"'Bless me, Small,' said the captain, 'but I hope they've not knocked a hole in my gig—ay, there they are, I think, looking over the brig's quarter—but don't seem to have a boat to swim! Get the cutter hauled alongside, Mr Stebbing,' continued he to the fourth mate, 'and go aboard for them at once—confounded bothering, this! Mind get my gig safe, sir, if you please—can ye parley-voo, though, Mr Stebbing?' 'Not a word, sir,' said the young mate, a gentlemanly, rather soft fellow, whom the other three all used to snub. 'Bless me, can't we muster a bit o' French amongst us?' said the skipper; 'catch a monshoor that knows a word of English like any other man—'specially if they've a chance of keeping my gig!' 'Well, sir,' said I, 'I'll be happy to go with the officer, as I can speak French well enough!' 'Thank ye, young gentleman, thank ye,' said he, 'you'll do it as well as any man, I'm sure—only look sharp, if you please, and bring my gig with you!' So down the side we bundled into the cutter, and pulled straight for the brig, which had just hoisted French colours, not old 'three-patches,' of course, but the new Restoration flag.
"I overhauled her well as we got near, and a beautiful long schooner-model she was, with sharp bows, and a fine easy-run hull from stem to stern, but dreadfully dirty and spoilt with top-bulwarks, as if they meant to make her look as clumsy as possible; while the brig-rig of her aloft, with the ropes hanging in bights and hitches, gave her the look of a hedge-parson on a race-horse; at the same time, I counted six closed ports of a side, in her red streak, the exact breadth and colour of itself. Full of men, with a long gun, and schooner-rigged, she could have sailed round the Indiaman in a light breeze, and mauled her to any extent.
"They hove us a line out of the gangway at once, the mate got up her side as she rolled gently over, and I followed him: the scene that met our eyes as soon as we reached the deck, however, struck me a good deal on various accounts. We couldn't at first see where Mr Rollock and his party might be, for the shadow of a thick awning after the glare of the water, and the people near the brig's gangway; but I saw two or three dark-faced, very French-like individuals, in broad-brimmed straw hats and white trousers, seemingly passengers; while about twenty Kroomen and negroes, and as many seamen with unshaven chins, earrings, and striped frocks, were in knots before the long-boat, turned keel up amidships, careless enough, to all appearance, about us. One of the passengers leant against the mainmast, with his arms folded over his broad chest, and his legs crossed, looking curiously at us as we came up; his dark eyes half closed, the shadow of his hat down to his black moustache, and his shirt-collar open, showing a scar on his hairy breast; one man, whom I marked for the brig's surgeon, beside him; and another waiting for us near the bulwarks—a leathery-faced little fellow, with twinkling black eyes, and a sort of cocked hat fore-and-aft on his cropped head. 'Moi, monsieur,' said he, slapping his hand on his breast as the mate looked about him, 'oui, je suis capitaine, monsieur.'
"'Good-day, sir,' said Stebbing, 'we've just come aboard for our passengers—and the gig—sir, if you please.' 'Certainement, monsieur,' said the French skipper, bowing and taking a paper from his pocket, which he handed to the mate, 'I comprind, sare—monsieur le capitaine d' la frégate Anglaise, il nous demande nos—vat you call—peppares—voilà! I have 'ad le honneur, messieurs, to be already sarch by vun off vos crusoes—pour des esclaves! vous imaginez cela, messieurs!' and here the worthy Frenchman cast up his hands and gave a grin which seemed meant for innocent horror. 'Slaifs! chez le brigantin Louis Bourbon, Capitaine Jean Duprez? Non!' said he, talking away like a windmill, 'de Marseilles à l'Isle de France, avec les vins choisis——' 'You mistake, monsieur,' said I, in French; 'the ship is an Indiaman, and we have only come for our friends, who are enjoying your wine, I daresay, but we must——' 'Comment?' said he, staring, 'what, monsieur? have de gotness to——'
"Here the moustached passenger suddenly raised himself off the mast, and made one stride between us to the bulwarks, where he looked straight out at the Indiaman, his arms still folded, then from us to the French master. He was a noble-looking man, with an eye I never saw the like of in anyone else, 'twas so clear, bold, and prompt—it actually went into you like a sword, and I couldn't help fancying him in the thick of a battle, with thousands of men and miles of smoke. 'Duprez,' said he, quickly, 'je vous le dis encore—debarquez ces misérables!—nous combattrons!' 'Then, mon ami,' said the surgeon, in a low, cool, determined tone, stepping up and laying a hand on his shoulder, 'aussi, nous couperons les ailes de l'Aigle, seulement!—Hush, mon ami, restrain this unfortunate madness of yours!—c'est bien mal-à-propos à present!' and he whispered something additional, on which the passenger fell back and leant against the mainmast as before. 'Ah!' said the French master in his own language, shaking his head, and giving his forehead a tap, 'le pauvre homme-là! He has had a coup-de-soleil, messieurs, or rather of the moon, you perceive, from sleeping in its rays! Ma foi!' exclaimed he, on my explaining the matter, 'c'est pos-sible?—we did suppose your boat proposed us the honour to visit, when evidently deterred by the excessive undulation!—My friends, resign yourselves to a misfort——' 'Great heavens! Mr Stebbing,' said I, 'the boat is lost!' 'By George! what will the captain say, then!' replied he; however as soon as I told him the sad truth, poor Stebbing, being a good-hearted fellow, actually put his hands to his face and sobbed.
