“Not so soon, lad!” said he, sorrowfully. “It’s a big spar to splice, the surgeon says, and will take three months; though how I’m to lie here three months is more than I can tell.”
“I’ll do my best to make it endurable for you. I’ll get books—they’ve plenty of books here—and maps, and drawings; and I saw a draftboard this morning, and you’ll see the time won’t hang so heavily as you feared.”
“That ain’t it at all, Harry. You’ve got to go to Liverpool to Towers and Smales—them’s the fellows know me well. Smales sailed with me as a youngster, and you’ll hand them a letter I’ll write, and they’ll look about for the sort of craft we’re wanting—something bark-rigged, or a three-masted schooner. I was dreaming of one last night—such a clipper on a wind! The French are blockading Vera Cruz just now, and if we could slip past them and get in, one trip would set us all right again.”
“I think I should like that well!” cried the youth. “Like it! Why. wouldn’t you like it? There ain’t nothing to compare with blockade running in this life: stealing carefully up till you see the moment to make a dash—watching your wind, and then with every inch of canvas you can spread, go at it till the knee timbers crack again, and the planks work and writhe like the twigs of a wicker basket, and all the ships of war flying this signal and that to each other, till at last comes a gun across your bows, and you run up a flag of some sort—English belike, for the French never suspect John Bull of having a clipper. Then comes the order to round to, and you pretend to mind it; and just as they man their boat, dead at them you go, swamp every man of them, and hold on, while they fire away, at the risk of hulling each other, and never take more notice of them than one discharge from your pivot-gun, just by way of returning their salute. That’s what I call sport, boy; and I only wish I was at it this fine morning.”
“And what happens if you’re taken?”
“That depends on whether you showed fight or not; if you fired a shotted gun, they hang you.”
Luttrell shook his head, and muttered, “A dog’s death; I don’t like that.”
“That’s prejudice, Sir; nothing more. Every death a man meets bravely is a fine death! I’d just as lieve be hanged as flayed alive by the Choctaws!”
“Perhaps so would!”
“Well, there’s what you’ve got to do. Towers and Smales, shipbuilders!—they’re the men to find what we want, and they know a clipper well; they’ve built more slavers than any house in the trade.”