“Not very far, monsieur,” said the stranger; “there is no boom across the basin, and once outside, I land where I left my garments.”
The Frenchman thanked the Lieutenant for his courtesy, slipped over the side, and noiselessly made his way through the still waters of the basin, and was soon lost to sight.
CHAPTER III.
After the departure of the Frenchman, Lieutenant Cooke and William Thornton commented upon what they had just heard.
“I forgot to ask the stranger,” remarked the Lieutenant, “the lady’s present title; he called her Madame la Duchesse. Her former name, at all events, was Arden.”
“I dare say,” said the midshipman, “the note he presented will explain, and perhaps give some further particulars of her situation.”
“True, I forgot the note; there will be daylight in another hour, its getting grey to the eastward. A terrible scene this poor lady and her child must have witnessed in Lyons,” continued the lieutenant; “the atrocities committed there by that fiend, Collet de Herbois, exceeds all human belief. The wretch found the guillotine too slow for his bloodthirsty soul; he had the unfortunate people of Lyons actually shot down by cannon, loaded with grape shot, hundreds at a time. He even undermined the streets, and blew up the houses with gunpowder,[1] tied his victims to trees, and shot them down like wild beasts. In five months this detestable monster slaughtered six thousand persons.”
“What extraordinary infatuation!” exclaimed our hero. “I can scarcely understand human beings becoming so suddenly seized with such a thirst for blood.”
Lieutenant Cooke, finding the daylight rapidly increasing, became curious to examine his letter. It was addressed in a female handwriting—