‘How are we to get off?’ asked the captain.  ’You will float off when the tide makes.’  ‘And then what will we do if there is no wind?’ ’You will go on the cliffs, but there will be a capful of wind at ebb tide.’  The captain had sent for his chart, and the fisherman pointed out where the brig stood.  He said if a breeze did not come in time for her to make a slant southwards we were to take to the boats and row to the cove which he covered with his thumb.  ’If you can get your anchor over the side, it may help you,’ he added.

He and his comrades were out catching bait.  He heard our horn and then saw our lump of a brig loom through the fog.  We were sorry to see him leave and row off to his schooner, of which he had the bearings.  To hoist the anchor from where it had been stowed when we lost sight of Tory island and bitt it to the chain was tedious work but it was begun.  We waited hopefully for the tide and, sure enough, it lifted us gently.  On feeling we were afloat once more we gave a cheer.  Soon after a faint breath of air was felt, the ship got steerage way, and we slowly hauled off the dreaded coast.  The breeze cleared the fog and in the rays of the setting sun we saw the cliffs against which we might have been shivered and the fishing-boats to which our friend belonged.

On gathering in the hold our talk was of our escape.  The master said it was proof to him God was with us; we thought we were lost when we grounded, yet that sandbank was what had saved us.  Just then Mr Snellgrove came down the ladder.  ’I have just bade the captain good night,’ he said, ’and I am authorized by him to inform you all danger is past.  Had an executive committee been appointed the moment the vessel struck matters would have gone on with less confusion.  We are safe, however, notwithstanding we have a Jonah on board.’

Mr Kerr who was, like all of us, excited by the accident, asked, ’You mean me?’

Yes, you are a fugitive from the justice which would have punished you as you deserve for sedition.  The world has come to a strange pass when tailors would dictate to the Powers ordained by God how the realm is to be governed.  For one I am loyal to my King and his advisers in all they ordain.  England’s glorious bulwark is her throne and the nobility who surround it.’

The little man stood on the lower rungs of the ladder, in front of the lantern that swung from a beam, so I saw him clearly.  To our surprise Mr Kerr came forward and spoke slowly and quietly.  ’I do not wish you, my fellow passengers, to look upon me any longer as a fugitive from justice, and will explain how it comes that circumstances give color to the charge.  I have a brother, older than myself and father of a large family.  One day in April, a clerk in the sheriff’s office, who is a cousin, came to me at night to tell me that a spy who had attended a meeting of the Liberal club, had laid an information that my brother had spoken disrespectfully of the