“All that are left,” replied the spokesman of the party, “out of eight hundred and fifty men. Sacristie—as-tu d’eau-de-vie?”
“I hardly know what we have—something has been saved from the wreck,” replied Seymour, “and shall cheerfully be shared with you with all the assistance we can afford. We were enemies, but we are now brothers in affliction. I must quit you to bring up our wounded men; there is sufficient room, I perceive, for all of us. Adieu, pour le moment!”
“Savez-vous que c’est un brave garçon ce lieutenant-là?” observed the Frenchman to his companions, as Seymour and his party quitted the hut.
Seymour returned to the beach, and, collecting his men, found the survivors to consist of forty-four seamen and marines, the boatswain and himself. Of these, fifteen were helpless, from wounds and fractured limbs. The articles which had been collected were a variety of spars and fragments of wood, some of the small sails which had been triced up in the rigging, one or two casks of beef and pork, and a puncheon of rum, which had miraculously steered its course between the breakers, and had been landed without injury. The sails which had been spread out to dry, were first carried up to form a bed for the sick and wounded, who, in the space of an hour, were all made as comfortable as circumstances would admit, a general bed having been made on the floor of the hut, upon which they and the wounded Frenchmen shared the sails between them. The spars and fragments were then brought up, and a fire made in the long deserted hearth, while another was lighted outside for the men to dry their clothes. The cask of rum was rolled up to the door, and a portion, mixed with the water from a rill that trickled down the sides of the adjacent mountain, served out to the exhausted parties. The seamen, stripping off their clothes, and spreading them out to dry before the fire which had been made outside, collected into the hut to shield their naked bodies from the inclemency of the weather.
The spirits, which had been supplied with caution to the survivors of the French vessel, had been eagerly seized by the one who had first addressed our hero, and in half an hour he seemed to be quite revived. He rose, and after trying his limbs, by moving slowly to and fro, gradually recovered the entire use of them; and by the time that the circulation of his blood had been thoroughly restored by a second dose of spirits, appeared to have little to complain of. He was a powerful, well-looking man, with a large head, covered with a profusion of shaggy hair. Seymour looked at him earnestly, and thought he could not well be mistaken, long as it was since they had been in company.
“Excuse me—but I think we once met at Cherbourg. Is not your name Debriseau?”
“Sacristie!” replied the Frenchman, seizing himself by the hair, “je suis connu! And who are you?”
“Oh! now I’m sure it’s you,” replied Seymour, laughing—“that’s your old trick—do you not recollect the boy that Captain McElvina took off the wreck?”
“Ah mon ami—Seymour, I believe—midshipman, I believe,” cried Debriseau. “Est-ce donc vous? Mais, mon Dieu, que c’est drôle” (again pulling his hair as he grinded his teeth) “Un diable de rencontre!”
“And how is it that you have been on board of a French man-of-war?”