It was a great mortification to him when a man was sent aloft to help him. He would look as meeching as a dog caught in the act of sheep-killing, and not get over it for a week.
After Walter, on the homeward voyage, was promoted to a chief mate's berth, he, in order to save Ned's feelings, and enable him to handle it, had a royal buntline rove, the legs of which, led through thimbles on each leech, which spilled the sail, that is, threw the wind out of it, gathered it up, and enabled him to handle it in all weathers.
Even this chafed the proud-spirited boy, because he thought everybody knew what it was done for, and felt that it was a tacit acknowledgment of incompetence.
Walter and Ned went on board the vessel in Boston some days before the crew came up from Pleasant Cove. Ned goes aloft in the night, unreeves the royal buntline, takes the thimbles from the sail, the block from the eyes of the rigging, and the thimbles from the tie, and stows them all away.
"Ned," said Walter, the next day, as he was looking over the running-rigging, preparatory to bending sails, "where is the royal buntline?"
"I thought, sir, it wouldn't be needed," replied Ned, slightly coloring; "so I unrove and stowed it away."
"All right. I missed it, and thought some dock thief had stolen it."
The shrewd course of Captain Brown, in making Jacques Bernoux a handsome present for his past services, and thus attaching him to his interests, was now evident. Jacques was not merely a fisherman, but also a pilot, and thoroughly acquainted with the coast all along the shores of the Gulf of Lyons, and especially between Toulon and Marseilles. Along some portions of the gulf the land is low, and there are many lagoons, separated by narrow portions of land, into which the sea is forced by storms; but towards Toulon the shores are bolder, and the land broken into many rocky heights and promontories, intersected by creeks and coves. With every one of these Jacques was thoroughly acquainted, as he had been a smuggler before his marriage.
All the passage Captain Brown was studying the charts of the French coast, and obtaining information from Jacques in respect to it.
Arthur Brown had no ordinary foes to deal with. Lord Hood was in command of the Mediterranean fleet, with orders to take all vessels, of whatever nation, attempting to enter Marseilles or Toulon, and under him was Nelson, in the Agamemnon, sixty-four guns—a very fast ship, that is, for an English ship. It was merely a question of shrewdness and seamanship, as the Arthur Brown was unarmed, and could not resist.