“Oh!” cried Rodd, laughing.
“Ah, it warn’t anything to laugh at, my lad, with round shot coming a-splashing right across your bows. Certainly it was in a fog, and my craft didn’t get hit, but more than once the balls came pretty near, and I remember thinking whether if the cutter did sink us we should all be able to swim ashore, and I come to the conclusion that we couldn’t in our boots, for it was about nine miles.”
“I should think not,” replied Rodd dryly. “But, Captain Chubb—about that brig; do you think they’d get right away to sea?”
“I shouldn’t think they’d try to, my lad.”
“They seemed to be trying to.”
“Not they. Her skipper, as soon as he got outside the harbour, would try to creep under the lee of the high ground somewhere out west. Whether he’d do it or not is quite another thing. Let’s hope he did, for I don’t care about hearing that good men and true have been drowned in a storm, even if they are French. I am not like your uncle here.”
“Come, I say, Captain Chubb,” cried the doctor indignantly, “how dare you say that! Surely a thinking man can have a feeling of antipathy against Napoleon Bonaparte and all his works without being accused of liking to see brave Frenchmen drowned.”
“Beg pardon, sir. I suppose you are right,” granted the skipper; “but I should like to hear that that there smart brig got safe away.”
“Well, I hope so too,” said Uncle Paul shortly, and with a look in his countenance that made Rodd think about some words a friend had once said about a red rag to a bull. “But I suppose you don’t believe that vessel had some emissaries of Napoleon on board, come to set fire to the port of Havre?”
“Nay,” said the skipper, drawing out the negative very deliberately. “Don’t see any likelihood of their doing such a thing. What for? Suppose they did get it alight, that wouldn’t bring Bony back. Nay, his game’s about up now, and there will be quiet again over here for a bit, though I wouldn’t venture to say for how long. Keeping quiet isn’t in a Frenchman’s nature.”