“That’s wot I call rough-and-tumble fighting, your honour,” he grumbled, with a sheepish glance at the ladies; for with all his boasted knowledge of their sex, he was unaccustomed to such specimens as these, and discomfited, as he admitted to himself, by the “trim on ’em.” “Them’s not games as is fitted for such a company as this here, if I may make so bold. No, no, your honour, it’s good advice to keep to windward of a nigger, and it’s my opinion as we should weather them on this here tack; get down to the beach with a long leg and a short one—half-a-mile and more below the town—fire three shots, as agreed on, for the boat, and so pull the ladies aboard on the quiet. After that, we might come ashore again, d’ye see, and have it out comfortable. What say _you_, Bottle-Jack?” That worthy turned his quid, and looked preternaturally wise; the more so that the question was somewhat unexpected. He was all for keeping the ladies safe, he decided, now they had got them. Captain Kidd always did so, he remembered, and Captain Kidd could sail a ship and fight a ship, &c.; but Bottle-Jack was more incoherent than usual—utterly adrift under the novelty of his situation, and gasping like a gudgeon at the Marquise and her daughter, whose beauty seemed literally to take away his breath. George soon made up his mind. “Is there any way to the beach,” said he, addressing himself rather to Cerise than her mother, “without touching the road to Port Welcome? It seemed to me, as we marched up, that the high road made a considerable bend. If we could take the string instead of the bow we might save a good deal of time, and perhaps escape observation altogether.” The Marquise and her daughter looked at each other helplessly. Had they been Englishwomen, indeed, even in that hot climate, they would probably have known every by-road and mountain path within three leagues of their home; but the ladies of France, though they dance exquisitely, are not strong walkers, and neither of these, during the months they had spent at _Cash-a-crou_, had yet acquired such a knowledge of the locality as might now have proved the salvation of the whole party. In this extremity a groan was heard to proceed out of the darkness at a few paces’ distance. Slap-Jack, guided by the sound, and parting some shrubs that concealed her, discovered poor Fleurette, more dead than alive, bruised, exhausted, terrified, scarcely able to stand, and shot through the ankle by a chance bullet from the blue-jackets, yet conscious enough still to drag herself to the feet of Cerise and cover them with kisses, forgetting everything else in her joy to find her young mistress still alive.