“Oh!” said the skipper, “he is of course asking who we are. His Bwitannic Majesty’s fwigate ‘Juno,’ from Malta, with supahnumewawies for the garrison,” he added, roaring back between his hands at the motionless figure on board the brig.
“Viva!” was the reply, accompanied by the wave of a navy cap.
“He’s Fwench,” said the skipper; “one of the fellows who has suwendered to our fleet. Can any of you gentlemen speak Fwench well enough to ask him which is the Bwitish admiral’s ship?”
There was no one, it appeared, with quite sufficient confidence in his knowledge of the French language to undertake this duty, so I stepped forward and, with becoming modesty, offered to obtain whatever information was required. Permission being given, I approached the side, and squeaked out, in the most manly tones at my command, the proposed inquiry.
The figure gesticulated violently, then stooped down to commune with three or four more, whose heads could now be seen just above the taffrail; finally he raised himself to an upright position, and shouted back, “Yesh, yesh!”
“I’m afraid he did not understand you, Mr Chester,” said Mr Annesley. “Try him again.”
I did so, with even more confusing results than before.
“Ask him which is the Bwitish fleet,” suggested the skipper.
I put this question also, and the confusion appeared to become worse confounded; some half-a-dozen replies coming back to us all jumbled up together, English and French words being so hopelessly intermixed, that it was utterly impossible to make head or tail of what they were saying.
We were by this time passing close under the brig’s stern, and Percival was remarking to the first lieutenant that it was quite time to heave about, as he was sure we must be close upon the shoal, when the voice, which had hailed us first, shouted out for us to “Luff!”