A hard ride of five hours brought our travelers to Bath, which place they rode around just as the sun began to gild the tile roofs and steeples, and another hour brought them to Bristol.

The ship was to sail at sunrise, but as the wind had died out with the night, there was no danger of its sailing without them.  Soon the gates opened, and the party rode to the Bow and String, where Brandon had left their chests.  The men were then paid off; quick sale was made of the horses; breakfast was served, and they started for the wharf, with their chests following in the hands of four porters.

A boat soon took them aboard the Royal Hind, and now it looked as if their daring scheme, so full of improbability as to seem impossible, had really come to a successful issue.

From the beginning, I think, it had never occurred to Mary to doubt the result.  There had never been with her even a suggestion of possible failure, unless it was that evening in our room, when, prompted by her startled modesty, she had said she could not bear for us to see her in the trunk hose.  Now that fruition seemed about to crown her hopes she was happy to her heart’s core; and when once to herself wept for sheer joy.  It is little wonder she was happy.  She was leaving behind no one whom she loved excepting Jane, and perhaps, me.  No father nor mother; only a sister whom she barely knew, and a brother whose treatment of her had turned her heart against him.  She was also fleeing with the one man in all the world for her, and from a marriage that was literally worse than death.

Brandon, on the other hand, had always had more desire than hope.  The many chances against success had forced upon him a haunting sense of certain failure, which, one would think, should have left him now.  It did not, however, and even when on shipboard, with a score of men at the windlass ready to heave anchor at the first breath of wind, it was as strong as when Mary first proposed their flight, sitting in the window on his great cloak.  Such were their opposite positions.  Both were without doubt, but with this difference; Mary had never doubted success; Brandon never doubted failure.  He had a keen analytical faculty that gave him truthfully the chances for and against, and, in this case, they were overwhelmingly unfavorable.  Such hope as he had been able to distil out of his desire was sadly dampened by an ever-present premonition of failure, which he could not entirely throw off.  Too keen an insight for the truth often stands in a man’s way, and too clear a view of an overwhelming obstacle is apt to paralyze effort.  Hope must always be behind a hearty endeavor.

Our travelers were, of course, greatly in need of rest; so Mary went to her room, and Brandon took a berth in the cabin set apart for the gentlemen.

They had both paid for their passage, although they had enlisted and were part of the ship’s company.  They were not expected to do sailor’s work, but would be called upon in case of fighting to do their part at that.  Mary was probably as good a fighter, in her own way, as one could find in a long journey, but how she was to do her part with sword and buckler Brandon did not know.  That, however, was a bridge to be crossed when they should come to it.