Pausing here for a moment, I rapidly recalled to mind the route by which I had arrived at the barracks on the previous day, and was by this means enabled to decide upon the direction which I ought to take in order to reach the harbour. This point settled, I stepped quickly out; and after two or three turns and windings, found myself in a street which I remembered passing through before.
The rain was still pouring down in torrents, and not a soul was to be seen in any direction, nor a sound heard; and if any one had seen me flitting noiselessly along the silent and deserted street, I should assuredly have been taken for a washed-out ghost, for I had left my boots behind, and my feet gave only a faint, scarcely audible, pit-pat on the flooded causeway.
Half an hour of sharp walking brought me down to the harbour; and I at once proceeded to the slipway where I had moored the boat on the previous night. The previous night? Ay; it was only some twenty-four hours since I had entered Bastia; but it seemed as though I had been there at least a month.
The boat was still there, with several others; and as my own safety was just then of more importance to me than any one else’s convenience, I did not hesitate, on finding a much smaller and lighter boat among them, to help myself to her.
Casting the little craft adrift, I shipped the oars and paddled leisurely down the harbour until I approached the pierheads, when, noiselessly laying in my oars, I shipped one of them in the notch at the stern; and, sheering close in under the walls of the pier from which I had been hailed on the previous night, I sculled gently out to the open sea. I almost held my breath until I had gone far enough to lose sight of the pier altogether in the darkness, when I once more shipped my oars and pulled steadily out toward a line of twinkling lights which indicated the position of the fleet.
The dawn was just breaking, grey, cheerless, and chill, as I reached the cutter and stepped in on deck over her low bulwarks, wet to the skin, nerveless from exhaustion and hunger, and with my feet, elbows, and knees lacerated and bleeding from my battle with the rough stone walls of my prison.