"Up with your signal, sir; up with your signal. I shall be obliged to order Greenly to put you upon watch-and-watch for a month, in order to bring you down to the old level of manners."
"Signal answered, already, Sir Gervaise. By the way, sir, I'll thank you to request Captain Greenly to give me another quarter-master. It's nimble work for us when there is any thing serious to do."
"You shall have him, Bunting," returned the vice-admiral, a shade passing over his face for the moment. "I had missed poor Jack Glass, and from seeing a spot of blood on the poop, guessed his fate. I fancied, indeed, I heard a shot strike something behind me."
"It struck the poor fellow's head, sir, and made a noise as if a butcher were felling an ox."
"Well—well—let us try to forget it, until something can be done for his son, who is one of the side boys. Ah! there's Blewet keeping away in earnest. How the deuce he is to speak us, however, is more than I can tell."
Sir Gervaise now sent a message to his captain to say that he desired his presence. Greenly soon appeared, and was made acquainted with the intention of the Druid, as well as with the purport of the last signals. By this time, the rent main-top-sail was mended, and the captain suggested it should be set again, close-reefed, as before, and that the main-sail should be taken in. This would lessen the Plantagenet's way, which ship was sensibly drawing ahead of her consorts. Sir Gervaise assenting, the change was made, and the effects were soon apparent, not only in the movement of the ship, but in her greater ease and steadiness of motion.
It was not long before the Druid was within a hundred fathoms of the flag-ship, on her weather-quarter, shoving the brine before her in a way to denote a fearful momentum. It was evidently the intention of Captain Blewet to cross the Plantagenet's stern, and to luff up under her lee quarter; the safest point at which he could approach, in so heavy a swell, provided it were done with discretion. Captain Blewet had a reputation for handling his frigate like a boat, and the occasion was one which would be likely to awaken all his desire to sustain the character he had already earned. Still no one could imagine how he was to come near enough to make a communication of any length. The stentorian lungs of the second lieutenant, however, might effect it; and, as the news of the expected hail passed through the ship, many who had remained below, in apathy, while the enemy was close under their lee, came on deck, curious to witness what was about to pass.
"Hey! Atwood?" exclaimed Sir Gervaise, for the little excitement had brought the secretary up from the commander-in-chief's cabin;—"what is Blewet at! The fellow cannot mean to set a studding-sail!"
"He is running out a boom, nevertheless, Sir Gervaise, or my thirty years' experience of nautical things have been thrown away."
"He is truly rigging out his weather fore-topmast-studding-sail-boom, sir!" added Greenly, in a tone of wonder.