Volume The First - Chapter 1

With roomy decks, her guns of mighty strength,
Whose low-laid mouths each mounting billow laves,
Deep in her draught, and warlike in her length,
She seems a sea wasp flying on the waves.

DRYDEN

It was between the hours of ten and twelve on a fine night of February,
in the year sixteen hundred and fifty-six, that three men moored a light
skiff in a small bay, overshadowed by the heavy and sombre rocks that
distinguish the Isle of Shepey from other parts along the coast of Kent,
the white cliffs of which present an aspect at once so cheerful and so
peculiar to the shores of Britain. The quiet sea seemed, in the murky
light, like a dense and motionless mass, save when the gathering clouds
passed from the brow of the waning moon, and permitted its beams to
repose in silver lines on its undulating bosom.

It was difficult to account for the motive that could have induced any
mariner to land upon so unpropitious a spot, hemmed in as it was on
every side, and apparently affording no outlet but that by which they
had entered--the trackless and illimitable ocean. Without a moment's
deliberation, however, the steersman, who had guided his boat into the
creek, sprang lightly to the shore: another followed; while the third,
folding himself in the capacious cloak his leader had thrown off,
resumed his place, as if resolved to take his rest, at least for a time.