“Hist! mon lieutenant!” whispered the old mariner, unwilling to expose the drowsiness of his young superior to the gaze of the common men; “mon lieutenant—­’tis I, Antoine.”

“Eh!—­bah!—­Oh, Antoine, est-ce-que toi?  Bon—­what would you have, mon ami?”

“I hear the surf, I think, mon lieutenant. Listen—­is not that the water striking on the rocks of the shore?”

“Jamais! You see the land is a mile from us; this coast has no shoals.  The captain told us to stand close in, before we hove to or called him. Pardie!—­Antoine, how the little witch has travelled in my watch!  Here we are, within a musket’s range from the heights, yet there has been no wind.”

“Pardon, mon lieutenant—­I do not like that sound of the surf; it is too near for the shore.  Will you have the kindness to step on the forecastle and look ahead, monsieur?—­the light is beginning to be of use.”

The young man yawned, stretched his arms, and walked forward; the first to indulge himself, the first, also, to relieve the uneasiness of an old shipmate, whose experience he respected.  Still his step was not as quick as common, and it was near a minute ere he reached the bows, or before he gained the knight-heads.  But his form was no sooner visible there, than he waved his arms frantically, and shouted in a voice that reached the recesses of the vessel: 

“Hard up—­hard up with the helm, Antoine—­ease off the sheets, mes enfans!”

Le Feu-Follet rose on a heavy ground-swell at that moment; in the next she settled down with a shock resembling that which we experience when we leap and alight sooner than was expected.  There she lay cradled in a bed of rocks as immovable as one of the stones around her;—­stones that had mocked the billows of the Mediterranean, within the known annals of man, more than three thousand years.  In a word, the lugger had struck on one of those celebrated islets under the heights of St. Agata, known as the Islands of the Sirens, and which are believed to have been commemorated by the oldest of all the living profane writers, Homer himself.  The blow was hardly given, before Raoul appeared on deck.  The vessel gave up all that had life in her, and she was at once a scene of alarm, activity, and exertion.

It is at such a moment as this that the most useful qualities of a naval captain render themselves apparent.  Of all around him, Raoul was the calmest, the most collected, and the best qualified to issue the orders that had become necessary.  He made no exclamations—­uttered not a word of reproach—­cast not even a glance of disapprobation on any near him.  The mischief was done; the one thing needful was to repair it, if possible, leaving to the future the cares of discipline and the distribution of rewards and punishments.

“She is as fast anchored as a cathedral, mon lieutenant,” he quietly observed to the very officer through whose remissness the accident had occurred; “I see no use in these sails.  Take them in at once; they may set her further on the rocks, should she happen to lift.”