“Why, not much; the French, who we were told had left the Elbe entirely, are still here, as well as at Cuxhaven, not in force certainly, just sufficiently strong to pepper us very decently in the outgoing?”
“What, are any of the people hurt?”
“No,” said the garrulous emissary. “No, not hurt, but some of us frightened leetle piece—ah, very mosh, je vous assure.”
“Speak for yourself, Master Plenippo,” said Treenail. “But, Splinter, my man, now since the enemy have occupied the dike in front, how the deuce shall we get back into the river, tell me that?”
“Why,” said the senior lieutenant, “we must go as we came.”
And here the groans from two poor fellows who had been hit were heard from the bottom of the launch. The cutter was by this time close to us, on the larboard side, commanded by Mr Julius Caesar Tip, the senior midshipman, vulgarly called in the ship Bathos, from his rather unromantic name. Here also a low moaning evinced the precision of the Frenchmen’s fire.
“Lord, Mr Treenail, a sharp brush that was.”
“Hush!” quoth Treenail. At this moment three rockets hissed up into the dark sky, and for an instant the hull and rigging of the sloop of war at anchor in the river glanced in the blue-white glare, and vanished again, like a spectre, leaving us in more thick darkness than before.
“Gemini! what is that now?” quoth Tip again, as we distinctly heard the commixed rumbling and rattling sound of artillery scampering along the dike.
“The ship has sent up these rockets to warn us of our danger,” said Mr Treenail. “What is to be done? Ah, Splinter, we are in a scrape—there they have brought up field-pieces, don’t you hear?”