Jack and his bedfellow both found it difficult to sleep, and the Frenchman proved more loquacious than any of the others. He could speak no English save a few words, and his French was so broad a dialect that Jack, who knew little French at the best, was often at a loss to understand him. But he understood enough to learn that he had been kept in an underground chamber near the Hollow until the time came when a boat might put off, ostensibly for night fishing, really to convey the prisoner to the French lugger, the whereabouts of which would be known to the Luscombe smugglers. He had been carried on board the boat from the cart openly at Luscombe quay. "Whose boat was it?" "It was to a man—Monsieur might know him—who calls himself Goujon." "No, I don’t know anybody of that name. Who is he?" "He is Goujon; that is all." "Is he a fisherman? What is he like?" "I have never seen him, Monsieur. For myself, I have never put foot to land in England. But the captain knows him; ah, yes! the captain knows Goujon." And Jack at last went to sleep, wondering who Goujon could be. *CHAPTER X* *A PRISONER OF FRANCE* Next morning Jack was awakened early and told that he must march. "Very happy," he said, "but where to?" He had recovered his spirits. No misfortunes, no bufferings, can long depress a healthy boy of sixteen. Consequently when he learned that he was to tramp to Boulogne, more than fifty miles away, he received the information with a smile. His chief thought was: "Perhaps I shall see that Monstair, Boney himself!" The prospect of a fifty-mile walk in keen, bright weather did not daunt him. He was accompanied by the skipper of the lugger and several of the men. Now that they were on French soil they had lost their reluctance to talk, and before many miles had been covered Jack was chatting as freely as his command of the language permitted, and laughing at the misunderstandings that occurred on both sides. He learned one fact that made him feel sorry. A few days before, Admiral Keith had exploded some vessels among a hundred and fifty of the French praams at their anchorage outside the pier at Boulogne. But this attempt to destroy the flotilla had not succeeded, the vessels having been separated by distances too wide for the explosion to have the destructive effect intended. The French smugglers were much elated at Admiral Keith’s failure, and amused Jack by their confident assertion that before long Bonaparte, or the Emperor Napoleon, as he was beginning to be called, would make himself King of England.