"Is this the gentleman you mean, Etooelle?" demanded Raoul, when the cabin-lamp shone on the prisoner's face; "he who was so much rejoiced to hear that his enemy was not hanged?"
"'Tis the same, Captain Rule; in the main, he is a good-natured officer--one that does more harm to himself than to any one else. They said in the ship, that he went up to Naples to do you some good turn or other."
"Bon!--you have been long in your boat, Mr. Clinch--we will give you a warm supper and a glass of wine--after which, you are at liberty to seek your frigate, and to return to your own flag."
Clinch stared as if he did not, or could not, believe what he heard--then the truth flashed on his mind, and he burst into tears. Throughout that day his feelings had been in extremes, hope once more opening a long vista of happiness for the future, through the renewed confidence and advice of his captain. Thus far he had done well, and it was by striving to do still better that he had fallen into the hands of the enemy. For a single moment the beautiful fabric which revived hopes had been industriously weaving throughout the day was torn into tatters. The kindness of Raoul's manner, however, his words, and the explanations of Ithuel, removed a mountain from his breast, and he became quite unmanned. There is none so debased as not to retain glimmerings of the bright spirit that is associated with the grosser particles of their material nature, Clinch had in him the living consciousness that he was capable of better things, and he endured moments of deep anguish--as the image of the patient, self-devoting, and constant Jane rose before his mind's eye to reproach him with his weaknesses.
It is true that she never made these reproaches in terms; so far from that, she would not even believe the slanders of those she mistook for his enemies; but Clinch could not always quiet the spirit within him, and he often felt degraded as he remembered with how much more firmness Jane supported the load of hope deferred than he did himself. The recent interview with Cuffe had aroused all that remained of ambition and self-respect, and he had left the ship that morning with a full and manly determination to reform, and to make one continued and persevering effort to obtain a commission, and with it Jane. Then followed capture and the moment of deep despair. But Raoul's generosity removed the load, and again the prospect brightened.
CHAPTER XXVI.
"Oh! many a dream was in the ship
An hour before her death;
And sight of home, with sighs disturbed
The sleeper's long-drawn breath."
WILSON.
Raoul soon decided on his course. While he was consoling Clinch, orders had been sent to Pintard to look for the other gig; but a few minutes' search under the cliffs satisfied those on deck that she was not to be found; and the fact was so reported below. Nor could all Ithuel's ingenuity extract from the captured boat's crew any available information on the subject. There was an esprit de corps among the Proserpines, as between their own ship and le Feu-Follet, which would have withstood, on an occasion like this, both threats and bribes; and he of the Granite State was compelled to give the matter up as hopeless; though, in so doing, he did not fail to ascribe the refusal to betray their shipmates, on the part of these men, to English obstinacy, rather than to any creditable feeling. The disposition to impute the worst to those he hated, however, was not peculiar to Ithuel or his country; it being pretty certain he would have fared no better on board the English frigate, under circumstances at all analogous.
Satisfied, at length, that the other boat had escaped him, and feeling the necessity of getting out of the Bay while it was still dark, Raoul reluctantly gave the order to bear up, and put the lugger dead before the wind, wing-and-wing. By the time this was done, the light craft had turned so far to windward as to be under the noble rocks that separate the piano of Sorrento from the shores of Vico; a bold promontory that buttresses the sea, with a wall of near or quite a thousand feet in perpendicular height. Here she felt the full force of the land-wind; and when her helm was put up, and her sheets eased off, a bird turning on the wing would not have come round more gracefully, and scarcely with greater velocity. The course now lay from point to point, in order to avoid being becalmed within the indentations of the coast. This carried the lugger athwart the cove of Sorrento, rather than into it, and, of course, left Yelverton, who had landed at the smaller marina, quite out of the line of her course.