"By the time we were halfway, the swell began to get considerable, and the mate stepped up abaft to look for the gig. 'Can't see the boat yet,' said he; 'give way there, my lads—stretch out and bend your backs! there's the brig!' 'Hallo!' exclaimed he again, 'she's clued up royals and to'gallants'ls! By heavens! there go her tops'ls down too! Going to bend new sails, though, I daresay, for it looks clear enough there.' 'The ship's run up a flag, aft sir,' said Jacobs. 'The——so she has,' said Finch, turning round; 'recall signal! What's wrong? Sorry we can't dine aboard the French vessel this time, ladies!' said he, 'extremely so—and the griffins there after all, too. I hope you won't be disappointed in any great measure, Miss Hyde; but if you wished it now, miss, I'd even keep on, and——'
"The young lady coloured a little at this, and turned to her companion just as I remembered her doing from the dragoon in the ball-room. 'Do you not think, Miss Wyndham,' said she, 'we ought not to wish any officer of the ship should get reproved, perhaps, on our account?' 'Oh dear, no,' said Miss Wyndham: 'indeed, Mr Finch, you had better go back, if the captain orders you.'
"'Hold on there with your larboard oars, you lubbers!' sang out Finch, biting his lip, and round we went, pulling for the Indiaman again; but by this time the swell was becoming so heavy as to make it hard work, and it was soon rarely we could see her at all; for nothing gets up so fast as a swell, sometimes, near the Line; neither one way nor the other, but right up and down, without a breath of wind, in huge smooth hills of water darker than lead, not a speck of foam, and the sky hot and clear. 'Twas almost as if a weight had been lifted from off the long heaving calm, and the whole round of it were going up dark into the sky, in one weltering jumble, the more strange that it was quiet; sweep up it took the boat, and the bright wet oar-blades spread feathering out for another stroke to steady her, let alone making way; though that was nothing to the look of the Indiaman when we got near. She was rolling her big black hull round in it as helpless as a cask; now one side, then the other, dipping gunwale to in the round swell that came heaping up level with her very rail, and went sheeting out bright through the bulwarks again; the masts jumping, clamps and boom-irons creaking on the yards, and every sail on her shaking, as her lower yard-arms took it by turns to aim at the water—you heard all the noise of it, the plunge of her flat broadside, the plash from her scuppers, the jolts of her rudder, and voices on board; and wet you may be sure she was from stem to stern.
"'Comfortable,' thought I; 'we've come home too soon of a washing-day, and may wait at the door, I fear!' 'Oh dear,' exclaimed the three griffins, 'how are we to get in!' and the young ladies looked pale at the sight. The mate steered for her larboard quarter without saying a word, but I saw he lost coolness and got nervous—not at all the man for a hard pinch: seemingly, he meant to make a dash alongside and hook on. 'If you do, sir,' said I, 'you'll be smashed to staves'; and all at once the ship appeared almost over our heads, while the boat took a send in. I looked to Jacobs and the men, and they gave one long stroke off, that seemed next heave to put a quarter of a mile between us. 'Close shave that,' said the bowman. 'Begs pardon, sir,' said Jacobs, touching his hat, with his eyes still fixed past the mate, upon me; 'hasn't we better keep steadying off, sir, till such time as a sulk in the swell——' 'Hold your jaw, sirrah,' growled Finch, as he looked ahead still more flurried; 'there's a squall coming yonder, gentlemen, and if we don't get quick aboard, we may lose the ship in it! Pull round, d' ye hear there!' Sure enough, when we lifted, there was the French brig clear out against a sulky patch of dark-grey sky, growing in, as it were, far off behind the uneven swell, till it began to look pale; the Indiaman's topsails gave a loud flap out, too, one after the other, and fell to the mast again.
"Suddenly I caught the glance of Violet Hyde's eyes watching me seriously, as I sat overhauling the Indiaman for a notion of what to do, and I fancied the charming girl had somehow got nearer to me during the last minute or two, whether she knew it or not; at any rate, the thought of having such a creature to protect made all my blood tingle. 'Never fear, ma'am,' said I, in a half whisper; when Finch's eye met mine, and he threw me a malicious look, sufficient to show what a devil the fellow would be if ever he had occasion; however, he gave the sign for the men to stretch out again, and high time it was, as the Indiaman's main-topsail made another loud clap like a musket-shot. Still he was holding right for her quarter—the roll the ship had on her was fearful, and it was perfect madness to try it; but few merchant mates have chanced to be boating in a Line swell, I daresay; when just as we came head on for her starboard counter, I took the boat's tiller a sudden shove with my foot, as if by accident, that sent us sheering in close under her stern. The bowman prized his boat-hook into the rudder-chains, where the big hull swung round us on both sides like an immense wheel round its barrel, every stern window with a face watching us—though one stroke of the loose rudder would have stove us to bits, and the swell was each moment like to make the men let go, as it hove us up almost near enough to have caught a hand from the lower-deck.
