"Then you must have gone to bed standing." And he turned to the soldiers. "Comrades, a dead tree, old and hollow, wherein a man can sheathe himself like a sword in a scabbard, is what these savages call an _émousse._ But what would you have? All are not obliged to be Parisians." "The idea of sleeping in the hollow of a tree,--and with three children!" exclaimed the vivandière. "And when the little one bawled, it must have seemed queer to the passers-by, who could see nothing, to hear the tree calling out, 'Papa! mamma!'" "Fortunately, it is summer-time," said the woman, with a sigh. She looked down resigned, with an expression in her eyes of one who had known surprising calamities. The silent soldiers surrounded this wretched group. A widow, three orphans, flight, desolation, solitude, the rumblings of war on the horizon, hunger, thirst, no food but herbs, no roof but the sky. The sergeant drew near the woman and gazed upon the nursing infant. The baby left the breast, turned her head, and looked with her lovely blue eyes on the dreadful hairy face, bristling and fierce, that was bending over her, and began to smile. The sergeant drew back, and a large tear was seen to roll down his cheek, clinging to the end of his moustache like a pearl. He raised his voice. "Comrades, I have come to the conclusion that this battalion is about to become a father. Are you willing? We adopt these three children." "Hurrah for the Republic!" shouted the grenadiers. "So be it!" exclaimed the sergeant; and he stretched out both hands over the mother and the children. "Behold the children of the battalion of the Bonnet-Rouge!" he said. The vivandière jumped for joy. "Three heads under one cap!" she cried. Then she burst out sobbing, and embraced the widow excitedly, saying,-- "She looks like a rogue already, that little girl!" "Hurrah for the Republic!" repeated the soldiers. "Come, citizeness," said the sergeant to the mother. [Footnote 1: The sergeant makes a pun on the name Fléchard which is untranslatable. Flèche means arrow, and he asks whether the Fléchards made arrows.--TR.] [Footnote 2: An opprobrious epithet for an ecclesiastic.--TR.] [Illustration: The Corvette "Claymore" 007] BOOK II. THE CORVETTE "CLAYMORE." [Illustration 008] I. ENGLAND AND FRANCE UNITED.