The Seigneur of Rozel presently broke the silence so awkward for him. He had seen the tears in her eyes, and though he could not guess the cause, he vaguely thought it might be due to his announcement that she had lost a friend. He was magnanimous at once, and he meant what he said and would stand by it through thick and thin.
"Well, well, I'll be thy everlasting friend if not thy husband," he said with ornate generosity. "Cheer thy heart, lady."
With a sudden impulse she seized his hand and kissed it, and, turning, ran swiftly down the rocks towards her home.
He stood and looked after her, then, dumfounded, at the hand she had kissed.
"Blood of my heart!" he said, and shook his head in utter amazement.
Then he turned and looked out upon the Channel. He saw the little boat Angele had descried making from France. Glancing at the sky, "What fools come there!" he said anxiously.
They were Michel de la Foret and Buonespoir the pirate, in a black- bellied cutter with red sails.
CHAPTER III
For weeks De la Foret and Buonespoir had lain in hiding at St. Brieuc. At last Buonespoir declared all was ready once again. He had secured for the Camisard the passport and clothes of a priest who had but just died at Granville. Once again they made the attempt to reach English soil.
Standing out from Carteret on the Belle Suzanne, they steered for the light upon the Marmotier Rocks of the Ecrehos, which Angele had paid a fisherman to keep going every night. This light had caused the French and English frigates some uneasiness, and they had patrolled the Channel from Cap de la Hague to the Bay of St. Brieuc with a vigilance worthy of a larger cause. One fine day an English frigate anchored off the Ecrehos, and the fisherman was seized. He, poor man, swore that he kept the light burning to guide his brother fishermen to and fro between Boulay Bay and the Ecrehos. The captain of the frigate tried severities; but the fisherman stuck to his tale, and the light burned on as before— a lantern stuck upon a pole. One day, with a telescope, Buonespoir had seen the exact position of the staff supporting the light, and had mapped out his course accordingly. He would head straight for the beacon and pass between the Marmotier and the Maitre Ile, where is a narrow channel for a boat drawing only a few feet of water. Unless he made this, he must run south and skirt the Ecriviere Rock and bank, where the streams setting over the sandy ridges make a confusing perilous sea to mariners in bad weather. Else, he must sail north between the Ecrehos and the Dirouilles, in the channel called Etoc, a tortuous and dangerous passage save in good weather, and then safe only to the mariner who knows the floor of that strait like his own hand. De la Foret was wholly in the hands of Buonespoir, for he knew nothing of these waters and coasts; also he was a soldier and no sailor.