The remainder of the exclamation was promptly suppressed, but it was enough; George’s suspicions were now fully aroused, and he whispered to the two men standing by him—
“She is French, beyond a doubt; they intended to surprise us, and very nearly they did it, too. But we will not be caught quite so easily this time. Ritson, go forward, rouse the men, and tell them to creep aft under the shelter of the bulwarks; let not one of them show so much as a hair of his head above the rail; and tell them to look lively. And you, Mr Bowen, be good enough to go below and bring up a cutlass apiece for all hands.”
Chapter Five.
“Choppee for Changee—A Black Dog for a Blue Monkey.”
By the time that the Aurora’s crew were on deck, crouching behind the bulwarks aft on the port side, armed, and instructed by George as to what he required of them, the strange sail was within a dozen fathoms of the Aurora’s port quarter.
She could now be seen with tolerable distinctness, the outline of the hull and of the lofty canvas showing black as ebony against the dark background of sea and sky; and any doubts which Captain Leicester might have still entertained concerning her, were completely set at rest as he glanced at the cut of her canvas. It was French all over.
Foot by foot the brig—for such she was—crept up to the Aurora, until her bows were in a line with the barque’s stern and not more than twenty feet distant. George stood by the main-rigging, watching her, cutlass in hand, calm and determined, his plans already formed for action in the event of his suspicions proving correct.
In the ordinary course of things the two craft were now quite near enough to each other for any communication, however confidential in its nature, to be made without the possibility of its being overheard; but, though George could see that a figure stood on the brig’s rail by the main-rigging, not a word was uttered.