The next minute they were alongside; and springing upon the deck, boarding her on the quarter, our hero encountered Sir Sidney, coming aft, having boarded her from the bow. After a ten minutes’ conflict, the lugger’s crew surrendered, but the first mate stole forward, and with an axe cut the cable. This was not perceived for a moment, till Bill Saunders came running up, saying:—
“She’s adrift, sir, and fast going towards the shore.”
“Then hunt for an anchor and let go, Bill,” cried the young lieutenant, going aft to speak to Sir Sidney, who was talking to the Captain, Auguste Baptiste Gaudet, a tall powerful man, with a remarkably repulsive countenance.
“This gentleman,” said Sir Sidney, laying his hand on our hero’s arm, and little thinking how destructive and dangerous those words would prove to his officer; “this gentleman very nearly captured you once before, when you lost your main mast.”
“Sacre dieu—what!” exclaimed the privateer Captain, “was it Monsieur who took the Bon-Citoyen?”
“Yes,” returned Sir Sidney, “and shot her captain also.”
“Sacre diable!” muttered the Captain, with a savage scowl, which neither our hero nor Sir Sidney saw or noticed, for both were anxiously regarding their then critical situation.
“I shall return on board the Diamond,” said Sir Sidney; “do you order the boats ahead, and set all the sail you can on the lugger, put the prisoners into the boats, and send them ashore at Harfleur.”
“There’s not an anchor in the craft,” said Bill Saunders to our hero, after Sir Sidney had left.
But just then one of the men shouted out that they had found a small kedge, which was accordingly let go, when they discovered that neither the boats ahead nor the sails would move the lugger against the strong flood tide making up the river Seine. Day was approaching, when Lieutenant Thornton perceived that the lugger had dragged, and that at last she had brought up, two miles higher up than the town of Havre, nearly abreast of Harfleur. The launch, after landing the prisoners, had pulled back to the Diamond, and Sir Sidney Smith perceiving, as the daylight made, several vessels coming out of Havre to attack and re-take the lugger, gallantly put back to her assistance, resolved to defend her to the last; a most spirited determination, but an unfortunate one, as will be seen in our next chapter.