The captive had by this time seated himself on the window-sill with his legs outward. His irons were wrapped and muffled with portions of his blanket, which he had sacrificed for the purpose. A twisted rope was made of strips of the same material, a stout gray woollen, woven and milled in Pentridge, and therefore free from shoddy and mixture. Adown this Lance cautiously lowered himself--how cautiously and anxiously! A slip--a touch of foot on the side instead of the centre of the frail bark, and failure--recapture even--were imminent. The splash would at once alarm the vigilant ears of the sentries, whose rifle-bullets would be spurting in and about the spot in no time. Inch by inch he lowered himself until he felt a man's hand touch and steady him. His feet were on the flat bottom of a ducking canoe which floated low on the surface of the stirless deep. Lower still and lower he sank down until he found himself sitting on the floor of the punt with an arm on either thwart and his back nearly touching the stern. With one strong noiseless stroke the strange boatman sent his light craft yards away from the prison-ship, and as the hull vanished abruptly, swallowed up in the Egyptian darkness of the night, Lance felt a great throb at his heart. He inhaled joyously the salt odour of the tide, for he knew that, bar accidents, he was again a free man. 'Steady,' said the boatman in a low but distinct voice as he settled to his sculls, 'another quarter of a mile and we may talk as much as you please. We shall make the shore before yon black cloud bursts, and after that no boat leaves any ship in the bay till sunrise.' Lance sat carefully still, and indeed had little inclination to talk for a while. Swiftly, smoothly, they seemed to speed through the ebon darkness lit up from time to time by the phosphorescent scintillations which fell from the black water at each dip of the oars. 'How do you steer?' he said at length. 'It wouldn't do to get lost in this fog; we might easily be picked up, and then my fate would be worse than before.' 'See that light?' said the rower, pointing to a tiny speck like a beacon, miles away on the main. 'I do see a very small glimmering,' said Lance; 'are you sure that is the right direction?' 'That light,' said the stranger slowly, 'is a fire in a nail can which is kept alight by my mate. It stands before our hut in Fisherman's Bend, and there could not be a better place to land.' 'How so?' 'Because it is cut off before and behind by marshes. There is no track to Liardet's Beach, which is only half a mile off. There is a mud flat in front, and hardly any one but ourselves knows the channel. It's dead low water now; any boat, even if they chased us, would be stuck in the mud in ten minutes, and it isn't every one that knows how to get off again.' 'Then we're right, and I'm a free man once more. Great God of Heaven! what a feeling it is. May I ask your name, the name of a man that's saved my life?'