“I see, I see,” cried Colonel Vereker quickly, interrupting him, and in a state of great excitement. “Thank God! But for that you would never have sighted our drifting boat and picked up myself and poor Captain Alphonse! Thank God, Señor Haldane saw us in that mysterious way. It seems to have been an interposition of heaven to warn you of our peril and bring you to our aid!”
“Just so, colonel; that’s what I think myself now,” said the skipper impressively, taking off his cap and looking upward with a grave reflective air. “Aye, and I thank God, too, for putting us in the way of helping you, with all my heart, sir!”
“Ah!” observed old Mr Stokes, who had remained silent the while. “The ways of Providence are as wonderful as they are mysterious!”
There was a pause after this in our conversation which no one seemed anxious to break till Garry O’Neil spoke.
“Faith, sor, you haven’t tould us yit how ye come by this wound in your leg, an’ about that poor chap in yander,” he said to the colonel, nodding his head in the direction of Captain Applegarth’s inner state cabin, where the French captain was lying in his cot. “Sure, we’re dyin’ to hear the end of your scrimmage with those black divvles!”
Colonel Vereker heaved a sigh.
“Well, I ought not to doubt that the good God is watching over my little, darling daughter after what I have just learnt, my friends,” said he in a more hopeful tone than his depressed manner indicated, looking round at us with his large, melancholy, dark eyes. “I ought not to despair!”
“Certainly not, sir; I dare say we’ll soon overhaul the ship now, for we’re more than an hour and a half in chase of her at full speed,” remarked the skipper, recovering himself from his fit of abstraction and looking at his watch to see the time. “Go on, colonel; go on, please, and tell us the end of your story.”
“There is little more for you to hear, sir,” replied the other, settling himself back in his seat again, after Mr O’Neil had once more dressed the wound in his leg. “Before it was dark that terrible night I sent Elsie below, while Captain Alphonse with myself stayed up on the poop for the first watch, each of us with a loaded revolver, besides having a box of cartridges handy on the skylight near by, should we want to replenish our ammunition. But the Haytians, sir, had evidently had enough of us for that evening, making no further attempts to attack us as the hours wore on.
“They were as watchful as ourselves, though, for as Cato, anon, trying to creep forwards so as to release the French sailors confined under the main hatchway, had a narrow escape of his life, a heavy spar being suddenly let down by the run almost on top of his head when he ventured out on the exposed deck. This was at midnight, when the second mate, Basseterre, and Don Miguel, with the French sailor Duval, relieved Captain Alphonse and me, taking the middle watch.