← catalogue

The Log of a Privateersman

by Harry Collingwood · English · Gutenberg #21065 · 588,647 chars · public domain (US)

The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Log of a Privateersman
    
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.

Title: The Log of a Privateersman

Author: Harry Collingwood

Illustrator: W. Rainey


        
Release date: April 13, 2007 [eBook #21065]

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/21065

Credits: Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LOG OF A PRIVATEERSMAN ***




Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England




The Log of a Privateersman

By Harry Collingwood
________________________________________________________________________
Another cleverly written and interesting book by this prolific author of
books about the sea for teenage boys.  The time of the story is the very
beginning of the nineteenth century, at which time the British were at
war with France.  The task of a privateersman is to act as a licensed
pirate, preying on enemy ships.  The hero is very successful at all
this, and eventually is offered a permanent commission in the Royal
Navy.  Makes a good audiobook.
________________________________________________________________________
THE LOG OF A PRIVATEERSMAN

BY HARRY COLLINGWOOD



CHAPTER ONE.

THE CAPTURE OF THE WEYMOUTH--AND WHAT IT LED TO.

The French probably never did a more audacious thing than when, on the
night of October 26th, 1804, a party of forty odd of them left the
lugger _Belle Marie_ hove-to in Weymouth Roads and pulled, with muffled
oars, in three boats, into the harbour; from whence they succeeded in
carrying out to sea the newly-arrived West Indian trader _Weymouth_,
loaded with a full cargo of rum, sugar, and tobacco.  The expedition was
admirably planned, the night chosen being that upon which the new moon
occurred; it was a dismal, rainy, and exceptionally dark night, with a
strong breeze blowing from the south-west; the hour was about two
o'clock a.m.; there was an ebb tide running; and the ship--which had
only arrived late in the afternoon of the previous day--was the outside
vessel in a tier of three; the Frenchman had, therefore, nothing
whatever to do but to cut the craft adrift and allow her to glide,
silent as a ghost, down the harbour with bare poles, under the combined
influence of the strong wind and the ebb tide.  There was not a soul
stirring about the quays at that hour; nobody, therefore, saw the ship
go out; and the two custom-house officers and the watchman--the only
Englishmen aboard her--were fast asleep, and were secured before they
had time or opportunity to raise an alarm.  So neatly, indeed, was the
trick done that the first intimation poor old Peter White--the owner of
the ship and cargo--had of his loss was when, at the first streak of
dawn, he slipped out of bed and went to the window to gloat over the
sight of the safely-arrived ship, moored immediately opposite his house
but on the other side of the harbour, where she had been berthed upon
her arrival on the previous afternoon.  The poor old gentleman could
scarcely credit his eyes when those organs informed him that the berth,
occupied but a few hours previously, was now vacant.  He looked, and
looked, and looked again; and finally he caught sight of the ropes by
which the _Weymouth_ had been moored, dangling in the water from the
bows and quarters of the ships to which she had been made fast.  Then an
inkling of the truth burst upon him, and, hastily donning his clothes,
he rushed downstairs, let himself out of the house, and sped like a
madman down the High Street, across Hope Square, and so on to the Nothe,
in the forlorn hope that the ship, which, with her cargo, represented
the bulk of the savings of a lifetime, might still be in sight.  And to
his inexpressible joy she was; not only so, she was scarcely two miles
off the port, under sail, and heading for the harbour in company with a
British sloop-of-war.  She had been recaptured, and ere the news of her
audacious seizure had reached the ears of more than a few of the
townspeople she was back again in her former berth, and safely moored by
chains to the quay.

It was clear to me, and to the rest of the _Weymouth's_ crew, when we
mustered that same morning to be paid off, that the incident had
inflicted a terribly severe shock upon Mr White's nerves.  The poor old
boy looked a good ten years older than when he had boarded us in the
roads on the previous afternoon and had shaken hands with Captain Winter
as he welcomed him home and congratulated him upon having successfully
eluded the enemy's cruisers and privateers; but there was a fierce
glitter in his eyes and a firm, determined look about his mouth which I,
for one, took as an indication that the fright, severe as it undoubtedly
was, had not quelled the old man's courage.

The capture of the ship by the Frenchmen occurred during the early hours
of a Friday morning; and on the following Tuesday evening I received a
message from Mr White, asking me to call upon him, at his office, next
day at noon.  Punctual to the moment, I presented myself, and was at
once ushered into the old gentleman's private sanctum, where I found my
employer seated at his desk, with several bundles of papers lying before
him.  He shook hands with me very cordially, and signed to me to be
seated.

"Let me see, George," he commenced.  "Your indentures will soon expire,
will they not?"

"Yes, Mr White," I answered.  "I shall be out of my time on the
sixteenth of next month."

"Just so; just so.  I thought that they would have about a month to run;
but have been too busy the last few days to ascertain the precise date.
Well, George," he continued, "I have come to the conclusion that the
_Weymouth_ must be laid up, for the present at all events.  Her capture
the other night has opened my eyes more completely than they have ever
been opened before, to the risk of working an unarmed ship during war-
time.  Were I to continue to do so, and the ship should happen to be
captured, it would go far toward ruining me; and I am too old to endure
such a loss; so I have made up my mind to lay up the _Weymouth_ while
the war lasts.  But there is good money to be made, even in war-time, if
a man goes the right way to work.  Privateering is a very profitable
business when it can be carried on successfully; and success depends as
much as anything upon the kind of men employed.  I have been having a
chat with Captain Winter upon the subject, with the result that I have
purchased the schooner that they are now finishing off in Martin's
building-yard; and I intend to fit her out as a privateer; that being
the kind of work, in fact, that she has been especially built for.
Captain Winter will have the command of her, of course, with Mr Lovell
as chief mate; and, George, upon the captain's very strong
recommendation, I have determined to offer you the berth of second mate.
It will take more than a month to complete the schooner and fit her for
sea; and by that time your indentures will have expired.  Captain Winter
gives you a most excellent character, and has recommended you for the
berth; and from what I have seen of you, my lad, I have come to the
conclusion that I shall not go very far wrong in giving it to you.  Nay,
you owe me no thanks, boy; you have earned the refusal of the offer by
your steadiness and industry, so it is yours, freely, if you like to
have it.  I do not want you to make up your mind and answer me yea or
nay upon the spur of the moment; take a little time to consider the
matter if you like, and let me know by the end of the week."

I needed no time for consideration, however; the offer was altogether
too good and advantageous in every way to be left hanging in the
balance, as it were.  I therefore thankfully accepted it on the spot,
and the question of pay and prize-money then being gone into and settled
upon a very satisfactory basis, so far as I was concerned, I took my
leave, and hurried off home to acquaint my relatives with my good
fortune.

Now the reader will have gathered from the foregoing that at the period
of the opening of my story I was a sailor, and quite a young man; and
probably I need say but little more to complete the acquaintance thus
begun.

My name is George Bowen, and I was the only son of my father, Captain
Bowen, who was believed to have been drowned at sea--his ship never
having been heard of after leaving England for the South Seas--when I
was a little chap of only six years old.  My sister Dora was born just
about the time that it was supposed my father must have perished, and a
year later my poor mother died, broken-hearted at the loss of a husband
that she positively idolised.  Thus, we two--Dora and I--were left
orphans at a very early age, and were forthwith taken into the motherly
care of Aunt Sophie, who had no children of her own.  Poor Aunt Sophie!
I am afraid I led her a terrible life; for I was, almost from my birth,
a big, strong, high-spirited boy, impatient of control, and resolute to
have my own way.  But Dora--ah!  Dora, with her sweet, docile
disposition, made ample amends for all my shortcomings, and in the end,
by her gentle persuasiveness, did much to subdue my rebellious spirit
and render me amenable to domestic discipline.

We were both exceptionally well educated, as education went then; for
Uncle Jack--Aunt Sophie's husband--was a clever, long-headed fellow, who
believed that it was not possible for a man to know too much; so Dora,
in addition to receiving a sound English education, was taught French,
music, and, in fact, the general run of what was then known as
"accomplishments", while I, in addition also to a good sound English
education, was taught French, Latin, and mathematics, including
geometry, algebra, and trigonometry.  I was allowed to continue at
school until my fourteenth birthday, when, in consequence of my strong
predilection for the sea as a profession, I was apprenticed by Uncle
Jack to Mr White for a period of seven years.  The first year of my
apprenticeship was spent aboard a collier, trading between the Tyne and
Weymouth; then I was transferred for three years to a Levant trader; and
finally I was promoted--as I considered it--into the _Weymouth_, West
Indiaman, which brings me back to the point from whence this bit of
explanation started.

The modest cottage which I called home was situated in the picturesque
little village of Wyke; I had therefore a walk of some two miles before
me when I left Mr White's office; and as I sped along the road I
beguiled the way by building the most magnificent of castles in the air.
After the brief peace of Amiens, war had again broken out in May of the
preceding year; and everybody was of opinion that the struggle which
then commenced was destined to be of quite exceptional duration and
severity.  Then, again, it was well-known that Spain was only waiting
for a sufficiently plausible pretext to declare war against us; and that
pretext, it was believed, would be found in the capture by a British
squadron of the three Spanish treasure-ships _Medea_, _Clara_, and
_Fama_, news of which had just reached England.  All this was of course
simply disastrous from a commercial point of view; but for navy men and
privateersmen it opened up a long vista of opportunities to win both
distinction and fortune; for it gave us the marine commerce of three
rich and powerful nations--France, Holland, and Spain--as a lawful prey.
Fortunes of almost fabulous magnitude had been made by lucky
privateersmen during the last war; and was there not even then living in
Weymouth the heroic Captain Tizard, who had captured a Spanish Plate
ship and sailed into Plymouth Sound with his prize in tow, and a massive
gold candlestick glittering at each mast-head?  And if others had done
such things, why not we?  I knew Captain Winter for a man who not only
had every detail of his profession at his fingers' ends, but who also
combined the highest courage with the nicest discretion and a subtlety
of resource that had already served us in good stead on more than one
occasion.  Then there was Robert Lovell, our chief mate, late of the
_Weymouth_.  He, like the captain, was a finished seaman; bold as a
lion; and knew exactly how to deal with a crew, encouraging those who
did their duty, while the idle skulkers found in him a terrible enemy.

Our late second mate--a man named Penrose, who had only been one voyage
with us--had not given the skipper satisfaction; he had proved to be
untrustworthy, overbearing, obstinate, unscrupulous, and altogether
objectionable, so I was not at all surprised to find that he had been
passed over; but it was a surprise, and a most agreeable one, too, to
learn that the captain had recommended me in place of him.  It was a
responsible post, more so even than that of second mate in an ordinary
trader; but I had no fear of myself, and was quite determined to leave
nothing undone to justify "the old man's" recommendation.

Thus pondering, I soon found myself at home.  Truth compels me to admit
that I was greatly disappointed with the reception that my good news met
with at the hands of Aunt Sophie and Dora.  Instead of congratulating me
they wept! wept because I was so soon to leave them again, and because
of the dangerous character of my new berth!  They declared their
conviction that I should be killed by the first enemy that we might
happen to fall in with; or, if I were fortunate enough to escape death,
that I should be brought home to them a miserable, helpless cripple,
minus a leg and arm or two, and all that Uncle Jack and I could say
failed to shake that conviction.  Dora even went so far as to endeavour
to coax me to decline the berth; and only desisted upon my
representation that, were I so foolish as to do so, I should inevitably
be snapped up by the press-gang.  That, and the indisputable fact--which
they appeared to have forgotten--that there were at least a dozen men in
Weymouth alone who had gone through the whole of the last war without
receiving so much as a scratch, brought them to regard the matter
somewhat more resignedly; and at length, when they had all but cried
themselves blind, Uncle Jack's cheery and sanguine arguments began to
tell upon them so effectually, that they dried their tears and announced
their determination to hope for the best.

Strange to say, although I had been at home six days, I had hitherto
been so busy, running about with Dora and calling upon a rather numerous
circle of friends that, up to the time of receiving Mr White's offer, I
had not found time to do more than just become aware of the fact that
Mr Joe Martin, our local ship-builder, happened to have a very fine
craft upon the stocks, well advanced toward completion.  Now, however,
that it had come about that I was to serve on board that same craft as
"dickey", I was all impatience to see what she was like; so, the next
day happening to be fine, I set off, the first thing after breakfast,
and, walking in to Weymouth, made my way straight to the shipyard.  As I
reached the gates I caught my first near view of her, and stood
entranced.  She was planked right up to her covering-board, and while
one strong gang of workmen was busy fitting her bulwarks, another gang,
upon stages, was hard at work caulking her, a third gang under her
bottom, having apparently just commenced the operation of coppering.
She was, consequently, not presented to my view in her most attractive
guise; nevertheless, she being entirely out of the water, I was able to
note all her beauties, and I fell in love with her on the spot.  She was
a much bigger craft than I had expected to see; measuring, as I was
presently told, exactly two hundred and sixty-six tons.  She was very
shallow, her load-line being only seven feet above the lowest part of
her unusually deep keel, but this was more than counterbalanced by her
extraordinary breadth of beam.  She had a very long, flat floor, and,
despite her excessive beam, her lines were the finest that I had ever
seen--and that is saying a great deal, for I had seen in the West Indies
some of the most speedy slavers afloat.  Altogether she impressed me as
a vessel likely to prove not only phenomenally fast but also a perfect
sea-boat.  She was pierced for four guns of a side, with two stern-
chasers; and there was a pivot on her forecastle for a long eighteen-
pounder; she would therefore carry an armament formidable enough to
enable us to go anywhere and do anything--in reason.  Having thoroughly
inspected her from outside, and gone down under her bottom, I next made
my way on board, and went down below to have a look at her interior
accommodation.  This I found to be everything that could possibly be
desired; the arrangements had evidently been carefully planned with a
view to securing to the crew the maximum possible amount of comfort; the
cabins were large, and as lofty as the shallow depth of the vessel would
allow; there was every convenience in the state-rooms in the shape of
drawers, lockers, sofas, folding tables, shelves, cupboards, and so on;
and the living quarters were not only light, airy, and comfortable, but
were being finished off with great taste and considerable pretensions to
luxury.  While I was prowling about below I encountered Harry Martin,
the son of the builder, who told me that Mr White, when completing the
purchase of the vessel, had given instructions that no reasonable
expense was to be spared in making the craft as thoroughly suitable as
possible for the service of a privateer.  I spent fully two hours on
board, prying into every nook and cranny of the vessel, and making
myself thoroughly familiar with the whole of her interior arrangements,
and then left, well satisfied with my prospects as second mate of so
smart and comfortable a craft.

As I was crossing Hope Square, toward the foot of Scrambridge Hill, on
my way home again, I met Captain Winter, who, after congratulating me
upon my appointment, informed me that he had secured _carte blanche_
from the owner as to the number of the crew, and that he was determined
to have the vessel strongly manned enough to enable her to keep at sea
even after sending away a prize crew or two.  He was therefore anxious
to secure as many good men as possible, and he suggested that I could
not better employ my spare time than in looking about for such, and
sending to him as many as I could find.  This I did; and as the skipper
and Mr Lovell, the chief mate, were both industriously engaged in the
same manner, we contrived, by the time that the schooner was ready for
sea, to scrape together a crew of ninety men, all told--a large
proportion of whom were Portlanders,--as fine fellows, for the most
part, as ever trod a plank.

The schooner was launched a fortnight from the day upon which I had
first visited her, and as she slid off the ways Joe Martin's youngest
daughter christened her, giving her the name of the _Dolphin_.  She was
launched with her two lower-masts in, and was at once taken up the
harbour and moored opposite Mr White's warehouse, where the work of
rigging her and getting her guns and stores on board was forthwith
commenced.  Thenceforward I was kept busy every day, assisting the
skipper and Mr Lovell in the task of fitting-out; and so diligently did
we work that by mid-day of the 26th of November the _Dolphin_ was all
ataunto and ready for sea.  And a very handsome, rakish, and formidable
craft she looked, as she lay alongside the quay, her enormously long and
delicately-tapering masts towering high above the warehouse roof; her
wide-spreading yards, extending far over the quay, accurately squared;
her standing and running rigging as taut and straight as iron bars; her
ten long nine-pounders grinning beneath her triced-up port-lids; her
brightly-polished brass long eighteen-pounder mounted upon her
forecastle; her spacious deck scraped and scoured until it was as white
as snow; and her new copper and her black topsides gleaming and
shimmering in the gently-rippling tide.  Day after day, as the work of
fitting-out progressed, the quay was crowded with people who came down
to watch our operations and admire the schooner; and so favourable was
the impression she created that, had we been in want of men, we could
have secured volunteers in plenty from among the idlers who spent day
after day alongside, watching us at work, and speculating among
themselves--with their hands in their pockets--as to the measure of
success that our bold venture was likely to meet with.

When we knocked off work at noon, to go to dinner, our work was
completed; and as Mr White had taken care to secure our letters-of-
marque in good time, it was determined that the _Dolphin_ should proceed
to sea that same evening, the crew having already signed articles, and
been warned to hold themselves in readiness for a start at a moment's
notice.  As for me, my traps were already on board, and nicely arranged
in my cabin--my sister Dora having, with her usual tenderness of
affection, insisted upon attending to this matter herself--there was
therefore nothing for me to do but to go home, say good-bye, and rejoin
the ship.  This ceremony I had always found to be a most painful
business; but it was especially so in the present case; for I was not
only once more about to brave the ordinary perils incidental to a
sailor's life, but was, in addition, to be exposed to the still greater
hazards involved in battle with the enemy.  Poor Dora and my aunt were
but too well aware, from the experience of others in the last war, what
these hazards were; they knew how many men had gone out from their
homes, hale, strong, and full of enthusiasm, either to find death in
their first engagement, or to be brought back, sooner or later, maimed,
helpless, and physically ruined for the remainder of their lives; and,
as tender, loving women will, they anticipated one or another of these
evils for me, and were therefore distressed beyond all hope of comfort.
Nor could I shut my eyes to the possibility that their forebodings might
come true, and that I might therefore be looking upon their dear faces
for the last time.  To bid them farewell, therefore, and tear myself
from their clinging arms was a most painful business; and it was not
until I had returned to the _Dolphin_, and was busying myself about the
final preparations for our departure, that I was able in some degree to
recover my equanimity and get rid of the troublesome lump that would
keep rising in my throat.



CHAPTER TWO.

A FOGGY NIGHT IN THE CHANNEL.

The town clock was striking four when, the muster roll having been
called and all hands being found to be on board, we cast off the shore-
fasts and, under the influence of a light, keen, frosty air from the
northward, went gliding down the harbour under mainsail and flying-jib,
fully two hundred people following us along the quay and cheering us as
we went.  The _Dolphin_ was the first privateer that Weymouth had fitted
out since the last declaration of war, and the enthusiasm was intense;
for, in addition to the foregoing circumstance, she was the largest,
most powerful, and most heavily-manned privateer that had ever sailed
out of the port; our full complement numbering no less than ninety, all
told, including a surgeon, every one of whom was either a Weymouth or a
Portland man; consequently there were plenty of friends and relatives to
see us start and bid us God-speed.

Upon clearing the harbour all sail was at once made upon the schooner,
our object being, of course, to reach the open channel as quickly as
possible--when we might hope to fall athwart a prize at any moment,--and
a noble picture we must have made as, edging away to pass out round
Portland, our noble spaces of new, white canvas were expanded one after
the other, until we were under all plain sail, to our royal.

The day had been one of those quiet grey days that occasionally occur
about the latter end of November; the sky a pallid, shapeless canopy of
colourless cloud through which the sun at long intervals became faintly
distinguishable for a few minutes at a time, then vanished again.  There
was little or no wind to speak of, the faint breathing that prevailed
being from the northward.  The air was very keen, the atmosphere so
thick that our horizon was contracted to a limit of scarcely three
miles, and it looked very much as though, with nightfall, we should have
a fog.  The moon was a long time past the full, and the small crescent
to which she had been reduced would not rise until very late; there was
a prospect, therefore, that the coming night would be both dark and
thick; just the kind of night, in fact, when we might hope to blunder up
against a ship belonging to the enemy, and take her by surprise.

