“Thank your honours,—­thank your honours,” said the boatswain, somewhat electrified by these brilliant offers.  “The lads may take the money, if they like; all I cares about is the king’s commission.  Give me but a swab on my shoulder, and the money will come fast enough of itself.  But, still, shiver my topsails, if I wants any bribery to make me do my duty; besides, if ’twas only for them poor girls alone, I would go through fire and water to sarve them.  I’m not very chicken-hearted in my old age, your honours, but I don’t recollect the time when I blubbered so much as I did when Miss Madeline come aboard.  But I can’t bear to think of it; and now let us see and get all ready for towing.”

Every thing now became bustle and activity on board the schooner.  The matches, no longer required for the moment, were extinguished, and the heavy cutlasses and pistols unbuckled from the loins of the men, and deposited near their respective guns.  Light forms flew aloft, and, standing out upon the yards, loosely furled the sails that had previously been hauled and clewed up; but, as this was an operation requiring little time in so small a vessel, those who were engaged in it speedily glided to the deck again, ready for a more arduous service.  The boats had, meanwhile, been got forward, and into these the sailors sprang, with an alacrity that could scarcely have been expected from men who had passed not only the preceding night, but many before it, in utter sleeplessness and despair.  But the imminence of the danger, and the evident necessity existing for exertion, aroused them to new energy; and the hitherto motionless vessel was now made to obey the impulse given by the tow ropes of the boats, in a manner that proved their crews to have entered on their toil with the determination of men, resolved to devote themselves in earnest to their task.  Nor was the spirit of action confined to these.  The long sweeps of the schooner had been shipped, and such of the crew as remained on board laboured effectually at them,—­a service, in which they were essentially aided, not only by mine host of the Fleur de lis, but by the young officers themselves.

At mid-day the headlands were seen looming largely in the distance, while the immediate shores of the ill-fated fortress were momentarily, and in the same proportion, disappearing under the dim line of horizon in the rear.  More than half their course, from the spot whence they commenced towing, had been completed, when the harassed men were made to quit their oars, in order to partake of the scanty fare of the vessel, consisting chiefly of dried bear’s meat and venison.  Spirit of any description they had none; but, unlike their brethren of the Atlantic, when driven to extremities in food, they knew not what it was to poison the nutritious properties of the latter by sipping the putrid dregs of the water-cask, in quantities scarce sufficient to quench the fire of their parched palates.  Unslaked thirst was a misery unknown