“Ay, ay; oh, yesh,” was the response from the other vessel; and as it came floating down upon the wind the stranger took a broad sheer to port, showing herself to be a large lugger, and shot very neatly alongside the Aurora, the grappling-irons being cleverly hove into the barque’s fore and main-rigging, as the two vessels touched.
At the same moment some five-and-twenty Frenchmen, armed with cutlass and pistol, scrambled alertly in over the Aurora’s bulwarks, the leader singling out George, notwithstanding the darkness, and exclaiming, as he promptly presented a pistol at his head—
“Vat cheep dis is, eh?”
“The Aurora, of London,” was the answer, “Très bien! My cheep, the Belle Marie, est un corsaire Français, un—vat you call—privateere, et vous êtes mes prisonniers. It is ze fortune of war, messieurs; my turn to-night—yours to-morrow, perhaps—ha, ha! Now, my dear sares, as there not moosh time is, permettez moi,” and he flung open the companion-doors, motioning significantly to George and the mate to go below.
Poor George glanced swiftly round the deck, only to see that it was in complete possession of the Frenchmen, one of whom was already at the wheel. So, turning to Mr Bowen, and murmuring, “There is no help for it, I suppose,” he signed to the mate to lead the way, and then followed, dejectedly, the doors being smartly slammed-to after them, and the next moment they heard the sound of some heavy body being dragged up to and banged against the companion entrance, thus precluding the possibility of their stealing on deck again, and effecting a counter surprise.
The whole thing had been done so rapidly that it was not until he found the ship being once more hove about, with her head pointing toward the French coast, that Captain Leicester fully realised his situation. In less than ten minutes his ship had been taken from him, and himself confined in his own cabin, a prisoner. Had he not been on deck at the time of the occurrence, he would certainly have considered it an avoidable misfortune, to be accounted for only by the most gross carelessness; but as it was, he was fully able to understand that it was entirely due to the extreme darkness of the night, and the circumstance of the lugger and the barque stumbling over each other, as it were. But that made matters no better for him; he had lost his ship—his all—and now there loomed before him the immediate prospect of a dreary confinement—for many years perhaps—in a French prison. The thought goaded him almost to madness, and he sprang impatiently to his feet, and began to pace moodily to and fro over the narrow limits of the cabin floor.
Meanwhile the second mate—who had started out of his berth at the first shock of contact between the two vessels, and had made a rush for the deck, only to be confronted and driven back by a Frenchman with a drawn cutlass—was seated on the lockers alongside Mr Bowen, listening to that individual’s gloomy recital of the details of the capture.
The low murmur of the two men’s voices annoyed George in his then irritable frame of mind, and, to avoid it, he retired into his own state-room. The night being close and sultry, all the stern-ports were open, and as he entered the cabin the sound of a hail from to leeward came floating in through the ports. It was answered from the deck, and, kneeling upon the sofa-locker and thrusting his body well out of the port, the skipper became aware that the lugger was parting company, and that the hail he had heard was the voice of the French captain shouting his parting instructions to the officer he had left in charge of the prize. Looking away to leeward, in the direction from which the sounds had come, he was just able to distinguish the dark outline of the lugger, as she bore up and pursued her way once more to the eastward. After this a considerable amount of excited jabbering took place on deck, the word “Cherbourg” being so often repeated that George had no doubt it was to that port that the barque was to be taken; but in about half an hour all this died away, and perfect silence reigned on board once more.
From the moment that the lugger parted company a confused idea as to the possibility of retaking the barque had been gradually attaining definite shape in George’s mind. It was rather a desperate attempt to make, it is true, with himself and the two mates shut up there in the cabin aft, while the crew were doubtless confined in the forecastle, and with no possibility of effecting a junction with them. Still, if Bowen and Cross were willing to run the risk of assisting him, it might be worth while to try it.
Thinking thus, he drew his head inside the stern-port, and made his way back into the main cabin, where he found the two mates, with their arms crossed upon their chests, and their heads bowed upon their breasts, asleep.