Captain Winter's plan was to run across to the French coast, make
Cherbourg, and then cruise to the westward, in the hope that, by so
doing, we should either pick up a French homeward-bound merchantman, or
succeed in recapturing one of the prizes that the French privateers
occasionally captured in the Channel and generally sent into Cherbourg
or Saint Malo.  Should we fail in this, his next project was to cruise
in the chops of the Channel for a fortnight, and then return to Weymouth
to replenish our stores and water; it being hoped that by that time
something definite would be known as to the prospects of war with Spain.

Our course took us close past the easternmost extremity of Portland--the
highest point of the miscalled "island"; and by the time that we had
drifted across the bay--for our progress could scarcely be called more
than drifting--the fog had settled down so thickly that, had we not by
good fortune happened to have heard two men calling to each other
ashore, we should have plumped the schooner on to the rocks at the base
of the cliff before seeing the land.  Even as it was, it was touch and
go with us; for although the helm was put hard a-starboard at the first
sound of the mens' voices, we were so close in that, as the schooner
swerved heavily round, we just grazed a great rock, the head of which
was sticking out of the water.  But we now knew pretty well where we
were, and hauling well off the land, out of further danger, we shaped a
course that would take us well clear of the Shambles, and so stretched
away athwart the Channel.

By the time that we had hauled off the land about a mile it had fallen
as dark as a wolf's mouth, with a fog so thick that, what with it and
the darkness together, it was impossible to see as far as the foremast
from the main rigging, while the wind had fallen so light that our
canvas flapped and rustled with every heave of the schooner upon the
short Channel swell; yet, by heaving the log, we found that the
_Dolphin_ was slinking through the water at the rate of close upon three
knots in the hour, while she was perfectly obedient to her helm.  The
most profound silence prevailed fore and aft; for Captain Winter had
given instructions that the bells were not to be struck, and that all
orders were to be passed quietly along the deck by word of mouth.  The
binnacle light was also carefully masked, and the skylight obscured by a
close-fitting painted canvas cover that had been made for the express
purpose.  There was, therefore, nothing whatever to betray our presence
except the soft rustling of our canvas, and, as the same sounds would
prevail on board any other craft that might happen to drift within our
vicinity, we were in hopes that, by keeping our ears wide open, we might
become aware of their presence before our own was betrayed.  It is true
that these precautions greatly increased the risk of collision with
other vessels; but we trusted that the watchfulness upon which we
depended for the discovery of other craft in our neighbourhood would
suffice to avert any such danger.

In this way the time slowly dragged along until midnight, when I was
called to take charge of the deck.  Upon turning out I found that there
was no improvement in the weather, except that the faint breathing from
the northward had strengthened sufficiently to put our canvas to sleep,
and to increase our speed to a trifle over six knots; but it was just as
dark and thick as ever.  Lovell, whom I was relieving, informed me that
nothing whatever had been seen or heard during his watch; and that now,
by our dead reckoning, we were, as nearly as possible, thirty miles
south-by-west of Portland Bill.  The skipper was still on deck; he had
been up all through the first watch, and announced his intention of
keeping the deck until the weather should clear.  The night was now
bitterly cold and frosty; the rail, the ropes coiled upon the pins, the
companion slide, even the glass of the binnacle, all were thickly coated
with rime, and the decks were slippery with it.

It was close upon two bells; and everything on board the _Dolphin_ was
silent as the grave, no sound being audible save the soft seething of
the water past the bends, and the "gush" of the wave created by the
plunge of the schooner's sharp bows into the hollows of the swell, when
the skipper, who was standing near me on the starboard side of the
binnacle, sucking away at a short pipe, caught hold of my arm and said
in a low tone:

"Listen, Bowen! you have sharp ears.  Tell me if you hear anything
hereaway on the starboard bow?"

I listened intently for some seconds without hearing anything, and was
about to say so, when I thought I caught a faint sound, as of the
creaking of a boom; and at the same instant the two look-out men on the
forecastle, forgetting, in the imminence of the danger, their
instructions to be silent, simultaneously shouted, in sharp incisive
tones:

"Hard a-port!  Hard over! there's a big ship right under our bow!"

There was nothing whatever to be seen from where the skipper and I
stood, but the cry was too imperative to be neglected; I therefore
sprang with one bound to the wheel and assisted the helmsman to put it
hard over, while the skipper rushed forward to see for himself what it
was that was reported to be in our way.

I had but grasped the spokes of the wheel when I heard a cry, close
ahead of us of:

"There's a small craft close aboard of us on our larboard beam, sir!"
followed by a confused rush of feet along a ship's deck, and an order to
"put the helm hard a-starboard, and call the captain!"

These sounds appeared to be so close aboard of us that I involuntarily
braced myself against the expected impact of the two vessels; but the
next moment, through the dense fog, I saw the faint glimmer of a light
opening out clear of our foremast, saw a huge, dark, shapeless blot go
drifting away on to our port bow, and heard a sharp hail from the
stranger.

"Schooner ahoy!  What schooner is that?"

"The _Dolphin_, privateer, of Weymouth.  What ship is that?" answered
the skipper.

"The _Hoogly_, East Indiaman; Calcutta to London.  Can you tell me
whereabouts we are?"

"Thirty-six miles south-by-west of Portland Bill," answered the skipper.

"Much obliged to you, sir," came the faint acknowledgment from the
Indiaman, already out of sight again in the fog.  This was followed by
some further communication--apparently a question, from the tone of
voice,--but the two vessels had by this time drawn so far apart from
each other that the words were unintelligible, and the captain made no
endeavour to reply; coming aft again and resuming his former position
near the binnacle.

He and I were still discussing in low tones our narrow escape from a
disastrous collision, some ten minutes having elapsed since we had lost
sight of the _Hoogly_, when suddenly a faint crash was heard, somewhere
away on our port quarter, immediately followed by shouts and cries, and
a confused popping of pistols, which lasted about a minute; when all
became as suddenly silent again.

"Hillo!" ejaculated the skipper, turning hastily to the binnacle, as the
first sounds were heard, and taking the bearing of them, as nearly as
possible; "there's something wrong with the Indiaman; it sounds very
much as though one of the rascally, prowling, French lugger privateers
had run him aboard and--"

"D'ye hear that rumpus away out on the larboard quarter, sir?" hailed
one of the men on the forecastle.

"Ay, ay, my lad, we hear it; we're not asleep at this end of the ship!"
answered Winter.  "Depend upon it, George," he continued to me, "the
_Hoogly_ has been boarded and carried by a Frenchman.  There!" as the
sounds ceased, "it is all over, whatever it is.  We will haul up a bit,
and see if we can discover what has happened.  Starboard, my man!" to
the man at the wheel; "starboard, and let her come up to full and by.
Hands to the sheets and braces, Mr Bowen.  Brace sharp up on the
larboard tack; and then let the men cast loose the guns and load them.
Call all hands quietly, and let them go to quarters."

The skipper peered into the binnacle again.

"Nor'-east, half east!" he continued, referring to the direction in
which the schooner was now heading: "If we are in luck we ought to come
athwart the Indiaman again in about twenty minutes--that is to say, if
they have hove her to in order to transfer the prisoners."

He pulled out his watch, noted the time, and replaced the watch in his
pocket.  "Just slip for'ard, Mr Bowen, and caution the hands to be as
quiet as possible over their work," said he.  "And give the look-out men
a hint to keep their eyes skinned.  The French have undoubtedly taken
the Indiaman by surprise; now we must see if we cannot give the
Frenchmen a surprise in turn."

I went forward to execute my orders; and upon my return found the
skipper, watch in hand, talking to the chief mate, who, with the rest of
the watch below, had been called.  Meanwhile the crew were at quarters,
and, having cast loose the guns, were busily loading them, the work
being carried on as quietly as possible.  As I rejoined the skipper, the
arms-chest was brought on deck; and in a few minutes each man was armed
with a cutlass and a brace of pistols.

By the time that these preparations were completed, the twenty minutes
allowed us by Captain Winter to reach the scene of the recent
disturbance had elapsed, and our topsail was laid to the mast, the word
being passed along the deck for absolute silence to be maintained, and
for each man to listen with all his ears, and to come aft and report if
he heard any sound.  Then we all fell to listening with bated breath;
but not a sound was to be heard save the gurgle and wash of the water
about the rudder as the schooner rose and fell gently to the lift of the
sea.

In this way a full quarter of an hour was allowed to elapse, at the
expiration of which the skipper remarked:

"Well, it is clear that, wherever the Indiaman may be, she is not
hereabout.  If, as I believe, she has been attacked, and has beaten the
Frenchman off, she has of course proceeded on up channel; but if she has
been taken, her captors have evidently headed at once for some French
port, possibly having been near enough to have heard the hails that
passed between us.  If that was the case they would naturally be anxious
to get away from the neighbourhood of their exploit as quickly as
possible, for fear of being interfered with.  And, assuming this
supposition of mine to be correct, they will be certain to make for the
nearest French port; which, in this case, is Cherbourg.  We will
therefore resume our course toward Cherbourg, when, if we are lucky, we
may get a sight of both the Indiaman and the privateer at daybreak, if
this confounded fog will only lift."

We accordingly squared away once more upon our former course, which we
followed until morning without hearing or seeing anything of the vessels
for which we were looking.

This being our first night out, and my watch being the starboard watch,
I was relieved by Lovell at four o'clock a.m., and under ordinary
circumstances should not have been called until seven bells, or half-
past seven.  But I was not greatly surprised when, on being called, I
found that it was still dark, the time being five bells.  It was Lovell
who called me.

"George!" he exclaimed, shaking me by the shoulder.  "George! rouse and
bitt, my lad; tumble out!  The fog is clearing away, and the cap'n
expects to make out the Indiaman at any moment, so it's `all hands'.
Hurry up, my hearty!"

"Ay, ay," grumbled I, only half awake; "I'll be up in a brace of
shakes."

And as Lovell quitted my cabin and returned to the deck, I rolled out of
my bunk and hurriedly began to dress by the lamp that the chief mate had
been considerate enough to light for my convenience.

When I went on deck I found that, as Lovell had stated, the fog was
clearing away, a few stars showing out here and there overhead; moreover
the wind had hauled round from the eastward and was now blowing a fresh
topgallant breeze that had already raised a short choppy sea, over which
the _Dolphin_ was plunging as lightly and buoyantly as a sea-gull, doing
her seven knots easily, although the skipper had taken all the square
canvas off her, letting her go along under mainsail, foresail, staysail,
and jibs.  There was nothing to be seen, as the fog still lay thick on
the water; but there were indications that it would probably lift before
long, and Captain Winter had therefore ordered all hands to be called,
so that we might be ready for any emergency that might arise.

"Sorry to have been obliged to disturb you, George, before your time,"
said the skipper, as I appeared on deck; "but the fog shows signs of
clearing, and I want to be ready to act decisively the moment that we
catch sight of the Indiaman."

"Quite so, sir," I replied.  "Where do you expect to make her?"

"Ah!" he answered; "that's just the question that has been puzzling me.
We did not see enough of her last night to enable us to judge very
accurately what her rate of sailing may be; but I rather fancy, from the
glimpse we caught of her, that she is something of a slow ship, and, if
so, we may have run past her.  At the same time, if the French have got
hold of her--of which I have very little doubt--they would be pretty
certain to crowd sail upon her in order to get well over toward their
own coast before daylight.  I have shortened sail, as you see, so as to
reduce our own speed as nearly as possible to what I judge hers will be;
but this schooner is a perfect flyer--there's no holding her,--and it
would not surprise me a bit to find that we have shot ahead of the
chase.  I feel more than half inclined to heave-to for a short time; but
Lovell thinks that the Indiaman is still ahead of us somewhere."

"Well," said I, "we ought to see something of her before long, for it is
clearing fast overhead, and it appears to me that, even down here on the
water, I can see further than I could when I first came on deck."

It was evident that the skipper was very fidgety, so I thought I would
not further unsettle him by obtruding my own opinion--which coincided
with his--upon him; therefore, finding him slightly disposed to be
taciturn, I left him, and made the round of the deck, assuring myself
that all hands were on the alert, and ready to go to quarters at any
moment.  I passed forward along the starboard side of the deck, noticing
as I did so that there was a faint lightening in the fog away to
windward, showing that the dawn was approaching; and as I turned on the
forecastle to go aft again, I observed that the fog was thinning away
famously on the weather quarter.  As I walked aft I kept my eyes
intently fixed on this thin patch, which appeared to be a small but
widening break in the curtain of vapour that enveloped us, for it was
evidently drifting along with the wind.  I had reached as far aft as the
main rigging, still staring into the break, when I suddenly halted, for
it struck me that there was a small, faint blotch of darker texture in
the heart of it, away about three points on our weather quarter.  Before
I could be quite certain about the matter, however, the blotch, if such
it was, had become merged and lost again in the thicker body of fog that
followed in the track of the opening.  But while I was still debating
within myself whether I should say anything about what I fancied I had
seen, I became aware of a much larger and darker blot slowly looming up
through the leeward portion of the break, and apparently drifting across
it to windward, though this effect was, I knew, due to the leeward drift
of the break.  This time I felt that there was no mistake about it, and
I accordingly cried:

"Sail ho! a large ship about a point on our weather quarter!"

And I hurried aft to point it out to the skipper before it should vanish
again.  He looked in the direction toward which I was pointing, but was
unable to see anything, his eyes being dazzled in consequence of his
having been staring, in a fit of abstraction, at the illuminated
compass-card in the binnacle.  Neither could Lovell see anything; and
while I was still endeavouring to direct their gaze to it, it
disappeared.

"Are you quite certain that your eyes were not deceiving you, Mr
Bowen?" demanded the skipper rather pettishly.

"Absolutely certain, sir," I replied.  "And what is more, I believe it
to be the Indiaman; for just before sighting her I fancied I saw another
and smaller craft about two points further to windward, and astern of
the bigger ship; and I am now of opinion that what I saw was a lugger."

"Ay," retorted the skipper; "you fancied you saw a lugger; and so,
perhaps, under the circumstances, would naturally fancy also that you
saw the Indiaman.  Did anybody else see anything like a sail astern of
us?" he demanded in a low voice, addressing the crew.

"Yes, sir," answered a voice from the forecastle.  "I looked directly
that I heard Mr Bowen sing out, and I fancied that I saw something
loomin' up dark through the fog on the weather quarter."

"Another fancy!" ejaculated the skipper.  "However," he continued, "you
may be right, Mr Bowen, after all.  How far do you suppose the stranger
to have been away from us?"

"Probably a matter of three miles or thereabout," I answered.  "The
smaller craft would perhaps be a mile, or a mile and a half astern of
her."

"Then," said the skipper, "we will haul the fore-sheet to windward, let
our jib-sheets flow, and wait a quarter of an hour to see what comes of
it.  If you are correct in your surmise, Mr Bowen, we ought to see
something of these strangers of yours by that time."

"And I have no doubt we shall, sir," answered I.  "And if I may be
allowed to offer a suggestion, it is that we should bring the schooner
to the wind, so that she may eat out to windward of the Indiaman, all
ready for bearing up and running her aboard when she heaves in sight."

"A very good idea, Mr Bowen! we will do so," answered the skipper.

The main- and fore-sheets were accordingly flattened in, when the
schooner luffed up to about south-east, and slowly forged to windward,
athwart what I believed to be the track of the Indiaman.

Meanwhile, the dawn was coming slowly, while the fog was gradually
thinning away under the influence of the freshening breeze, so that we
were by this time able to distinguish the heads of the breaking waves at
a distance of fully half a mile.  As for me, I kept my eyes intently
fixed upon the grey cloud of vapour that went drifting away to leeward
past our weather quarter; and presently, when we had been hove-to about
ten minutes, I caught sight of a thickening in the fog thereaway that,
even as I looked, began to grow darker and assume a definite shape.

"There she is, sir!"  I exclaimed, pointing out the darkening blot to
the skipper; and by the time that he had found it, that same blot had
strengthened into the misty outline of a large ship under studding-
sails, running before the wind, and steering a course that would bring
her diagonally athwart our stern, and within biscuit-toss of our lee
quarter.

"Ay! there she is, sure enough!" responded the skipper eagerly.  "Now,"
he continued, "the next thing is to find out whether she is the Indiaman
or not, without arousing the suspicions of those aboard her.  Haul aft
your lee-jib and fore-sheets, there, my lads; we must not present the
appearance of lying in wait for her.  Luff all you can without shaking,"
to the man at the wheel; "I do not want the schooner to move fast
through the water.  We must let yonder ship pass near enough to us, if
possible, to be able to read the name on her stern."

"I do not think there is much doubt about her being the Indiaman, sir,"
said I; "for if you will look out here, broad on our weather quarter,
you will see what I take to be the lugger that has captured her."

"Ay, true enough, I do see something!  You have sharp eyes, George, and
no mistake," answered the skipper.  "Yes, there certainly is something
there; and, as you say, it looks uncommonly like a lugger!  Well, she is
a good two miles off.  We shall have time to run the big fellow aboard
and take her before that lugger is near enough to trouble us.  Stand by,
there, some of you, to jump aloft and loose the topsail when I give the
word.  Hillo, what is that?  A gun from the lugger, by the hookey!  They
have made us out, and don't like the look of us, apparently, so they
have fired a gun to wake up the people aboard the prize.  Ha! now they
have seen us aboard the big ship too, and are taking in their stunsails,
to haul to the wind, I suppose.  But you are too late, my hearties!"
apostrophising the ship, now less than a cable's length from us; "you
will be to leeward of us in another two minutes.  Boy, bring me my
glass.  You will find it slung in beckets in the companion."

On came the ship, near enough now for us to see that she was undoubtedly
an Indiaman, and as undoubtedly British.  The people on board her were
evidently in a great flusteration, for they had started to take in all
the studding-sails at once, and a pretty mess they were making of the
job, most of the studding-sails having blown forward over the fore side
of the booms.  While they were still battling with the unruly canvas the
ship swept, yawing wildly, close past our lee quarter; so close, indeed,
that no glasses were required, for even in the faint light of the
growing dawn it was possible to read with the unaided eye the gilt
lettering on her stern--"_Hoogly, London_."



CHAPTER THREE.

OUR FIRST SUCCESS.

"That settles the matter for good and all!" exclaimed the skipper, now
in rare good-humour, as he pointed to the Indiaman's stern.  "Up with
your helm, my man," to the man at the wheel; "let her go broad off.  We
will pass under the Indiaman's stern, and board her from to leeward.
Away aloft there and let fall the topsail, some of you.  Mr Lovell, you
will take twenty men--I don't suppose there are above forty Frenchmen
aboard that craft--and board by the main and mizzen chains as we touch.
You will have to be smart about it, as I do not want to remain
alongside, grinding the schooner's side to pieces, a moment longer than
is absolutely necessary.  Take the ship; and, as soon as you have
secured possession and driven the prize crew below, haul your wind,
keeping us between you and the lugger.  The moment that you and your
party are aboard I shall haul off; and you may leave me to deal with
that fellow to windward.  You will make the best of your way to
Weymouth, of course.  See that your men freshen the priming of their
pistols at once; and then station them, half by the main rigging, and
half by the fore, ready to jump at the word."

"Ay, ay, sir!" responded Lovell, as he hastened away to select his
twenty men.  The topsail was by this time sheeted home, and the men were
mast-heading the yard.  The skipper sprang upon the rail, steadying
himself by the weather main swifter, to con our schooner alongside; and
I, in obedience to an order from him, went forward and gave the word for
those who were not of the boarding-party to arm themselves with muskets,
and pick off any of the Frenchmen who might show their heads above the
rail.

It took us less than ten minutes to close with the Indiaman; and as we
ranged up on her lee quarter and swept alongside a party of some ten or
a dozen jabbering and gesticulating Frenchmen jumped up on her poop and
saluted us with an irregular fire of musketry, which, however, did no
harm; and upon our people returning the fire three of the Frenchmen
fell, while the rest tumbled off the poop in such a desperate hurry that
our fellows were fairly convulsed with laughter.  The skipper conned us
alongside in such a masterly style that I do not believe the hulls of
the two vessels actually touched at all--at least, I was unconscious of
any shock--yet we were close enough for the two boarding-parties to
spring with ease and certainty from our rigging into the Indiaman's
channels; and the next moment, as they tumbled in over the ship's rail,
our helm was eased up, and the vessels sheered apart, without having
carried away so much as a rope-yarn.  There was a tremendous scuffle on
the Indiaman's deck for perhaps half a minute, with a great popping of
pistols, the sound of heavy blows, cheers from our lads, loud
execrations on the part of the Frenchmen, a shriek or two of pain at
some well-directed cut or thrust, then a rush forward, during which we
remained some twenty fathoms to leeward of the Indiaman, ready to sheer
alongside again and render assistance if necessary; and then Lovell
sprang up on the poop and hailed that he had secured possession of the
ship, and would haul his wind as soon as he could get in the studding-
sails.  Thereupon our helm was put hard up, and we wore short round,
bracing sharp up on the starboard tack to intercept the lugger, which
craft was now foaming along under all the canvas that she could spread.

