And the rain was falling steadily on the white sand of Quiberon Bay also, on the low dunes, on Hoche's triumphant grenadiers, on the little fort, now abandoned, on the useless English ships, and on the upturned face of René de Flavigny, who lay, wrapped in a cloak, a short stone's cast from the rising tide. All about him were the evidences of the great disaster, but he had never heeded them, lying where the two soldiers had left him, by a little spur of rock that had its extremity in the sea. It had proved impossible to get him off to a boat; there was no chance for an unconscious man when even good swimmers perished. So his bearers had laid him down by the rock; he was no worse off than hundreds of others, and neither the cries of the drowning nor the boom of the English cannon had wakened him. But now he had drifted back to pain, and the thirst of the stricken, and the numbing remembrance of catastrophe. He had tried to raise his head, but desisted from the distress of the effort. The fingers of his left hand ploughed idly into the sand. As it dribbled through them, white as lime, he remembered everything. . . . His eyes, so like Anne-Hilarion's, darkened. Since there was no one to make an end of him, he would do it himself, not so much to ease the pain and to hasten an otherwise lingering death as because everything was lost. And he would go to Jeannette. Yet his senses were playing him tricks again. One moment he was here, a piece of driftwood in the great wreck; the next, he was kneeling by Anne-Hilarion's bed, going again through that dreadful parting, promising that he would soon return, and the boy was clinging to him, swallowing his sobs. He could hear them now, blent with the plunge of the tide. He could not keep that promise. Better end it all, and go to Jeannette. René thrust down a hand, tugged a pistol out of his belt, cocked it, and put it to his head. But ere the cold rim touched his temple, sky and sea had gone black. Flashes of radiance shot through the humming darkness, steadying at last to a wide sunflower of light, and then . . . he saw distinctly Anne-Hilarion's terrified face, his little outstretched hands. His own sank powerless to the sand, and he was swept out again on the flood of unconsciousness. (6) "Not a single blessed patrol, by gad!" thought Mr. Francis Tollemache to himself. "That means they have got at the port wine and beer we landed at Fort Penthièvre: trust the sans-culottes for scenting it out! But, O gemini, what luck for us!"