The Wing-and-Wing; Or, Le Feu-Follet

by James Fenimore Cooper

"Aye, Winchester, once on her deck, I make no doubt you'd carry her; but it may not be so easy as you imagine to get on her deck. Of all duty to a captain, this of sending off boats is the most unpleasant. He cannot go in person, and if anything unfortunate turns up he never forgives himself. Now, it's a very different thing with a fight in which all share alike, and the good or evil comes equally on all hands."

"Quite true, Captain Cuffe; and yet this is the only chance that the lieutenants have for getting ahead a little out of the regular course. I have heard, sir, that you were made commander for cutting out some coasters in the beginning of the war."

"You have not been misinformed, and a devil of a risk we all ran. Luck saved us--and that was all. One more fire from a cursed carronade would have given a Flemish account of the whole party; for, once get a little under, and you suffer like game in a batteau." Captain Cuffe wished to say battue; but, despising foreign languages, he generally made sad work with them whenever he did condescend to resort to their terms, however familiar. "This Raoul Yvard is a devil incarnate himself at this boarding work, and is said to have taken off the head of a master's mate of the Theseus with one clip of his sword when he retook that ship's prize in the affair of last winter--that which happened off Alicant!"

"I'll warrant you, sir, the master's mate was some slender-necked chap that might better have been at home, craning at the girls as they come out of a church-door. I should like to see Raoul Yvard or any Frenchman who was ever born take off my head at a single clip!"

"Well, Winchester, to be frank with you, I should not. You are a good first; and that is an office in which a man usually wants all the head he has; and I'm not at all certain you have any to spare. I wonder if one could not hire a felucca, or something larger than a boat, in this place, by means of which we could play a trick upon this fellow, and effect our purpose quite as well as by going up to him in our open boats bull-dog fashion?"

"No question of it at all, sir; Griffin says there are a dozen feluccas in port here, all afraid to budge an inch in consequence of this chap's being in the offing. Now one of these trying to slip along shore might just serve as a bait for him, and then he would be famously hooked."

"I think I have it, Winchester. You understand; we have not yet been seen to communicate with the town; and luckily our French colors have been flying all the morning Our head, too, is in-shore, and we shall drift so far to the eastward in a few minutes as will shut in our hull, if not our upper sails, from the lugger where she now lies. As soon as this is done you shall be off with forty picked men for the shore. Engage a felucca and come out stealing along the rocks as close as you can, as if distrusting us. In due time we will chase you in the boats, and then you must make for the lugger for protection as fast as you can, when, betwixt the two, I'll answer for it, you get this Master Yvard, by fair means or foul."

Winchester was delighted with the scheme, and in less than five minutes orders were issued for the men to be detailed and armed. Then a conference was held as to all the minor arrangements; when, the ship having become shut in from the lugger by the promontory, as expected, the boats departed. Half an hour later, or just as the Proserpine, after wearing, had got near the point where the lugger would be again open, the boats returned and were run up. Presently the two vessels were again in sight of each other, everything on board of each remaining apparently in statu quo. Thus far, certainly, the stratagem had been adroitly managed. To add to it, the batteries now fired ten or twelve guns at the frigate, taking very good care not to hit her; which the Proserpine returned, under the French ensign, having used the still greater precaution of drawing the shot. All this was done by an arrangement between Winchester and Andrea Barrofaldi, and with the sole view to induce Raoul Yvard to fancy that he was still believed to be an Englishman by the worthy vice-governatore, while the ship in the offing was taken for an enemy. A light air from the southward, which lasted from eight to nine o'clock, allowed the frigate to get somewhat more of an offing the while, placing her seemingly beyond the reach of danger.

During the prevalence of the light air mentioned, Raoul Yvard did not see fit to stir tack or sheet, as it is termed among seamen. Le Feu-Follet remained so stationary that, had she been by compass from any station on the shore, her direction would not have varied a degree the whole time. But this hour of comparative breeze sufficed to enable Winchester to get out of the harbor with la Divina Providenza, the felucca he had hired, and to round the promontory, under the seeming protection of the guns by which it was crowned; coming in view of the lugger precisely as the latter relieved her man at the helm for ten o'clock. There were eight or nine men visible on the felucca's deck, all dressed in the guise of Italians, with caps and striped shirts of cotton. Thirty-five men were concealed in the hold.

Thus far everything was favorable to the wishes of Captain Cuffe and his followers. The frigate was about a league from the lugger, and half that distance from la Divina Providenza; the latter had got fairly to sea and was slowly coming to a situation from which it might seem reasonable and a matter of course for the Proserpine to send boats in chase; while the manner in which she gradually drew nearer to the lugger was not such as to excite distrust or to appear in the least designed. The wind, too, had got to be so light as to favor the whole scheme.