“I’ll give you eight;” and after parley the two men in their little boat agreed to take the Rob Roy in tow.
Almost immediately I noticed that the moon was hid, and the wind had chopped round to the southwest, the very wind I was told not to start with, but now—well it was too late to withdraw, and so we laboured on, while the great clumsy luggers crossed and recrossed our course, and frequently dashed upon the piles of the pier in the stupidest manner, with much loud roaring of voices, and creaking of spars, and fluttering of sails.
Presently the men called out that, as the sea was getting higher, I had better pay them the money. “Certainly,” I said; but, alas! I could find only five francs of change, the rest being napoleons.
They shouted, “Give us gold—we will send the change to England;” but I bellowed out a better plan, to give them an order on the yacht agents at Havre for five francs, and the silver besides.
Finally this was accepted, so I got out paper and envelope, and on the wet deck, by moonlight, wrote the banker’s draft.
When they came near the harbour’s mouth, they sung out “Get ready your mizen.”
“Ay, ay!”
“Hoist;” and so up went the trim little sail, glad to flap once more in salt air. Then they bid me “Get ready your jib—we have cast you off; hoist!” Yes, and I did hoist.
Perhaps the reader may recollect that the end of my bowsprit had been squeezed by a collision, and was in fact as weak as a charred stick. But I had entirely forgotten this by some unaccountable fatality, during the three days at Havre, when it might have been easily repaired.
The moment therefore I had hoisted the jib, the bowsprit end broke sharp off into a ragged stump, and the jib instantly flew away into the air just like an umbrella blown inside out.