“That is a Parliament ship,” he said.

At that moment another vessel of about the same size as that in which they were was passing her.  She fired a gun, and the ship at once dropped her sails and brought up.

“What can she be doing now, arresting the passage of ships on their way down?  If your crime had been a serious one, I should have thought that a message must have been brought down in the night for her to search vessels coming down stream for the persons of fugitives.  What say you, lads?  Have you told me the truth?”

“We have told you the truth, sir,” Harry said; “but not the whole truth.  The circumstances are exactly as my friend related them.  But he omitted to say that the preacher recognized in me one of a Cavalier family, and that they may suspect that I was in London on business of the king’s.”

“Is that so?” the captain said.  “In that case, your position is a perilous one.  It is clear that they do not know the name of the ship in which you are embarked, or they would not have stopped the one which we see far ahead.  If they search the ship, they are sure to find you.”

“Can you swim, Jacob?” Harry asked the other.

He nodded.

“There is a point,” Harry said, “between this and the vessel of war, and if you sail close to that you will for a minute or two be hidden from the view of those on her deck.  If you will take your ship close to that corner we will jump overboard and swim on shore.  If then your vessel is stopped you can well say that you have no fugitives on board, and let them search.”

The captain thought the plan a good one, and at once the vessel’s head was steered over toward the side to which Harry had pointed.  As they neared the corner they for a minute lost sight of the hull of the man-of-war, and the boys, with a word of thanks and farewell to the captain, plunged over and swam to the bank, which was but some thirty yards away.  Climbing it, they lay down among the grass, and watched the progress of the vessel.  She, like the one before, was brought up by a gun from the man-of-war, and a boat from the latter put out and remained by her side for half an hour.  Then they saw the boat return, the vessel hoist her sails again, and go on her way.

“This is a nice position into which you have brought me, Master Roger,” Jacob said.  “My first step in taking part in plots and conspiracies does not appear to me to lead to the end which I looked for.  However, I am sick of the shop, and shall be glad of a turn of freedom.  How let us make our way across the marshes to the high land.  It is but twenty miles to walk to London, if that be really your intent.”

“I shall not return to London myself,” Harry said; “but shall make my way back to Oxford.  It would be dangerous now for me to appear, and I doubt not that a sharp hue and cry will be kept up.  In your case it is different, for as you have been long an apprentice, and as your face will be entirely unknown to any of them, there will be little chance of your being detected.”