“Yes, sir, and the French pretends to be friends with us; but all the same if I was the skipper I should double my night watch and be well on the look-out for squalls.—Ay, ay, sir!”
Joe Cross answered a hail from the skipper, and was directly after busy at work helping his mates to make all snug aloft, for the wind had sunk now into a pleasant soft gale which seemed to suggest fine weather; but Captain Chubb shook his head and frowned very severely as he looked out to windward.
“Nay, my lad,” he said, “we have made our start and got as far as here, but it don’t seem to me like getting away just yet, for there’s a lot of weather hanging about somewhere, and as we are in no hurry and are snug in port, I am not going to run the risk of losing any of my tackle while the wind is shifting about like this. If I was you I should go in for a general dry up, and maybe you and your uncle, if the rain holds off, would like to go and have a look round the town.”
The skipper moved away, and Rodd went to the side to have another look at the French brig, and then, not satisfied, he went below to fetch the small spy-glass, finding his uncle busy re-arranging some of his apparatus in the laboratory, and as he did not seem to be required, the boy took the small telescope from where it hung and made his way back again on deck, where he focussed the glass and began to scan the brig, scrutinising her rig and everything that he could command, from trucks to deck, making out the long gun covered by a great tarpaulin, and then bringing the glass to bear upon such of the crew as came within his scope.
And as he watched the well-built, smartly-rigged vessel with such knowledge as he had acquired during his life at the great English port, he made out, though fairly distant now, that there seemed to be something in Joe Cross’s remarks, so that when he closed his glass to go down below, he began to dwell on the possibility of the smart brig being indeed a privateer, and this set him thinking of how horrible it would be if she did turn inimical and make an attempt at what would have been quite an act of piracy if she had followed the Maid of Salcombe out to sea and seized her as a prize.
“Why, it would break uncle’s heart, after all his preparations for the expedition,” mused the boy; “and besides it would be so treacherous. But Captain Chubb would not give up, I am sure. I never thought of it before, but he must have thought a good deal more about an accident such as this happening when he was taking such pains to drill and train the men. What did he say—that as we were going along a coast where the people were very savage and spent most of their time in war and fighting, we ought to be prepared for danger, in case we were attacked. Was he thinking of the French as well as the savages when he said this? Perhaps so. If one of his men thought so, why shouldn’t he? Well, I will ask him first time I get him alone. Hullo! What are they doing there? Somebody going ashore from the brig.”
Rodd could see with the naked eye the lowering down of a ship’s boat over the brig’s side, and that made him quickly focus his glass again, and while he was busy scanning the boat as it kissed the water and the oars fell over the side, Joe Cross came up behind him and made him start.
“Well, sir,” he said, “what do you make of her now?”
“Nothing, Joe,” said the boy, “only that it seems a very nice brig.”
“Very, sir, and well-manned. Look at that.”