She was a big lump of a craft, of her class, measuring, according to my
estimation, fully a hundred and fifty tons; and she appeared to be very
fast.  It was light enough by this time, what with the increasing
daylight and the clearing away of the fog, for us to see that she
mounted four guns--probably six-pounders--of a side, and there was
something very like a long nine-pounder covered over by a tarpaulin,
between her fore and mainmasts.  She was well to windward of us, and
presently crossed our bows at a distance of about a mile.  We, of
course, at once tacked, and, letting the schooner go along clean full,
so as to head off the lugger, set our topgallant-sail and small gaff-
topsail.

We rapidly neared each other, the _Dolphin_ gradually edging away as the
lugger fore-reached upon us, until only half a mile of water divided the
two craft.  Then we saw that her people were busy with the mysterious
object between her masts, and presently, sure enough, a long nine-
pounder, mounted upon a pivot, stood revealed.  Five minutes later they
tried a shot at us from this same piece--the ball from which struck the
water some five fathoms astern of us,--and at the same time hoisted the
French tricolour.  We responded by running our ensign up to the gaff,
but reserved our fire for a while, the skipper having as yet had no
opportunity of finding out our lads' capabilities with the guns.  At
length, however, having edged up to within a quarter of a mile of the
lugger, and having conclusively demonstrated our superiority of sailing,
Captain Winter gave orders that our larboard broadside should be
carefully levelled and trained upon the lugger's mainmast; and while
this was being done she fired her starboard broadside at us, one of the
shot from which passed through our mainsail, while another struck our
fore-topmast about a foot above the topsail-halliard sheave-hole,
bringing down the upper part of the spar and the topgallant-sail.

The Frenchmen's cheers at this success were still floating down to us,
when, having personally supervised the levelling and training of our
guns, I gave the order to fire.  Sharp at the word, our broadside rang
out; and as the smoke blew over us and away to leeward the lugger's
mainmast was seen to suddenly double up, as it were, in the middle, the
upper portion toppling over to leeward and carrying the sail with it
into the water, while the foresail began to flap furiously in the wind,
the sheet having been shot away.

"Hurrah, men! capitally done!" shouted the skipper; "you have her now,"
as the lugger, under her mizzen only, shot up into the wind, plunging
heavily.  "Ready about! and stand by to rake her with your starboard
broadside as we cross her stern.  Helm's a-lee!  Load your port guns
again as smartly as you please, my lads.  Topsail haul!  Stand by, the
starboard battery, and give it her as your guns are brought to bear!
Away aloft there, a couple of hands, and clear the wreck of the
topgallant-mast!"

The _Dolphin_, tacking as fast as the men could haul round the yards,
without losing headway for an instant, went round like a top, and in
less than half a minute was crossing the lugger's stern.  There was
tremendous confusion on board, her crew, to the number of some thirty or
forty, rushing about her decks,--as we could now plainly see,--
apparently undecided what to do next.  At the proper moment our
starboard broadside was fired, and the great white, jagged patch that
instantly afterwards appeared in the lugger's transom showed that pretty
nearly, if not quite all, the shot had taken effect.

"Well aimed, men!" cried the skipper in an ecstasy of delight.  "That is
the way to bring them to their senses.  Ready about again!  And stand by
to give them your port broadside.  Helm's a-lee!"

Round swept the _Dolphin_ again, and presently we were once more
crossing the stern of the lugger, the confusion on board being, as it
seemed, greater than ever.  We were by this time within a quarter of a
mile of our antagonist, and again our broadside, discharged at precisely
the right moment, told with terrible effect on board the lugger, not
only raking her from stem to stern, but also bringing down her fore and
mizzen-masts.  And all this time they had not replied to our fire with a
single gun.

Standing on for a distance of about a cable's length, the _Dolphin_
again tacked, this time fetching far enough to windward to have enabled
us to cross the lugger's bows had we desired to do so.  Instead of that,
however, Captain Winter gave orders to keep away and pass close under
her stern, the starboard broadside being all ready to pour into her if
need were.  Captain Winter's orders were, however, not to fire until he
gave the word.  Reaching along on an easy bowline, we were soon on the
lugger's starboard quarter, and within biscuit-toss of the vessel, when
the skipper ordered the topsail to be laid aback, and as, with
diminished way, we drifted fair athwart the lugger's stern, in a
position admirably adapted for raking her from end to end, he sprang
into the starboard main rigging, and hailed in French, asking whether
they surrendered.  A man, who looked like the captain, standing near the
deserted wheel, looked at us intently for a few seconds, and then,
observing that we were all ready to give him our starboard broadside,
answered in the affirmative; whereupon our people, several of whom had a
smattering of French, gave three hearty cheers as they dropped the
lanyards of their locks to the deck, and laid down their rammers,
sponges, and hand-spikes.

"Take the starboard cutter, Mr Bowen, and ten men, and go on board to
take possession," said the skipper.  "Cut away the wreckage as soon as
you have secured the crew below, and then send the boat back with a
couple of hands, and be ready to receive a tow-line from us.  We shall
have to take you in tow, as I see that the Indiaman is now on a wind;
and I have no fancy for leaving either her or you to make your way into
port unprotected.  As soon as you are fast to us, set your men to work
to get up jury-masts, if you find that there are any spars aboard
suitable for the purpose.  There is a fine breeze blowing now, and if we
have luck we ought to get into harbour to-night, prizes and all."

"Ay, ay, sir," answered I.  "The carpenter had better come with us, had
he not?  I expect we shall want his help in rigging our jury-masts."

"Yes, certainly," assented the skipper; "take him by all means."

"Thank you, sir," said I as I turned away.  "Now then," I continued,
"ten of you into the starboard cutter, lads, as quick as you like.  And
take your cutlasses and pistols with you.  Come along, Chips, my man;
get your tools, and tumble them into the boat."

Ten minutes later we were on board the lugger, which proved to be the
_Belle Jeannette_, of Saint Malo, and a very fine craft she was, as we
saw, when we stood upon her broad, roomy deck.  She mounted nine guns,
eight of them being long sixes, while the ninth was the long nine-
pounder between the fore and mainmast.  I was astonished to see what
havoc our shot had wrought, the deck and bulwarks being broadly streaked
and splashed with blood, while each gun had its own little group of two
or three killed and wounded lying about it.  All three of her masts had
been shot away, as already stated; and, in addition to this, her stern
transom was regularly torn to pieces, one of the jagged and splintered
holes being quite large enough for me to have passed through it had I
been so minded.  Three spokes of the wheel had been shot away, and it
was a wonder to me, as I marked the path of our shot along the torn and
splintered deck, that the whole concern had not been destroyed.  The
companion was badly damaged and started; and as for the cabin skylight,
there was very little of it left.

The crew--the few of them who could still stand, that is to say--had
thrown down their arms and gone forward on to the forecastle upon
hearing their skipper state that he surrendered, and there we found them
when we boarded our prize.  The skipper himself--a rather fine-looking
man, some thirty-five years of age, with piercing black eyes, curly
black hair and beard, and large gold ear-rings in his ears--had, of
course, remained aft; and when I sprang over the bulwarks, in on deck,
he advanced toward me, and handing me his sheathed sword, remarked
rather bitterly:

"Accept my sword, monsieur, and with it my congratulations upon your
good fortune in having secured two such valuable prizes.  The Indiaman
herself is not to be despised, but I was a fool not to let her go when I
saw that her capture was inevitable.  I believe we could have escaped
you had we hauled our wind when we first made you out; but, as it is, I
have lost not only my prize but also my ship and the chest of specie
which we took the precaution of removing from the Indiaman last night.
You are certain to find it, as it is lying beneath the table in my
cabin, so I may as well make a virtue of necessity and tell you of it at
once.  Perhaps, under the circumstances, monsieur will be generous
enough to be content with the treasure, and allow me to retain my
lugger, which represents all that I possess in the world?"

"And thus restore to you the power to inflict further injury upon our
commerce?  I am afraid not, monsieur," answered I.  "Had you been a mere
harmless trader, it might possibly have been different; but, as it is,
the proposal is--pardon me for saying so--preposterous."

"As monsieur pleases, of course.  But it will be my ruin," remarked the
man gloomily.  "With monsieur's permission, then, I will retire to my
cabin."  And he turned away as though to go below.

"Pardon me, monsieur," said I, hastily interposing between him and the
companion; "I am afraid that my duty necessitates my requesting that
monsieur will be so obliging as to remain on deck for the present."

"Then take that, curse you!" ejaculated he, whipping a big, ugly knife
out of his bosom, and striking savagely at my heart with it.
Fortunately the sudden glitter in his eyes warned me, and I succeeded in
catching his upraised arm in my left hand, with which I gripped his
wrist so strongly that he was perforce obliged to drop the knife to the
deck or submit to have his wrist broken.  Kicking the weapon overboard,
through an open port close at hand, I called to one of my men to clap a
lashing round the hands and feet of my antagonist, and then went forward
to superintend the securing of the remainder of our prisoners.  There
were only fourteen of them uninjured, or whose wounds were so slight as
to leave them capable of doing any mischief, and these we drove down
into the hold, where, finding plenty of irons, we effectually secured
them.

By the time that this was done, the wreck of the masts cut away, and the
sails--which had been towing overboard--secured, the _Dolphin_ was ready
to pass a towrope on board us.  This we at once took, securing the end
to the windlass bitts, when the schooner filled away, with the lugger in
tow, and stood after the Indiaman, which was by this time a couple of
miles to windward of us, heading to the northward on an easy bowline, on
the starboard tack.  Russell, the _Dolphin's_ surgeon, came aboard us
about the same time as the tow-line, and while he busied himself in
attending to the hurts of the Frenchmen, we went to work to rig up a set
of jury-masts--suitable spars for which we were lucky enough to find
aboard the lugger--and, by dint of hard work, we contrived to get three
spars on end,--securely lashed to the stumps of the masts, and well
stayed,--by dinner-time, and by four bells that same afternoon we had
the lugger under her own canvas once more, when we cast adrift from the
_Dolphin_, it being found that, even under jury-masts, the _Belle
Jeannette_ was quite capable of holding her own with the Indiaman in the
moderate weather then prevailing.  Long before this, however, I had
found an opportunity to go below and have a look at the treasure-chest,
which I had found in the position indicated by the French skipper.  It
was an unexpectedly bulky affair; so much so, indeed, that I thought the
safest place for it would be down in the _Dolphin's_ run, and there it
was soon safely stowed, after I had gone on board the schooner to report
to Captain Winter the great value of our prize.  It afterwards turned
out that this chest contained no less than thirty thousand pounds in
specie; so I was right in considering it worth taking care of.



CHAPTER FOUR.

ANOTHER FIGHT, AND ANOTHER PRIZE.

The weather had been clearing all day, and when, about six bells that
afternoon, we made the high land of Portland, the sky was without a
cloud, the atmosphere clear and bright, and the sun was shining as
brilliantly as though it had been midsummer, quite taking the keen edge
off the frosty air.  There was not a vessel in sight in any direction,
which was rather a relief to us; for, situated as we were then, it would
have been difficult to say whether the sight of a friend or of an enemy
would have excited the most uneasiness in our breasts.  A friend would
almost certainly have been a man-o'-war; and although our papers were
nominally a protection of our crew against impressment, we were fully
aware that, as a matter of fact, they were nothing of the sort, the
captains of our men-o'-war impressing almost as freely from a privateer
as from an ordinary merchantman.  Now, our men were, so far as we had
had an opportunity of proving them, first-rate fellows, with scarcely a
single exception, we were therefore most anxious not to lose any of
them; and were consequently the reverse of desirous to meet with one of
our own ships of war.  On the other hand, we were by this time so close
in with the English coast that, if we happened to encounter an enemy, it
would certainly be a prowling privateer--like ourselves--heavily enough
armed and manned to admit of their venturing, without much risk, over to
our side of the Channel, on the look-out for homeward-bound British
ships.  To encounter such a customer as this would mean plenty of hard
knocks, without very much profit, and with just the chance of losing one
or the other of our prizes.  We were, therefore, heartily thankful to
find a clear horizon all round us when the fog cleared away.  We were
destined, however, to have another bout with a Frenchman before long, as
will presently appear.

We had made the high land of Portland about half an hour when the sounds
of distant firing were faintly borne to our ears; and shortly afterwards
two craft, a cutter and a brig--the latter evidently in chase of the
former--hove into view, broad on our weather-bow.  The firing was not
very heavy, it is true, but it was briskly maintained; and as they came
sweeping rapidly down toward us it became apparent that the two craft
were exchanging shots from their bow and stern-chasers respectively.
The cutter was flying the British ensign, while the brig sported the
tricolour; and, the two vessels being dead before the wind, the brig
carrying studding-sails on both sides, the Frenchman seemed to be
getting rather the best of it, overhauling the cutter slowly but surely.
As soon as this was seen, the _Dolphin_ hove-to and put ten more men on
board the _Belle Jeannette_, with orders to me to close with the
Indiaman, and to clear for action, both which orders I obeyed without
loss of time.  And, while doing so, the _Dolphin_ and ourselves hoisted
British colours, as a hint to the brig that if she dared to meddle with
us we were quite ready for her.  The cutter and the brig happened to be
steering a course that would bring them close aboard of our little
squadron, and when the Frenchman saw the colour of our bunting he began
at once to shorten sail by taking in his studding-sails, preparatory, as
we supposed, to hauling his wind out of so perilous a neighbourhood.

But in supposing thus we were mistaken; the fellow evidently at once hit
off our respective characters to a T; he saw that the lugger--under
jury-masts and bearing other unmistakable signs of having been very
recently in action--was a prize; no doubt judged the Indiaman to be a
recapture; and--perhaps believing that, with these two prizes, the
schooner would be very short-handed--quickly made up his mind that
either of the three would be more valuable than the cutter to him.  At
all events he shortened sail in a most determined and workmanlike
manner, threw open all his ports, and, slightly shifting his helm, made
as though he would slip in between the _Dolphin_ and the Indiaman.
Captain Winter, however, would not have it so; as the Frenchman luffed,
the _Dolphin_ edged away, until both vessels were heading well in for
the West Bay, athwart the Indiaman's hawse, and running upon lines so
rapidly converging that, within ten minutes of the declaration of the
Frenchman's intentions, the brig and the schooner were within biscuit-
toss of each other.  The brig mounted six guns of a side against the
_Dolphin's_ five; but this disparity was altogether too trifling a
matter for our skipper to take any notice of, and accordingly, when the
two vessels had neared each other to within about twenty fathoms, the
Frenchmen showing signs of an intention to run the schooner on board,
Captain Winter poured in his starboard broadside, and at the same time
edged away just sufficiently to keep a few fathoms of water between
himself and the brig.  The broadside was promptly returned, and in
another minute the two vessels were at it, hammer and tongs, yard-arm to
yard-arm, and running almost dead away before the wind.

Meanwhile, having sent a hand aloft to take a look round, and having
thus ascertained that there was nothing else in sight to interfere with
us, I came to the conclusion that the Indiaman might very well take care
of herself for half an hour or so; and, accordingly, we in the lugger at
once bore up to support the schooner.  Up to the time of encountering
the Frenchman we had been sailing about a quarter of a mile to leeward
of the Indiaman, while the _Dolphin_ had been jogging along about the
same distance to windward of the big ship; our positions, therefore,
were such that we in the lugger had only to put up our helm a couple of
spokes or so to enable us to converge upon the two combatants, which we
did.  By the time of our arrival upon the scene the fight was raging so
hotly, and both craft were so completely enveloped in smoke that neither
party was aware of our presence; I therefore steered so as to just shave
clear of the _Dolphin's_ stern; and, having done so, our men
deliberately fired each of the four long sixes in our larboard broadside
slap into the stern of the brig, raking her fore-and-aft.  Then, passing
out clear of her, we tacked the instant that we had room, and, passing
close under her stern again, gave her in like fashion the contents of
our starboard broadside.  This time the Frenchmen were ready for us, and
returned our fire with their two stern-chasers, both shot passing
through our mainsail without doing any further damage.  Again we tacked;
and this time I gave orders to put in a charge of grape on top of each
round shot, which we rattled into the stern of the Frenchman at a
distance of not more than three or four fathoms.  Our shot must have
wrought terrible execution; for after each discharge we could hear the
shrieks and groans of the wounded even through the crash of the two
other vessels' broadsides.  This time they only gave us one gun in
exchange for our four, the shot passing in through our port bulwarks and
out through the starboard, killing a man on its way.  Our shot, however,
had killed the brig's helmsman, and almost immediately afterwards the
vessel broached-to, her foremast going over the bows as she did so.
This was enough for them; they received another broadside from the
_Dolphin_, and then, just as we were in stays, preparatory to passing
athwart their stern and raking them again, a man ran aft and hauled down
their flag, at the same time crying out that they surrendered.

The firing on both sides at once ceased, the smoke drifted away to
leeward, and we were able to see around us once more, as well as to note
the condition of the combatants after our brief but spirited engagement.
The cutter had seized the opportunity to make good her escape, and was
now more than two miles to leeward, running before the wind to the
westward on her original course.  The brig--which proved to be the
_Etoile du Nord_, of Dunkirk--had, as already stated, lost her foremast,
her bulwarks were riddled with shot-holes, and her rigging badly cut up.
The _Dolphin_ also had suffered severely from the fire of her
antagonist, her starboard bulwarks being almost destroyed, her rigging
showing a good many loose ropes'-ends floating in the wind, and her
main-boom so severely wounded that it parted in two when her helm was
put down to bring her to the wind and heave her to.  As for us, the
damage that we had received from the brig's fire was so trifling as to
be not worth mentioning.

I knew, of course, that after so determined a fight the services of our
surgeon would be in urgent request on board both the principal
combatants; so, as he was aboard the lugger, I ran down close under the
_Dolphin's_ lee and, having hove-to, lowered a boat and put the medico
on board the schooner, going with him myself to see whether I could be
of any service.  The deck of the schooner bore eloquent testimony to the
sharpness of the recent conflict, several dead and wounded men lying
about the guns in little pools of blood, while the torn and splintered
woodwork that met one's view on every side was grimly suggestive of the
pandemonium that had raged there a few minutes previously.  Captain
Winter was one of the wounded, a splinter having torn a large piece of
skin from his forehead, laying bare the skull over his right eye; but
the gallant old fellow had replaced the skin as well as he could, lashed
up the wound with his silk neckerchief, using his pocket handkerchief
under it as a pad, and was attending to his duty as coolly as though he
had escaped untouched.  He instructed me to go on board the brig with
ten men, to take possession, leaving the carpenter in charge of the
lugger, and at the same time signalled the Indiaman--which had hove-to
some two miles to windward--to close.

The new prize was, as may be supposed, terribly knocked about; out of a
crew of eighty-six men and boys she had no less than nineteen killed--
the captain among them--and forty-three wounded; while, in addition to
the damage which had been noticeable before going on board her, I found
that two of her guns had been dismounted, most probably by the lugger's
raking broadsides.  Fortunately, her hull was quite uninjured, the whole
of the damage done being to the upper works.  Our first task was to
clear away the wreck of the foremast, the skipper hailing me soon after
I had boarded to say that he intended the Indiaman to take us in tow.
The wreck was soon cut away, and just as it was falling dark we got our
tow-line aboard the Indiaman, and proceeded, the uninjured Frenchmen
having meanwhile requested permission to attend to their wounded fellow-
prisoners and make them comfortable below.

