The stranger suffered him to expend all his astonishment without moving a muscle, and then replied, with perfect calmness, “My good friend, you are a Catholic, I have been told, and a good subject to King James—­”

“God bless him!” interrupted the man, heartily; but Sherbrooke proceeded, saying, “In these days one may well be doubtful of one’s own relations; and I have a fancy, my man, that unless I prevent any one from knowing my course, and where I am, I may be betrayed where I go, and betrayed if I stay.  Now what I want you to do is this, to take me over to the coast of England, instead of to yonder French brig.”

The man’s astonishment was very great; but he seemed to enter into the motives of his companion with all the quick perception of an Irishman.  There were innumerable difficulties, however, which he did not fail to start; and he asserted manfully, that it was utterly impossible for them to proceed upon such a voyage at once.  In the first place, they had no provisions; in the next place, there was the wife and children, who would not know what was become of them; in the third place, it was coming on to blow hard right upon the coast.  So that he proved there was, in fact, not only danger and difficulty, but absolute impossibility, opposed to the plan which the gentleman wished to follow.

In the meanwhile, the four seamen, who were at the oars, laboured away incessantly, but with very slow and difficult efforts.  Every moment the wind rose higher and higher, and the sun’s lower limb touched the waters, while they were yet two miles from the French brig.

A part of the large red disk of the descending orb was seen between the sea and the edge of the clouds that hung upon the verge of the sky, pouring forth from the horizon to the very shore a long line of blood-red light, which, resting upon the boiling waters of the ocean, seemed as if the setting star could indeed “the multitudinous sea incarnadine, making the green one red.”

That red light, however, showed far more clearly than before how the waters were already agitated; for the waves might be seen distinctly, even to the spot in the horizon where they seemed to struggle with the sun, heaving up their gigantic heads till they appeared to overwhelm him before he naturally set.

The arguments of the fisherman apparently effected that thing which is so seldom effected in this world; namely, to convince the person to whom they were addressed.  I say seldom, for there have been instances known, in remote times, of people being convinced.  They puzzled him, however, and embarrassed him very much, and he remained for full five minutes in deep and anxious thought.

His reverie, however, was brought to an end suddenly, by a few words which the fisherman whispered to him.  His countenance brightened; a rapid and brief conversation followed in a low tone, which ended in his abruptly holding out his hand to the good man at the helm, saying, “I trust to your honour.”