"Then your conference concerned me?"
"It certainly did, mon ami."
"How?"
"Marin wished to force you to deceive your countrymen, by replying to them in English—replying with his pistol at your head. Sangdieu! you comprehend?"
Before Quentin could reply, the question,
"What brig is that? d—n it, you had better look sharp!" came over the black surging water from the foe.
"Stand by the braces, and be ready to fill the sails to the yard-heads, and bear away right before the wind," said Marin; then, raising his voice, he shouted a deep and bitter curse through his trumpet.
"Hail again," cried the officer; "this is His Britannic Majesty's ship Medusa—send a boat off instantly with your skipper and his papers."
Instead of complying, Marin daringly gave orders to fire his three 12-pounders on the portside, to fill his yards, and bear right away before the western breeze; but on the appearance of the first portfire glittering on his deck, bang came another shot from this pugnacious stranger, which took his foreyard right in the sling; it came crashing down on deck, breaking the arm of one man and the leg of another; and before M. Marin had made up his mind what to do next, the Medusa, a fifty-gun ship, forged a little way ahead of him, as if she meant to sweep his deck or sink him; but neither was her object, for a boat's crew of those "pestilent Englishmen," with pistols in their belts and cutlasses in their teeth, were alongside in a moment, holding on with boat-hooks to the forechains, as the now partly unmanageable brig rose and fell heavily on the black waves of that stormy midnight sea. Another boat-load clung like leeches to the starboard quarter, and in less than five minutes the Bien Aimé was the lawful prize of the British frigate, Medusa.
Her crew were all disarmed and placed under a guard of marines; a strong hawser was run on board and made fast to the capstan or windlass, the yard heads were trimmed, a jury fore-yard rigged in a trice, and the privateer in tow of the Medusa stood off towards the coast of "perfidious Albion." The weather was so rough, however, that they were compelled to slack off or let go the towline; but lanterns were hoisted at the foreyard, and thus they kept company till daylight.