"That is 1801. We were standing for Malta with a stiff breeze from the nor'-east. The Polly Femus was close hauled on the starboard tack——"
"D—n the Polyphemus," cried the midshipman, testily, as he put the helm up; "take in your loose gaff, Tom: if we are not picked up by the Amphion, your tune will be changed before morning. Hoste keeps a good look out!"
"He was made a sailor of in the Polly—whew! beg pardon, sir," said the old fellow, who could not resist making another allusion to his old ship.
"Faith! Captain Dundas," said the middy, "it is so dark that I have not the slightest notion of our whereabouts."
"Yonder's a spark away to windward, sir," said old Tom. "The Electra, cannot be less than somewhere about two miles off—a few fathoms more or less."
At that moment the frigate fired a gun; the red flash gleamed through the gloom, and after a lapse the report was borne past us on the night wind. A blue light was next burned; it shone like a distant star above the black and tumbling sea, then expired: and so did all our hopes of reaching the ship—the sound of her gun having informed us that we had been swept by the current far to the north of the Lanterna of Messina, which was rapidly being lost amid the murky vapour.
"Keep a good look out there forward," cried the middy: "if we miss the Amphion, we may all go to the bottom, or be under weigh for a French prison by this time to-morrow."
"Ay, ay, sir," replied the sailor through his hand, while, bending forward, he strove to pierce the gloom a-head.
"Give way, men—cheerily now."
The rowers stretched back over the thwarts till their oars bent like willow wands, and as the strong current was with us now, we flew through the foaming water with the speed of a race-horse.