“This time, gentlemen, you must permit me to treat you. It is not every day such guests assemble under my poor roof,” said the landlord, bowing courteously, “nor am I likely soon to pass so pleasant an evening.”
“That's as you please it,” said Paul, carelessly. “If you are too good a fellow to care for money, there's three naps for the poor of the village; mayhap there may be an old sailor amongst them.”
A murmur of satisfaction at their comrade's conduct ran round the circle, as the host disappeared for the fresh supply of wine. In an instant he was back again, carrying a second basket under his arm, which he placed carefully on the table, saying, “Pomard of '87, gentlemen; I wish it were Chambertin for your sakes.”
“Tête bleue!that's what I call wine,” said one, smacking his lips, as he tasted the generous liquor.
“Yes,” said Paul, “that's better than drinking the pink water they serve us out on service. Morbleu! how we 'd fight, if they'd tap an aume of that when they beat to quarters.”
The bottle now passed freely from hand to hand; and Paul, leaning back in his chair, crossed his arms before him, as, with his eyes half closed, he seemed to be occupied in remembering some long passed occurrence.
“Ay, Comrades,” said he, after a long pause, “the landlord was not so far out as you may think him. I might have been, if not an admiral of the fleet, at least a captain or a commodore by this time, if I only wished it, but I wouldn't.”
“You wouldn't, Paul?” cried three or four in a breath. “How do you mean, you wouldn't? Is it that you didn't like it?”
“That's it: I didn't like it,” replied he, glaring around him as he spoke, with a look which had repressed any tendency to mirth, if such an inclination existed in the party. “Mayhap there are some here don't believe this,” he continued, as if anxious to extort a contradiction from any one bold enough to adventure it; but none seemed disposed to meet his wishes. He resumed. “The way of it was this:—
“We sailed from Brest, seven sail and two frigates, on a cruise, in the Messidor of the year '13, (it was the time of the Republic then), and our orders were to keep together, and afford protection to all vessels of our flag; and wherever an opportunity offered to engage the enemy, to do so, if we had a fair chance of success. There was one heavy sailer of the fleet, the 'Old Torch,' and by good luck I was in her; and so, before we were eight days out, it came on to blow a hurricane from the northeast, with a great sea that threatened to poop us at every stroke. How the others weathered it I can't say; we rolled so badly that we carried away our mainmast and half our bulwarks, and when day broke we could see nothing of the rest. We were lying floundering there in the trough of the sea, with nothing left but a storm-jib to keep her head straight, and all hands at the pumps; for in working she had opened her old seams, and leaked like a basket. Well, we cut away the wreck of the mast, and we threw twelve of our guns over,—short eighteens they were, and all heavy metal,—and that lightened her a bit, and we began to have hopes of weathering out the gale, when the word was passed of a strange sail to windward.