“To the Indies if need be,” said Kilbride. “But the truth is that this accident is a perfect God-send to him, for England's the one place below the firmament he would choose for a refuge at this moment. Is all ready?” “If my sail-making's to be relied on she's in the best of trim,” I answered. “And--what do ye call it?--all found?” “A water breaker, a bottle of brandy, a bag of bread--” “Enough for a foray of fifty men!” he said heartily. “Give me meal and water in the heel of my shoe and I would count it very good vivers for a fortnight.” He went into the cutter; I released the ropes that bound her to the frigate and followed him. “_Mon Dieu_ dear lad, 'tis a world of most fantastic happenings,” was all the poor old priest said, shivering in the cold night air. We had to use the oars of the frigate's small-boat for a stroke or two so as to get the cutter round before the wind; she drifted quickly from the large ship's side almost like a living thing with a crave for freedom at last realised; up speedily ran her sail, unhandsome yet sufficient, the friendly air filled out the rustling folds and drove her through the night into the open sea. There is something in a moonlit night at sea that must touch in the most cloddish heart a spring of fancy. It is friendlier than the dawn that at its most glorious carries a hint of sorrow, or than the bravest sunset that reminds us life is a brief day at the best of it, and the one thing sempiternal yet will be the darkness. We sat in the well of the cutter--three odd adventurers, myself the most silent because I had the double share of dubiety about the enterprise, for who could tell how soon the doomster's hand would be on me once my feet were again on British soil? Yet now when I think of it--of the moonlit sea, the swelling sail above us, the wake behind that shone with fire--I must count it one of the happiest experiences of my life. The priest looked back at the low land of France receding behind us, with its scattered lights on the harbour and the shore, mere subjects to the queenly moon. “There goes poor Father Hamilton,” said he whimsically, “happy schoolboy, foolish lover in Louvain that had never but moonlit eves, parish priest of Dixmunde working two gardens, human and divine, understanding best the human where his bees roved, but loving all men good and ill. There goes the spoiled page, the botched effort, and here's a fat old man at the start of a new life, and never to see his darling France again. Ah! the good mother; _Dieu te bénisse!_” CHAPTER XL MY INTERVIEW WITH PITT Of our voyage across the Channel there need be no more said than that it was dull to the very verge of monotony, for the wind, though favourable, was often in a faint where our poor sail shook idly at the mast. Two days later we were in London, and stopped at the Queen's Head above Craig's Court in Charing Cross.