“Aha!” thought I; “that looks as though my suspicions are at last shared by somebody else. Richards’ communication to the skipper has surely borne fruit.”
“Wall,” replied the Yankee with a knowing twinkle in his eye, “when she sailed from here she was black right down to her copper. But that ain’t much to go by; I guess her skipper knows a trick or two.”
“You think, then, he might alter her appearance as soon as he got outside?” insinuated Smellie.
“He might—and he mightn’t,” was the cautious reply.
“Um!” observed Smellie. Then, as if inspired with a sudden suspicion, he asked:
“Have you seen any men-o’-war in here lately?”
I could see by the knowing look in our Yankee friend’s eyes that he read poor Smellie like a book.
“Wall,” he replied. “Come to speak of it, there was a brig in here a few days ago that looked like a man-o’-war. She were flyin’ French colours—when she flew any at all—and called herself the Vestale.”
“Ah!” ejaculated Smellie. “Did any of her people board you?”
“You bet!” was the somewhat ambiguous answer. Not that the reply was at all ambiguous in itself; it was the peculiar emphasis with which the words were spoken, and the peculiar expression of the man’s countenance as he uttered them, which constituted the ambiguity; the words simply implied that the Pensacola had been boarded; the look spoke volumes, but the volumes were written in an unknown tongue, so far as we at least were concerned.