"'For God's sake steady your wheel,' said I; 'hard a port!' while the mate was singing out for a line. 'Now, up you go,' said I to Jacobs in the hubbub, 'look sharp, and send us down a whip and basket from the boom-end, as we did once in the Pandora, you know!' Up the rope went Jacob like a cat, hand over hand; and five minutes after, down came the 'basket' over our heads into the boat, made out of a studding-sail and three capstan-bars, like a big grocer's scale dangling from the spanker-boom. The mate proposed to go up first with Miss Hyde, but she hung back in favour of her companion; so away aloft went Miss Wyndham and he, swinging across the Indiaman's stern as she rolled again, with a gant-line to steady them in—Finch holding on to the whip by one hand, and the other round the young lady, while my blood crept at the thought how it might have been Lota herself!
"As soon as it came down again, she looked for a moment from me to Jacobs, when Captain Williamson himself shouted over the taffrail! 'Sharp, sharp, there! the squall's coming down! she'll be up in the wind! let's get the helm free!' and directly after I found myself swinging twenty feet over the water with Violet Hyde, as the ship heeled to a puff that filled the spanker, and rose again on a huge swell, gathering steerage way, while every bolt of canvas in her flapped in again at once like thunder. I felt her shudder and cling to me—there was one half-minute we swung fairly clear of the stern; they stopped hoisting—and I almost thought I'd have wished that same half-minute half-a-day; but a minute after she was in the judge's arms on the poop; the men had contrived to get the cadets on board, too, and the boat was dragging astern, with the line veered out, and her crew still in it baling her out.
"I fixed my eyes at once, breathless as we of the boat party were, on the weather-signs and the other vessel, which everybody on the poop was looking at, as soon as we were safe, and our friends in the gig had to be thought of. The short top-swell was beginning to soften in long regular seas, with just air enough aloft to give our light sails a purchase on it, and put an end to the infernal clatter; but the vapour had gathered quicker than you could well fancy behind the brig in the distance, so that she looked already a couple of miles nearer, rising up two or three times on as many huge swells that shone like blue glass, while she steadied herself like a tight-rope dancer on the top of them, by a studding-sail set high from each side. On the far horizon beyond her, you'd have thought there was a deep black ditch sunk along under the thickening blue haze, as it stretched out past her to both hands, till actually the solid breast of it seemed to shove the brig bodily forward over the oily-like water, every spar and rope distinct; then the fog lifted below as if the teeth of a saw came splitting through it, and we saw her bearing down towards us—cloud, water, and all, as it were—with a white heap of foam at her bows.
"'Brace up sharp, Mr Finch!' said the old skipper hastily, 'and stand over to meet her. Confound this! we must have these people out of that brig in a trice; we shall soon have a touch of the Horse Latitudes, or my name's not Richard Williamson—ay, and bid good-bye to 'em too, I think!'
"For a quarter of an hour or so, accordingly, we kept forging slowly ahead, while the brig continued to near us. No one spoke, almost—you heard the lazy swash of the water round our fore-chains, and the stillness aboard had a gloomy enough effect, as one noticed the top of the haze creep up into round vapoury heads upon the sky, and felt it darkening aloft besides. We were scarce three-quarters of a mile apart, and could see her sharp black bows drip over the bright sheathing, as she rolled easily on the swell; when the Indiaman suddenly lost way again, sheered head round, and slap went all her sails from the royals down, as if she had fired a broadside. Almost the next moment, a long low growl ran muttering and rumbling far away round the horizon, from the clouds and back to them again, as if they had been some huge monster or other on the watch, with its broad green muzzle shooting quietly over us as it lay; the brig dipped her gilt figure-head abeam of us, and then showed her long red streak; the swell sinking fast, and the whole sea far and wide coming out from the sky as dark and round as the mahogany drum-head of the capstan.