Equally, of course, the Captain had to tell him what he knew—how the fort was built of solid masonry, sixteen feet thick, with two feet of armour-plating outside that; and how the little fortress, as it undoubtedly was, had a well dug deep down into the sands below the sea, to supply its garrison with fresh-water in the event of communication being cut off with the mainland. To provide against which contingency it was also provisioned and furnished with every requisite to stand a siege.
He was explaining all this, when a large screw-steamer, high in the bows and low in the stern, crossed the Bembridge Belle making for Portsmouth.
“Hullo, ma’am!” cried the Captain, glad to have the opportunity of a sly dig at Mrs Gilmour in remembrance of her previous amusement at his expense, “there’s your pig-boat!”
“What!” said she innocently. “I don’t understand you.”
“The Irish pig-boat, ma’am,” he repeated, his beady black eyes twinkling and his bushy eyebrows moving up and down, as they always did when he said anything funny. “It brings your fellow-countrymen over here twice a week.”
“You’re very complimentary, sir,” said she. “Very complimentary, I declare!”
“Not a bit of it, ma’am,” he replied, delighted at the idea of her taking his remark seriously. “Don’t you, in your ‘swate little island’ call poor piggy ‘the jintleman who pays the rint,’ eh?”
“Sure,” she retorted with a smile, taking up the cudgels on behalf of her country, “there are more pigs in England than what come over from Ireland!”
“I cry a truce!” exclaimed the old sailor laughing heartily, Bob and Nell, too, as well as Dick, appreciating the joke hugely; “you had me there, ma’am, you had me there!”
The Bembridge Belle was now well across the waterway, rapidly nearing the pier from which they had originally started in the morning, and Mrs Gilmour was just saying what a very enjoyable day they had passed, in spite of all mishaps, while Nellie was priding herself on the grand collection of wild-flowers she had made with her aunt’s help, and Bob and Dick busy over the bucket, showing Hellyer the various treasures they had picked up amongst the rocks on the shore; when, all at once, the bows of the steamer struck against something in the channel, with a concussion that threw nearly everybody off their feet—the shock being succeeded by a harsh grating sound as if her hull was gradually being ripped open.