More or less disabled as we all were, with the exception of the
Indiaman, it took us until past midnight to reach Weymouth roadstead,
where we anchored for the night, without communicating with the shore;
no one in the town, therefore, was aware of our quick return to port,
and our brilliant success, until the following morning; and as for Mr
Peter White, our owner, the first intimation that he had of the affair
was while he was dressing; when his servant knocked at his door to say
that Captain Winter had returned with three prizes, and was waiting
below to see him.  The old gentleman, I was afterwards told, was so
excited at the good news that he would not wait to dress, but descended
to the parlour, where the skipper awaited him, in his dressing-gown.
The old boy was almost overwhelmed at the news of his good fortune;
insisted that Captain Winter should stay to breakfast with him; and
afterwards, despite the cold weather, came off to the roadstead and
visited each of the prizes in turn.  It was as well, perhaps, that he
did so, as there was a considerable amount of business to be transacted
in connection with the recapture of the _Hoogly_, the captain of which
was anxious to resume his voyage up channel as soon as possible.  This
important matter was arranged by noon; and about two o'clock, the wind
having hauled round from the southward, the Indiaman weighed and
proceeded, the passengers on board having meanwhile subscribed a purse
of two hundred and thirty guineas for the officers and crew of the
_Dolphin_, in recognition of what they were complimentary enough to term
our "gallantry" in the recapture of the ship.  This nice little sum was,
however, only the first instalment of what was to come; there was the
salvage of the ship to follow: and over and above that I may mention
that the underwriters voted a sum of five hundred guineas to us; while
the Patriotic Fund Committee awarded the skipper a sword of the value of
one hundred guineas, and to me a sword of half that value, for our fight
with and capture of the two privateers, poor Lovell being left out in
the cold in consequence of his having been prize-master of the _Hoogly_,
and having therefore taken no part in either of the engagements.  He got
his reward, however, in another way; for the _Etoile du Nord_ turned out
to be such a very fine vessel, quite new and wonderfully fast, that Mr
White purchased her on his own account, rechristening her the _North
Star_, and put Lovell in command.  He was fairly successful in her, I
afterwards heard, but not nearly to such an extent as he ought to have
been with so fine a vessel under him.  He declared that luck was always
against him.  As for me, Mr White was so pleased with the report of my
conduct which Captain Winter had given him that, as soon as ever the
purchase of the _Etoile du Nord_ had been effected, and Lovell provided
for, he offered me the berth of chief mate of the _Dolphin_, which berth
I promptly and thankfully accepted.  As for the _Belle Jeannette_, she,
too, was sold, fetching a very good price, and before we left port again
we had divided our prize-money, my share of which amounted to the very
respectable sum of two thousand six hundred and odd pounds.

The _Dolphin_ had received so severe a mauling in her fight with the
French privateer brig that, although the utmost despatch was used in
repairing and refitting her, it was not until the 24th of December that
she was again ready for sea, by which time news had reached us of the
declaration of war by Spain against Great Britain.  This last
circumstance, of course, threw all hands of us into a fever of
impatience to get to sea again, in order that we might have an early
opportunity of picking up a rich Spanish prize; but when Christmas-eve
arrived, finding us still in harbour, our owner was generous enough to
say that we might, if we pleased, defer our sailing until the day after
Christmas-day, in order that the crew might have the opportunity to
spend Christmas at home, which opportunity we thankfully made the most
of.  But all hands were on board by noon of the 26th, when we cast off
and stood out of the harbour once more before a fresh south-westerly
breeze, the day being, for a wonder--with the wind in a wet quarter--
brilliantly fine, and as mild as a day in early autumn; a circumstance
which most of our lads were willing to accept as the omen of a
prosperous cruise.

Captain Winter's object was to reach the French coast as soon as
possible, and then to work along it to the westward, right round to the
Spanish coast, and thence as far as Gibraltar, and perhaps into the
Mediterranean, hoping that somewhere on the way we might pick up
something worth having, or at least obtain information relating to a
homeward or outward-bound convoy; upon clearing Portland, therefore, we
stood across the Channel, on a taut bowline, on the starboard tack,
making Cape de la Hague, well on our lee bow, next morning at daybreak.
We then shortened sail to our fore-and-aft canvas only, and, taking in
our gaff-topsail, held on as we were going, with the French coast close
aboard, to leeward, until we reached Granville, when, having seen
nothing worthy of our attention, we tacked to the westward, and
eventually found ourselves off Cape Frehel, the easternmost extremity of
Saint Brieuc Bay.  This was our third day out; we had seen nothing, and
the men, who appeared to think, from our past experience, that we ought
to take at least one prize every day, were beginning to grumble at our
ill-luck.  Great, therefore, was their enthusiasm when, on the following
day,--the breeze being fresh at about north-north-west, and the time
about five bells in the forenoon watch,--a large ship was seen to emerge
from behind Chien Point, then about eight miles distant, a couple of
points on our lee bow.  She was coming along under larboard studding-
sails.  It was my watch on deck, and upon the ship being reported to me
I took the glass, and at once went up to the fore-cross-trees to get a
better look at her.  So far as I could make out she was full-rigged; she
floated very deep in the water; and the exceeding whiteness of her sails
caused me to suspect that she was homeward-bound from a long voyage.
She had somewhat the look of a Dutchman, to my eye, and if so she would
probably afford very respectable pickings to a crew of hard-working
privateersmen like ourselves.  When first seen she was steering a course
that would lead her about mid-way between the islands of Jersey and
Guernsey; but before I returned to the deck it seemed to me that she had
hauled up a point or two, and had braced her yards correspondingly
further forward.  Our game, of course, was to get between her and the
land, if possible, before declaring ourselves, so that, if she happened
to be what I suspected, she might be prevented from running in and
taking shelter under the guns of one of the numerous batteries which the
French had thrown up all along the coast, to cut her out from which
might involve us in a heavy loss of men.  I therefore gave no order to
make sail, or to alter our course, but at once went down below to the
skipper, who was lying down, his wounded head still troubling him a good
deal, and reported the stranger to him.  He immediately followed me on
deck at the news, and took a good long look at the ship through the
telescope; and while he was doing so she took in her studding-sails and
hauled her wind.

"Ah!" remarked the skipper; "they have made us out, and evidently don't
quite like our looks.  I suppose her captain thinks that, having hauled
his wind, we shall now make sail in chase of him if we happen to be an
enemy.  But I know a trick worth two of that.  You did quite right, Mr
Bowen, not to shift your helm.  Let him stand on another three miles as
he is going, and then we will show him who and what we are.  Just so;
there goes his bunting--Dutch, as you thought.  He is beginning to feel
a little anxious.  Perhaps it would ease his mind a bit if you were to
run the tricolour up to our gaff-end, Mr Bowen."

I did so, and we kept it flying for the next half-hour, by which time
the Dutchman had been brought well out on our weather beam, about six
miles distant, and his retreat cut off.  We then hauled down the French
flag and made sail, still, however, holding on upon the same tack.  By
the time that we had got our topsail, topgallant-sail, flying-jib, and
small gaff-topsail set the stranger was about two points abaft our
weather beam, and we at once tacked in chase.  This was the signal for
an immediate display of confusion on board the Dutchman; which ship
immediately set her royals and flying-jib, and, when she found that that
would not do, bearing away sufficiently to permit of her setting all her
larboard studding-sails again.  Of course, as soon as she bore away we
bore away too, steering such a course as would enable us to gradually
converge upon her.

But we had hardly been in chase half an hour when another large ship
appeared in sight ahead, steering toward us; and, approaching each other
rapidly, as we were, another quarter of an hour sufficed us to discover
that she was a frigate, and undoubtedly French.  We stood on, however, a
few minutes longer, trying to devise some scheme for slipping past her
without being brought to, but it evidently would not do; her people
suspected us, and clearly intended to have a nearer look at us if they
could; so, as she was altogether too big a craft for us to tackle, we
were reluctantly compelled to abandon the chase, and heave about to
ensure our own escape.  And now it became our turn to play the part of
the pursued; for as we went in stays the frigate fired a gun, to
ascertain whether we were within range, most probably, hoisted her
ensign, and made all sail in chase.  The shot--a twelve-pounder, we
judged it to be by the sound of the gun--fell short; yet at the same
time it came near enough to satisfy us that we had not turned tail a
moment too soon.

Captain Winter at once jammed the schooner close upon a wind, the vessel
heading up about west-north-west for the chops of the Channel, in the
hope of both out-weathering and out-sailing the frigate.  But the wind
had shown a disposition to freshen all day, and was by this time piping
up so spitefully that we had been obliged to furl our topgallant-sail
and haul down our flying-jib as soon as we hauled our wind; moreover
there was a nasty, short jump of a sea on, into which the _Dolphin_
plunged to her knight-heads every time.  The weather was, therefore, all
in the frigate's favour, and very soon, to our extreme annoyance, we
discovered that the Frenchman was slowly but surely gaining upon us; for
when the frigate had been in chase about half an hour, she fired another
gun, the shot from which reached within twenty fathoms of us, and it was
capitally aimed, too.

"We must get the topgallant-sail and flying-jib on her again, Mr Bowen,
and shift our small gaff-topsail for the big one.  This will never do;
we shall be within range in another half-hour; and then, if that fellow
happens to wing us, we shall be done for!"

"The sticks will never bear it, sir," answered I.  "Look at our topmasts
now; they are bending like fishing-rods as it is; and unless we rig the
preventers pretty quickly we shall lose them, in my opinion."

"Then get up your preventers at once, my dear fellow," answered the
skipper; "and be as smart as you please about the job.  One thing is
quite certain, and that is that unless we can drive the schooner a
little faster we shall be nabbed!"

"Perhaps, sir," said I, "if we were to keep the schooner away about half
a point she would go along more freely.  We are looking a good point
higher than the frigate at present, but we are hugging the wind so
closely that we have no life in us, and are losing as much as we gain."

The skipper looked at the frigate astern, then up at the weather leech
of our own topsail, which was lifting at every plunge of the schooner.

"Perhaps you are right, George," said he.  "At all events your
suggestion is worth trying.  So, my man," to the helmsman, at the same
time peering into the binnacle, "keep her away to west-by-north; nothing
higher."

"West-and-by-north, and nothin' higher, sir," answered the man, easing
his weather helm a couple of spokes as I turned away to see to the
preventer back-stays being rigged.



CHAPTER FIVE.

THE FRENCH FRIGATE.

Our preventer back-stays--which, for the benefit of the uninitiated, I
may explain, were simply extra ropes intended to take a portion of the
strain and so relieve the ordinary back-stays whenever it became
necessary to carry a very heavy press of canvas--were already cut and
fitted; all that we had to do, therefore, was to send their upper ends
aloft and attach them to their respective spars by shackling the eye to
a stout iron collar on the spar, fitted especially for the purpose, set
up the lower ends by means of runners to ring-bolts in the stanchions,
and the thing was done.  Five minutes sufficed for this job, and we then
reset our topgallant-sail and flying-jib, and shifted our gaff-topsail.
The effect soon became apparent; for a few minutes after we had
concluded our work the frigate fired another gun, the shot from which
only reached to within about thirty fathoms of us.  I was inclined to
attribute this result, however, quite as much to our having eased the
schooner away a trifle as to the extra canvas that we had packed upon
her.  I believed we should have done quite as well, if not better,
without it; for the poor little craft seemed pressed down and buried by
the enormous leverage of the wind upon her sails.  She was heeling over
so much that it was difficult to maintain one's footing upon the steeply
inclined deck; the lee scuppers were all afloat, and at every lee roll
the white, yeasty seething from her lee bow brimmed to the level of her
rail, sometimes even toppling in over it.  She was a magnificent sea-
boat; but we were now driving her so unmercifully that at every plunge
into the hollow of a sea she buried her sharp nose completely, taking
green water in over both the lee and the weather-bow by tons at a time,
so that it became necessary to close the fore-scuttle to prevent the
water from going below.  As for the spray, it flew over us in clouds,
coming right aft, and wetting our mainsail as high up as the second
reef-band.

Another gun from the frigate served to conclusively demonstrate that we
were at least holding our own; but our topmasts were bending like
fishing-rods, and at every savage plunge of the schooner I quite
expected to see one or both of them go over the side.  The skipper, too,
was very uneasy, as I could see by the anxious glances that he
continually flung aloft.  At length, when the frigate had fired yet
another gun, the shot from which fell at about the same distance astern
of us as the preceding one had done, he turned to me and said:

"This is all very well, George, as far as it goes; and if the wind would
only drop a little we might snap our fingers at that fellow astern; but
I don't at all like the way that those topmasts are whipping about, up
there.  If so much as a rope-yarn parts we shall lose them, as sure as
fate; and then we may bear up for a French prison as soon as we please.
The frigate keeps popping away at us, in the hope, I suppose, that a
lucky shot may wing us; and I don't see why we shouldn't return the
compliment.  We are just out of reach of her twelve-pounders, but I
think our long eighteen ought to be capable of pitching a shot aboard
her.  Just bowse it up to wind'ard as far as it will go, and let us see
what it will do."

"Ay, ay, sir," answered I.  "The gun ought to reach her; and if we can
but wing her, though ever so slightly, we may scrape clear after all.
Lay aft, here, some of you, and get the tarpaulin off this Long Tom, and
pass the word for the gunner."

We soon got the gun into position, and the captain of it--a man who had
seen a great deal of service on board a man-o'-war, from which he had
deserted just before joining the _Dolphin_--tried a shot at the frigate.
The gun was splendidly aimed, but it was fired just a second too late,
as the schooner's stern was dipping; the result was that the shot, which
flew straight for the frigate, struck the water some distance ahead of
her.

"Very good, Mason, for a first attempt!" remarked the skipper
approvingly.  "Try again, my lad."

The gun was sponged, loaded, and again fired, and this time the shot
hulled the frigate fair and square, striking her about a foot below the
larboard hawse-pipe.

"Now," remarked the skipper, "try her again, my fine fellow.  You ought
to do something worth the powder this time."

The words were hardly spoken when the frigate bore almost square up for
a moment, and let fly her whole weather broadside at us; but every one
of the shot fell short.  The moment that she had fired she luffed up
into our wake once more.

Again Mason pointed the long gun and fired, but this time--perhaps
because he was too careful--the shot flew wide, striking the water some
distance to leeward and, as we all thought, astern of the frigate.

"Keep cool, Mason, keep cool, my man," warned the skipper.  "That shot
was well meant, and shows that you have got the range to a nicety; but
you were in too much of a hurry.  Try again."

Mason mopped his forehead with his handkerchief, although the wind was
piercingly cold; the gun was reloaded, and then Mason pointed and
levelled it with the utmost care.  When this was done, taking the
lanyard in his hand he stepped back to the utmost length of the line,
and with arm outstretched, stood for more than a minute squinting along
the sights of the gun.  Suddenly he pulled the lanyard, the gun belched
forth a torrent of flame and smoke, and, as I stood looking at the
frigate through my own telescope, I saw a small round hole appear in the
foot of the fore-topgallant-sail, another moment and the topgallant-mast
doubled over and went, hanging down by its rigging, under the lee of the
topsail, with the topgallant-sail and royal attached.

"Hurrah!" shouted I, in an ecstasy of delight; "winged her, by all that
is fortunate!"

The men heartily echoed my cheer; one or two of them playfully patting
Mason on the shoulder, by way of encouragement.

"A most excellent shot!" remarked the skipper.  "I owe you a glass of
grog for that, Mason; and you shall have it, my lad, but by and by, not
now; you must keep your head perfectly clear until we have done with
that gun.  Try her again!"

They were certainly a very smart set of fellows aboard the Frenchman;
for no sooner had the topgallant-mast fallen than the hands were in her
rigging on their way aloft to clear away the wreck.

Again Mason levelled the gun, taking a long and careful aim as before;
and this time the shot struck the sill of the frigate's lee bridle port,
entering the port, and no doubt raking the deck for a considerable
portion of its length.  That it did enough damage to greatly exasperate
the French captain seemed almost certain, for presently he bore away
again and treated us to another broadside, the shot of which fell so far
astern that it looked as though we were now creeping away from her.

Mason now seemed to have got his hand in, for his next shot hit the
frigate's bowsprit-end as fair as though he had specially aimed at it,
knocking the cap to pieces, and causing the jib-booms to go over to
leeward.  This completely disabled the frigate, so far as chasing to
windward was concerned, as with the loss of her jib-booms she also lost
the use of her jibs; the pressure of her after-sail at once throwing her
up into the wind until she was all aback.  They at once went to work to
take in all the sail upon her mizzen-mast, and presently boxed her off
again; but her captain knew that to think of catching us now was out of
the question, and presently he wore round and hauled up to the northward
and eastward, on an easy bowline; his people swarming on the forecastle
as they busied themselves in securing the jibs.

Our lads gave three rousing cheers as they saw the frigate bear up; but
it appeared that we had not quite done with her yet, for as the men
ceased cheering, the skipper very quietly remarked:

"Now it is our turn!  That fellow has given us some anxiety; and, now
that we have the opportunity, we will return the compliment.  I mean to
teach him that he cannot bully us poor, hard-working privateersmen with
impunity.  Take in your topgallant-sail, flying-jib, and gaff-topsail,
Mr Bowen, and then stand by to 'bout ship."

Our men responded to this with a cheer of rapturous delight.  We had had
an opportunity to take a good look at the frigate as she wore round, and
we had made her out to be a vessel of thirty-six guns.  The audacity of
the idea of the _Dolphin_ actually chasing such a ship exactly suited
the taste of our people; it was a stupendous practical joke to them, and
they entered into it with all the glee and spirit of so many overgrown
school-boys.  Sail was quickly shortened, and we then hove about and
steered after the Frenchman.

The first thing to be done was to get the long gun over to windward.
This was soon accomplished; and then Mason went to work once more.  His
first and second shots were misses; but the third one plumped slap in
through the frigate's cabin windows.  The next shot struck the gig that
was hanging at the frigate's weather quarter, tearing her bottom out;
and the next passed through her main-topsail.  After this came four
misses in succession, to the unspeakable disgust of all hands, who
chaffed poor Mason so unmercifully that he almost lost his temper over
it.  The skipper thought the opportunity a good one to serve out a glass
of grog to the gun's crew, which had the effect of restoring harmony;
and presently Long Tom began to speak again.  The shot struck fair upon
the frigate's stern; and almost instantly she flew up into the wind,
with all the appearance of something having gone wrong with her
steering-gear.  She remained head to wind for so long a time that at
length the skipper caused our own helm to be put down and the topsail
laid to the mast lest we should stand on too far and get within range of
her guns.  And we were not a moment too soon; for as we rounded-to she
fired the whole of her larboard broadside at us, the shot making the
water spout all round us, and one of them actually striking our hull; it
was, however, so far spent that it did no damage.

Lying almost broadside-on to us, as the frigate now was, she presented a
very pretty mark for target practice; and our long eighteen was brought
to bear upon her most effectively.  Shot after shot we gave her, as fast
as the men could load, and almost every one of them struck her
somewhere.  Mason's blood was now thoroughly up; he was making a
reputation as a crack shot, and he knew it.  I saw, by the increasing
care with which he every time sighted his piece, that he was striving to
do something specially good; and presently he did it.  Taking an
unusually long and careful aim he at length gave a smart tug to the
lanyard, and immediately sprang aside to watch the result.

"Did it, by the great horn spoon!" shouted he delightedly; and even as
he spoke we saw the white splinters fly from the frigate's mainmast-
head; the topmast swayed aft, tottered for a moment, and came down by
the run!

The delight of our men--every soul of whom was by this time on deck--was
a sight to see!  They cheered shouted, laughed, patted Mason on the
back, and were in the midst of a variety of ludicrous antics, expressive
of supreme gratification, when another broadside rattled out from the
frigate, and this time the shot went humming close over our heads,
drilling half a dozen holes in our canvas, and showing us that we had
drifted within range of her guns.  We immediately filled on the
schooner, and hauled off to a respectful distance; for we had no fancy
for being reduced to the same plight as the Frenchman.  But the moment
that we considered ourselves safe from her guns we again hove-to, and
resumed our attentions with the long gun.

They were now in a very pretty mess on board the frigate; but they
managed at length to box her off again; and this time they bore up for
the land; making as though they would run in behind the Saint Riom
islands.  We immediately bore up in chase, and, running parallel with
her, and taking care to keep just beyond the range of her broadside,
plied her with the long gun again so effectively that some twenty
minutes afterwards her foremast went over the bows, and, broaching-to
once more, she lay completely at our mercy.

"There," exclaimed the skipper, in a tone of great gratification, "that
will do with the gun.  We have done enough for honour, I think, and have
given him a thorough good licking, so we may as well be off.  We cannot
take him," he continued, in answer to my exclamation of astonishment at
this decision on his part; "he is altogether too big a fish for our net.
If he were to haul down his colours he would rehoist them directly
that, in running down to take possession of him, he had got us fairly
within the range of his broadside; and at close quarters he would simply
sink us in ten minutes.  No; I am sorry, but I can see nothing for it
but to leave him--unless you have any plan to suggest, Mr Bowen."

