"As for the cutter, it would spoil all to keep her off thereabouts; and I knew, if a boat did come in of the kind I guessed, why she wouldn't lay herself out for strength of crew. Snelling and I were well armed enough to manage half-a-dozen, if they fancied us friends; so I ordered the men to pull clear off for an hour, at least leaving fair water. In fact there were sentries about the heights, I was aware, if they could have heard or seen us; but the din of the surf, the dark, and the expectation of the thing, set us both upon our mettle; while I showed the boat's lantern every now and then, like the light I had noticed, such as the Channel smugglers use every thick night on our own coast. I suppose we might have waited five or ten minutes when the same twinkle was to be caught, dipping dark down into the swell again, about opposite the cove; next we had half-an-hour more, every now and then giving them a flash of the lantern, when suddenly the reefer said he saw oars glisten over a swell, which he knew weren't man-o'-war's strokes, or else the fellows ought to have their grog stopped. I had the lantern in my hand, slipping the shade once more, and the other to feel for my cutlass-hilt, when the mid gave a cry behind me, and I turned just in time to see the dark figure of a black spring off the stones at our backs. One after another three or four more came leaping past me out of the gloom—the Frenchman's red cap and his dark fierce face glared on me by the light of the lantern; and next moment it was down, with him and me in a deadly struggle over it in the thick black of the night. Suddenly I felt myself lose hold of him in the heave of the swell, washing away back off the rock; then something else trying to clutch me, when down I swept with the sea bubbling into my mouth and ears.
"I came up above water again by the sheer force of the swell, as it seemed to me, plunging into the shore; with the choice, I thought, of either being drowned in the dark, or knocked to a jelly on the rocks; but out I struck, naturally enough, rising on the huge scud of the sea, and trying to breast it, though I felt it sweep me backwards at every stroke, and just saw the wide glimmer of it heave far and wide for a moment against the gloom of the cliffs behind. All at once, in the trough, I heard the panting of someone's breath near alongside of me, and directly after I was caught hold of by the hair of the head, somebody else grabbing at the same time for my shoulder. We weren't half-a-dozen fathoms from the stranger's boat, the blacks who had fallen foul of me swimming manfully together, and the boat lifting bow-on to the run of the sea, as her crew looked about for us by the light of their lantern. I had just got my senses enough about me to notice so much, when they were hauling me aboard; all four of the negroes holding on with one hand by the boat's gunnel, and helping their way with the other; while the oars began to make for the light, which was still to be caught by fits, right betwixt those of the two cruisers, as the space widened slowly in the midst of them, standing out to sea. Scarce had I time to feel some one beside me as wet as myself, whether the reefer or the Frenchman I didn't know, when crash came another boat with her bows fairly down upon our gunwale, out of the dark.
"The spray splashed up betwixt us, I saw the glitter of the oar-blades, and heard Snelling's shrill voice singing out to 'sink the villains, my lads—down with 'em—remember the second lieutenant!' The lantern in the French boat flared, floating out for a single instant amongst a wreck of staves and heads, bobbing wildly together on the side of a wave. One of my own men from the cutter pulled me by the cuff of the neck off the crest of it with his boat-hook, as it rose swelling away past, till I had fast grip of her quarter; the blacks could be seen struggling in the hollow, to keep up their master's body, with his hands spread helplessly hither and thither above water. The poor devils' wet black faces turned so wistfully, in their desperation, towards the cutter, that I gasped out to save him. They kept making towards us, in fact, and the bowman managed to hook him at last, though not a moment too soon, for the next heave broke the unlucky wretches apart, and we lost sight of them; the cutter hanging on her oars till they had both him and me stowed into the stern-sheets, where the Frenchman lay seemingly dead or senseless, and I spitting out the salt water like a cockney after a bathe.
"'Why, Mr Snelling,' said I, as soon as I came fully to myself, 'I can't at all understand how I got into the water.' 'Nor I either, sir,' said he; 'I'll be hanged, sir, if I didn't think it was a whirlwind of niggers off the top of Diana's Peak, seeing I made out the very one we found there this afternoon—the four of them took you and this other gentleman up in their arms in a lump, as you were floundering about together, and took to the water like so many seals, sir!' I looked down into the Frenchman's face, where he lay stretched with his head back and his hair dripping. 'Is he gone?' said I. 'Well, sir,' said the mid, who had contrived to light the lantern again, 'I'm afraid he's pretty near it. Is he a friend of yours, sir?—I thought as much, by-the-way, you caught him the moment you clapped eyes on each other, sir.' 'Silence, sirrah!' said I. 'D'ye see anything of the light to seaward?'
