For Mr. Tollemache was at that moment--midnight--steering a small boat along the shore of Quiberon. On his one hand were the lights of the English squadron, still in the bay; on the other, the Republican camp-fires among the sandhills. The files of Royalist prisoners had started hours ago on their march up the peninsula, but Sir John Warren was still hoping to pick up a fugitive or two under cover of darkness, and Mr. Tollemache's was not the only boat employed on this errand of mercy. But it was emphatically the most daring; nor had Sir John the least idea that Mr. Tollemache was hazarding his own, a midshipman's, and half a dozen other lives in the search for one particular Royalist. Mr. Tollemache, indeed, never intended that he should have. A rescued Frenchman sat already in the sternsheets--the sergeant of du Dresnay, picked up earlier in the day, who had helped to carry de Flavigny down the beach. Truth to tell, Mr. Tollemache had smuggled him into the boat as a guide, for the task of finding the wounded man in the dark would otherwise have been hopeless. But the sergeant could direct them to the little rock by which his officer had been laid, and, rocks being uncommon on that long sandy shore, he did so direct them. Unfortunately, since Mr. Tollemache, no expert in tongues, could not always follow his meaning, they had not yet found it. Already, indeed, had they made hopefully for some dark object at the water's edge, only to ascertain that it was a dead horse, and Mr. Tollemache's flowers of speech at the discovery had not withered till the body of a drowned Royalist slid and bumped along the boat's side. But meanwhile, even though the shore was unguarded, it was getting momentarily more difficult to see, the tide was rising once again, the men were becoming impatient. After all, it _was_ rather like looking for the proverbial needle. The French soldier tugged suddenly at the Englishman's arm. "V'là, m'sieur!" he whispered. "There is the place--that is the rock!" The young lieutenant peered through the gloom, gave a curt order or two, and then, lifted on the swell, the _Pomone's_ boat greeted the sand of Quiberon Bay. Another moment, and Englishman and Frenchman had found what they sought. But only Mr. Dibdin's special maritime cherub averted the discharge of the cocked pistol which the Marquis de Flavigny still grasped in a senseless hand, and which Mr. Tollemache had some difficulty in disengaging before they got him into the boat. The middy, now in charge of the tiller, desired, as they pulled away, to be informed why his superior officer had been so set on saving this particular poor devil. "Oh, I met him once in England," replied Mr. Tollemache carelessly, and, as far as the bare statement went, quite truthfully. "Here, give me the tiller now! It makes a difference when you have actually known a man, you see."