Hand and eye were equally true. He was sure of his mark before he pulled the trigger. With a flash that lighted up the cabin, and an explosion that filled it with smoke, the bullet cut clean through the “falls,” or ropes, supporting the boat’s head, bringing her perpendicularly on end, and shooting every article she contained—planks, bottom-boards, stretchers, oars, boat-hook, an empty hen-coop, and the astonished occupant—plump into seven fathom of water.
Nor was the consternation created by this alarming capsize confined to the unfortunate Slap-Jack. His comrades, lowering away industriously from the taffrail, started back in the utmost bewilderment, the anchor-watch rushed aft, persuaded a mutiny had broken out, and in grievous indecision whether to take the skipper’s part or assist in cutting his throat. The crew tumbled up the hatchway, and blundered about the deck, asking each other absurd questions, and offering wild suggestions, if anything were really amiss, as to breaking open the spirit-room. Nay, the harbour-guard himself awoke from his nap, emerged from his sentry-box, took a turn on the quay, hailing loudly, and receiving no answer, was satisfied he had been dreaming, so swore and turned in again.
Captain George reloaded his pistol, and sang out lustily, “Man overboard! Show a light on the deck there, and heave a rope over the side. Bear a hand to haul him in, the lubber! I don’t much think he’ll want to try that game in a hurry again!”
Meanwhile, hapless Slap-Jack was incapacitated for the present from that, or indeed any other game involving physical effort. A plank, falling with him out of the boat, had struck him on the head and stunned him; seventy fathom of water would have floated him no better than seven, and with the first plunge he went down like a stone. Captain George had intended to give him a fright and a ducking; but now, while he stretched his body out of the cabin window, peering over the gloomy water and listening eagerly for the snort and gasp of a swimmer who never came up, he wished with all his heart that his hand had been less steady on the pistol.
Fortunately, however, Beaudésir, after he had fulfilled the Captain’s orders by personating him at the hold, remained studiously on watch. It was a peculiarity of this man that his faculties seemed always on the stretch, as is often to be observed with those over whom some constant dread impends, or who suffer from the tortures of remorse. At the moment he heard the shot, he sprang to the side, threw off hat and cloak, as if anticipating danger, and kept his eyes eagerly fixed on the water, ready, if need be, for a pounce. The tide was still flowing, the brigantine’s head lay to seaward, where all was dark, and fortunately the little light on the ruffled surface was towards the shore. Slap-Jack’s inanimate form was carried inwards by the flood, and crossed the moorings of that huge red buoy which Eugène remembered gazing on listlessly in the morning. Either the contact with its rope woke an instinctive consciousness in the drowning man, or some swirl of the water below brought his body to the surface, but for a few seconds Slap-Jack’s form became dimly visible, heaving like a wisp of seaweed on a wave. In those few seconds Eugène dashed overboard, cleaving the water to reach him with the long springing strokes of a powerful swimmer.
A drowning man is not to be saved but at the imminent risk of his life who goes in for the rescue, and this gallant feat indeed can only be accomplished by a thorough proficient in the art; so on the present occasion it was well that Beaudésir felt as much at home in the water as on dry land.
How the crew cheered the Frenchman while he was hauled on board with his dripping burden; how the two Jacks who had remained in the brigantine, and were now thoroughly sobered, vowed eternal gratitude to the landsman who had dived for their messmate; how the harbour-guard was once more disturbed by the cheering, and cheered lustily in reply; how Captain George clapped his comrade on the shoulder while he took him below to change his wet garments, and vowed he was fit to be King of France, adding, with a meaning smile, “If ever I go to school again, I’ll ask them to give me a berth at Avranches in Normandy!”—all this it is unnecessary to relate; but if the Captain gained the respect of the crew by the promptitude with which he resented an attempt at insubordination, the gallant self-devotion of his friend, clerk, supercargo, cabin-passenger, or whatever he was, won their affection and good-will for the rest of the voyage.
This was especially apparent about sunrise, when Captain George beat to quarters and paraded his whole crew on deck, preparatory to weighing anchor and standing out down Channel with a fair wind and a following tide. He calculated that the King’s ship, even if on watch, must be still some distance from land, and he had such implicit confidence in the sailing qualities of his brigantine that if he could only get a fair start he feared a chase from no craft that swam.
Owing to his early education and the experiences of his boyhood, notwithstanding his late career in the service of King Louis, he was a seaman at heart. In nothing more so than a tendency to idealise the craft he commanded as if it were a living creature, endowed with feelings and even reason. For him ‘The Bashful Maid,’ with her exquisite trim, her raking masts, her graceful spars, her long fluttering pennon, and her elaborately-carved figure-head, representing a brazen-faced beauty baring her breast boastfully to the breeze, was less a triumph of design and carpentering, of beams, and blocks, and yarn, and varnish, and tar, than a metaphorical mistress, to be cajoled, commanded, humoured, trusted, above all, admired. He spoke of her as possessing affections, caprices, impulses, and self-will. When she answered her helm steadily, and made good weather of it, in a stiff breeze and a heavy sea, she was “behaving admirably”—“she liked the job”—“a man had only to trust her, and give her a new coat of paint now and then, she’d never fail him—not she!” While, on the other hand, she might dive and plunge, and dip her boltsprit in the brine, shipping seas that swept her decks fore and aft, and she was “only a trifle saucy, the beauty! Carried a weather-helm like the rest of her sex, and must be humoured a bit, till she came round!”