"For a minute or two we peered over the swells into the dark, to catch the twinkle of the signal again, but to no purpose; and I began to think the bird was flown. All of a sudden, however, there it was once more, dipping as before beyond the heave of the sea, and between the backs of it, sliding across the open space, with the blind side to the cruisers. 'Hallo, my lads!' said I, quickly, and giving myself another shake as I seized the tiller, 'give way seaward—stretch your backs for ten minutes, and we have her!' We were pulling right for the spot, when the light vanished, but a show of our lantern brought it gleaming fairly out again, till I could even catch a glimpse by it of some craft or other's hull, and the iron of one boom-end, rising over the swells. 'Bow-oar, there!' whispered I. 'Stand by, my lad, and look sharp!' 'Hola!' came a short, sharp hail over the swells, 'd'où venez-vous?' 'Oui, oui!' I sang out boldly, through my hand, to cover the difference as much as possible; then a thought occurred to me, recollecting the French surgeon's words on board this very craft the first time we saw her—'De la cage de l'Aigle,' I hailed; 'bonne fortune, mes amis!' 'C'est possible! c'est possible, mon capitaine!' shouted several of the schooner's crew, jumping upon her bulwarks, 'que vous apportez lui-même?'
"We are pulling for her side as lubberly as possible, all the time—a man ran up on her quarter with a coil of line ready to heave—but still the main boom of the schooner was already jibbing, her helm up, and she under way; they seemed half doubtful of us, and another moment might turn the scales. 'Vite, vite!' roared I, choosing my French at hap hazard. 'Oui, oui, jettez votre corde—venez au lof, mes amis!'—luff, that was to say. I heard somebody aboard say it was the American—the schooner came up in the wind, the line whizzing off her quarter into our bows, and we came sheering down close by her lee-quarter, grinding against her bends in the surge, twenty eager faces peering over at us in the confusion; when I sung out hoarsely to run for brandy and hot blankets, as he was half-drowned. 'Promptement—promptement, mes amis!' shouted I, and as quickly there was a rush from her bulwarks to bring what was wanted, while Snelling and I made dash up her side, followed by the men, cutlass in hand. Three minutes of hubbub, and as many strokes betwixt us, when we had driven the few that stood in our way pell-mell down the nearest hatchway. The schooner was completely our own.
"We hoisted up the cutter, with the French captain still stretched in the stern-sheet—hauled aft the schooner's headsheets, let her large mainsail swing full again, and were soon standing swiftly out toward the light at the frigate's mast-head.
"When the Hebe first caught sight of us, or rather heard the sound of the schooner's sharp bows rushing through the water, she naturally enough didn't know what to make of us. I noticed our first luff's sudden order to clear away the foremost weather-gun, with the rush of the men for it; but my hail set all to rights. We hove-to off her weather quarter, and I was directly after on board, explaining, as simply as possible, how we had come to get a hold of a French craft thereabouts in such a strange fashion.
"Accordingly, you may fancy the surprise at Jamestown in the morning, to see the Hebe standing in with her prize, let alone the Governor's perfect astonishment at suspecting some scheme to carry off Napoleon, apparently, so far brought to a head. The upshot of it was, to cut this bit of my story short, he and the military folks would have it, at last, that there was nothing of the kind, but only some slaver from the African coast wanting to land a cargo, especially as there were so many blacks aboard of her; and the Frenchman at once took the cue, the little Monsieur of a mate swearing he had been employed by several of the islanders some months before to bring them slaves. For my own part, all things considered, I had nothing to say, and after some likelihood of a shine being kicked up about it at first, the matter was hushed up. However, the schooner was of course condemned in the meantime, as the Hebe's fair prize, till such time as the Admiralty Court at the Cape should settle it on our outward-bound voyage.
"As the Hebe was to sail at once for India, the Governor took the opportunity to send two or three supernumeraries out in the vessel along with us to the Cape of Good Hope, amongst whom was the Yankee botanist; and though being in the frigate I didn't see him, I made as sure as if I had, it was my old shipmate Daniel.