The man made his way into the forecastle growling and swearing at the lamp having gone out, while the boy clambered over the boom and made fast the painter to a ring in the stern-sheets. Gervase had hoped that the boy might have followed the man into the forecastle, and that he himself might then have dropped overboard unperceived. But in this he was disappointed, for the boy instead of going below began to unloose the earing by which the mainsail was fastened, whistling as he did so with a clear shrill note that Gervase remembered for years afterwards. Presently the man came up from below swearing at the boy for the noise he was making, and began to take in a fathom or two of the cable by which the craft was moored. There seemed to Gervase no chance of escaping unperceived, and a better opportunity than this might not present itself. So while the man knelt with his back turned towards him, and the boy was fumbling with the halyards in the darkness, he rose from his place of concealment and leaped upon the bulwark. The lad hearing the noise turned round with a look of terror on his face. “Holy Mother of God!” he cried, “it´s a spirit;” and as the man turned round where he was kneeling at the cat-heads, he seemed for a moment to share his belief and participate in his alarm. As Gervase dropped noiselessly into the water they were both too bewildered to raise any alarm, and the river bed was already under his feet before he heard their outcry. Then they called out loudly to someone on the shore. Wading through the water toward the land, Gervase noticed for the first time a low fort built of sods and rough timber close to the bank. At the hubbub that was raised by the crew of the hooker, the door was opened and a man came down towards the water´s edge in the uniform of a French sergeant. Seeing Gervase come upon the bank and mistaking him for one of the crew he called out, “_Que le diable faites-vous ce bruit, coquin?_” But as he came down and saw the young fellow closer, clad only in his shirt and breeches, he immediately divined what was wrong and came running down the bank. Gervase waited till he came close up; then, and it was an old trick he had learned years before, he put out his foot and struck him a tremendous blow with his left hand. The man went headlong into the water, and without waiting to see what became of him, Gervase ran at full speed along the bank, and never halted to take breath till he found himself in the shelter of the wood, that at that time grew thick along the bank.