When the Pilot’s purchase had been completely refitted, stores shipped, papers obtained, and every requisite made for the outward voyage, the departure of the three adventurers was announced, and a crowd assembled on shore to see their ship leave the harbor.  She was towed out to the roads, where she lay tranquilly mirrored in the sea, ready to start the moment her commander stepped on board.  Neither Fritz nor Jack, however, had yet completed their preparations.  For the moment, therefore, the vessel was left in charge of some French seamen, whom Willis, however, had taken care to engage only for a short period.

Somewhere about a week after this, Fritz and Jack, in a small boat, painted perfectly black and manned by four stout rowers, with muffled oars, were lurking about the fortalice already mentioned.  The night was pitch dark, and there was no moon.  The waves beat sullenly on the foot of the tower and surged back upon themselves, like an enraged enemy making an abortive attempt to storm the walls of a town.  Not a word was uttered, and the young men were intently listening, as if expecting to hear some preconcerted signal.

Meanwhile, in one of the rooms or cells of the round tower, about sixty feet above the level of the sea, Captain Littlestone, the missionary, and the Pilot were engaged in a whispered conversation, through which might be detected the dull sound of an oiled file working against iron.  The cell was ample in size, but the stone walls were without covering of any kind.  It was lighted during the day by one of the apertures we have already described; the thickness of the walls did not permit the rays of the sun to penetrate to the interior, and at the time of which we speak the apartment was perfectly dark.

“I should like to see the warder,” whispered Willis, “when he comes, with his bundle of keys and his night-cap in his hand, to wish your honors good morning, but, in point of fact, to see whether your honors are in safe custody.  How astonished the old rascal will be!  Ho, ho, ho!”

“My good fellow,” said the missionary, “it is scarcely time to laugh yet.  It is just possible we may escape; but vain boasting is in no case deserving of approbation.  It is, indeed, scarcely consistent with the dignity of my cloth to be engaged in breaking out of a prison; still, I am a man of peace, and not a man of war.”

“No,” said Willis, “you are not; but I wish to goodness you were a seventy-four—­under the right colors, of course.”

“I was going to remark,” continued the missionary, “that I am a man of peace, and, consequently, do not think that I am justly entitled to be treated as a prisoner of war.  Under these circumstances, I am, no doubt, justified in shaking off my bonds in any way that is open to me; the more particularly as the apostle Paul was once rescued from bondage in a similar way.”

“He was let down from a window in a basket, was he not?”