The Frenchman disdained to use his chase-guns, so confident was he of bringing us to action at broadside range; but all the forenoon the breeze dwindled, and at midday both ships were caught in a dead calm. The frigate put out her boats, and so did we, and at once the advantage shifted in our favor. For 'twas one thing to tow a great forty-four, loaded with vast weight of metal, men and stores, and entirely a different task to tow the Walrus, of two-thirds the bulk and practically unladen below the gundeck. Moreover, the French sailors were in no wise so hardy or so desperate as the pirates, who knew that their chances of life were in proportion to the distance they extended betwixt the two vessels.
Flint swaggered around the fo'csle, swearing and urging on the men in the boats like the spectator of a horse-race who has staked more than he can afford upon the issue.
"We'll make it, —— me," he would say. "My luck's with us, I tell ye all. Here, Darby, jump on to the bulwarks and let 'em see your red head. Mark him, men! There's luck for ye. There don't live the man can stop me whilst the lad's with us."
And he would brandish his hanger at the towering sails of the frigate, lying slack against the yards, just out of cannonshot, and burst into the wildest imprecations and challenges.
"No Frenchman'll pull down John Flint! Aye, —— —— me for a —— —— —— if he will! I tell ye I ha' luck. Look to what I ha' done. There were three after us but two days since, and we lost 'em as we'll lose yon fellow."
His promises were justified amazingly. In the course of the afternoon we gained a hard-won league; and that night under cloak of darkness we stole silently north before a freshening wind, which by morning was a tempest. The French frigate disappeared, making the best of the heavy weather, and the Walrus was blown north and west for five days, past the latitude of Spyglass Island, past the scattered rocks and cays of the Bahamas, past the Floridas. Impossible now to watch for the tall spars of fighting-ships—as impossible as it would have been to fight them or for them to fight us, with the gray waves toppling mainyard high and the gunports buried half the time.
Flint had only dead reckoning to go by, for low-hung clouds and black banks of rain obscured sun and stars. Literally we did not know where we were, and our lookouts were peering through the scud for a landfall in the Bermoothes the morning the storm flailed itself to pieces.
It was this morning that the fever first appeared in our midst. I can still see the look, half-doubt, half-misgiving, in Silver's face as he heaved himself aft by one of the life-lines which grilled the maindeck and hailed Flint on the poop.
"There's ten lads groanin' in their hammocks, cap'n."
"Take your crutch to 'em," snapped Flint.