Meanwhile, the night was passing rapidly away; for we had scarcely got clear of the frigate when seven bells of the middle watch was struck, and, it being then the middle of August, we might expect daylight very shortly, when a surprise would at once become an impossibility; the word was therefore passed for the oarsmen to give way at top speed, and away we all went, as if for a wager, the two divisions heading respectively south-west and south-east, in the hope that we might get close enough in with the land to escape detection, and even possibly to land, before the coming dawn betrayed us.