"The town, Captain, is in confusion—full of planters, men, women, and children lying about the streets. There is pretty surely a guard on board that ship. Why not beat in closer without lights, and then, with all the men you can spare, find the ship, and if it is ours, take her out?"
"If we can. A good idea. It might be done."
"It is the only way. It must be done. Give me the mate and ten men."
"What! Give you my men, and sit down and wait for you? No, sir. I shall go with you." He was of a breed which has served the country well on sea and land, and whose burial-places are battle-fields and oceans.
It was soon decided to wait to attack until the town was asleep. In the interval De Courval, in case of accident, wrote to his mother and to Schmidt, but with no word of Carteaux. Then for a while he sat still, reflecting with very mingled feelings that success in carrying the ship would again cut him off from all chance of meeting Carteaux. It did seem to him a malignant fate; but at last dismissing it, he buckled on his sword, took up his pistols, and went on deck.
At midnight the three boats set out with muffled oars, and after a hard pull against an off-shore wind, through the warm tropic night, they approached the town.
The captain whistled softly, and the boats came together.
"Speak low," he said to De Courval. "It is the George Washington and no mistake. They are wide-awake, by ill luck, and singing."
"Yes, I hear them."
"But they are not on deck. There are lights in the cabin." The "Ça Ira" rang out in bits across the water. The young noble heard it with the anguish it always awakened; for unfailingly it gave back to memory the man he longed to meet, and the blood-dabbled mob which came out of the hall at Avignon shouting this Jacobin song.