assert his claim, not plead his cause.

The truce was to continue until the first of February, when the bands were

again to assemble on the Place Vendome; it was of the utmost consequence

therefore that Adrian should arrive in Paris by that day, since an hair

might turn the scale, and peace, scared away by intestine broils, might

only return to watch by the silent dead. It was now the twenty-eighth of

January; every vessel stationed near Dover had been beaten to pieces and

destroyed by the furious storms I have commemorated. Our journey however

would admit of no delay. That very night, Adrian, and I, and twelve others,

either friends or attendants, put off from the English shore, in the boat

that had brought over the deputies. We all took our turn at the oar; and

the immediate occasion of our departure affording us abundant matter for

conjecture and discourse, prevented the feeling that we left our native

country, depopulate England, for the last time, to enter deeply into the

minds of the greater part of our number. It was a serene starlight night,

and the dark line of the English coast continued for some time visible at

intervals, as we rose on the broad back of the waves. I exerted myself with

my long oar to give swift impulse to our skiff; and, while the waters

splashed with melancholy sound against its sides, I looked with sad

affection on this last glimpse of sea-girt England, and strained my eyes

not too soon to lose sight of the castellated cliff, which rose to protect

the land of heroism and beauty from the inroads of ocean, that, turbulent

as I had lately seen it, required such cyclopean walls for its repulsion. A

solitary sea-gull winged its flight over our heads, to seek its nest in a

cleft of the precipice. Yes, thou shalt revisit the land of thy birth, I

496

The Last Man