became hardy
British seamen. The "Chief" had piped up "that the engines would be out
of her," if they shipped another sea like the last. Prayer in the cabin,
curses on the deck, fear in the hold, and misery everywhere; the stout
Stella struggled shoreward, toward her dangerous landing at the pier,
whose sheer sixty feet of masonry wall was now lashed by the wild waves.
Black waters rose and fell in great surges. The shivering coastguards
in the line of garrisoned martello towers, vowed that no such night had
ever been seen since the "Great Storm."

Prince Djiddin had also given up all hope of the return of the faithful
Moonshee whose plea of "business," had led him away to the society of
his brave and beautiful bride. There was but one more day of "home life"
before resumin