Chapter Forty Three.
Bigley Feels his Position.
During the day, after leaving an adequate guard over the prisoners in the lugger, the lieutenant came up the Gap twice, and worked hard with his men to get our poor work-people in a more comfortable state, though now plenty of the Ripplemouth folk had been over, and help and necessaries were freely lent, so that the night was made fairly comfortable for the wounded and their families. We slept in the ruins of the counting-house, whose roof was open to the sky, for my father had not the heart to go home and rest there; and when he sent Bigley over, and I felt that I should like to go and keep the poor fellow company, I, too, had not the heart to go and leave my father alone.
The next morning the lieutenant came to fetch us to breakfast on board the lugger; but we made a very poor meal, our injuries being more painful, and I felt weak and ill; but there was so much to see and hear that I kept forgetting my sufferings in the interest of the time.
There were our men to go and see, and sit and talk to where they were too poorly to get up. There was Mother Bonnet to speak to when she started for the Bay to attend on Bigley; and I had her to see again when she came back, all ruffled and indignant, after a verbal engagement with our Kicksey, who would not let the old woman interfere, because she wanted to nurse Bigley herself.
Then towards afternoon, when the lieutenant had nearly gone mad with suspense about the frigate and at being bound to stop there with the lugger, according to his orders, news came by a fishing boat, that there had been a desperate engagement, and the frigate had been sunk.
But on the top of that came news by a man who was riding over from Stinchcombe, that it was the French vessel that had been sunk.
This stopped the lieutenant just as he was putting off in the lugger, and soon after a fresh news-bearer came in the shape of another fisherman, who announced that the Frenchman was taken.