"Peste!--Vere you boun', Monsieur, s'il vous plait."
"Hamburg."
"Diable!--zis is non ze chemin.--How you come her, sair, viz ze vin' at sow-vess?"
"We are going in to Brest, being in need of a little succour."
"You vish salvage, eh! Parbleu, we can do you zat mosh good, as veil as anodair."
I was then ordered, privateer fashion, to lower a boat, and to repair on board the lugger with my papers. When old I had no stern or quarter-boat to lower, the Frenchman Manifested surprise; but he sent his own yawl for me. My reception on board the Polisson was a little free for Frenchmen. The captain received me in person, and I saw, at a glance, I had to deal with men who were out on the high seas, with the fear of English prison-ships constantly before their eyes, in quest of gold. I was not invited into the cabin, a crowded, dark and dirty hole, for, in that day, the French were notoriously foul in their vessels, but was directed to show my papers seated on a hen-coop.
As everything was regular about the register, manifest and clearance, I could see that Monsieur Gallois was not in a particularly good humour. He had one, whom I took to be a renegade Englishman, with him, to aid in the examination, though, as this man never spoke in my presence, I was unable precisely to ascertain who he was. The two had a long consultation in private, after the closest scrutiny could detect no flaw in the papers. Then Monsieur Gallois approached and renewed the discourse.
"Vy you have no boat, sair?" he asked.
"I lost my boat, three days since, about a hundred leagues to the southward and westward."
"It is not have bad veddair!--Why you got no more marins in your sheep?--eh!"