“Yes,” said the young man, his cheek flushing, as he thought of the bitter treatment and contemptuous words of Sir Howard Etherton towards his sister; “yes, and, please God, I will assert those rights; though I may, till I can communicate with my mother, find some difficulty as I am, as I now stand as nobody in the eyes of the law. Do you know, Captain O’Loughlin, I have just been wishing you could land me on the coast to the eastward of Havre; Coulancourt is within a league of the sea. I remember every yard of the country. I may say I am almost a Frenchman, in manner, and speaking the language, having passed almost all my life in France and with Frenchmen. My mother is in Paris; and I have no doubt of being able to make my way there without any suspicion being attached to me.”[6] “By Jove! it is not a bad idea,” said Captain O’Loughlin; “but your dress, and the want of French money. Be the powers of war! we must capture some fellow, and supply ourselves with the needful. It is possible you might pick up some intelligence of my poor friend, Sir Oscar, who, I fear, is a prisoner with Sir Sidney Smith; at all events, we will run down along the coast, and see what is to be done.” In the evening, after the watch was set, the weather fine, and the wind blowing from the land, the officers of the Onyx were assembled in the Captain’s cabin, enjoying a social bottle of wine, having been invited by their Commander. When only Lieutenant Pole and Julian Arden were left with the Captain, the latter gave them the following account of his escape from the perils of the revolutionary bloodhounds, and his adventures afterwards:— “I was scarcely sixteen years of age,” began Julian Arden, “when the demons let loose by the revolution at Lyons seized me one morning in the saloon with my mother and sister. Mocking their cries and lamentations, they tore me forcibly away, and dragging me through the streets filled with a revolutionary rabble, who seemed to revel in the miseries of the victims driven along with myself, they consigned me to the tender mercies of Marachat, the notorious and ferocious head gaoler of the prisons of Lyons. “‘There,’ said my brutal conductors, giving me a blow that drove me on my face with force, causing the blood to flow down my cheeks, ‘there’s a spawn of an aristocrat for you, Marachat; treat him tenderly, and do not make him too fat with kindness.’ “‘Ah! my brave garçon, be not afraid,’ returned the gaoler, ‘I will tell my chef de cuisine to be sparing of his lard.’