While these dispositions were in progress, Raoul himself, assisted by his sailing-master, prepared to heave the lugger off the rocks.  To this, at present the most important duty, our hero gave his personal inspection; for it required skill, judgment, and caution.  The physical force of the crew was reserved to aid in the attempt.  At length everything was ready, and the instant had arrived when the momentous trial was to be made.  The lugger had now been ashore quite four hours, and the sun had been up fully three.  By this time, Raoul calculated that the English, at Capri, knew of his misfortune, and little leisure remained in which to do a vast deal of work.  The hands were all summoned to the bars, therefore, and the toil of heaving commenced.

As soon as the cable got the strain, Raoul felt satisfied that the anchor would hold.  Fortunately, a fluke had taken a rock, a circumstance that could be known only by the result; but, so long as the iron held together, there was no danger of that material agent’s failing them.  The last part of the process of lightening was now performed as rapidly as possible, and then came the trial-heave at the bars.  Every effort was fruitless, however, inch being gained after inch, until it seemed as if the hemp of the cable were extending its minutest fibres, without the hull’s moving any more than the rocks on which it lay.  Even the boys were called to the bars; but the united force of all hands, the officers included, produced no change.  There was an instant when Raoul fancied his best course would be to set fire to the hulk, get on board the felucca, and sweep off to the southward, in season to avoid the expected visit from the English.  He even called his officers together, and laid the proposition before them.  But the project was too feebly urged, and it met with too little response in the breasts of his auditors to be successful.  The idea of abandoning that beautiful and faultless little craft was too painful while the remotest hope of preserving it remained.

Raoul had measured his hours with the accuracy of a prudent general.  It was now almost time for the English boats to appear, and he began to hope that the Neapolitans had made the great mistake of sending their information to the fleet off Naples, rather than carrying it to the ships at Capri.  Should it prove so, he had still the day before him, and might retire under cover of the night.  At all events, the lugger could not be abandoned without an enemy in sight, and the people were again called to the bars for a renewed effort.  As water might be obtained at a hundred points on the coast, and the distance to Corsica was so small, the last gallon had been started and pumped out, during the recent pause.

Our hero felt that this was the final effort.  The hold of le Feu-Follet was literally empty, and all her spare spars were floating among the rocks.  If she could not be started now, he did not possess the means to get her off.  The anchor held; the cable, though stretched to the utmost, stood; and every creature but himself was at the bars.  The ground-swell had been lessening all the morning, and little aid was now to be had from the rising of the water.  Still, that little must be obtained; without it, the task seemed hopeless.