Chapter Forty Eight.
The Help that came.
In those brief few minutes despair and dogged determination were turned into the mingled emotions of triumph and delight, for the two boats, after giving two or three volleys at the schooner, whose crew contented themselves with hoisting a couple more sails to increase their speed, came on as hard as the men could row, their crews cheering in French and English with all their might, while in the stern of one the Count stood up waving his cap; in that of the other Captain Chubb, looking grim and stern, stood like a statue, his left foot on the thwart before him, his right resting upon the muzzle of a musket.
“Here, I don’t feel as if I’d got a cheer left in me, lads,” cried Joe Cross to his tired companions on board the stranded schooner; “but we must give them one, or they’ll think we aren’t much obliged to them for coming, and there’s no gammon about it, we are, and no mistake.”
“Cheer, yes!” cried Rodd. “With all your might, my lads. Take your time from me. Now then, as you never cheered before—Hooray!”
There was no want of heartiness either in that or in those which followed, to be returned as enthusiastically from the two boats, which were rapidly nearing, so that in a few minutes Rodd and his uncle were wringing the hands of the bluff old skipper, while it was observable that all three kept their backs to the French Count and his son till they came up together, when the three started round in surprise, going through a curious kind of pantomime as if they were astonished to see the Frenchmen there.
Meanwhile a regular fraternisation had gone on between the crews, and after a mere glance at the three masts of the schooner, which were standing out of the water about a couple of hundred yards away, the skipper’s whole attention was directed to their own vessel, whose keel was now fast in the mud, and which was beginning to heel over slightly.
“Then I suppose you took her again, doctor?” he said gruffly.
“Well, hardly,” said Uncle Paul. “It was Cross and the lads who did that.”
“More shame to him, then,” growled the skipper. “I should have thought you were seaman enough, Joe Cross, to have kept her afloat and not run her aground like this.”