“By St. Peter! if you turn out to be the son of my noble protector, to whom I owe everything—my position—all,” said Patrick O’Loughlin, warmly, “the great desire of my heart will be gratified, for I shall look upon myself as a father to you.”
“A young father, O’Loughlin, twenty-four years of age, scarcely seven years older than your son,” said our hero. “However, to-morrow much of this wild dream of mine will vanish or be substantiated.”
CHAPTER XI.
Towards sunset the following day the Babet was within sight of Gibraltar, the wind having shifted, during the night, to the eastward. The ladies were all on deck, anxious for a view of the rock, the bold and noble front of which, approaching from the eastward, is particularly fine, and struck Madame Volney and her daughters with admiration, and Mabel with wonder. They were only three leagues distant; and as Captain O’Loughlin required some few things to complete his jury rig, he resolved to run into the bay for a day, and give his guests an opportunity of landing and seeing the place.
“I promised you yesterday, Mr. Thornton,” said Madame Volney, sitting down beside the anxious midshipman, “to give you some particulars concerning the young child saved in the long boat by the sailors of the Surveillante. I stated that the frigate—so my brother told me—went ashore on a reef off Isle Dieu; part of the crew became mutinous, and got at the spirits. However, as many remained true, the frigate was got off, and anchored, very little damaged; and the next day my brother, who was greatly interested about the child, inquired for him, and was grieved and vexed to hear that in the hurry and confusion of the preceding night, the English prisoners had got away with the jolly boat, and no doubt had taken the child with them. Now my brother was the first person that received the child when handed on board the Surveillante, and he carried him down in his arms, for he was nearly dead, to the cabin stove, and with the steward’s assistance applied restoratives. In stripping him of his wet garments to wrap him in hot blankets, he perceived a small morocco case fastened round the child’s neck, and on opening it beheld the small miniature of a very handsome man, in a British naval uniform, and on the back, in small gold letters, ‘Oscar de Bracy!’”
“My God, how extraordinary!” exclaimed the midshipman, greatly agitated; and the hand little Mabel was holding nervously pressed hers.
“You suspected this disclosure, Mr. Thornton, I see,” said Madame Volney.
“Yes, madame; I thought and hoped something might lead to this important announcement.”
He then briefly related Mr. O’Loughlin’s intercourse with Sir Oscar de Bracy, but carefully refrained from stating his friend’s early history, merely saying that Sir Oscar de Bracy was Captain O’Loughlin’s guardian, and that he had saved his boy’s life when a mere child of two years old.