Three days later, the stanch Hirondelle was beating up and down Granville Bay, while Alan Hawke awaited the letter of the faithful Mattie Jones. He had furnished the twenty-pound note which made that natty damsel doubly anxious to meet her faithful lover “Joseph Smith,” to whom she now dispatched the news of the immediate return of the anxious Professor. Fraser was burning to take up the gathering of Thibetan pearls of hidden knowledge, while the artful and restless Professor Alaric Hobbs was stealthily waiting Prince Djiddin’s departure, but kept busied with some personal tidal and magnetic observations on Rozel Head. In the deserted second floor of an old martello tower, he had made a lair for his evening star and planetory researches, and the ingenious Yankee concealed a rope ladder in the clinging ivy which enabled him to cut off all intrusion on his eyrie. CHAPTER XV. THE FRENCH FISHER BOAT, “HIRONDELLE.” It was four o’clock of a wild November afternoon when Major Alan Hawke, cowering in a hooded Irish frieze ulster, crawled deeper into a cave-like recess in the little path leading from the Jersey Arms up to Rozel Head. The blinding rain was thrown in wild gusts by the howling winds, now lashing the green channel to a roughened foam. A sudden and terrific storm was coming on. Half an hour before the disguised adventurer could see the ominous double storm signals flying in warning on the scattered coast guard stations, a signal of danger sent on from the Corbieres Lighthouse. But now not a single sail was to be seen, and huge banks of heavy blackening mists were rolling over the stormy channel. Not a stray sail was in sight! “Where in hell is Jack?” raged the excited conspirator, swallowing half the contents of his brandy flask. As he returned it, the butts of his two revolvers and the handle of a huge couteau de chasse were plainly visible. “The fiends seem to be let loose to-day,” he growled. “It would be the night of all nights! Ha!” The discharged officer noted two men in sou’westers and oilskins now toiling up the path. And his heart leaped up in a wild joy. In another moment, he half dragged his drenched companions into the weather-worn cave. “What news?” he hoarsely demanded of Blunt, as he extended his flask.