Something of the exhilaration of the old life came upon Monsieur Mornay as he sent a seaman-like eye aloft at the straining canvases. The _Sally_ was leaving the narrows and making for the broad reaches where the Channel grew into the wide ocean. Far away over his larboard quarter, growing ever dimmer in the eastern mist of the morning, was the coast of France, the land where he was born, where he had suffered and struggled to win the good name he thought his birth had denied him. On his right, slipping rapidly astern, was England, where he had come to crown his labors with a new renown, and where he had only squandered that favor he had passed so many years of stress in winning--squandered it for a fancy that now was like some half-forgotten dream. It seemed only yesterday that he had been standing there upon a vessel of his own, looking out to sea. A year had passed since he had given up the command of the _Dieu Merci_ and gone to Paris--a year of reckless abandon to pleasure at the gay court of Charles, a year in which he had lived and forgotten what had gone before, a year in which he had been born into the life that was his by every right. A dream? Yes, a dream. It was a rough awakening. He looked down at his rough clothing--his baggy, red trousers, with the tawdry brass buttons, his loose, coarse shirt and rough boots, the rudest slops that the brig provided; he felt of his short hair under the woolen cap, and he wondered if this could be himself, the Chevalier Mornay; the cock of the bird-cage walk, friend of princes and the intimate of a king! Astern, across the swirling wake, lay the city of pleasure, but the bitter smile that came into his face had none of the rancor of hatred. It spoke rather of failure, of disappointment, of things forsaken and unachieved. From these reflections he was surprised by the sound of a voice at his elbow. There, beside him, stood a fat man munching at a sea-biscuit. His face, in consonance with the body, was round and flabby, but there the consistency ended, for in color it was gray, like a piece of mildewed sail-cloth. The distinguishing feature of his person was his nose, which, round and inflamed, shone like a beacon in the middle of his pallid physiognomy. His voice was lost in the immensity of his frame, for when he spoke it seemed to come from a long distance, as though choked in the utterance by the layers of flesh which hung from his chin and throat. The pucker which did duty for a frown upon his brow became a fat knot.