“Whose yacht, boy?” asked one of the officers.
“Sir Dudley Broughton's, sir; the 'Firefly,'” said I.
“Broughton! Broughton!” said an old, shrewd-looking man, in a foraging-cap; “don't you know all about him? But, to be sure, he was before your day;” and then, changing his discourse to French,—with which language, thanks to my kind old friend Father Rush, I was sufficiently acquainted to understand what was said,—he added, “Sir Dudley was in the Life Guards once; his wife eloped with a Russian or a Polish Count,—I forget which,—and he became deranged in consequence. Were you long with Sir Dudley, boy?” asked he, addressing me in English.
“Not quite two months, sir.”
“Not a bad spell with such a master,” resumed he, in French, “if the stories they tell of him be true. How did you happen to be left on Anticosti?”
“No use in asking, Captain!” broke in the skipper. “You never get a word of truth from chaps like that; go for'ard, boy.”
And with this brief direction I was dismissed. All my fancied heroism—all my anticipated glory—vanishing at once; the only thought my privations excited being that I was a young scamp, who, if he told truth, would confess that all his sufferings and misfortunes had been but too well merited.
This was another lesson to me in life, and one which perhaps I could not have acquired more thoroughly than by a few days on Anticosti.
