Keeping his gaze steadfastly fixed upon the brig, Captain Leicester saw that her helm had suddenly been ported, for she was sheering strongly in toward his own vessel.
“Brig ahoy!” he hailed. “What is it you have to say to me? Do not come too close, sir, or you will be into us.”
“Never fear,” answered in perfect English the dark figure on board the brig, “we will not carry away so much as a rope-yarn belonging to you. But I must be on board you before I can venture to give you your instructions.”
“Oh! very well,” said George. “If you intend boarding us, you had better do so by way of our fore-rigging, or you may get a nasty fall; we are very much littered up here abaft with spars and so on.”
“Ah, thank you very much; I will take your advice,” was the reply.
George saw the man motion with his arm, and the brig’s course was altered sufficiently to put her alongside with her gangway even with the Aurora’s fore-mast. Another second or two, and the ships gently jarred together, the brig’s quarter dropping alongside the barque at the same moment.
“Enfans, allons-nous-en!” exclaimed the voice of the stranger forward, followed by the sound of a leap on to the barque’s deck, and a scramble among the spars which littered it there.
“Now is your time, lads; jump for your lives!” exclaimed George in a low, excited tone; and, setting his men the example, he forthwith sprang from his own ship’s bulwarks to those of the brig; and dashing at the helmsman, cut him down with his cutlass before the fellow could recover sufficiently from his astonishment to utter a cry. Then, without a moment’s pause, he seized the wheel and exerting all his strength, sent it with a single twirl spinning hard over to starboard, where he lashed it.
The shock of collision, slight as it was, caused the two vessels to recoil from each other, and they were barely alongside when they separated again; George’s manipulation of the brig’s wheel, and a similar manipulation of the Aurora’s helm at the last moment before the touching of the two vessels, greatly expediting the separation. By the time, therefore, that George had looked about him, and satisfied himself that the whole of his crew were safely with him on the brig’s deck, the two vessels were a dozen feet apart and increasing their distance every second; their bows diverging from each other at almost a right angle.
The Frenchmen, on boarding the Aurora, divided into two parties, one of which rushed forward to secure the crew, while the other made a similar rush aft, for the purpose of overpowering the officers and helmsman. In their astonishment and perplexity at finding the decks deserted, they paused for a moment irresolutely, then hurriedly searched the cabin and forecastle, only to find that the ship was utterly deserted. Then, for the first time, a glimmering of the truth presented itself to the mind of the French leader, and his suspicions were instantly confirmed; for Captain Leicester, having at that moment rallied his crew, led them forward, and, finding that, as he had expected, the Frenchmen had boarded the Aurora with all their available strength, leaving only some five-and-twenty men on board the brig to handle her, he, after a short, sharp tussle, drove these men below and secured complete possession of the brig.