Hilary felt less disposed to take the lieutenant’s words to heart, for he knew that if he were charged with neglect of duty the evidence of the men would be quite sufficient to clear him; so, after turning the matter over and over in his mind, he had cheerily set to work to try and get the cutter in decent trim, and, as the morning broke, crippled as she was in her fair proportions, she sailed well enough to have warranted the lieutenant in making an attack, should the schooner have come in sight.
But there was no such good fortune. Both the lieutenant and he swept the horizon and the cliff-bound coast with their glasses, and the Kestrel was sailed along close inshore in the hope that the enemy might be seen sheltered in some cove, or the mouth of one of the little rivers; but there was no result, and at last, very unwillingly, the cutter’s head was laid for Portsmouth, and the lieutenant went below to prepare his despatch.
“How long shall we be refitting, carpenter?” asked Hilary, after a long examination of the damages they had received, and a thorough awakening to the fact that if it had not been for that turn of the helm they must have been struck amidships, and sent to the bottom.
“All a month, sir,” said the carpenter. “There’ll be a deal to do, and if we get out of the shipwright’s hands and to sea in five weeks I’ll say we’ve done well.”
It was galling, for it meant four or five weeks of inaction, just at a time when Hilary was getting intensely interested in the political question of the day, and eagerly looking forward for a chance of distinguishing himself in some way.
“Who knows,” he said to himself, “but that schooner may have borne the Young Pretender and his officers to the English coast. If it did I just lost a chance of taking him.”
Ah! he thought, if he could have taken the young prince with his own hand. It would have been glorious, and he could have shown Sir Henry that he was on the way to honour and distinction without turning traitor to his king.
And so he went on hour after hour building castles in the air, but with little chance of raising up one that would prove solid, till they passed by the eastern end of the Isle of Wight, went right up the harbour, and the lieutenant had a boat manned and went ashore to make his report to the admiral.
To Hilary’s great disgust he found that he was not to go ashore, but to remain in charge of the cutter during the repairs, for the lieutenant announced his intention of himself remaining in the town.
But Hilary had one satisfaction—that of finding that the lieutenant had made no report concerning his conduct on the night of the collision. In fact, the lieutenant had forgotten his mad words almost as soon as he had spoken them, for they were only the outcomings of his petty malicious spirit for the time being.