"I am really very much afraid that what you say is only too true, sir,"
answered I mournfully.  "I suppose we could compel him to haul down his
colours, by pegging away at him with our long gun, as he is fairly in
our power now; but, naturally, he would seize any opportunity that might
present itself to effect a recapture.  At the same time it seems a
thousand pities to leave him now that we have given him such a terrible
mauling.  Why not keep pounding away at him a little longer?  Perhaps we
may yet hit upon some plan by which to secure possession; and only think
of what a feather it would be in our caps if we could but capture a fine
frigate like that, and take her into port!"

"That is very true," answered the skipper, and I could see that my
reference to the credit of such an exploit had touched him in a weak
spot.  "Well," he continued, "we will not give up yet awhile.  The
frigate is unmanageable at present, and will continue so until they can
get some sort of a jury-mast rigged for'ard; so we will fill on the
schooner, and make a stretch to windward until we can get into a raking
position, then drop down upon mounseer, and see what we can do with him.
But it is a risky business; a lucky shot may cripple us at any moment,
and we should then be done for.  However, `nothing venture, nothing
have!' so fill your topsail, Mr Bowen, and we will make a bid for
glory, although that is not our business."

This decision was received with enthusiasm by the men, who at once went
to work with hearty good-will to execute the orders that the skipper now
rapidly issued.  We filled upon the schooner, and reached away to the
northward and eastward on an easy bowline, keeping just beyond reach of
the frigate's guns, and making play diligently all the time with our own
long eighteen, aiming for the stump of the foremast, so as to embarrass
the Frenchmen as much as possible in any attempt that they might make to
rig up a jury spar.  But the French captain was game to the backbone,
and, helpless as he was to retaliate upon us, omitted no effort to
extricate himself from the difficulties by which he was surrounded.
What would he not have given, at that moment, for a single gun powerful
enough to have reached us?  As it was, he fired at us at frequent
intervals, for the apparent purpose of ascertaining whether we had
inadvertently ventured within range; and I noticed that every shot fell
further away from us.  I could not at first comprehend this, as our own
shot continued to strike every time; but at length I thought I had hit
upon an explanation of the mystery, which I mentioned to Captain Winter.
My belief was that the French captain was gradually reducing his
charges of powder, in the hope that, by so doing, he would tempt us to
draw nearer, under the impression that we were well out of range, when,
perhaps, by a well-directed broadside, with a full powder charge, he
might succeed in unrigging us; when our capture, by means of his boats,
would be an easy matter.  We were not, however, to be so easily tempted.

At length, by dint of great exertion, and probably at the cost of many
men, the Frenchmen succeeded in cutting adrift the wreck of their
foremast; when, by furling all the canvas upon their mizzen-mast, they
managed to once more get the frigate before the wind and heading in for
the land.  And now came our opportunity, for we were by this time dead
to windward of our antagonist; and no sooner was she before the wind
than we, too, kept away, gradually closing with her, and keeping our
long gun playing upon her until there was a hole in her stern big enough
to have driven a coach through.  As soon as we were near enough she
opened fire upon us with her two stern-chasers; and at the very first
fire both shots came in through our bows and raked us fore and aft,
killing one man and wounding three others with the splinters that were
sent flying about our ears.  Finding that we had approached her too
closely, we immediately hauled our wind, and began to sail to-and-fro
athwart her stern, keeping up a brisk fire upon her with our long gun,
and raking her at every shot.  This went on for about a quarter of an
hour, during which she repeatedly returned our fire, but without effect;
and then a lucky shot from us cut her main-yard in two in the slings,
and she was once more helpless, broaching-to, and lying with her bows
well up to the wind.  This reduced to nothing her hopes of escape by
running in under the land and anchoring within the shelter of the guns
of a battery; and after receiving three or four more shots from us, she
actually hauled down her colours and surrendered, to the unmitigated
delight of our lads, who cheered themselves hoarse over their victory.

And now came the delicate question of taking possession.  We fully
realised that it was only the superior power of our long eighteen that
had enabled us to accomplish the astonishing feat of compelling a
frigate of thirty-six guns to haul down her colours to a schooner
mounting less than a third of that armament; and we felt that our only
chance of securing peaceable possession of our prize, now that she had
surrendered, was to maintain the advantage conferred upon us by this
superiority.  It was, therefore, at length decided that I should go on
board the prize with forty men to take possession, while the schooner
remained hove-to out of range of the frigate's guns, but near enough to
open fire again with the long gun, should we meet with any difficulty
from the French crew.  My instructions were, to go on board, secure the
crew, and then fire three blank cartridges in quick succession as a
signal that I had obtained possession; upon which the schooner was to
close and render me all possible assistance.



CHAPTER SIX.

WE ARE COMPELLED TO ABANDON OUR PREY.

We lowered our two cutters and the gig, and then, picking out my forty
men, and arming them with a cutlass and a brace of pistols apiece, I
shoved off to take possession of our prize.  There was a rather nasty,
short, choppy sea running; but, fortunately, we were to windward, and
only had to run down before it.  As we neared the frigate it became
increasingly apparent to us that she was an exceedingly fine and
handsome ship; her tonnage, according to my estimate, being not far
short of nine hundred tons.  She had been knocked about a good deal more
severely than I had anticipated; and as we drew still nearer I was
astonished to perceive that some of her scuppers were running blood.

It took us about half an hour to pull down to her; and when we went
alongside, under her lee, we met with no opposition whatever in
boarding, somewhat to my surprise, I must confess, for, as a matter of
fact, I did not believe that they had really surrendered, the hauling
down of their colours being, in my opinion, only a ruse to get us within
reach of their guns.  In this, however, as it turned out, I was
mistaken, and did the commanding officer an injustice.

We clambered up the frigate's lofty side without let or hindrance; and
when I sprang, sword in hand, down upon her deck, I was met by a mere
lad, his beardless face deadly pale, his head bound up in a blood-sodden
bandage, and his right arm hanging helpless--and broken--by his side.
With his left hand he tendered to me his sword, in silence, and then,
turning away, burst into tears.

And as I looked around me I could well understand the cause of the poor
young fellow's emotion.  It was not only that this fine, handsome ship--
brand-new, as it turned out, and only commissioned a few days
previously--was a perfect wreck aloft, but the dead and wounded were
lying about her decks, especially in the vicinity of the stump of the
foremast, in heaps.  Her bulwarks were shot through and through; her
wheel was smashed to pieces; and there were long scorings fore-and-aft
her decks, showing the paths that our eighteen-pound shot had ploughed
up in their destructive passage.  But even this was not the worst of it;
for when I turned to the young officer and tried to soothe him by the
utterance of some platitude having reference to "the fortune of war", he
informed me that, although he had that morning been the ship's junior
lieutenant, he was now the senior surviving officer; the captain and the
other lieutenants being among the killed.

"And to think," he ejaculated bitterly, "that we should have been
compelled to strike to such an insignificant craft as that!" pointing to
the schooner.  "But," he added, "you did not fight fair; you never gave
us a chance.  Had you but once fairly come within range of our guns we
would have blown you out of the water!"

"Precisely!"  I agreed; "we were well aware of that, monsieur, and,
therefore, we preferred to fight you at a respectful distance.  And
now," I continued, "as I have relieved you of your command, let me beg
you to lose no time in going below to the surgeon to get your hurts
attended to; I am sure that France can ill afford to lose so brave a man
as yourself."

The poor fellow smiled wanly at my clumsy compliment, and with a bow
turned away to follow my suggestion; while I went to work to get the
prisoners disarmed and secured below.  This was managed without
difficulty; the French appearing to be too utterly downcast and broken-
spirited to dream of resisting us after having hauled down their
colours; and I was not surprised at this when I shortly afterwards
learned that, out of a crew numbering two hundred and eighty-four, she
had lost no less than seven officers and sixty-three men killed, and
eighty-eight officers and men wounded.  It was astonishing; the more so
when I came to reflect that all this loss and damage had been inflicted
by one gun!  But then it was to be remembered that the unfortunate
frigate had been under the fire of that one gun for close upon five
hours; the dusk of the short winter's day closing down upon us shortly
after we had boarded our prize--the name of which, by the way, was the
_Musette_.

Having secured our prisoners, I fired the three blank cartridges agreed
upon as a signal, when the _Dolphin_ ran down and sent the end of a
hawser aboard for the purpose of taking us in tow.  She also put very
nearly her whole crew aboard, retaining merely enough hands to work her,
in order that we might have as much strength as possible for the purpose
of rigging up jury-masts.

We had been in tow of the schooner but half an hour when Captain Winter
came aboard in a boat to say that we were rather too heavy for him to
manage, the breeze having been steadily freshening all day and raising a
sea that caused the schooner to strain to an alarming extent with so
heavy a craft as the frigate hanging on to her.  We therefore went to
work to get some sail upon the prize forthwith, and, having routed out a
main-staysail, we set it.  We found that, in the strong breeze then
blowing, even this small amount of canvas was sufficient to place the
frigate under command; we therefore cast off from the _Dolphin_, and
that craft thereupon shortened sail to her boom-foresail and fore-
staysail, so that she might not run away from us.  But even under that
short canvas she was able to sail round and round us.

During the whole of that night we stood to the northward and eastward;
and all night long, too, we were hard at work, watch and watch, getting
up jury spars; the result of our labours being that, by daybreak next
morning, we had got a very serviceable jury foremast in place, enabling
us to set a fore-staysail, and also a main-topsail in place of a
foresail.  With this head sail we were also enabled to give the frigate
her close-reefed mizzen-topsail and spanker; with which canvas we began
to move through the water at quite a respectable pace--that is to say
about four knots per hour.  This, however, was not all; for the
carpenter had been hard at work all through the night preparing a jury
fore-topmast and jib-boom; while we had got a spare main-yard swung
aloft and slung; by mid-day, therefore, we were enabled to set a fore-
topsail, jib, and mainsail, which further increased our speed.  By four
bells in the afternoon watch the island of Jersey was in sight, broad
upon our lee bow, some six miles distant; and at eight bells we tacked
ship, being anxious not to draw too close in with the French coast in
our then disabled condition.

As the sun went down that night the weather manifested a tendency to
improve, and by midnight the wind had softened down to a gentle breeze
that barely gave us steerage-way through the water.  Finally it died
away altogether, and when the sun rose next morning, clear and bright,
the _Dolphin_ and ourselves were boxing the compass, not half a cable's
length apart.  This in itself was rather provoking, as we were
exceedingly anxious to get our prize into port, and off our hands; but
the delay was as nothing compared with the disagreeable circumstance
that there were three exceedingly suspicious-looking sails in sight,
about ten miles to the westward of us, apparently consorts, for we could
see a good deal of signalling going on between them, of which we could
make nothing.

They were a ship, a brig, and a large lugger, and the cut of their
canvas left us little room to doubt that they were French.  Of course it
was quite possible that they might all three be perfectly harmless
merchantmen, but there was a certain smart, knowing look about them
eminently suggestive of the privateersman, and if that was their
character there could be no doubt whatever that we should find them very
objectionable and dangerous neighbours immediately that a breeze
happened to spring up.  So little did Captain Winter like their
appearance that, immediately after breakfast--the calm seeming likely to
continue for some few hours--he ordered his own gig to be lowered, and
went away in her to get a nearer look at them.  There was not much
danger in this course, as the gig was a beautifully light, splendidly
modelled, fast-pulling boat, exactly suited for such a service, and not
in the least likely to be overtaken by any boat such as either of the
three vessels in sight might be expected to carry.  I did not,
therefore, greatly concern myself with the skipper's movements, but gave
my whole attention to the getting of additional jury spars aloft, in
order that, if possible, the frigate might be brought into something
like fighting order by the time that the breeze should come.

We were busy pointing a new main-topmast when the boatswain, who was in
the top, hailed the deck to say that the lugger and brig had rigged out
their sweeps, and were heading in our direction, while the ship had
lowered her boats and sent them ahead to tow.  I went up into the
mizzen-topmast cross-trees, taking my glass with me, and soon discovered
that the report was only too correct; for when I reached my perch all
three craft were heading straight for us, the lugger churning up the
water with her sweeps and coming along at quite a smart pace, the brig
following close behind, and the ship, in tow of her own boats, bringing
up the rear.  This effectually disposed of the theory that they might
possibly be merchantmen; they were far too heavily-manned to be anything
but privateers or men-o'-war, and it was perfectly clear that they were
fully bent upon paying us a visit.

It afterwards appeared that Captain Winter did not suspect this new
development until some time after the strangers had got into motion;
then, observing that all three vessels kept their heads persistently
pointed in our direction, and that he appeared to be nearing them much
faster than at first, an inkling of the truth dawned upon him, and he
ordered his crew to pull easy, that they might reserve their strength
for a spurt in case of need.  Nevertheless, he continued to pull toward
them until he had arrived within gun-shot of the lugger--the crew of
which at once opened fire upon him--when, having ascertained the force
of the squadron, he returned with all speed to us, having meanwhile made
up his mind how to act.

He discovered that the lugger mounted six six-pounders; the brig showed
five ports of a side, but the weight of her metal he could not
ascertain, since her guns were run in and her ports closed; and the ship
mounted sixteen guns, apparently nine-pounders.  Now this was a force
altogether too strong for us to cope with, even had we not been hampered
with a prize to look after; for, unlike the case of the frigate, the
force was distributed among three vessels instead of being concentrated
on board of one only; and while Captain Winter was always ready to trust
something to the chapter of accidents, and to risk a good deal upon the
chance that a lucky shot might seriously disable a single antagonist, it
became a different matter altogether when there were three craft to
contend with.  He, therefore, reluctantly came to the conclusion that
our prize must be sacrificed in order to ensure our own safety.  He
therefore pulled straight to the _Dolphin_, and ordering the whole of
her boats to be lowered and manned, sent them alongside the frigate,
coming on board himself to superintend the operations upon which he had
decided.

His first act was to order the whole of the frigate's boats to be
stripped of their oars, rowlocks, and bottom-boards, and when this was
done they were lowered, and the prisoners, wounded as well as sound,
sent down into them; when, as soon as he had satisfied himself that the
whole of the Frenchmen were out of the ship, the frigate's boats were
towed about a mile away and cast adrift.  Meanwhile, in obedience to
instructions, I had collected all the inflammable material that I could
lay hands upon, and had set the ship on fire in four places, with the
result that when the _Dolphin's_ boats returned alongside our prize to
take us off, she was well alight, with the smoke pouring in dense clouds
up through every opening in the deck.  It took us but a short time to
leave her, and the moment that we were once more on board the schooner
the sweeps were manned and the vessel put upon a northerly course, this
direction having been chosen in consequence of the discovery that a
light air had sprung up and was coming down from the northward and
eastward, which would place us dead to windward of our formidable
antagonists by the time that it reached us.

At the moment when the _Dolphin_ began to move, the lugger was some
seven miles away, bearing due west, the brig being about half a mile
astern of her, and the ship perhaps a mile astern of the brig.  Very
shortly afterwards the flames burst up through the frigate's main
hatchway, and half an hour later she was blazing from stem to stern; so
that, although we had lost her, there was no chance of her again falling
into the hands of the French.

The breeze was a long time in finding its way down to us; so long,
indeed, that after waiting a full half-hour, with the cat's-paws playing
upon the water within biscuit-toss of us, the helm was ported and the
schooner headed straight for the fringe of delicate blue that marked the
dividing line where the calm and the wind were contending together for
the mastery.  This was reached in about a quarter of an hour, when,
after a feeble preliminary rustling, our canvas filled, the sweeps were
laid in, and we began to move through the water at a speed of some two
and a half knots per hour, heading up nearly due north, while the lugger
and the brig at the same time kept away, in the hope apparently of
intercepting us, and the ship despatched two of her boats to the rescue
of their helpless compatriots adrift in the frigate's boats.

The lugger, which was a very fine and evidently very fast vessel of her
class, was making desperate efforts to close with us, with such success
that at the end of another half-hour it became evident that, unless the
light and fickle breeze freshened somewhat in the interim, another
couple of hours would see her within gun-shot of us.  This, however,
gave us no concern whatever, for we were far more than a match for her
alone, and although the brig also was doing her best, we were both
drawing away from her so steadily that we of the _Dolphin_ quite
reckoned upon being able in due time to fight and take the lugger before
her consort could come up to her assistance.

Six bells in the forenoon watch had just struck when the frigate blew up
with a dull, heavy boom, not nearly so loud as I had expected to hear,
but the concussion was terrific, causing the schooner to quiver to her
keel, while its effect upon the languid breeze was such as to completely
kill it for three or four minutes.  At the end of that time it came
creeping stealthily along the water again, and about half an hour later
it reached the lugger, which immediately laid in her sweeps and hauled
close to the wind in pursuit of us.  We were at this time under all
plain sail, to our royal and flying-jib, creeping along at a speed of
about four and a half knots, the lugger being about a point abaft our
lee beam and two miles distant from us, but looking up about half a
point higher than ourselves, in her eagerness to close with us.  By noon
it had become apparent that we had the advantage in point of speed, so
that it lay with us to make good our escape, or not, as we pleased.  We
had, however, lost one valuable prize, through the inopportune
appearance of the lugger and her consorts, and were by no means disposed
to go off empty-handed, if we could help it.  We therefore quietly and
unostentatiously checked our sheets and weather braces just sufficiently
to permit the wind to all but spill out of our canvas, thus deadening
our way somewhat; and the men then went to dinner.

Our little ruse had its desired effect, the lugger having closed up to
within a mile by the time that the men were ready to turn to again; and
as the schooner had long ago been cleared for action, the galley fire
was now extinguished, and the crew went to the guns in readiness for the
coming struggle.  At the same time our helm was eased up a trifle, and
we began to edge down upon our antagonist.

Just about this time the brig caught the first of the breeze, and at
once crowded sail in chase.  It was therefore time for us to set about
our work in earnest, if we did not desire to have her to reckon with as
well as the lugger.  Nevertheless, we still withheld our fire; the
skipper being determined not to begin until he could make short work of
it.

"Mr Bowen," said he to me, when we were within about half a mile of the
lugger, "I want to take that fellow with as little damage as possible to
his spars and rigging, because if they happen to be much cut up we may
find ourselves so seriously hampered as to have some difficulty in
getting away from the other two.  Be good enough, therefore, to go round
the deck, and direct the men to aim with the utmost care at the ports,
so that our shot may sweep her decks and drive her men from their guns,
after which it will be an easy matter to run alongside and carry her
with a rush.  I expect her people are already so tired with their long
spell at the sweeps that they will not have much stomach for a hand-to-
hand fight.  Ha! there she opens fire!  So it is time to show our
colours."

And he proceeded to bend on and hoist the ensign with his own hands,
while I turned away to carry out his instructions.

The single shot that the lugger had fired flew fair between our masts,
cutting our lee topsail brace.  The damage, however, was repaired in
less than five minutes by a hand who sprang aloft and neatly spliced and
re-rove the brace.  Meanwhile our lads had carefully levelled and
pointed their guns, and now only awaited the word to fire.  This soon
came from the skipper, whereupon the five guns in our larboard broadside
rang out together, five neat holes in the lugger's bulwarks testifying
to the accuracy with which they had been aimed.  The lugger almost
instantly replied with her starboard broadside, and again the shot went
humming over us, but this time without doing any damage.  They probably
had no very keen desire to engage us single-handed, but were anxious to
cripple us and so give time for the brig to close to their support; but
in their anxiety to do this they had pointed their guns so high that the
shot had flown over us altogether.

Our lads were quite wide-awake enough to understand the importance of
making short work of the lugger.  They therefore handled their guns very
smartly, giving the enemy two broadsides in exchange for their one, and
we were now close enough to observe that the second of these two
broadsides had dismounted one of the lugger's guns.

"Hurrah, lads!" exclaimed the skipper; "look alive and load again.  If
you are smart we shall just have time to give another broadside, and
board in the smoke.  Stand by, fore and aft, with your grappling-irons,
and heave as we touch.  I will lead the boarders myself, Mr Bowen; so
be good enough to take charge of the ship--"

He was interrupted by another broadside from the lugger, which this time
crashed in through the bulwarks, and I immediately felt that I was hurt,
a sharp, stinging, burning pain just above my left elbow indicating the
locality of the injury.  It proved to be a mere trifle, however, a large
splinter having been driven into the flesh.  I quickly pulled it out,
and hurriedly bound up the wound with my pocket handkerchief, and as I
was doing so Captain Winter gave the word to the helmsman to "Up helm,
and run her aboard!"

