They then began to reproach themselves for having come out with me.

I told them I had not forced them, but that it was a matter of their own choice.

In the midst of this conversation I informed them that I thought I saw either a star or a light straight forward.

They both looked at it and pronounced it to be a light, and added with great joy that it must be a light in the Passage-house; and so we found it; for in about ten minutes afterwards we landed, and, on reaching the house, learnt that a servant maid had been accidentally talking to some other person on the stair-case, near a window, with a candle in her hand, and that the light had appeared to us from that circumstance.
It was now near eleven o'clock.

My messenger, it appeared, had arrived safe about five in the evening, and had proceeded on his route.