Here was a denouement to the affair, with a vengeance!  I was to be captured, because I had been captured.  “Once a corporal, always a corporal.”  As the English had taken me, the French would take me.  A prize to-day, you must be a prize to-morrow.  I have always thought the case of the Dawn was the first of the long series of wrongs that were subsequently committed on American commerce, in virtue of this same principle, a little expanded and more effectually carried out, perhaps, and which, in the end terminated by blockading all Europe, and interdicting the high seas, on paper.

I knew the uselessness of remonstrating with a rapacious privateersman.  “Let him send me in,” I thought to myself, at first; “it is just where I wish to go; once in, the minister must get me clear.  The fellow will only be the dupe of his own covetousness, and I shall profit by it, in the degree that he will be a loser!”

I presume Mons. Gallois entertained a very different view of the matter, for he manifested great alacrity in throwing a crew of no less than seventeen souls, big and little, on board us.  I watched these operations in silence, as did Neb and Diogenes.  As for Marble, he lighted a segar, took his seat on the windlass, and sat in dignified anger, ready to explode on the slightest occasion, yet apprehensive he might be sent out of the ship, should he betray one-half of what he felt.  Out of the ship neither of us was sent, however, the French probably feeling indisposed to be troubled with passengers in the narrow quarters they had for themselves.

Chapter XVI.

                       You are safe;
  Nay, more,—­almost triumphant.  Listen, then,
  And hear my words of truth.

Marino Falierlo.

It was just four o’clock, P.M., when the Dawn and the Polisson parted company; the former steering on her old course for Brest, while the latter continued her cruise.  The lugger sailed like a witch, and away she went towards the chops of the channel, on a bow-line; leaving us to stand towards the French coast—­close-hauled, also, but on the opposite tack.

It is scarcely necessary to dwell on the feelings with which we four, who were eye-witnesses of all that passed, witnessed the proceedings.  Even Diogenes was indignant.  As for Marble, I have already alluded to his state of mind; and, if I had not, the following dialogue, which took place at sunset, (the first that occurred between us in private since the second capture,—­while the French were eating their suppers,) would serve to explain it.

“Well, Miles,” the mate drily observed, “whatever we have to do, must be done at once.  When shall we begin?—­in the middle, or in the morning watch?”

“Begin what, Moses?” I asked, a little surprised at the settled manner in which he put his question.

“To throw these Frenchmen overboard.—­Of course, you don’t mean to let them carry your ship into Brest?”