"Excitement," replied Charters, "then you are likely to have it with a vengeance, my boy! Think of thirteen thousand men invading France!" By two o'clock p.m. we came to anchor in Cancalle Bay, on the coast of Brittany, nine miles eastward of St. Malo. The _Brilliant_ lay not far from the famous rock of Cancalle, so celebrated for its oysters, the fishing of which forms one of the chief sources of local wealth. Commodore Howe, it would appear, had now questioned narrowly the two French deserters, Theophile Damien and Benoit Bossoit, whom I had been the humble means of introducing to his notice, and discovering that they were profoundly ignorant of the whole locality, he began to suspect both their veracity and intentions, and therefore ordered them to be made close prisoners, while, accompanied by the Duke of Marlborough, Colonel Watson our quarter-master-general, and Thierry the pilot, he went in the _Grace_, an armed cutter, to reconnoitre the Bay. The information of two pretended deserters, as to the position and strength of batteries, and so forth, having proved perfectly erroneous, on his return the commodore ordered the Frenchmen to be searched; and then, on papers detailing the number and object of our armament being found upon them both, he forthwith ordered them to be put to death in the most summary manner. Posted as sentinel on the poop of the _Brilliant_, I was in ignorance of all this, and was treading to and fro carbine in hand, with my eyes fixed on the rough and wooded shore of Brittany, when Captain Lindsay came on deck, harnessed in full regimentals with sword and gorget on. "Well, Gauntlet," said he, "your two Frenchmen have, unfortunately, proved to be impostors and spies, after all." "Spies!" I reiterated, with some dismay. "Yes; of the most dangerous kind." "And what is to be done with them, sir?" "That which the laws of war direct--ah! look yonder!" He pointed to the _Essex_, the ship of the commodore, and a thrill of horror ran through me, on beholding two human forms run up simultaneously by the neck, to the arms of the foreyard, where they dangled for a minute in mid-air; but they were not meant to be hanged, as each had a cold thirty-two pound shot at his heels. This must have been a pleasant spectacle for Thierry the pilot, who was also a Frenchman, and consequently a traitor. A gun was fired from the bow of the _Essex_; solemnly the echoes of the sea and shore replied, and ere the last had died away, both culprits had vanished under the waves, whose ripples closed over them and left no trace behind. Then, as the pale and fierce dark face of Damien came in memory before me, I turned to my leader and said-- "Captain Lindsay, the fate of Damien forms a terrible sequel to the story of his brother."