A boy's voice answered from the upper part of the tower,—the same figure who made the signal towards the shore, and whose presence there I had altogether forgotten; and in a few minutes a red glare on the rocks below showed that the old man's command was obeyed, and the beacon lighted.
“Ah! they see it already,” cried he, triumphantly, pointing seawards; “they've extinguished the light now, but will show it again, from time to time.”
“But tell me, friend, how happens it that the marines of the Guard, who line this coast, do not perceive these signals?”
“And who tells thee that they do not? They may be looking, as we are now, at that same craft, and watching Her as she beats in shore; but they know better than to betray us. Ah, ma foi! the 'contrebande' is better than the Government. Enough for them if they catch some poor English prisoner now and then, and have him shot; that contents the Emperor, as they call him, and he thinks the service all that is brave and vigilant. But as to us, it is our own fault if we fall in with them; it would need the rocket you spoke of a while ago to shame them into it. There, look again,—thou seest how far in shore they've made already; the cutter is stealing fast along the water. Answer the signal, Joseph.”
The boy replenished the fire with some dry wood, and it blazed up brilliantly, illuminating the gray cliffs and dark rocks, on which the night was fast falling, but leaving all beyond its immediate sphere in deepest blackness.
“I see not, friend, by what means I am to discover this sloping cliff, much less guide my way along it,” said I, as I gazed over the precipice, and tried to penetrate the gloomy abyss below me.
“Thou 'lt have the moon at full in less than two hours; and if thou 'lt take a friend's counsel, thou 'lt have a sleep ere that time. Lay thee down yonder on those rushes; I 'll awake thee when time comes for it.”
The rather that I resolved to obey my old guide in his every direction, than from any desire for slumber at such a time, I followed his advice, and threw myself full length in a corner of the tower. In the perfect stillness of the hour, the sea alone was heard, surging in slow, minute peals through many a deep cavern below; and then, gathering for fresh efforts, it swelled and beat against the stern rocks in passionate fury. Such sounds, heard in the silence of the night, are of the saddest; nor was their influence lightened by the low, monotonous chant of the old sailor, who, seated in a corner, began to repair a fishing-net, as he sang to himself some ditty of the sea.
How strangely came the thought to my mind, that all the peril I once incurred to reach France, the hoped-for, wished-for land, I should again brave to escape from its shores! Every dream of boyish ambition dissipated, every high hope flown, I was returning to my country as poor and humble as I left it, but with a heart shorn of all the enthusiasm that gave life its coloring. In what way I could shape my future career I was not able even to guess; a vague leaning to some of England's distant colonies, some new world beyond the seas, being all my imagination could frame of my destiny. A sudden flash of light, illuminating the whole interior of the tower, startled me from my musings, while the sailor called out,—
“Come, wake up, friend! The cutter is standing in close, and a signal to make haste flying from her mast.”