“I had little delay when I reached the Channel. The wind was easterly, and before my horse had done shaking himself on the quay, an honest fellow had put his two sons, a spare oar, and a keg of brandy, on board a shallop about as weatherly as an egg-shell, hoisted a sail the size of a pocket-handkerchief, and stood out manfully with a following wind and an ebb tide. I know the Channel well, and I was as sure as he must have been that the wind would change when the tide turned, and we should be beating about, perhaps in a stiffish breeze, all night. It was not for me to baulk him, however, and I only stipulated for a loaf or two of bread and a beaker of water in the bows. I tell you before they led my horse to the stable, we were a cable’s length off shore. “A fair wind, Eugène, does not always make a short voyage. At sundown it fell to a dead calm. The lads and the old man, and I, who speak to you, took our turns, and pulled like galley-slaves at the oars. With the moon-rise, a light breeze came up from the south-west, and it freshened by degrees till at midnight it was blowing half a gale. The egg-shell behaved nobly, and swam like a duck, but it took all the old man’s time to steer her, and the sons said as many _Aves_ before dawn as would have lasted a whole convent for a month. “At one time I feared we must put her head about, and run for it, on the chance of making Ambleteuse, or even Calais, but the old fellow who owned her had a conscience, and to give him his due he was a first-rate sailor. The wind moderated at sunrise, drawing round by the south, and at noon we had made Beachy Head, when it fell a dead calm, with a ground swell that was no child’s play when we laid out on our oars. By dint of hard pulling we ran her ashore on the English coast about sundown, and my friend put off again with his two sons, none the worse for the voyage, and all the better for some twenty gold pieces with which I paid my passage. He deserved it, for he earned it fairly. She was but an egg-shell, as I said before, but she swam like a duck; it’s only fair to allow that.” “And now, my Captain,” asked Beaudésir, looking round the strangely-furnished apartment, “you are living here? you are settled? you are a householder? Are you reconciled to spend your life in this dirty little town, ill-paved, ill-lighted, smelling of salt water and tar, where it always rains, and they bring you nothing to drink but black beer and hot punch?” Captain George laughed heartily. “Not such a bad thing that hot punch,” said he, “when you can get neither Chambertin, Burgundy, nor Bourdeaux. But I understand you nevertheless, comrade. It is not likely that a man who has served Louis le Grand in the Musketeers would be content to vegetate here like a wisp of seaweed left at high-water mark. It was lucky I met you to-night. In twenty-four hours, at most, I hope to be off the Needles if the wind holds.” Beaudésir looked interrogatively at the pile of accounts on the table.