all, and allow the privateer to pass them. This was put in execution:
the convicts, now that there was no more firing, coming to their
assistance. The next morning the weather proved hazy, and the schooner,
who had evidently crowded sail in pursuit of them, was nowhere to be
seen.

Newton and his crew congratulated themselves upon their escape, and
again shaped their course for the Channel.

The wind would not allow them to keep clear of Ushant; and two days
afterwards they made the French coast near to that island. The next
morning they had a slant of wind, which enabled them to lay her head up
for Plymouth, and anticipated that in another twenty-four hours they
would be in safety. Such, however, was not their good fortune; about
noon a schooner hove in sight to leeward, and it was soon ascertained to
be the same vessel from which they had previously escaped. Before dusk
she was close to them; and Newton, aware of the impossibility of
resistance, hove-to, as a signal of surrender.




Chapter XII

"Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows."
SHAKESPEARE.


As the reader may have before now occasionally heard comments upon the
uncertainty of the moon and of the sea, and also, perhaps of human life,