"All this time the brig's crew were gabbling and kicking up a confounded noise about something they were at with the spare spars, and in throwing tarpaulins over the hatches; for it was fearfully dark, and going to rain heavy; the slight swell shone and slid up betwixt the two vessels like oil, and the clouds to south-westward had gathered up to a steep black bank, with round coppery heads, like smoke over a town on fire. 'Will you go down, messieurs,' said the Frenchman, politely, 'and taste my vin de——' 'No, sir,' said I, 'we must make haste off, or else—besides, by-the-way, we couldn't, for you've got all your hatches battened down!' 'Diable, so they are!' exclaimed he, 'par honneur, gentlemen, I regret the occasion of—ha!' Just before, a glaring brassy sort of touch had seemed to come across the face of the immense cloud; and though everything, far and wide, was as still as death, save the creaking of the two ships' yards, it made you think of the last trumpet's mouth! But at this moment a dazzling flash leaped zigzag out of it, running along from one cloud to another, while the huge dark mass, as it were, tore right up, changing and turning it inside out like dust—you saw the sea far away under it, heaving from glassy blue into unnatural-like brown—when crash broke the thunder over our very heads, as if something had fallen out of heaven, then a long bounding roar. The mad French passenger stood up, walked to the bulwarks, and looked out with his hand over his eyes for the next; while the young mate and I tumbled down the brig's side without further to-do, and pulled fast for the ship, where we hardly got aboard before there was another wild flash, another tremendous clap, and the rain fell in one clash, more like stone than water, on sea and decks. For half an hour we were rolling and soaking in the midst of it, the lightning hissing through the rain, and showing it glitter; while every five minutes came a burst of thunder and then a rattle fit to split one's ears. At length, just as the rain began to slacken, you could see it lift bodily, the standing sheets of it drove right against our canvas and through the awnings—when we made out the French brig with her jib, topsails, and boom-mainsail full, leaning over as she clove through it before the wind.
"The squall burst into our wet topsails as loud as the thunder, with a flash almost like the lightning itself, taking us broad abeam; the ship groaned and shook for a minute ere gathering way and falling off, and when she rose and began to go plunging through the black surges no brig was to be seen: every man on deck let his breath out almost in a cry, scarce feeling as yet but it was equal to losing sight for ever of our late shipmates, or the least hope of them. The passengers, ladies and all, crowded in the companion-hatch in absolute terror, every face aghast, without thinking of the rain and spray; now and then the sulky crest of a bigger wave would be caught sight of beyond the bulwarks, as the sea rose with its green back curling over into white; and you'd have said the shudder ran down into the cabin, at thought of seeing one or other of the lost boat's crew come weltering up from the mist and vanish again. I knew it was of no use, but I held on in the weather mizzen-rigging, and looked out to westward, against a wild break of light which the setting sun made through the troughs of the sea; once and again I could fancy I saw the boat lift keel up, far off betwixt me and the fierce glimmer.
"'Oh, do you see them? do you not see it yet?' was passed up to me over and over, from one sharp-pitched voice to another; but all I could answer was to shake my head. At last, one by one, they went below; and after what had happened, I must say I could easily fancy what a chill, dreary-like, awful notion of the sea must have come for the first time on a landsman, not to speak of delicate young girls fresh from home, at sight of the drenched quarter-deck leaning bare down to leeward, the sleet and spray battering bleak against the round-house doors, where I had seen Miss Hyde led sobbing in, with her wet hair about her face; then the ship driving off from where she had lost them, with her three strong lower masts aslant into the gale, ghastly-white and dripping—her soaked sheets of canvas blown grey and stiff into the rigging, and it strained taut as iron; while you saw little of her higher than the tops, as the scud and the dark together closed aloft. Poor Miss Fortescue's mother was in fits below in her berth—the two watches were on the yards aloft, where no eye could see them, struggling hard to furl and reef; so altogether it was a gloomy enough moment. I stayed awhile on deck, wrapped in a pea-coat, keeping my feet and hanging on, and thinking how right down in earnest matters could turn of a sudden. I wasn't remarkably thoughtful in these days, I daresay, but there did I keep, straining my eyes into the mist to see, I couldn't tell what, and repeating over and over again to myself these few words out of the Prayer-book, 'In the midst of life we are in death,' though scarce knowing what I said.