Then, with a wonderful bound at my heart, half surprise, half joy, I saw the brig suddenly put about, while a flag waved at her stern showed that my signal had been seen. A minute later the welcome sight of a boat coming towards me assured me that I was saved, and with a cry of thankfulness to Heaven my weary head drooped, and the mist in my eyes became darkness.
What roused me was the consciousness of two strong arms round me, and the taste of liquid fire between my lips. My saviours, who were Dutchmen, had lifted me from the spar, and were plying me with spirits as I lay more dead than alive in the stern-sheets. I looked up. The sails of the brig, flapping against the wind, towered above me, and her dark hull as she swung over us hid the sun. The boat pulled round her stern to reach the lee-ladder. As we passed I glanced up, and my eyes fell on two words, painted in gilt letters—
“Scheldt. Rotterdam.”
Chapter Thirty One.
The highwayman on the Delft road.
The next thing I clearly remember was crawling up on deck, clad in a Dutch sailor’s jacket and cap (I had been stripped for action when I was pitched into the waves out of the Zebra), and seeing a stretch of red-tiled roofs and windmills and tall towers on the bank of the broad stream up which we sailed on the tide. Rotterdam was in sight.
I had lain in a sort of stupor since I was carried on board twenty-four hours ago. The Dutchmen had been kind to me in their rough way, particularly as they took me for a Frenchman. I thought it prudent not to undeceive them, and passed myself off to the skipper as a castaway citizen of the Republic One and Indivisible, which my knowledge of the language made easy.
But, as you may imagine, now that I stood on the deck of the Scheldt, my mind had room for but one thought. Miss Kit—where was she?