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 valve open until we descended into a stratum of fog—from which, no doubt, the Lunardi had lately risen: the moisture collected here would account for its congelated coat of silver. By-and-bye, still without rising, we were quit of the fog, and the moon swept the hollow beneath us, rescuing solitary scraps and sheets of water and letting them slip again like imprehensible ghosts. Small fiery eyes opened and shut on us: cressets of flame on factory chimneys, more and more frequent. I studied the compass. Our course lay south by west. But our whereabouts? Dalmahoy, being appealed to, suggested Glasgow: and thenceforward I let him alone. Byfield snored on.

I pulled out my watch, which I had forgotten to wind; and found it run down. The hands stood at twenty minutes past four. Daylight, then, could not be far off. Eighteen hours—say twenty: and Byfield had guessed our rate at one time to be thirty miles an hour. Five hundred miles—

A line of silver ahead: a ribbon drawn taut across the night, clean-edged, broadening—the sea! In a minute or two I caught the murmur of the coast. "Five hundred miles," I began to reckon again, and a holy calm dawned on me as the Lunardi swept high over the fringing surf, and its voice faded back with the glimmer of a white-washed fishing haven.

I roused Dalmahoy and pointed. "The sea!"

"Looks like it. Which, I wonder?" "The English Channel, man."

"I say—are you sure?"

"Eh?" exclaimed Byfield, waking up and coming forward with a stagger.

"The English Channel."

"The French fiddlestick," said he with equal promptness.