"I see that you are hurt, Mr Bowen," said he, turning to me.  "Nothing
very serious, I hope?"

"A mere scratch, sir, I thank you," replied I.  "Nothing worth speaking
about."

"So much the better," answered the skipper.  "Are you ready, there, with
the guns?  Then fire as we touch, and then follow me everybody but the
sail-trimmers.  Fire!"

The two vessels collided with considerably more violence than I had
anticipated, so much so, indeed, that the shock sent me reeling to the
deck, whereby I just escaped being shot through the head by the volley
of musketry with which the Frenchmen greeted our arrival; at the same
moment our broadside again crashed through and through the lugger's
bulwarks; and with a hearty cheer on our side, and a terrific hullabaloo
on the part of the French, our lads leapt aboard the lugger, and, taking
no denial, succeeded in clearing her decks after an obstinate fight of
about a minute, during which several rather severe hurts were given and
received on both sides.



CHAPTER SEVEN.

OUR ATTACK UPON ABERVRACH HARBOUR.

The unwounded prisoners were quickly secured below;--the wounded on both
sides being as quickly transferred to the _Dolphin_, in order that they
might the more conveniently be attended to by our worthy surgeon; after
which the prize was placed in charge of our second mate--a Portland man
named John Comben--and we made sail in company.

The brig was at this time about a mile distant on our lee quarter, while
the ship was about a mile and a half distant, just open of the brig's
stern.  Captain Winter stood looking wistfully at the two vessels for a
long time; but at length turned away and said regretfully:

"I am afraid we shall have to be content with what we have got, George.
If there was only one of them, and I wouldn't care very much which of
them it was, I would tackle her unhesitatingly; but the two of them
together are rather too big a mouthful for us.  So make sail and let us
get back to Weymouth as quickly as we can; if another Frenchman were to
heave in sight while those two are so close to us we might find it a
hard matter to take care of ourselves, to say nothing of the lugger."

The brig and the ship clung persistently to our skirts the whole of that
day, although we gradually drew away from them; but during the night we
lost sight of them, and late the next evening we arrived in Weymouth
harbour without further adventure.

Our prize--the _Cerf_, of Saint Brieuc--proved to be a very fine vessel,
and quite worth the taking; still the prize-money accruing from her
capture did not amount to very much, and Captain Winter came to the
conclusion that, with so many vessels of our own nationality already
swarming in the Channel, that locality could no longer be regarded as a
very profitable cruising-ground.  He therefore determined, with Mr
White's full approval, to prosecute operations further afield; trying
the Atlantic first of all, and afterwards--if that did not yield
satisfactory results--pushing right across as far as the West Indies.
This decision arrived at, we pressed forward our preparations with all
speed, and a week later were once more ready for sea.

We sailed early on a Saturday morning with a moderate breeze at west;
and, having cleared the Bill of Portland, stretched away for the French
coast, close-hauled on the starboard tack, making the land near
Abervrach Harbour shortly after mid-day on the following Monday.  We
stood in to within a mile of the land, and then tacked.  We were about
ten miles off shore when our look-out reported a large sail on our
weather beam, coming down under studding-sails, and it being my watch on
deck I went up on to the topsail yard to have a better look at her.

She was about ten miles dead to windward of us at this time, and was
steering a course to take her between us and the land.  She was
evidently a merchantman of about six hundred tons burden or thereabout,
floating pretty deep in the water, and had all the appearance of being
French.  Having completed my observations, I went down and reported to
the skipper, who immediately gave orders to tack ship that we might get
a nearer view of her.  This was done, and when we got round it was found
that the stranger bore broad on our weather-bow.  We happened to be
under easy sail at the time, and Captain Winter at first decided not to
increase our spread of canvas, hoping by this means to impress our
neighbour with the belief that we were in nowise concerning ourselves
about him.  But it would not do; he clearly distrusted us, for we were
no sooner round than he edged away toward the land, making for Abervrach
harbour; and an hour later we had the mortification of seeing the
craft--by this time determinable as a barque--enter the harbour and
anchor under the guns of one of the two batteries that guarded its
entrance.  We hoisted French colours, and steered as though we, too,
were about to enter the harbour; but the skipper was altogether too wary
to venture inside, so when by observation we had ascertained all that we
could about the place without exposing the schooner to the fire of
either of the batteries, we tacked and stood off shore again as though
working along the coast.  This was about six bells in the afternoon
watch, and as the breeze was light and the flood-tide against us, we
made very little progress, and of that little we wasted as much as we
thought we dared without exciting suspicion; our object being to remain
in the neighbourhood until after dark, and then attempt a cutting-out
expedition.

The harbour was a snug enough place, and excellently adapted for the
purpose of sheltering shipping from the attack of an enemy; the entrance
being guarded by two six-gun batteries--one on each headland--mounting
thirty-two pounders, the combined fire of both batteries effectually
commanding the entrance.  These two batteries were apparently all that
we had to fear; but they were quite enough, nay, more than enough, for
they were capable of sinking a much bigger craft than the _Dolphin_ in
less than ten minutes.  It was these batteries, therefore, that we had
to reckon with in the first place; and, after talking the matter quietly
over in the cabin, it was ultimately decided that, as soon as it was
dark enough to conceal our movements, the canvas should be taken off the
schooner, and she should be allowed to drive, under bare poles, along
the coast back to the eastward until once more abreast of the harbour
entrance, when the anchor was to be let go.  Then a sharp look-out was
to be kept for the barque, and if there were no signs of her making an
attempt to slip out to sea again before two o'clock in the morning, the
boats were to be lowered, and the skipper and I, with all the hands that
could be spared, were to pull in, surprise the batteries, spike the
guns, and then dash aboard the barque and bring her out.

The night happened to be dark, with an overcast sky and a thick drizzle
of rain; it was therefore excellently adapted for our purpose, and
having arrived within about a mile and a half of the land, the first
part of our programme was carried out by furling everything and allowing
the schooner to drive up the coast until a deeper blackness in the
shadow that indicated the land revealed that we were off the harbour's
mouth.  Here the anchor was let go; and as every precaution had been
taken to prevent any light from showing on board the schooner, we had
good reason for hoping that our presence in that particular spot was
unsuspected.  An anchor watch was set, with instructions to keep a sharp
look-out and at once report to the skipper anything of an unusual or
suspicious character, when all hands turned in for the purpose of
securing as much rest as possible prior to the execution of the
important task that we had set ourselves.

Nothing having occurred during the earlier part of the night, all hands
were called at four bells in the middle watch, a cup of hot coffee and a
biscuit was served out to each man, and then those who were to go away
in the boats were told off and armed; after which the skipper made a
short speech, explaining the nature of the service upon which we were
about to engage, and how it was proposed to execute it, after which the
boats were got into the water, and we pulled away with muffled oars for
the shore.

It had been arranged that the skipper should tackle the battery on the
eastern side of the harbour mouth, while I was to deal with the one on
the western headland; and as it was deemed possible that, despite all
our efforts to mislead those on shore, our appearance during the
afternoon might have awakened a sufficient amount of uneasiness to cause
a watch to be set for us, it was further arranged that a landing should
be effected, if possible, on the outside beach; since if we were
expected, we should almost certainly be looked for somewhere along the
more sheltered shore inside the harbour.

Our expedition numbered sixty men, all told--thirty in each division,--
and upon shoving off from the schooner the two divisions at once
separated, the skipper bearing away to the eastward, while I hauled up
for a point about half a mile, as nearly as I could guess, to the
westward of the western battery.

The night was even thicker and darker than it had been when we brought
the schooner to an anchor off the harbour's mouth; there was a cold,
dismal rain persistently falling, and the breeze, having freshened up
considerably, was now sweeping over the sea with a dreary, wintry,
moaning sound that distinctly accentuated the discomfort of our
situation, while it had knocked up a sea that threatened to render our
landing a work of very considerable difficulty and danger.  This became
increasingly apparent as we drew closer in with the land, the roar of
the surf upon the rocky beach and the ghostly white gleam and flash of
the fringe of breakers exciting within me a feeling of very lively
apprehension as to the safety of the boats.  We pulled cautiously in to
within about fifty fathoms of the beach, and then turned the boats
round, bows on to the sea, while we looked anxiously about for a
suitable spot at which to beach them, allowing them to drift shoreward
meanwhile; but it soon became evident that, if we desired to land
outside the harbour's mouth, it would be necessary for us to seek a more
favourable spot for the purpose, the surf being so heavy and the shore
so thickly cumbered with rocks, just where we were, that any attempt at
beaching the boats would only result in their destruction, and possibly
the loss of several lives.  We therefore hauled off again a short
distance, and directed our search somewhat further westward, when, after
traversing the line of beach for somewhere about half a mile, we found
ourselves in a sort of miniature harbour, about fifteen fathoms wide,
formed by a projecting reef of rocks, under the lee of which we
forthwith effected a landing without the slightest difficulty.  I left
two men in each boat, to take care of them and keep them afloat, and
then, having satisfied myself as well as I could that our ammunition had
been kept dry and in serviceable condition, I led the rest of my party
up the steep, slippery face of the low cliffs beyond the beach.  A
breathless scramble of some three or four minutes carried us to the top;
and all that remained was for us to follow the edge of the cliff to the
eastward, when we should in due time find ourselves at the battery which
was the primary object of our attack.

The result of our procedure amply demonstrated the wisdom of the
skipper's arrangements; for when we reached the battery--which we did
rather sooner than I had expected--we found it absolutely unguarded at
the rear, the sentinels, three in number, being so posted as to watch
the harbour entrance only.  Where the rest of the garrison were we could
not at the moment discover, but, feeling certain that they were
somewhere close at hand, it became necessary to proceed with the utmost
caution; I therefore formed up my little band under the shelter and in
the deep shadow of a projecting angle, and, enjoining upon them the most
absolute silence, entered the battery alone for the purpose of
reconnoitring.

I gained the inside without difficulty--the gate having been carelessly
left unfastened--and at once found myself in a semicircular court-yard
formed by the gun platform of the battery and the sod revetment which
surrounded it.  The platform was about eight feet high, and was
apparently case-mated, for immediately in front of me, as I entered, was
a door and two windows, through the latter of which streamed into the
blackness of the night the feeble rays of a barrack lantern.  Pyramidal
piles of round shot were stacked here and there about the gravelled
court-yard; and upon approaching one of these and passing my hand over
the shot, I came to the conclusion that the five guns which I dimly made
out as shapeless masses of blackness upon the platform were thirty-two
pounders.  The three sentries, wrapped in their greatcoats, stood
motionless, one in the centre and one at each extremity of the platform,
facing to seaward, but I judged from their listless attitudes that they
were anything but on the alert.  Access to the platform was obtained by
two broad flights of stone steps, one at either extremity.

It was the work of but two or three minutes for me to ascertain these
particulars, having done which I returned to my men, gave them most
careful instructions how to proceed, and then led them into the battery,
where, while the main body silently divided and stole round, in the
shadow of the platform, to the guard-room door, about which they ranged
themselves, I and two others, whom I had especially picked for the
purpose, drew off our boots, and, in our stockinged feet, crept,
silently as shadows, up on to the gun platform, where each of us
crouched behind a gun waiting for a signal which I had arranged to give.
I selected as my victim the sentinel who mounted guard in the middle of
the platform, because he was the most difficult man to approach, the
other two being posted close to the head of the two flights of stone
steps, and I knew that by the time that I had reached him my men would
be quite ready.

The fellow stood close to the middle gun, on its lee side, and appeared
to be sheltering himself as well as he could from the wind and the rain
by crouching close to its carriage.  His back was toward me.  I
therefore had no difficulty whatever in approaching him, which I did in
a crouching attitude until I was near enough to touch the flapping
skirts of his coat.  Then, drawing myself up to my full height and
taking a deep breath, I coughed loudly as a signal to my two men, at the
same instant clapping one hand over the sentinel's mouth and seizing his
musket in the other as I drove my knee into the small of his back and
bore him irresistibly to the ground.

"Utter no sound if you value your life!"  I hissed in his ear, in
French; and whether it was that my caution was effective, or that the
poor fellow was too utterly surprised and astounded to speak, certain it
is that he lay perfectly quiet, with my knee on his breast and my hand
clutching his throat, while I carefully laid down the musket and drew a
gag and some line from my pocket wherewith to secure him.  A subdued
scuffling to my right and left, scarcely audible above the rush of the
wind and the roar of the breakers on the outside beach, told me that the
other two sentinels were being similarly dealt with; but there was no
outcry whatever, and in less than five minutes we had all three of them
securely gagged, and bound hand and foot.

The next thing was to secure the remainder of the garrison, and this we
did without any difficulty, simply flinging open the guard-room door and
dashing in, cutlass and pistol in hand, upon the sleeping soldiers, and
seizing the muskets that stood neatly ranged in a rack along one of the
walls.  There was a terrific outcry and jabber among the astonished
Frenchmen for a minute or two, with some show of a disposition to
resist; but I pointed out to them that there were only thirty of them to
twenty-six of us, that we were armed while they were not, and that we
were not in the humour to put up with any nonsense whatever; which, with
the resolute attitude of our men, had the effect of very speedily
reducing them to subjection.

I had brought a hammer and a handful of nails with me, and my next
business was to spike the guns.  This occupied but a very few minutes,
and when it was done I returned to the guard-room with the intention of
withdrawing my men.  As I glanced round the room, however, I caught
sight of a small bunch of keys hanging against the wall, and, thinking
that these might possibly belong to the magazine, the spirit of mischief
suggested to me the propriety of destroying the battery altogether,
instead of merely temporarily disabling it; so I took down the keys,
and, lighting another lantern, of which there were several, I proceeded
to investigate.

It was as I had anticipated.  The keys were those of the magazine and
the store-room, and, entering the former, I soon found that there was an
ample stock of powder, in kegs and made up into cartridges, to wreck the
entire structure.  There was also a coil of slow match, a piece of which
I cut off, and, taking it outside, lighted it for the purpose of
ascertaining the rate at which it burnt.  This was soon done, whereupon
I cut off enough to burn for about twenty minutes, opened the kegs of
powder, and emptying one of them in a heap in the middle of the floor,
buried one end of the slow match in the pile, taking the other end
outside.  I then returned to the guard-room and marched the prisoners,
surrounded by my own men, outside the battery, when, having assured
myself that all hands were safe, I informed the Frenchmen that I was
about to blow up the battery, and recommended them to run for their
lives, at the same time directing my own men to let them go.  The
Frenchmen needed no second bidding.  Away they went down the slope like
startled deer, tumbling over each other in their anxiety to escape from
the effects of the anticipated explosion, to the great delight and
amusement of our people, and in less than a minute they had vanished in
the darkness.  The Frenchmen thus disposed of, I ordered my own men to
make the best of their way down to the boats, there to wait for me, and
then re-entered the battery.  It had been arranged between the skipper
and myself that each of us should, after taking our respective
batteries, display a lantern or light of some sort, on the parapet, as a
signal to the other.  And my first act, therefore, upon returning to the
battery, was to light a lantern and place it where it could be seen from
the other battery, and at the same time be shielded from the wind and
the rain.  While doing this I noted with satisfaction that the captain's
signal was already displayed; so, comforted with the assurance that both
batteries were now rendered harmless, I descended to the court-yard,
and, with some difficulty, succeeded in igniting the slow match.  I
waited only long enough to make quite sure that it was burning all
right, and then made a bolt of it for my life, overtaking my men just as
they reached the beach.  We found the boats all right, and perfectly
safe, but the men in charge growing very uneasy, as the tide was rising
fast over the reef of rocks that sheltered the little cove in which they
were lying, and a very nasty, awkward sea was beginning to roll in,
occasioning the boat-keepers a great deal of trouble and anxiety in
their endeavours to prevent the boats being stove.  "All is well that
ends well", however, the boats had thus far escaped, and we lost no time
in tumbling into them and shoving off.  Just as we did so a terrific
glare lit up the sky for an instant, accompanied by a violent concussion
of the rocks upon which some of us were standing, and followed by a
deep, thunderous boom.  Our battery had blown up, and presently, above
the seething roar of the sea and the moaning of the wind, we caught the
crashing sound of the falling fragments of masonry and earth, and the
thud of the heavy guns dislodged from their resting-places upon the
demolished platform.

Meanwhile the wind and the sea had both been steadily increasing until
it had grown to be what sailors expressively term "a regularly dirty
night", and we were no sooner clear of our sheltering reef of rocks than
we were struck by a comber that pretty nearly half-filled the boat that
I happened to be in, the other boat, which was astern of us, faring
little or no better.  The men, however, bent to their oars with a will,
and in about ten minutes, by keeping the boats stem-on to the sea, we
forced our way out through the broken water and were enabled to head for
the harbour, toward which, wet to the skin, and half-dead with the cold
of the piercing bitter wind, we made the best of our way.  Just inside
the harbour entrance, and about mid-channel, we fell in with the
skipper's two boats, which had arrived a few minutes earlier, and were
lying upon their oars, waiting for us.  Thus reunited, the skipper and I
briefly exchanged details of the result of our respective efforts, after
which we gave way in line abreast for the spot where we expected to find
the barque.  We pulled for a quarter of an hour but failed to discover
her, although the skipper and I were equally confident that we must be
close to the spot where we had seen her at anchor.  Then, after a brief
consultation, it was agreed that the boats should separate and search
for her, a pistol-shot from the lucky boat being the signal arranged to
notify that the search had been successful.  This plan, or rather the
first part of it, was at once put into execution, each boat pulling away
in a different direction from the others; but although we diligently
searched in every likely direction, frequently encountering one or
another of the other boats, the barque was nowhere to be found, and, not
to needlessly spin out this adventure, it may suffice to say that we
fruitlessly hunted all over the harbour until daylight, when it became
evident that in some mysterious manner the vessel had contrived to give
us the slip and make good her escape.  It had probably occurred during
the time that the skipper and I had been busy with the batteries; but
the most curious part of it all was that Comben, our second mate, left
in charge of the schooner, declared that, although he had never relaxed
his vigilance for an instant, from the time of our leaving until our
return on board, neither he nor any of the men who shared his watch with
him had seen anything whatever of the craft.  We thus had an arduous,
dangerous, and most trying night's work for nothing; for with the escape
of the barque our work upon the batteries became absolutely useless to
us.  So, in no very good-humour, we all shifted into dry clothing,
weighed our anchor, shaping a course to the northward and westward, and
then went to breakfast.



CHAPTER EIGHT.

WE FALL IN WITH A CONVOY.

The next three days were spent in dodging about the chops of the
Channel, during which we saw nothing except a few homeward-bound British
merchantmen--all of them armed and quite capable of taking care of
themselves--and a British line-of-battle ship, by which we were chased
for six hours, but which we had little difficulty in escaping by jamming
the schooner close upon a wind.  The unsophisticated reader may perhaps
be inclined to wonder why we should have been chased by one of our own
men-o'-war; and why, being chased, we should have taken any trouble to
escape from her.  The fact, however, was that the _Dolphin_ was
altogether too rakish-looking a craft to be mistaken for a plodding
merchantman, her long, low, beamy hull, taunt, tapering spars, and broad
spread of superbly-cut canvas proclaimed her a sea-rover as far as the
eye could distinguish her; and, as the ensign carried was at that time
but an indifferent guarantee of a vessel's nationality, it was the
imperative duty of our men-o'-war, when falling in with such a craft, to
make sure, if possible, that she was not an enemy and a danger to our
commerce.  Our friend the two-decker was therefore quite justified in
her endeavour to get alongside us and obtain a sight of our papers; and
had we possessed any assurance that her delicate attentions would have
ended there, her people would have been quite welcome to come aboard us,
and overhaul the schooner and her papers to their heart's content.  But,
unfortunately, we had no such assurance.  There was, at the time of
which I am now writing, a very great difficulty in procuring men enough
to adequately man our ships of war, and there was therefore no
alternative left to the government but to resort to the process of
impressment, a process which naval officers were too often apt to adopt
with scant discrimination.  In their anxiety to secure a full complement
for their ships they deemed themselves justified not only in pressing
men ashore, but even in boarding the merchantmen of their own nation
upon the high seas and impressing so many men out of them that instances
were by no means rare of traders being subsequently lost through being
thus made so short-handed that their crews were insufficient in number
and strength to successfully battle against bad weather.  The crews of
vessels furnished with letters of marque were nominally protected from
impressment; but we were fully aware that the protection was only
nominal, and altogether insufficient; hence it came about that a British
privateer was always very much more anxious to escape from a man-o'-war
flying the colours of her own country than she was to avoid a ship
flying those of the enemy.

