one; an operation that took just four minutes by the watch.  He would have tried the same experiment with the other lug, but the mast was scarce worth the risk, and he thought the holes might act as reefs, and thus diminish the strain.  In these four hours, owing to the disadvantage under which le Feu-Follet labored, there was not a difference of half a knot in the distance run by the two vessels, though each passed over more than thirty miles of water.  During this time they had been drawing rapidly nearer to the coast of Corsica, the mountains of which, ragged and crowned with nearly eternal snows, had been glittering in the afternoon’s sun before them, though they lay many a long league inland.  But the formation of the coast itself had now become plain, and Raoul, an hour before the sun disappeared, noted his landmarks, by which to make for the river he intended to enter.  The eastern coast of Corsica is as deficient in bays and harbors as its western is affluent with them; and this Golo, for which the lugger was shaping her course, would never have been thought of as a place of shelter under ordinary circumstances.  But Raoul had once anchored in its mouth, and he deemed it the very spot in which to elude his enemy.  It had shoals off its embouchure; and these, he rightly enough fancied, would induce Captain Cuffe to be wary.

As the evening approached the wind began to decrease in force, and then the people of the lugger lost all their apprehensions.  The spars had all stood, and Raoul no longer hesitated about trusting his wounded mainmast with a new yard and sail.  Both were got up, and the repairs were immediately commenced.  The superiority of the lugger in sailing was now so great as to put it out of all question that she was not to be overtaken in the chase; and Raoul at one time actually thought of turning up along the land and going into Bastia, where he might even provide himself with a new mainmast at need.  But this idea, on reflection, he abandoned as too hazardous; and he continued on in the direction of the mouth of the Golo.

Throughout the day the Proserpine had shown no colors, except for the short period when her boats were engaged, and while she herself was firing at the lugger.  The same was the fact with le Feu-Follet, though Raoul had run up the tri-color as he opened on the felucca, and he kept it flying as long as there was any appearance of hostilities.  As the two vessels drew in near to the land several coasters were seen beating up against the westerly wind, or running down before it, all of which, however, seemed so much to distrust the appearance of the lugger as to avoid her as far as was possible.  This was a matter of indifference to our hero, who knew that they were all probably countrymen; or, at least, smugglers, who would scarcely reward him for the trouble, had he time to bring them to and capture them.  Corsica was then again in the hands of the French, the temporary and imperfect