“Pyramids of fog! and wreathing clouds! By heaven!” he shouted, “'tis a tall ship! Royals, skysails, and stud-dingsails all abroad! She is within a mile of us, and comes down like a racehorse, with a spanking breeze, dead before it! Now know we why Somers is speaking in the mist!”
“Ay,” cried Griffith, “and there goes the Alacrity, just breaking out of the fog, hovering in for the land!”
“There is a mighty hull under all that cloud of canvas, Captain Munson,” said the observant but calm Pilot: “it is time, gentlemen, to edge away to leeward.”
“What, before we know from whom we run!” cried Griffith; “my life on it, there is no single ship King George owns but would tire of the sport before she had played a full game of bowls with—”
The haughty air of the young man was daunted by the severe look he encountered in the eye of the Pilot, and he suddenly ceased, though inwardly chafing with impatient pride.
“The same eye that detected the canvas above the fog might have seen the flag of a vice-admiral fluttering still nearer the heavens,” returned the collected stranger; “and England, faulty as she may be, is yet too generous to place a flag-officer in time of war in command of a frigate, or a captain in command of a fleet. She knows the value of those who shed their blood in her behalf, and it is thus that she is so well served! Believe me, Captain Munson, there is nothing short of a ship of the line under that symbol of rank and that broad show of canvas!”
“We shall see, sir, we shall see,” returned the old officer, whose manner grew decided, as the danger appeared to thicken; “beat to quarters, Mr. Griffith, for we have none but enemies to expect on this coast”
The order was instantly issued, when Griffith remarked, with a more temperate zeal:
“If Mr. Gray be right, we shall have reason to thank God that we are so light of heel!”
The cry of “a strange vessel close aboard the frigate” having already flown down the hatches, the ship was in an uproar at the first tap of the drum. The seamen threw themselves from their hammocks, and lashing them rapidly into long, hard bundles, they rushed to the decks, where they were dexterously stowed in the netting, to aid the defences of the upper part of the vessel. While this tumultuous scene was exhibiting, Griffith gave a secret order to Merry, who disappeared, leading his trembling cousins to a place of safety in the inmost depths of the ship.