“Ah, I see,” remarked the officer. “You effected an exchange of ships—‘choppee for changee—a black dog for a blue monkey,’ eh? And now you want us to get your own ship back for you?”
“Not exactly,” answered George with a laugh; “I have already forced her to surrender; that is the craft—the barque immediately under my lee. But I shall feel obliged if you will take charge of the prisoners, and lend me sufficient men to navigate my prize into port.”
“Um; well, I really do not quite know about that. I will man your prize for you to-night; but you must see the commodore about the matter in the morning; if he will authorise me to lend you a prize-crew, of course I shall be very happy. By the way, where did the Frenchman come from?”
“When I saw the craft first, she was about a couple of cables’ lengths directly astern of us,” answered Leicester.
“She was, eh!” remarked the officer. “Well, there will be a pretty row to-morrow about her being allowed to slip in undetected. I will send a boat on board your own ship at once, to remove the prisoners; and, that done, I will tell off a crew to man your prize for you.”
This was accordingly done, and an hour after the arrival of the Throstle upon the scene, George and his crew were once more comfortably established on board their own ship.
On the following morning the affair was officially reported to the commodore, who put himself into a tremendous passion about it, declaring that such an occurrence reflected indelible disgrace upon the whole British navy, and that he would bring to court-martial every one of the officers belonging to the convoying ships;—which, however, seeing that at bottom he was a fine, good-hearted old fellow, he never did. And after abusing everybody else, he sent for George, complimented him upon his gallantry publicly on the quarterdeck of the Tremendous, offered to obtain a commission for him (an offer which our hero was foolish enough to decline), and gave his hearty consent to the proposed borrowing of a prize-crew.
But the affair did not by any means end here; for on the following night, which was almost as dark as the preceding one, three ships belonging to the merchant-fleet under convoy gave an unusual and altogether extraordinary amount of trouble to the captains of the gun-brigs by their persistent straggling; and, suspicion being at length aroused, they were all found to be in the hands of French prize-crews, having been surprised and captured by the Jeune Virginie immediately prior to her unsuccessful attempt upon the Aurora. Had they been only a little less anxious to effect their escape, they might, as the event proved, have accomplished it without the slightest difficulty.
About 2 p.m. on the day following the recapture of these three vessels, the weather being at the time stark calm, with an overcast sky, the signal to “shorten sail and prepare for bad weather,” was exhibited on board the commodore’s ship—the old Tremendous. It was very difficult to make out the signal, the flags hanging from the masthead in such close, motionless folds that it was almost impossible to identify them; so, after a long and anxious scrutiny of them through his telescope, George, thinking he must surely have misinterpreted the message, dived below to take a look at his barometer. A single glance at it was sufficient to show him that he was not mistaken, the mercury having fallen a full inch in little more than two hours.
When he returned to the deck again, which he did immediately, the various ships were lying with their heads all round the compass, the merchantmen showing no signs that they understood the signal; but on board the men-o’-war the crews were seen to be very busy reefing topsails; the topgallant and royal-masts and yards being already sent down on deck.