To starboard and to port, great hulls, not many hundred feet away, could be distinguished by the sharpest eyes, rising blacker than the night. The Mediterranean squadron of France had but made port the day before, and were due in Cherbourg on the morrow. The last patient launch had brought the last gay officer aboard, and peace commanded the formidable fleet.
Through the port-holes, veiled with silk, a light glimmered from the unconscious vessel that had just dipped anchor. Colonel Odminton, at that moment, was parting the curtains from his son's bed, and was regarding him with conflicting expressions. The lad slept restlessly, and under his father's eyes began to toss and mutter. Fearing to waken him, the unhappy man withdrew softly to his own cabin. There he poured himself out a full glass of brandy and began to pace the floor furiously.
It was a changed face that looked apprehensively at the door every time the timbers creaked in the chop of the sea. He was no longer the elegant, complacent, and successful criminal; he was the bandit at bay. He was distrustful, suspicious, ready for revenge. If he had only had Gatling guns aboard, he would have taught the inhabitants of Penzance a costly lesson for their threats and curses. Now, for the first time he rebelled against his lineage, and hated Englishmen and England with a virulent abhorrence.
But France was different. Tolerant blood ran in her veins. Here he felt secure from insult. The nation that had died in ecstasy under the nod of Napoleon, could not be otherwise than liberal to him. Colonel Odminton did not exactly expect a reception by the President of the Republic; but he did look forward to a respectful and harmless curiosity that would titillate his pride and remove the memory of his indignities.
His face began to assume a more benevolent expression, and the cowering, snarling look which comes to those who find themselves detested for good reasons, and thrust out, gave way to one of hope, such as comes to the convict when his term of imprisonment is nearly over.
Soothed by such imaginations, the Colonel smiled with disdain, snapped his finger at all the world, furtively examined his secret safe, and went to bed.
It did not seem to him that he had been slumbering as many minutes as he had hours, when he was startled by a violent tramping upon the deck above him, by the clanking revolutions of the machinery that hoisted the anchor, and then, before he had mastered his laggard senses, by imperative knocks at his door. Colonel Odminton pulled the spring, and his Captain bounded in. Terror was engraved on every line of that usually calm and observant face.
"For God's sake!" he cried in broken English and Danish, "we are to be blown up in ten minutes!" His jaws chattered without saying any more. He was stiff with fear.
With inconceivable rapidity Colonel Odminton thrust himself into his clothes and rushed upon deck. He had not time to put on his cap, and as he emerged in the rosy light of the breaking sun, his bare head was seen in all its now notorious characteristics. A cry greeted him.
Encompassed about by the huge mastiffs of war, more formidable than anything the vaunted navy of the United States could boast, the toy terrier shivered.