and instantly sank into a sound and dreamless slumber; to be awakened again with a start, and almost instantly, as it seemed to him, by the flapping of the ship’s canvas in the wind.

Starting up into a sitting posture, he heard the voice of the chief mate on deck giving the necessary orders for tacking ship.

“Hillo!” he thought, “what is the meaning of this? Nothing wrong, I hope. No, that cannot be, or they would surely have called me. Perhaps it is a change of wind; I hope it is. Well, being awake, I may as well slip on deck and satisfy myself as to the meaning of it.”

He accordingly sprang out of his cot, and began to dress himself; the sounds on deck having meanwhile ceased, save for the monotonous tread overhead of the officer of the watch, and the occasional clank of the wheel-chains. The ship was heeling over to starboard, showing that she was on the port tack, and the rushing sound of the water along her sides seemed to indicate that she was moving pretty rapidly through it.

As he opened his state-room door to pass into the main cabin, a heavy step was heard descending the companion-ladder, and the next moment the second mate appeared at its foot, in the act of turning into his own state-room.

“Well, Mr Cross,” said the skipper, “what is the news from the deck? You have tacked ship, it seems; is there a change of wind?”

“No, sir,” answered Cross; “the wind still holds steady at about west, though it seems a little inclined to back half a point or so to the south’ard, and it’s clouded over again and gone very dark. We tacked at midnight, sir, according to your orders.”

“Midnight!” ejaculated George; “you surely do not mean to say it is midnight already, Cross?”

“About a quarter after it, sir,” answered the second mate with a smile. “You’ve slept sound, sir, I expect; and time has travelled fast with you.”

“I must have slept sound indeed,” answered the skipper; “to me it seemed that I had hardly fallen asleep when I was awakened by the flapping of the canvas. Well, I’ll not keep you from your bunk; I shall go on deck and take a look round before I turn in again. Good-night.”

“Good-night, sir,” was the reply; and the second mate opened the door of his berth and passed in, whilst George sprang lightly up the companion-ladder and stepped out on deck.

It was indeed, as the second mate had said, very dark; so much so that the skipper, having just left the cabin, where a lamp was dimly burning, was unable to see anything for a moment or two. Then, as his eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, he caught first a glimpse of the man at the wheel, his form faintly illuminated by the binnacle light, then the figure of the mate, just turning near the taffrail to walk forward, and finally the dark, shadowy pile of canvas towering away aloft until it melted into the general obscurity.

“It has gone very dark again, Mr Bowen,” remarked the skipper, as the mate, becoming aware of George’s presence on deck, joined him.

“It is dark, sir,” answered the mate, “almost too dark to be poking about here in the Channel without lights.”

“It is rather risky, I admit,” returned George; “still, I do not think it is so dangerous as showing our lights; that would simply be hanging out an invitation to those prowling French privateers to pounce down on us. How is her head?”—to the man at the wheel, George and the mate having by this time strolled aft together.

“No’th, half west, sir,” was the reply.

“Come, that is not so bad,” remarked George. “We shall fetch Plymouth yet in good time to join the convoy if all be—”

“A sail broad on the weather bow!” broke in the lookout forward, with startling abruptness.

Both George and the mate instantly directed their gaze in the direction indicated by the lookout; and presently a shapeless something like a blacker patch against the black background of the darkness loomed into view, about one point before the beam, showing by this rapid change in the respective positions of the two ships how near was the stranger.

“Why!” exclaimed Leicester, “he is coming right down for us; he will be into us. Port, port hard; up with your helm smartly, my lad,” to the man at the wheel. “Ship ahoy! Port your helm; can you not see us?”

“Ay, ay; oh, yesh,” was the response from the other vessel; and as it came floating down upon the wind the stranger took a broad sheer to port, showing herself to be a large lugger, and shot very neatly alongside the Aurora, the grappling-irons being cleverly hove into the barque’s fore and main-rigging, as the two vessels touched.

At the same moment some five-and-twenty Frenchmen, armed with cutlass and pistol, scrambled alertly in over the Aurora’s bulwarks, the leader singling out George, notwithstanding the darkness, and exclaiming, as he promptly presented a pistol at his head—

“Vat cheep dis is, eh?”

“The Aurora, of London,” was the answer, “Très bien! My cheep, the Belle Marie, est un corsaire Français, un—vat you call—privateere, et vous êtes mes prisonniers. It is ze fortune of war, messieurs; my turn to-night—yours to-morrow, perhaps—ha, ha! Now, my dear sares, as there not moosh time is, permettez moi,” and he flung open the companion-doors, motioning significantly to George and the mate to go below.

Poor George glanced swiftly round the deck, only to see that it was in complete possession of the Frenchmen, one of whom was already at the wheel. So, turning to Mr Bowen, and murmuring, “There is no help for it, I suppose,” he signed to the mate to lead the way, and then followed, dejectedly, the doors being smartly slammed-to after them, and the next moment they heard the sound of some heavy body being dragged up to and banged against the companion entrance, thus precluding the possibility of their stealing on deck again, and effecting a counter surprise.

The whole thing had been done so rapidly that it was not until he found the ship being once more hove about, with her head pointing toward the French coast, that Captain Leicester fully realised his situation. In less than ten minutes his ship had been taken from him, and himself confined in his own cabin, a prisoner. Had he not been on deck at the time of the occurrence, he would certainly have considered it an avoidable misfortune, to be accounted for only by the most gross carelessness; but as it was, he was fully able to understand that it was entirely due to the extreme darkness of the night, and the circumstance of the lugger and the barque stumbling over each other, as it were. But that made matters no better for him; he had lost his ship—his all—and now there loomed before him the immediate prospect of a dreary confinement—for many years perhaps—in a French prison. The thought goaded him almost to madness, and he sprang impatiently to his feet, and began to pace moodily to and fro over the narrow limits of the cabin floor.

Meanwhile the second mate—who had started out of his berth at the first shock of contact between the two vessels, and had made a rush for the deck, only to be confronted and driven back by a Frenchman with a drawn cutlass—was seated on the lockers alongside Mr Bowen, listening to that individual’s gloomy recital of the details of the capture.

The low murmur of the two men’s voices annoyed George in his then irritable frame of mind, and, to avoid it, he retired into his own state-room. The night being close and sultry, all the stern-ports were open, and as he entered the cabin the sound of a hail from to leeward came floating in through the ports. It was answered from the deck, and, kneeling upon the sofa-locker and thrusting his body well out of the port, the skipper became aware that the lugger was parting company, and that the hail he had heard was the voice of the French captain shouting his parting instructions to the officer he had left