The next morning, just as the first slight murmuring sound arose from the big city, telling that the giant was awaking to its restless life, the canal lock was opened, and the yacht shot out into the tideway. Carew, who had taken mental notes of the navigation when sailing up the Maas, refused the assistance of a pilot, and took his vessel safely down the rapid river, across the shoals that encumber the estuary, and out into the open sea. The weather was splendid, and the wind favoured him, as it blew freshly from the south-east. Then Carew's pulse quickened; a wild exultation thrilled him, as the yacht, leaning well over to the steady wind, all her canvas set, rushed with pleasant sound through the smooth water. At that moment he felt happy, even proud of himself. He was safe at last, free from all anxiety. How Fortune had befriended him! That fatal superstition in luck that comes to the criminal and the gambler possessed him. Whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad. "Baptiste," he said, "I have heard it is a custom of Spain for the captain of a vessel, as soon as she is well outside the harbour, to call all hands aft and serve round grog, so that they can drink to the prosperity of the voyage. Fetch up some rum, and give each a glass." The Frenchman obeyed the order. Carew was steering at the time, and the men stood round him, glasses in hand, awaiting the toast. Then the captain raised his glass in his disengaged hand, and called out in French-- "Comrades, here's to a prosperous voyage--_to Buenos Ayres_!" When the men heard their destination they seemed dumb with surprise for a moment; then they raised a joyful shout. The prospect was evidently an agreeable one to them. "To Buenos Ayres," said the Frenchman, bowing to Carew with a knowing smile, "the land where there is no extradition." CHAPTER VII It was mid-ocean, and no land was in sight. The glassily smooth surface of the sea was not broken by the faintest ripple, but it rose and fell slowly with the long, rhythmical swell of the Atlantic. Gentle now was the massive heaving of the giant's bosom, showing that he was slumbering only, and that the strong, fierce life was there, ready to be awakened at any moment to its energy of cruel destruction. Though the swell must have been of considerable height, yet so gentle was the undulation that no motion whatever would have been perceptible to one on the deck of a vessel, unless he had observed how the horizon was withdrawn from his sight at regular intervals by the intervening hills of water, as the vessel softly glided down the easy slopes into the broad valleys between. The wind was quite still. The sky above was clear and of a deeper blue than is known in northern climes; but on the eastern horizon lay a long, low bank of very dark cloud, seeming almost black in contrast to the elsewhere dazzling glare.