“Pardie, Etooelle!” Raoul exclaimed, after he had given the American jog the third, “you sleep like a friar who is paid for saying masses at midnight.  Come, mon ami; no is our time to move; all is clear outside.”

“Well, natur’ they say is a good workman, Captain Rule,” answered Ithuel, gasping and rubbing his eyes; “and never did she turn off a prettier hiding-place than this.  One sleeps so quietly in it!  Heigho!  I suppose the ash must be kept moving, or we may yet miss our passage back to France.  Shove her bows round, Captain Rule; here is the hole, which is almost as hard to find as it is to thread a needle with a cable.  A good shove, and she will shoot out into the open water.”

Raoul did as desired.  Ithuel touching the tiller, the yawl glided through the opening, and felt the long ground-swell of the glorious Bay.  The two adventurers looked about them with some concern, as they issued from their hiding-place, but the obscurity was too deep to bring anything in view on the face of the waters.  The flashing that occasionally illuminated the summit of Vesuvius resembled heat-lightning, and would have plainly indicated the position of that celebrated mountain, had not its dark outlines been visible, exposing a black mass at the head of the Bay.  The ragged mountain-tops, behind and above Castel a Mare, were also to be traced, as was the whole range of the nearest coast, though that opposite was only discoverable by the faint glimmerings of a thousand lights, that were appearing and disappearing, like stars eclipsed, on the other side of the broad sheet of placid water.  On the Bay itself, little could be discerned; under the near coast, nothing, the shadows of the rocks obscuring its borders with a wide belt of darkness.

After looking around them quite a minute in silence, the men dropped their oars and began to pull from under the point, with the intention of making an offing before they set their little lugs.

As they came out, the heavy flap of canvas, quite near, startled their ears, and both turned instinctively to look ahead.  There, indeed, was a vessel, standing directly in, threatening even to cross their very track.  She was close on a wind, with her larboard tacks aboard, and had evidently just shaken everything, in the expectation of luffing past the point without tacking.  Could she succeed in this, it would be in her power to stand on, until compelled to go about beneath the very cliffs of the town of Sorrento.  This was, in truth, her aim; for again she shook all her sails.

“Peste!” muttered Raoul; “this is a bold pilot—­he hugs the rocks as if they were his mistress!  We must lie quiet, Etooelle, and let him pass; else he may trouble us.”

“’Twill be the wisest, Captain Rule; though I do not think him an Englishman.  Hark!  The ripple under his bow is like that of a knife going through a ripe watermelon.”

“Mon Feu-Follet!” exclaimed Raoul, rising and actually extending his arms as if to embrace the beloved craft.  “Etooelle, they seek us, for we are much behind our time!”