With no small indignation and horror, the Highlander read this obnoxious placard, which contained so much that wore the face of truth, with so much that was unquestionably false. "So Buck, whose papers I have appropriated, has been murdered--poor devil!" was his first reflection; "what if the honest skipper of the _Ohio_ should see this precious document and suspect _me_! In that case I should be altogether lost." He retired from the vicinity of this formidable placard, fearing that some watchful eye might compare his personal appearance with the description it contained; though his costume, accent, and the fashion of his whiskers and beard altered his appearance so entirely that his oldest friends at the mess would not have recognised him. He hastily retired upstairs to a miserable garret, to think and watch, but not to sleep. When loitering on the beach next evening, he entered into conversation with a venerable boatman, named Raoul Senebier, and an exchange of tobacco pouches at once established their mutual good-will. Grant said that "he was an American seaman out of a berth, and anxious to reach Portsmouth in England, where he had left his wife and children." The boatman, an honest and unsuspicious old fellow, seemed touched by his story, and offered to row him to a small island at the mouth of the Loire, where British vessels watered unmolested, and in return allowed the poor inhabitants to fish and traffic without interruption. "I can feel for you, my friend," said old Senebier; "for I was taken prisoner at the battle of Trafalgar, and was seven years in the souterrains of the _Château d'Edimbourg_, separated from my dear wife and little ones, and when I returned, I found them all lying in the churchyard of Paimboeuff." "Dead--what, all?" "All, all, save one--the plague, the plague!" "Land me on the isle, then, and ten Napoleons shall be yours," said Grant, joyfully, and in twenty minutes after, they had left the crowded wharves, the glaring salt-pans which gleam on the left bank of the Loire, and all its maze of masts and laden lighters, as they pulled down, with the flow of the stream and the ebb-tide together. The fisherman had his nets, floats, and fortunately some fish on board; so, if overhauled by any armed authority, he could pretend to have been at his ordinary avocation. They touched at the island, and were told by some of the inhabitants that not a British ship was in the vicinity, but that a French privateer, the terrible _Jean Bart_, was prowling about in these waters, and that the isle was consequently unsafe for any person who might be suspected of being a British subject; so, with a heart that began to sink, Grant desired old Raoul Senebier to turn his prow towards Paimboeuff.