The two men had just reached a place in front of a high wall surrounding a garden. The top of the trees could scarcely be distinguished, for the night had fallen.
The young man said to his companion, as he stopped and turned his ear eastward:
"Please God, what is it, captain?" said the man with the tobacco quid, in reply to this singular surname.
"I am not mistaken, it is certainly here."
"Yes, captain, it is in this made land between these two large trees. Here is the place where the wall is a little damaged. I noticed it yesterday evening at dusk, when we picked up the stone and the letter."
"That is so. Come quick, my old seaman," said the captain to his sailor, indicating with his eye one of the large trees of the boulevard, several of whose branches hung over the garden wall. "Up, Sans-Plume, while we are waiting the hour let us see if we can rig the thing."
"Captain, there is still a bit of twilight, and I see below a man who is coming this way."
"Then let us wait. Hide first your bag behind the trunk of this tree,--you have forgotten nothing?"
"No, captain, all my rigging is in there."
"Come, then, let us go. This man is coming; we must not look as if we were lying to before these walls."
"That's it, captain, we'll stand upon another tack so as to put him out of his way."
And the two sailors began, as Sans-Plume had said in his picturesque language, to stand the other tack in the path parallel to the public walk, after the sailor had prudently picked up the bag he had hidden between the trees of the boulevard and the wall.
"Sans-Plume," said the young man, as they walked along, "are you sure you recognise the spot where the hackney-coach awaits us?"
"That man looks as if he were following us."
"Come along, Sans-Plume, you are foolish!"
"Captain, let us set the prow larboard and you go and see."
And, followed by his sailor, he left the walk on the right of the boulevard, crossed the pavement, and took the walk on the left.
"Well, captain," said Sans-Plume, in a low voice, "you see this lascar navigates in our waters."
"It is not the first time it has happened to me," said Sans-Plume, with a shade of conceit, hiding one-half of his mouth with the back of his hand in order to eject the excess of tobacco juice produced by the mastication of his enormous quid. "One day, in Senegal, Gorée, I was followed a whole league, bowsprit on stern, captain, till I came to a plantation of sugar-cane, and--"