II.--THE UNDERTAKING H. B. M.'s ship-of-the-line _Centaur_, 74, Captain Murray Maxwell, flying the broad pennant of Commodore Samuel Hood, was cruising to and fro off the island of Martinique, in front of Fort Royal Bay, to blockade the port and capture in- and out-bound vessels. One afternoon in the month of January, 1804, the commodore and the captain were standing at the break of the poop discussing a problem. They had just been in chase of a fast-sailing French frigate, which had escaped them by boldly running under the lee of Diamond Rock, whither, through ignorance of the channel and want of pilots, they dared not follow. The thing had happened half a dozen times in the past month, and the commodore naturally was exasperated. The rock itself was a huge mass of naked stone, about a mile in circumference at the base, and towering out of the water to a height of some six hundred feet, in shape resembling a rounded haystack. On the southward side the rock, sloping precipitously down to the water's edge, was absolutely unscalable. The east and southwestern sides were so broken as to be equally inaccessible, and the breakers, smashing with tremendous force on the western end, made landing difficult or impossible. The officer of the watch that afternoon, who happened to be our quondam midshipman, James Wilkes Maurice, who had, by a series of fortunate accidents and some gallantry as well, been appointed a lieutenant a month since, could not help overhearing the conversation. "It's too bad!" said the commodore. "The scoundrels get under the lee of that rock every time and make a harbor, and I don't see how we can prevent it unless we get a battery of heavy guns up on the rock; but there appears to be no way up." "If you please, sir," said Maurice, turning about and saluting in great trepidation, for the junior lieutenant was a very small man indeed beside the commodore, "there is a way up, sir. When I was a reefer on the _Cerberus_ she was cruising around here, and one calm day a party of us received permission to go ashore on that pile of stone, and we managed to reach the top." "Oho!" exclaimed the commodore, his eyes brightening. "And could you take a gun up?" "Not the way we went, sir." "Well, then, I am afraid your experience will not be of service." "But, sir, if I might make so bold, sir----" continued the junior lieutenant, hesitatingly. "Heave ahead! Out with it!" said the commodore. "In calm weather, sir, there is no surf on that point, and it would be quite possible, I should think, to take the _Centaur_ in close to the shore, and then with a hawser and a traveller from the main-topmast head we might make shift to land some guns." "Capital!" exclaimed the commodore. "What do you think of it, Maxwell?" "It is for you to say, sir," replied the cautious captain. "The weather is fine enough to-day, and we might try it. It will be risking His Majesty's ship, though, sir," he remarked, gravely.