Next day and next night it was the same. The Admiral noticed many things in that mortal struggle of the great ship with all the powers of destruction, and among them were the different kinds and degrees of courage displayed by the officers and men. Not one showed fear, although each was conscious of the immediate and awful danger, but some bore the strain better than others. There was not one who stood it more calmly, more debonairly, than the little American midshipman.
At sunrise on the third day, when the storm passed off to the eastward, they found themselves near a rocky headland that jutted out into the sea. The sun shone brightly, but the sea was still angry, and as far as the eye could reach was wreckage. One glance on the rocks showed them the wreck of the Seahorse. Her masts and spars were gone, and the hulk rose and fell helplessly with the violence of the waves. Archy was leaning sadly over the rail when he saw an object floating nearer that he recognized, with a sickening dread, as that of a man's body. It was swept shoreward under the very lee of the Thunderer. As it shot past, Archy uttered a cry. The morning light had revealed the pale face of his best friend Langton. Another cry went up from the men on the Thunderer's deck as they watched the ghastly sight. But at that very moment they had all they could do to claw off the land and save the Thunderer from the fate of the Seahorse. It was some days before the wind permitted them to return to the scene of the wreck, and they found not a vestige of the gallant ship or her brave company.
CHAPTER II
The Comet coach, from London to York, left the Angel Inn, on the borders of Yorkshire, at three o'clock in the November afternoon, on the last stage of the journey.
It was bitterly cold, and the low-hanging clouds held snow. Inside the tavern parlor the passengers hugged the fire and looked dismally out of the small-paned windows on the court-yard at the coach, to which the horses were being put, while the coachman, taking his last nip from a pewter pot at the kitchen window, chaffed the bar-maid and playfully flecked his whip at the postilion busy with the horses near by.
Among the passengers lingering around the fire was Archy Baskerville. He still wore his uniform, which had grown excessively shabby; but he was not without money. He had engaged the box-seat, and had paid for it in a lordly manner, showing, meanwhile, with boyish vanity and imprudence, a handsome rouleau of gold. He had a very handsome new cloak of dark-blue camlet, elegantly lined, and with a fur collar; and his seedy knee-breeches were ornamented with a costly pair of buckles.
The singular contrast in his dress could not fail to excite remark. An individual known as a bagman began to chaff him, while the other passengers listened and smiled.
"Wot's the matter with your clothes, young man? Did you kill a French captain in that 'ere suit—as you won't change it?"