There was certainly every promise of a wild night, for the dark cloud which had rolled up over the setting sun was now frayed and ragged at the edges, extending a good third of the way across the heavens.  It had split low down near the horizon, and the crimson glare of the sunset beat through the gap, so that there was the appearance of fire with a monstrous reek of smoke.  A red dancing belt of light lay across the broad slate-coloured ocean, and in the centre of it the little black craft was wallowing and tumbling.  The two seamen kept looking up at the heavens, and then over their shoulders at the land, and I feared every moment that they would put back before the gale burst.  I was filled with apprehension every time when the end of their pull turned their faces skyward, and it was to draw their attention away from the storm-drift that I asked them what the lights were which had begun to twinkle through the dusk both to the right and to the left of us.

‘That’s Boulogne to the north, and Etaples upon the south,’ said one of the seamen civilly.

Boulogne!  Etaples!  How the words came back to me!  It was to Boulogne that in my boyhood we had gone down for the summer bathing.  Could I not remember as a little lad trotting along by my father’s side as he paced the beach, and wondering why every fisherman’s cap flew off at our approach?  And as to Etaples, it was thence that we had fled for England, when the folks came raving to the pier-head as we passed, and I joined my thin voice to my father’s as he shrieked back at them, for a stone had broken my mother’s knee, and we were all frenzied with our fear and our hatred.  And here they were, these places of my childhood, twinkling to the north and south of me, while there, in the darkness between them, and only ten miles off at the furthest, lay my own castle, my own land of Grosbois, where the men of my blood had lived and died long before some of us had gone across with Duke William to conquer the proud island over the water.  How I strained my eager eyes through the darkness as I thought that the distant black keep of our fortalice might even now be visible!

‘Yes, sir,’ said the seaman, ’’tis a fine stretch of lonesome coast, and many is the cock of your hackle that I have helped ashore there.’

‘What do you take me for, then?’ I asked.

’Well, ‘tis no business of mine, sir,’ he answered.  ’There are some trades that had best not even be spoken about.’

‘You think that I am a conspirator?’

‘Well, master, since you have put a name to it.  Lor’ love you, sir, we’re used to it.’

‘I give you my word that I am none.’

‘An escaped prisoner, then?’

‘No, nor that either.’

The man leaned upon his oar, and I could see in the gloom that his face was thrust forward, and that it was wrinkled with suspicion.

‘If you’re one of Boney’s spies—­’ he cried.