And now, to return to my story.  On the fourth day after our abortive
adventure in Abervrach harbour the wind hauled round from the eastward,
and, heartily tired of and disgusted with our ill-luck, we gladly
squared away before it to seek a better fortune on the bosom of the
broad Atlantic.  For a fortnight we stretched away to the southward and
westward, when we sighted and passed the lofty heights and precipitous
cliffs of Flores and Corvo, in the neighbourhood of which Captain Winter
determined to cruise for a week, it being customary for homeward-bound
ships from the southward to endeavour to make these islands and so check
their reckoning.  The wind, meanwhile, had gone round, and was now
blowing a very moderate breeze from the southward, with a clear sky,
bright sunshine, and a pleasantly mild temperature.

We cruised for eight days off the Azores, sighting only three vessels
during the whole of that time; and as they were all British they were of
course of no use to us.  Then, intensely disappointed at our continued
ill-luck, we hauled our wind and, with a freshening breeze from the
south-west, stretched away to the westward on the larboard tack, Captain
Winter having determined to look for better fortune in the West Indian
waters.

For the first two days after quitting the neighbourhood of the Azores we
made excellent progress; and then a steadily falling barometer,
accompanied by a lowering sky and a rapid increase in the strength of
the wind, warned us to prepare for bad weather.  Up to this time we had
been carrying our topgallant-sail, flying-jib, and small gaff-topsail;
but with the steady freshening of the wind, the approach of night, and
the threatening aspect of the sky, the skipper deemed it prudent to stow
our light canvas and to take down a reef in the mainsail and topsail.
It was well that this precaution was taken; for during the night the
wind increased to the strength of a gale, with a very heavy, dangerous
sea; and when morning came it found us snugged down to the jib--with the
bonnet off,--reefed foresail, and close-reefed mainsail.  It was at this
time looking very black and wild to windward; the sky all along the
south-western horizon being of a deep slaty, indigo hue, swept by swift-
flying streamers of dirty, whitish-grey cloud; while the leaden-grey
sea, scourged into a waste of steep, foam-capped ridges and deep,
seething, wind-furrowed valleys, had already risen to such a height as
to completely becalm our low canvas every time that the schooner settled
down into the trough.  The time was evidently at hand when it would be
necessary for us to heave-to; the schooner was therefore got round upon
the starboard tack, with her head to the southward; and, as the
barometer was still falling, the hands were set to work to send down the
yards and house the topmasts while it was still possible to do so.  The
task was a dangerous one; but we had plenty of strength, and, the men
working with a will, it was accomplished within an hour; and the
schooner was then ready, as we hoped, to face the worst that could
happen.  By noon it was blowing so furiously, and the sea had increased
to such an extent, that the skipper determined not to risk the vessel
any longer by further attempting to sail her, and she was accordingly
hove-to under a close-reefed foresail, when everybody but the officer in
charge of the deck, and the man at the wheel, went below.

As the day wore on the weather grew worse, and by nightfall it was
blowing a perfect hurricane, the force of the wind being so great that,
even under the small rag of a close-reefed foresail, the schooner was
bowed down to her water-ways, and her lee scuppers were all afloat.  Yet
the little craft was making splendid weather of it, riding the
mountainous seas as light and dry as a gull, looking well up into the
wind, and fore-reaching at the rate of fully three knots in the hour.
But it was a dreary and uncomfortable time for us all, the air being so
full of scud-water that it was like being exposed to a continuous
torrent of driving rain; despite our oil-skins and sou'-westers half an
hour on deck was sufficient to secure one a drenching to the skin, while
the spray, driven into one's face by the furious sweep of the hurricane,
cut and stung like the lash of a whip.  The schooner, being but a small
craft, too, was extraordinarily lively; leaping and plunging, rolling
and pitching to such an extent and with so quick a motion that it was
quite impossible to keep one's footing without holding on to something;
while to secure a meal demanded a series of feats of dexterity that
would have turned a professional acrobat green with envy.  And all this
discomfort was emphasised, as it were, by the yelling and hooting and
shrieking of the wind aloft, the roar of the angry sea, and the heavy,
perpetual swish of spray upon the deck.

It was about three bells in the first watch that night, when--I being in
charge of the deck, and the skipper keeping me company--a light was made
out upon our lee bow, quickly followed by another, and another, and
still another, until the whole of the horizon ahead was lighted up like
a town, there being probably over two hundred lights in sight.  It was
evident that we were approaching a large concourse of ships; and in
about an hour's time we found ourselves driving into the very heart of
the fleet.  The night was altogether too dark for us to be enabled to
make out who and what they were; but the skipper was of opinion that we
had encountered a large convoy, and as it was impossible to tell whether
they were friends or foes, he determined to wear the schooner round, as
soon as we could find room, and heave her to with her head to the
westward, like the rest of the fleet, when the morning would enable us
to ascertain the nationality of our neighbours and decide whether
anything was likely to be gained by keeping them company.  At eight
bells, therefore, by which time we had passed right through the fleet,
we got the schooner round and waited impatiently until morning.  There
was a good deal of firing of blank cartridge, throughout the night, as
also of signalling with coloured lanterns; but we could, of course, make
nothing of it, and took it simply to mean that the men-o'-war in charge
of the convoy were doing their best to keep the fleet from becoming
scattered during the continuance of the gale.

When morning dawned, and the light came struggling feebly through the
thick pall of murky, storm-torn vapour that overspread the sky, it
became apparent that the skipper's surmise as to the character of the
fleet had been correct: the _Dolphin_ being in the midst of some two
hundred and fifty sail of vessels of different rigs, from the stately
ship to the saucy schooner, in charge of two seventy-fours, a fifty-gun
ship, a frigate, and four eighteen-gun-brigs.  The men-o'-war were all
snugged comfortably down, royal and topgallant yards on deck,
topgallant-masts struck, and not an ounce of unnecessary top-hamper
aloft; but most of the merchantmen had kept everything standing, even to
their royal-yards.  There were a few, however--mostly the larger
craft,--who had sent down their top-hamper; and there were others--
notably a very fine, frigate-built ship--that had lost one or more of
their spars during the gale, and were now in great difficulties, with
the wreck thrashing about aloft and not only threatening the remaining
spars, but also the lives of the crew, who could be seen endeavouring to
cut the raffle adrift.  That the convoy was British became apparent as
soon as the light grew strong enough to enable us to distinctly make out
our nearest neighbours.

It struck me that the men-o'-war's people were not keeping their eyes
quite so wide open as they might have done; for there were only four
other schooners beside ourselves in the whole fleet, and one would have
supposed that the presence of a fifth would instantly have been
noticed--especially when that fifth wore so very roguish an appearance
as the _Dolphin_,--yet throughout the whole of that day no effort was
made to ascertain our nationality, where we came from, whither we were
bound, or anything about us!  Of course, under ordinary circumstances,
having ascertained that the convoy was British, and, therefore, of no
especial interest to us, we should have parted company by getting the
schooner round with her head to the southward.  There was, however, one
circumstance that decided the skipper to keep company with the convoy a
little longer, and it was this: As has already been mentioned, there was
a very fine, frigate-built merchantman in the fleet, which, when morning
dawned, was seen to be in a situation of considerable difficulty, her
fore and mizzen-topmast and main-topgallant-mast being over the side,
having apparently been carried away during the night by the tremendous
rolling and pitching of the ship.  And near her was an exceedingly
smart-looking brigantine, with main-topmast and fore topgallant-mast
housed.  This vessel joined the convoy about daybreak and was now hove-
to under a close-reefed main trysail, and fore-topmast-staysail, which
ought to have enabled her to easily forge ahead and eat out to windward
of the disabled ship.  And, as a matter of fact, she did so; yet somehow
she always seemed to drop back again into her old place, just to leeward
of the ship; and after observing her motions for some time, I became
impressed with the idea that this was the result of deliberate design,
rather than of accident.  For something seemed to be constantly going
wrong with her trysail sheet, necessitating a temporary taking in of the
sail, during which she would pay off and go wallowing away to leeward
for a distance of three or four miles, when the sail would be reset, and
she would come creeping stealthily and imperceptibly up into somewhere
near her old berth again.  And this was done so naturally that, had it
not occurred more than once, I do not know that I should have taken any
notice of it.  To me, however, the circumstance wore a rather suspicious
appearance; and when I had mentioned it to the skipper he seemed
somewhat disposed to take my view that the craft, although apparently
British built, was in reality an enemy's privateer, with designs upon
the disabled ship as soon as a favourable opportunity should occur for
carrying them out.  At all events there appeared to be enough
probability in the hypothesis to induce Captain Winter to remain in
company of the convoy, to watch the progress of events, instead of
wearing round and resuming our course to the southward.

The gale continued to blow all day with unabated fury, and the convoy,
of course, remained hove-to.  But, as the hours wore on, the several
craft gradually became more scattered, the less weatherly vessels
steadily settling away to leeward, until, by the time that the dark,
gloomy day drew toward its close, the fleet was spread out over a
surface of ocean measuring, as nearly as one could judge, nearly or
quite twelve miles in every direction: those craft that had sustained
damage aloft naturally for the most part settling to leeward at a
greater rate than the rest, since they were unable to dispose their
canvas so advantageously as the others for the purpose of lying-to.  The
frigate and gun-brigs were kept busy all day watching these stragglers,
urging them by signal, and the occasional firing of guns, to close with
the main body of the fleet, and generally playing the part of sheep-
dogs; while the crews of the lame ducks could be seen clearing away the
wreck of their broken spars, unbending their split sails and bending
others in place, and, in fact, doing their utmost to comply with the
orders of the men-o'-war.  But, after all, their utmost was but little;
the merchantmen being altogether too lightly manned to be able to do
really effective work in the face of such a gale as was then blowing.
The brigantine that had excited our suspicions had come in for a share
of the attention of one of the gun-brigs, and it was noticeable that,
after the man-o'-war had run down and hailed her, no further accidents
appeared to have happened aboard her, so that the disabled ship had
gradually settled away some five miles astern and to leeward of her.
Just as the darkness was closing down upon us, however, she took in her
trysail and fore-topmast-staysail, and set a main-staysail instead; but
they were so long about it that, when at length the change had been
effected, the ship had drawn up to within about half a mile of the
brigantine's lee quarter.  I directed Captain Winter's attention to
this, and he agreed with me that the manoeuvre had an exceedingly
suspicious appearance.

"The ship, however, is quite safe for the present," he remarked; "for,
even assuming the brigantine to be a Frenchman and a privateer, her
people can do nothing so long as it continues to blow so heavily as at
present.  But directly that the wind shows signs of dropping we may look
out; and if we observe any further suspicious manoeuvres we may safely
conclude that she is French, and, if the men-o'-war do not forestall us,
we will have a slap at her; for she appears to be a wonderfully fast and
weatherly craft and is certainly a most magnificent sea-boat."

I determined that I would keep a sharp eye upon the movements of that
brigantine--for I could not rid my mind of a very strong suspicion that
her people meant mischief,--and I accordingly watched her until she had
displayed her light, which I then pointed out to a man whom I told off
for the especial purpose of keeping his eye on it; it being my intention
to persuade the skipper, if possible, to run down a little closer to her
when it had become sufficiently dark to conceal our movements from
observation.  Captain Winter offered no objection to my proposal; and
accordingly, at eight bells of the second dog-watch, when the deck was
relieved, our helm was put up and we edged away down toward the light
which was stated to be that of the brigantine.  But when at length, by
careful manoeuvring, we had contrived to approach within biscuit-toss of
the vessel displaying it, it was discovered, to my chagrin, that she was
not the brigantine, but a large barque, the skipper of which appeared to
be greatly frightened at our sudden appearance near him; for he hailed
us, in execrable French, that he was armed, and that if we did not sheer
off forthwith he would fire into us.  I replied, in English, that he
need not be afraid of us, as we were British, like himself, and then
inquired whether he had seen a large brigantine in his neighbourhood.  I
got a reply to my question, it is true, but it was utterly
incomprehensible; and I doubt very much whether the man understood what
I had said to him; for the wind rendered it almost impossible for the
most powerful voice to make itself heard, unless at a very short
distance and dead to windward, as was the barque when her skipper hailed
us.  We made several attempts to find the brigantine that night, but
somehow failed to stumble across either her or the disabled ship upon
which we suspected her of entertaining designs.



CHAPTER NINE.

A NARROW ESCAPE, AND A FORTUNATE DISCOVERY.

About midnight there were signs that the gale had pretty well blown
itself out.  There was a distinct, if not very strongly-marked decrease
in the strength of the wind, and about an hour before dawn the veil of
impenetrable vapour overhead broke away, showing, first of all, a small
patch of clear sky, with half a dozen stars or so blinking out of it,
and then other and larger patches, with more stars; until, by the time
of sunrise, the sky was clear, save for the thin detached tatters of
fleecy vapour that still swept scurrying away to the northward and
eastward.

It was my morning watch on deck; and with the first grey light of early
dawn I indulged in a thoroughly searching scrutiny of the fleet--or as
much of it as still remained in sight,--on the look-out for the
brigantine; but I failed to discover any traces either of her or of the
disabled ship.  This I considered not only surprising but exceedingly
suspicious; as the crew of the ship had contrived, during the previous
day, to clear away the wreck of their top-hamper, and to get their craft
once more under command by setting their fore and main-topsails and a
make-shift fore-staysail, under which the vessel appeared to be doing
exceedingly well when the darkness of the preceding night had closed
down upon the convoy.  Indeed, so well had she been doing that it
occurred to me as possible that she might, during the night, have
managed to work herself into a tolerably weatherly position, relatively
to the rest of the fleet; and I therefore took the ship's telescope and
went up as far as the cross-trees, to see whether, from that elevation,
I could discover anything of her to windward.  But although I spent a
long half-hour aloft, carefully scrutinising every craft in sight, I was
quite unable to pick up either the ship or the brigantine.  I was still
aloft when the skipper made his appearance on deck; and, as I had by
that time about concluded my search, upon seeing him looking up at me I
gave one more comprehensive glance round the horizon, and then descended
to make my report.

"It is exceedingly odd," remarked the skipper, when I had assured him
that both vessels had vanished.  "What can have become of them?  The
brigantine can scarcely have taken the ship; for there has been, and
still is, far too much sea for boats to live in; and nobody but a madman
would ever dream of running a ship aboard in such weather; it would
simply mean the destruction of both craft.  I wonder, now, whether that
actually is the explanation of their disappearance?  But, no; the man
who commanded that brigantine was a sailor, whatever flag he may have
sailed under, and no sailor would even so much as think of attempting
such a foolhardy trick!  What is your opinion, George?"

"I quite agree with you, sir, as to the impossibility of boarding a ship
in such weather as that of last night," I answered.  "Yet the fact
remains that both craft have vanished.  And I do not believe that their
disappearance is the result of any accident such as, for instance, one
of them running foul of the other during the darkness.  Depend upon it,
sir, the brigantine is safe enough; and, wherever she may be at this
moment, the ship is not far from her."

"Well, it is a very extraordinary circumstance," observed the skipper;
"but I am inclined to believe, with you, that the disappearance of the
one is intimately connected with the disappearance of the other.  The
question now is, in which direction ought they to be looked for?"

I considered the matter a little, and then said:

"It appears to me, sir, that there is at least one direction in which--
supposing our suspicions to be correct--they are quite certain not to be
found, and that is to windward, in which direction the convoy will soon
be making sail.  If the brigantine is an enemy, and has had any hand in
the disappearance of the ship, depend upon it she would not shape a
course that would involve her being overtaken in a few hours by the
convoy, hampered as she would be by the disabled ship.  Nor do I think
she would be altogether likely to run away to leeward; because if the
ship happens to be missed by the men-o'-war--as she pretty certainly
will be before long,--that is precisely the direction in which she would
naturally be looked for.  Here we are, all hove-to on the larboard tack,
and my impression is that both vessels have remained on that tack; but,
instead of being hove-to all night, like the rest of us, they have
ratched away through the fleet, and have disappeared away there in the
north-western board."

"There is a good deal of sound reason and common sense in that argument
of yours, George, and, upon my word, I don't know that we could do
better than act upon it," answered the skipper meditatively.

"The sooner the better, sir, I think, if you will excuse me for saying
so," answered I.  "The frigate yonder is signalling to the gun-brigs,
who are all answering her; and that, to my mind, looks very much as
though the absence of the ship and the brigantine has just been
discovered.  If so, we shall probably have some of the men-o'-war coming
through the fleet making inquiries.  And although we have our papers to
show, I must confess I am not in love with the neighbourhood of those
gentry.  They may take it into their heads to order us to keep company
until they can come aboard to examine our papers; and, should that
happen, we may say good-bye to twenty or thirty of our best men, to say
nothing of our chance of finding the brigantine.  See, sir, the brigs
are shaking out a reef already."

"Ay, so they are," assented the skipper.  "You are right, George; it is
high time for us to be off.  You may make sail at once.  Those brigs
sail fairly well in moderate weather, but they are very crank, and I
believe we can run away from them in such weather as this.  Here is one
of them hereaway now, who looks as though she would like to have a word
with us.  Give the little hooker all that she will bear, George; and if
that fellow wants to try his rate of sailing with us, he is heartily
welcome to do so."

I looked in the direction indicated by the skipper, and saw one of the
gun-brigs about a mile and a half astern, heading straight up for us,
with the men upon her yards shaking out a reef from her topsails.  There
was no time to lose, so I sang out to the men; and, the tone of my voice
probably indicating the urgency of the case, they sprang into the
rigging and came tumbling aft, and almost as soon as the brig had got
her topsail-halliards sweated up, we were under double-reefed topsail,
double-reefed mainsail, foresail, fore-staysail, and jib, leaving the
rest of the fleet as though they had been at anchor.  The brig astern
now fired a gun as a signal for us to heave-to, but the shot never came
near us, and the only notice that we took of it was to hoist our
colours.  This caused the brig to give chase in earnest, shaking out
another reef in her topsails, and firing again.  It was perfectly clear
that we were looked upon with strong suspicion, and I had no doubt
whatever that, if we were caught, we should be detained until the
weather had moderated sufficiently for a boat to be sent aboard us.  A
few minutes, however, proved sufficient to set our minds at rest with
regard to the brig astern; she was being pressed altogether too much--
for although the gale had certainly broken, it was still blowing
heavily,--she was careened almost gunwale-to, and was sagging away to
leeward bodily, as well as dropping astern of us.  But unfortunately
there were two other brigs, one about a mile to leeward and another
about the same distance to windward, which now, in obedience to signals
thrown out by the frigate, took up the chase, and matters began to look
exceedingly awkward for us.  The brig to leeward I cared nothing about;
I felt satisfied that we could outsail and out-weather her; but it was
the fellow to windward that caused me to feel anxious, for he was edging
down upon us, and in a comparatively short time would have us under his
guns.  Luckily for us, there were a good many craft between us and this
vessel, and there was a whole crowd of them ahead, into the thick of
which we steered, in the hope that by threading our way among them we
should render it almost impossible for our pursuers to fire upon us for
fear of hitting some of the other vessels.

