Bill shook off his two opponents as a mastiff would a lapdog, and with a terrible blow with his clenched fist, sent one sprawling against the windlass. Lieutenant Thornton had rushed to his assistance, but Bill wanted no help, for his other assailant fled to the bows with savage oaths, exulting that they had fired the vessel.
“Did you think,” he fiercely exclaimed, as our hero came up, “that you were going to have the Vengeance for a prize? We are all sworn to sink or fire her.”
“Then blow me,” said Bill Saunders, when the Lieutenant told him what the man had said, “if you shall either sink or be burned in her,” and seizing the Frenchman in his terrible grasp before our hero could prevent him, he hurled him over the bows.
Despite their imminent danger, the Lieutenant ran aft and threw the drowning wretch a rope; he made an effort to grasp it, failed, and sank with a despairing cry. Thus the wretch who did not fear to meet death by fire, shrieked in despair in meeting his doom by water.
“Haul aft the sheet, Bill!” shouted our hero; “it’s quite in vain to think of extinguishing this fire; we must run her ashore round yonder headland. Providentially the wind permits us to make the land without a tack.”
As the deck caught, the flames threw a vivid glare over the waters, as the lugger dashed on for the land, as if urged by her prospect of certain destruction. It was an awful moment! The flames spread to the rigging of the lugger, and then the sail, and the sheets being consumed, the fiery mass dashed wildly about, as the flames roared, the strong breeze increasing their force.
“Come down below, Bill, she will strike in a few moments, and let us put on the Frenchmen’s garments; who knows but we may do something for freedom yet.”
“Curse the villains!” cried Bill; “they have burned the craft, and now I am to be turned into a frog-eating, soup-swilling Frenchman.”
In a few minutes they were completely rigged in two French seamen’s garments, and the furious flames hurried them on deck just as the lugger struck upon a reef, gave two or three heavy lurches, heeled over, and sunk in deep water under a lofty cliff, extinguishing the flames of the hull, and leaving the remnants of the burning sail fluttering in the wind. That part of the deck unconsumed was level with the water, but the swell over the bank washed over it. Lieutenant Thornton and Saunders, half blinded by the smoke and flying sparks from the burning sail, threw themselves over the side, a few strokes brought them ashore under the cliff. Landing upon some sharp and slippery rocks, and shaking themselves as they landed and clambered over the rocks, our hero said to his companion—
“We must get as far from this spot as we can, and dry ourselves in the morning sun, before we reconnoitre inland.”