the Lady Jane - at which piece of good news Crispin felt like
to shout for joy.

But his reflection upon his present position, when at last he
lay in the schooner's cabin, brought him the bitter reverse of
pleasure. He had set out to bring Cynthia to his son; he had
pledged his honour to accomplish it. How was he fulfilling his
trust? In his despondency, during a moment when alone, he
cursed the knave that had wounded him for his clumsiness in not
having taken a lower aim when he fired, and thus solved him
this ugly riddle of life for all time.

Vainly did he strive to console himself and endeavour to
palliate the wrong he had done with the consideration that he
was the man Cynthia loved, and not his son; that his son was
nothing to her, and that she would never have accompanied him
had she dreamt that he wooed her for another.

No. The deed was foul, and rendered fouler still by virtue of
those other wrongs in whose extenuation it had been undertaken.
For a moment he grew almost a coward. He was on the point of
bidding Master Jackson avoid Calais and make some other port
along the coast. But in a moment he had scorned the craven
argument of flight, and determined that come what might he
would face his son, and lay the truth before him, leaving him
to judge how strong fate had been. As he lay feverish and
fretful in the vessel's cabin, he came well-nigh to hating
Kenneth; he remembered him only as a poor, mean creature, now a
bigot, now a fop, now a psalm-monger, now a roysterer, but ever
a hypocrite, ever a coward, and never such a man as he could