The doctor kept on deck till breakfast-time, sweeping the horizon with his glass, while the skipper walked up and down with his long mahogany-covered glass tucked under his left arm, and his hands very deep down in his pockets, while his shoulders were hitched up to his ears.
Then breakfast, with everything hot except the conduct of the occupants of the cabin. This was almost icy, and hardly a word was spoken.
Up on deck again, with the schooner careening over to the pleasant breeze, but no sign of the brig; but the three-masted vessel was overhauling them fast, and before long a gun said, Heave to, in the very emphatic monosyllable so well understood in the Royal Navy.
The skipper gave a glance at Uncle Paul with one eye, and that morning it seemed if as he had been suddenly afflicted with a cast, for the other eye turned outward and looked at Rodd.
Then he gave the order to the man at the wheel, who with a few turns of the spokes ran the swift little vessel well up into the wind, her sails began to flap, and she quietly settled down into a gentle rock upon the beautifully rippled heaving sea. Then time went on, with the man-of-war bearing down upon them rapidly, while the doctor stood scowling angrily at the rock which had so much to do with the fate of nations standing out more clearly in the sunlit air.
In due time a boat full of men was swung down from the davits of the cruiser, the oars dipped, and she came skimming along with a steady pull, and every stroke pulled clean and with hardly a splash, till she came alongside, when, to the delight of Rodd, there in the stern-sheets were the same officer and middy who had overhauled them off the African coast.
Rodd was all eagerness, and advanced ready to grasp hands with the reefer, but to his great surprise everything was coldly stern and formal. Two marines followed the officers on board, and the skipper, doctor, and Rodd were ordered down into the boat as prisoners, while a prize crew under the command of the middy, who looked more important than he did upon his first visit to the schooner, and stared at Rodd as if he had never seen him before, was left on board.
Uncle Paul spoke to the lieutenant, but his words were received almost in silence, while no explanation being forthcoming, he sat still and frowned.
The sloop of war, their old friend, was soon reached, and the prisoners were marched up to the quarter-deck where the captain stood waiting for them, scanning them sternly before beginning to question the skipper as to the name of the schooner and their object in those waters.
Questions were answered and explanations given in Captain Chubb’s most blunt and straightforward way, before the captain turned his searching eyes upon Uncle Paul.