"What would you have had me do with him, Captain?" "Oh, perhaps it would have been better to kill him, than leave him exposed to such a horrible punishment." "He had been so precious tender to you, hadn't he, Captain? Stuff! Pity for such a ferocious brute would be madness on your part; besides, the fiend always protects his creatures, you may be sure, and I am certain that he has escaped." "How so?" "Hang it, he didn't swim off to Saint Honorat; his people were probably concealed somewhere: tired of not seeing him return, they will have set out to seek him, and picked him up where I put him to bed; he will probably have got off with gnawing the bit for two or three hours." "Well, that is possible, Michael, and even probable. Where are you taking us?" "Zounds, you are the commander here, Captain; we will go wherever you please." "I will tell you, but first let us land the Major, for I fancy he wishes to be free of our company as much as we do of his." At this moment Bowline's voice was heard. "Hilloh, Michael," he shouted, "we have a large vessel to windward." "Confusion!" said the sailor, "Has she hoisted her colours?" "Yes; she is a Norwegian." "That will be a good opportunity for you, Major," said the Count. "Eh, helmsman," Michael shouted, without awaiting the Major's answer, "steer down to the Norwegian." The Major considered it useless to protest. Two hours later the vessels were within speaking distance: the stranger was bound for Helsingfors, and the captain consented to take the passenger offered him. The Major was consequently transported on board, with everything belonging to him. "Now, Captain," said Michael, when the boat had returned, "where shall we steer?" "Let us go to the islands," the Count answered sadly, "henceforth we shall only find a shelter there and taking a last glance at the coast of France, whose outline was beginning to fade away in the distant horizon," he muttered, with a sigh, and concealing his face sorrowfully in his hands, "Farewell, France!" In these two words was exhaled the last human feeling that remained at the bottom of the heart of this man who had been so tried by adversity, and who, vanquished by despair, was going to ask of the new world the vengeance which the old world so obstinately refused him. CHAPTER XII. THE BEGINNING OF THE ADVENTURE. The seventeenth century was a period of transition between the middle ages, that were exhaling their last sigh, and the modern era, which the great thinkers of the eighteenth century were destined to constitute so splendidly.