All three of the brigs in chase were now under double-reefed topsails,
and the way in which they drove along through the mountainous sea, now
soaring up to the crest of a wave in a smother of spray, showing the
whole of their fore-foot and some twenty feet of keel, and anon diving
furiously into a hollow, burying themselves to the windlass bitts, was a
sight worth seeing.  The brig to windward had taken up the pursuit by
edging broad away for us, but her people were not long in discovering
that this would not do; the lively little _Dolphin_ was justifying her
name by almost flying through the water, and we fore-reached out so
rapidly that our friend quickly had to haul her wind again, and even
then we were bringing her fast upon our weather quarter, although she
was steadily decreasing the distance between us and herself.  At length
she tried a gun, and the shot struck the water some distance ahead and
on our weather-bow.  We were nearly, if not quite, within range.  A few
minutes later she fired again, and this time the shot fell so close that
the spray actually wetted our jib-boom.  But we were now close to a
straggling bunch of some thirty or forty vessels, and before the brig
could again fire we were among them, and for fully five minutes it
became impossible for her to fire without running the risk of hitting
one of them.  This gave us a very handsome lift, of which we availed
ourselves to the utmost; and the brig to leeward being now well on our
lee quarter, Captain Winter thought he might venture to edge away a
point, which brought the brig to windward broad on our weather quarter.
The critical moment was now fast approaching, for the last-mentioned
vessel was now very nearly as close to us as she would be at all, and if
we could manage to weather out the next twenty minutes without mishap we
might hope to make good our escape.  We were soon clear of the cluster
of shipping that had afforded us protection, and the moment that we were
so the brig to windward again opened fire, the conviction of her people,
no doubt, being by this time that we were an enemy, despite the British
ensign streaming from our gaff-end.  We heard the shot go humming over
our mast-heads, and although it did no damage I could see that the
skipper was beginning to feel very uneasy, as he kept glancing from the
brig to our own sails, as though debating within himself the
desirability of hazarding the attempt to give the schooner a little more
canvas.  Presently we saw the brig luff momentarily into the wind, a
line of flame and smoke burst from her lee broadside, and nine six-pound
shot came skipping along the water toward us.  The broadside was
splendidly aimed, but, luckily for us, the moment of firing was badly
chosen, or the guns were too much depressed, for none of the shot
reached us.  Almost at the same moment the brig to leeward began firing,
but her shot fell so far short that from that moment she gave us no
further concern whatever.  The luffing of the brig to windward gave us a
slight advantage, as by so doing she fell astern several fathoms;
moreover, she had by this time settled so far away on our quarter that a
few minutes more would suffice to bring her almost directly into our
wake, and I felt that, once there, we should have very little more to
fear from her.  This impression was quickly confirmed, for after her
late experience she fired no more broadsides, the only guns that she
could now bring to bear being her bow-chasers, and although the next
three or four shot came unpleasantly near to us, those that succeeded
fell short, and by the time that we were abreast of the most northerly
stragglers of the convoy we were practically safe, provided that none of
our gear carried away.  Of this, however, we had but little fear, as our
rigging was all new and of the very best.  Fortunately for us, none of
the big men-o'-war condescended to take part in the chase, or, from the
weatherly position which they occupied, there is very little doubt that
they would have cut us off.  As it was, the brigs maintained the pursuit
for a distance of some sixteen miles altogether, when they were recalled
by signal from the commodore.

We were greatly elated at this escape, for although the utmost that we
had to fear was the loss, by impressment, of some of our men, the
maintenance of our crew intact was an important matter with us, the more
so now that we were bound upon what might prove to be a lengthened
cruise, during the progress of which many vacancies might be expected to
occur,--either by the necessity to send away prize crews or otherwise,--
which we should have little or no chance to fill up.  But, over and
above this, our adventure with the gun-brigs had afforded us a brief but
sufficient opportunity to thoroughly test the powers of the schooner
under circumstances of about as adverse a character as could well be
imagined, and the triumphant manner in which she had more than justified
our most sanguine anticipations gave us unbounded confidence in her.

By noon that day the wind had moderated sufficiently to permit of our
shaking out another reef, and when the sun went down out of a clear sky,
shooting his last rays in a long trail of burning gold athwart the
tumbling waste of still tumultuous waters, the _Dolphin_ was once more
under all plain sail, and speeding to the westward in the direction that
we surmised had been taken by the brigantine and the ship.  During the
night the wind dropped still further, and the following morning found
us, with our sails barely filled, creeping lazily along over a long, low
swell that had already begun to wear that streaky, oily appearance which
sometimes heralds the approach of a stark calm.  Our calculations had
led us to hope that with the appearance of daylight on this particular
morning we should sight the brigantine and her prize, as we had grown to
consider the disabled ship; but, greatly to our disappointment, nothing
was to be seen in any direction, even from the lofty elevation of our
royal-yard.  As the day wore on the wind died away altogether, and by
noon the schooner had lost steerage-way, her head boxing the compass as
she floated on the glass-smooth undulations that alone remained to tell
of the elemental fury that had raged over the spot but a few hours
previously.

We remained thus becalmed for fifty-four hours, so utterly devoid of
movement that the ash-dust and galley refuse hove overboard by the cook
during that time collected into an unsightly patch alongside, just abaft
the larboard fore-rigging, in the exact spot where they had been thrown.
The weather was now excessively hot, and those of us who could swim
took advantage of so favourable an opportunity for bathing by spending
most of our time off duty in the water alongside, until the appearance
of a shark's fin or two, at no great distance, warned us of the danger
of such a proceeding, and caused the skipper to issue an order that no
man was to go overboard without especial permission.

A few hours of such weather, after the gale, would have been an
agreeable change, affording us, as it did, an excellent opportunity to
dry our drenched clothing; but it was spun out so long that we were all
heartily glad when, toward sunset on the second day of the calm, a
delicate line of blue, betokening the approach of a breeze, appeared
along the northern horizon; and by the time that the sun had sunk out of
sight, the first faint breathings reached us.  We had by this time
arrived at the conclusion that my surmise relative to the movements of
the brigantine of suspicious character was erroneous, and that she had
steered in some other direction.  As soon, therefore, as our canvas
filled and the schooner gathered steerage-way, a course was shaped for
the south-west; the skipper and I having made up our minds that the West
Indian waters afforded the most promising field for the operations of
such enterprising privateersmen as ourselves.

The breeze that had come to us proved to be but a very languid zephyr
after all, a scarcely perceptible breathing, just sufficient to give the
schooner steerage-way, and to drift us along at the rate of a bare two
knots, to the south-west, through the soft, mysterious sheen of the
star-lit night.  With the dawning of the new day matters improved
somewhat, our speed rising to nearly four knots.  When I went on deck at
six bells, to get a salt-water shower-bath in the head, I found the
schooner gently stealing along over a smooth sea, softly wrinkled to a
most delicate azure hue by the light touch of the faint breeze that came
to us, cool, sweet, and refreshing, out of the north.  The sky was a
deep, pure, cloudless blue overhead, merging, by a thousand subtle
gradations, into a warm, pinky, primrose tint along the horizon; and
away to the north, low down in the sky, there floated a few indefinite,
softly-luminous cloud shapes that gave us some reason to hope that we
might be favoured with a more robust breeze later on in the day,
notwithstanding the oily-looking streaks and patches of calm that
appeared here and there upon the ocean's surface.  The watch were busily
engaged in swabbing the deck subsequent to a vigorous treatment with the
holystone; the freshly-polished brasswork and the guns flashed like gold
in the brilliant morning sunlight; the white canvas swelled and sank
gently, as the schooner curtsied upon the almost imperceptible heaving
of the swell; everything looked fresh and bright and cheerful, and a
thin wreath of smoke that floated lazily out of the galley funnel and
away over the lee cat-head to the melody of a rollicking sea-ditty
chanted by the cook, as he busied himself with the preparation of
breakfast, imparted that sense of homeliness and light-hearted happiness
which seemed to be all that was required to satisfactorily complete the
picture.

Breakfast was over, and I had just set the watch to work upon certain
jobs requiring the doing, when a boy, whom I had sent aloft to grease
down the topmasts, as a punishment for some trifling misdemeanour,
reported two sail, close together, broad on our starboard beam, and
steering the same way as ourselves.  In reply to an inquiry respecting
their appearance, he furnished us with the further information that one
was a brigantine, but he could not quite make out the rig of the other,
although he thought she was a ship.  I immediately suspected, from this
reply, that we had accidentally tumbled upon the identical two craft
that we were most anxious to find; and, the better to satisfy myself
upon this important point, I took the ship's telescope and journeyed up
to the royal-yard, from whence I should obtain the most satisfactory
view of them possible.  They were at least twenty miles distant, and
therefore quite invisible from the deck, while even from the royal-yard
their upper canvas only, and the heads of their lower sails, were to be
seen; but I had not got them within the field of the telescope more than
a minute when I became convinced that the lost was found--that they were
the two vessels for which we had been looking.  The ship was under quite
a respectable jury-rig, and was carrying topgallant-sails and jib, while
the brigantine seemed to be under double-reefed canvas, doubtless to
moderate her speed to that of the disabled ship.  They were close
together, and steering to the south-west like ourselves.  Having
thoroughly satisfied myself upon these points, I descended and made my
report to the skipper.

The old fellow chuckled and rubbed his hands.  "What a lucky thing it
was that the breeze did not freshen during the night," he remarked.
"Had it done so we should have passed those two craft without seeing
them; whereas now, if all goes well, we will have the pair of them
before dark.  And to think that we were grumbling about the light airs
during the night!  Upon my word, I am beginning to believe that the
parsons are only speaking the simple truth when they say that we can
never tell what is really best for us.  However, this is not the time to
discuss matters of that sort.  How do you say the vessels bear from us?"

"Broad on the lee bow, sir, or as nearly as possible dead to leeward,"
answered I.

"Then, if we keep away a couple of points we shall just about hit them
off," remarked the skipper.  He gave the necessary instructions to the
helmsman, and then, turning again to me, continued:

"We may as well get this business over as soon as possible, George; so
get the stunsails, big gaff-topsail, and main-topmast-staysail on her at
once, my lad, and give the little hooker a chance to go through the
water."

These additions to our canvas were soon made, and then the watch
returned to the work upon which they had been previously engaged, as we
did not expect to overtake the object of our pursuit for several hours.

It was just noon, and we were still engaged upon our observations of the
sun for the determination of the latitude, when the captain made out,
through the telescope of his sextant, the mast-heads of the brigantine
just peeping above the line of the southern horizon; and while we were
in the cabin getting our dinner, Comben, who had charge of the deck,
reported, through the open skylight, that the brigantine had apparently
just sighted us, for she had hauled her wind and was making sail.

"All right," remarked the skipper; "so much the better.  That just suits
me, for we shall get to fisticuffs all the sooner, and get the whole
business comfortably over by dark.  Let her go along as she is, Mr
Comben."

We finished our dinner comfortably, and then went on deck, to find that
the brigantine had reached out well across our fore-foot; and shortly
afterwards she tacked, heading well up to meet us.  She was then about
nine miles off, and some four points on our starboard bow; the ship
being, perhaps, twelve miles distant, bearing a point on our port bow.
The wind had freshened a trifle during the forenoon, and was now blowing
a pretty little breeze that sent us along at about six knots; and if it
would but freshen a trifle more it would become a perfect working breeze
for a fight between two such craft as the brigantine and ourselves.  As
it was, I was by no means dissatisfied, for there was just wind enough
to ensure the proper working of the schooner, while the water was smooth
enough to admit of our laying our adversary aboard without injury to
either vessel.  The men were given plenty of time to finish their dinner
in peace and comfort; a tot of grog was served out to them, and then all
hands cleared the decks for action; the galley fire was extinguished,
the magazine opened, powder and shot passed on deck, cutlasses and
pistols served out, and the latter loaded; and then the crew went to
quarters.  The brigantine was by this time within three miles of us; we
allowed her to close to within two miles, and then shortened sail to
mainsail, foresail, topsail, topgallant-sail, and jibs, hoisted our
colours, and fired a gun.



CHAPTER TEN.

THE AFFAIR OF THE TIGRE AND THE MANILLA.

The brigantine was at this time under all plain sail, to her royal and
main-topmast-staysail, standing toward us, close-hauled, on the port
tack; but we had no sooner shortened sail and hoisted our colours than
she did the same, displaying a very large tricolour at her peak.

"Very good," commented the skipper approvingly; "that settles the
question of her nationality, at all events, and shows that she is
prepared to fight for the prize yonder, that she has somehow managed to
secure.  Well, I'm glad of it, George, for she is a wonderfully handsome
craft, powerful, fast, and half as big again as we are; she will be
quite worth the trouble of taking, I believe.  A man ought to be able to
do good work with such a fine vessel as that under his feet.  There she
comes round.  Very pretty! very pretty indeed!  Why, she works like a
top!  And look at the beam of her, and the height and spread of her
spars!  Upon my word it seems a pity to knock about such a beauty as
that with shot!  I suppose it will be impossible to avoid doing her some
damage, but we must knock her about as little as possible.  I tell you
what, George, I believe our best plan will be to make short work of her.
If we play the game of `hammer and tongs' we shall maul each other
fearfully before we compel her to haul down her colours; so let the men
clap a charge of grape and canister in on top of their round shot.  We
will run her aboard at once, firing as we touch; board in the smoke, and
drive her people below, out of hand."

This was quite in accordance with my own fancy, for, as the skipper had
said, the brigantine was half as big again as the _Dolphin_; she mounted
fourteen guns to our eleven, and the chances were that, in a fair stand-
up fight, she might disable us to such an extent as to render her own
escape and that of her prize an easy matter.  So I went round the decks
and personally saw to the execution of the skipper's orders, explaining
to the men his intentions, warning them not to fire until they got the
word, and cautioning all hands to be ready to follow the skipper and
myself on to the brigantine's decks the instant that the two vessels
were properly secured to each other.

The brigantine had gone about while the skipper was speaking to me, and
was now on our port bow, standing toward us on the starboard tack, and,
with the exception of our own gun of defiance, neither vessel had as yet
fired.  It looked almost as if she were waiting for us to begin, in
order that she might ascertain our weight of metal; but when the two
craft were within about a quarter of a mile of each other our antagonist
suddenly yawed and gave us her whole starboard broadside of seven
twelve-pound shot.  The guns were excellently aimed, the seven shot
flying close over our heads and passing through our sails.  But the
seven perforations in our canvas represented the full extent of the
damage, not one of our spars being hit, or so much as a rope-yarn cut.
I could see that our lads' fingers were itching to return the fire, the
captains of the guns squinting along the sights of their pieces and
audibly remarking that the elevation was just right if the skipper would
but luff and give them a chance to show what they could do; but I
steadied them by passing along from gun to gun telling them that, if
they would but have patience, their chance would come in a few minutes,
in answer to which many of them clapped their hands to their cutlasses
to make sure that they were loose in their sheaths, while others drew
their pistols and carefully examined the priming.

The brigantine luffed again immediately that she had fired, and we were
now so close that I could see her people busily reloading.  The two
vessels were rapidly nearing each other, and I was in hopes that we
should close before it would be possible for them to fire again.  But
there was a man on board, who, by his gestures, seemed to be urging them
to expedite their work, and when we were only some twenty fathoms
distant, while the brigantine was crossing our bows, I saw the guns
again run out.

"Look out, sir," I shouted to the skipper; "they are about to fire
again!  Luff, or they will rake us!"

The skipper signed with his hand, and the helmsman gave the wheel a
powerful whirl to starboard.  The schooner swerved round, and almost at
the same instant crash came another broadside, slap into us this time.
There was a perceptible concussion as the shot struck, followed by a
crashing and splintering of wood, two or three piercing shrieks of
agony, and five men fell to the deck, with the blood welling out of the
dreadful wounds inflicted by the shot and flying splinters.  Then, as we
bore down upon the brigantine, the skipper raised a warning cry.  I drew
my sword and rushed forward to head the boarders from that part of the
ship.  The skipper gave the word to fire, and, as our broadside rang
out, the two vessels crashed together.  There was an indescribable
tumult of thudding shot, rending wood, groans, shrieks, and execrations
on board the Frenchman, and, with a shout of "Hurrah, lads; follow me,
and make short work of it!"  I leaped on to the brigantine's rail and
down on deck.

The spacious deck of the French ship seemed to be crowded with men, as
far as I could see through the thick pall of powder smoke that wreathed
and twisted hither and thither in the eddying draughts of wind, but
there were great gaps among them filled with prostrate figures, heaped
upon each other, some lying stark and still, others writhing and
screaming with agony, bearing fearful witness to the havoc wrought by
our grape and canister, the discharge of which, at such close quarters,
seemed to have stunned and stupefied the Frenchmen, for not a hand was
raised to oppose me as I sprang down off the rail.  I darted a quick
glance along the deck, noticed that the skipper was leading his party on
board, aft, and then made a cut at the Frenchman nearest me.

This woke him up.  He hurriedly raised his cutlass to guard the blow,
and the next moment we were at it, cut, thrust, and parry, as hard as we
could go.  Our attack being made upon the two extremities of the
brigantine's deck, we soon had her crew hemmed in between the skipper's
and my own party, and for the next ten minutes there was as pretty a
fight as one need wish to witness, the Frenchmen rallying gallantly to
the call of their captain.  The hubbub was terrific, the clash of steel,
the popping of pistols, the shrieks, groans, and outcries of the
wounded, the execrations of the Frenchmen, the cheers of our own lads,
and the grinding of the ships together, creating a perfectly
indescribable medley of sound.  The struggle threatened to be stubborn
and protracted, the Frenchmen at our end of the ship obstinately
disputing every inch of the deck with us.  I therefore determined to
make a special effort, and see what the mere physical strength, of which
I possessed a goodly share, would do for us.

There was a handspike lying upon the deck, under my feet, which I had
tripped over and kicked aside twice or thrice, so, suddenly hitting out
with my left fist, I knocked down the man who happened to be at the
moment opposed to me, quickly stooped and seized the handspike, dropped
my sword, and, singing out to our own lads to give me room, I swung my
new weapon round my head and brought it down with a crash upon the two
or three Frenchmen nearest me.  The force of the blow made my arm tingle
to the elbow, but it swept the Frenchmen down as though it had been a
scythe, and caused those behind to recoil in terror.  Another flail-like
sweep proved equally effective, the cutlasses raised to guard the blows
being as useless as so many wands, and when I followed it up with a
third it proved too much for the Frenchmen, who, seeing their comrades
go down before me like ninepins, gave way with a yell of dismay,
retreating aft until they were all jammed and huddled together like
sheep, so closely that they had no room to fight effectively.  The
French captain, as I took him to be, finding things going badly in our
direction, forced his way through the crowd, and, perhaps regarding me
as the chief mischief-maker, levelled a pistol at my head and fired.  I
felt the ball graze my scalp, but at the same instant my handspike
descended upon the unhappy man's head.  I saw the blood spurt out over
his face, and down he went.  This proved sufficient.  The Frenchmen
nearest me threw down their weapons and cried that they surrendered.
The cry was taken up by the rest, and the brigantine was won.

The first thing now to be done was to see to the wounded.  The carnage
had been very great in proportion to the numbers engaged, and our men
had no sooner sheathed their weapons than they went to work among the
ghastly prostrate forms to separate the wounded from the dead.  This
task was soon completed, and it was then discovered that our loss had
not been nearly so great as I had feared; the dead amounting to eleven,
and the wounded to nineteen, three of whom were dangerously injured.
Our own dead and wounded were carefully removed to the schooner, and
then,--the unwounded Frenchmen having been driven below and securely
confined in the hold,--the skipper put me in charge of the prize, with a
crew of twenty men, and the two craft made sail in company, in pursuit
of the merchantman, which was now hull-down in the south-western
quarter.  The moment that the two craft were clear of each other, and
the sails trimmed, I set my people to work to convey the wounded
Frenchmen below to the cabin, where, the vessel by good luck being
provided with a surgeon, they were quickly attended to.  When this was
done it was found that the French loss totalled up to no less than
twenty-seven killed and forty-four wounded, out of a complement of one
hundred men with which she had commenced the engagement.  She was a
heavily-manned vessel, for, in addition to the number already given, she
had thirty men on board the prize.

Having seen the wounded carried below, the dead thrown overboard, and
the decks washed down, I had an opportunity to look about me a bit, and
take stock of the noble craft that we had captured.  She turned out to
be the _Tigre_ of Nantes, thirty-four days out, during which she had
captured only one prize, namely, the ship of which we were now in
pursuit.  She was a brand-new vessel, measuring three hundred and
seventy-six tons, oak-built, coppered, and copper fastened; of immense
beam, and very shallow, drawing only ten feet six inches of water.  She
was extraordinarily fast with the wind over her quarter, running away
from the _Dolphin_ easily.  But I suspected that in a thrash to
windward, in anything of a breeze, the schooner would prove to be quite
a match for her, with, perhaps, a trifle to spare.  She mounted fourteen
twelve-pounders, and her magazine was crammed with ammunition, it having
been the intention of her captain to try his luck, like ourselves, in
the West Indian waters.

It was about six bells in the afternoon w

Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/21065