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Bosistow scratched his head. “You’ve been making the most of your time. Now I’ve been busy in my way, too, but seemin’ to me the only trade I’ve learned is prison-breakin’. Not much to keep a wife on, as you say. Still, a bargain’s a bargain.”

“Oh, sutt’nly,” says Abe; “that is if your conscience allows it.”

“I reckon I’ll risk that,” answers Billy, and no more passed.

From Tours the prisoners tramped south-east again, to a town called Riou, in the middle of France, and reached it in a snowstorm on March 1. Here they were billeted for five weeks or so, and here, one night, they were waked up and told that Bonaparty had gone scat, and they must come forth and dance with the townspeople in honour of it. You may be sure they heeled and toed it that night, and no girl satisfied unless she had an Englishman for a partner. But the next day it all turned out to be lies, and off they were marched again. To be short, ’twasn’t till the end of April that they came to the river opposite Bordeaux, and were taken in charge by English red-coats, who told them they were free men. On the 28th of that month Abe and Billy, with forty others, were put on board a sloop and dropped down the river to the Dartmouth frigate, from which they were drafted on to the Lord Wellington, and again on to the Suffolk transport. And on May 4 the Suffolk, with six other transports, having about fifteen hundred released prisoners on board, weighed anchor under convoy for Plymouth before a fine breeze, S.E. by S.

On Monday, May 9, at half-past two in the afternoon–the wind still steady in the same quarter, and blowing fresh–the Suffolk sighted land, making out St. Michael’s Mount; and fetching up to Mousehole Island, the captain hailed a mackerel boat to come alongside and take ashore some officers with despatches.

Abe Cummins and Billy Bosistow were both on deck, you may be sure, watching the boat as the fishermen brought her alongside. Not a word had been said between them on the matter that lay closest to their minds, but while they waited Billy fetched a look at the boat and another at Abe. “The best man wins,” he said to himself, and edged away towards the ladder.

The breeze, as I said, was a fresh one, with a sea in the bay that kept the Suffolk rolling like a porpoise. A heavier lurch than ordinary sent her main channels grinding down on the mackerel boat’s gunwale, smashing her upper strakes and springing her mizzen mast as she recovered herself.

“Be dashed,” said one of the officers, “if I trust myself in a boat that’ll go down under us between this and land!”

The rest seemed to be of his mind, too. But Billy, being quick as well as eager, saw in a moment that the damaged strakes would be to windward on the reach into Mousehole, and well out of harm’s way in the wind then blowing, and also that her mainsail alone would do the job easy. So just as she fell off and her crew ran aft to get the mizzen lug stowed he took a run past the officer and jumped aboard, with two fellows close on his heels–one a Penzance fellow whose name I’ve forgot, and the t’other a chap from Ludgvan, Harry Cornish by name. I reckon the sight of the old shores just made them mazed as sheep, and like sheep they followed his lead. The officers ran to stop any more from copying such foolishness; and if they hadn’t, I believe the boat would have been swamped there and then. As ’twas, she re-hoisted her big lug and away-to-go for Mousehole, the three passengers sitting down to leeward with their sterns in and out of the water to help keep her damaged side above mischief.