"'Tom,' said I, 'Tom, you lubber!'—for our esteemed friend was, as usual, lying on the deck, with a cigar in his mouth, twangling at that eternal guitar—'take hold of the helm, will you, for a minute, while I go down and look at the chart.'
"I was as cold as a cucumber; so, after having ascertained, as I best could, the bearings about the Sound, I rather think I did stop below for one moment—but not longer—just to mix a glass of swizzle by way of fortification, for I didn't expect to get to bed that night. All of a sudden I heard a shout from the bows, bolted upon deck, and there, sure enough, was a black object right ahead, with the surf shooting over it.
"'Luff, Tom! or we are all dead men;—Luff, I say!' shouted I. I might as well have called to a millstone. Tom was in a kind of trance.
"'O Dorothea!' said our friend.
"'To the devil with Dorothea!' roared I, snatching the tiller from his hand.
"It was too late. We went smash upon the rock, with a force that sent us headlong upon the deck, and Strachan staggered to his feet, bleeding profusely at the proboscis.
"Down came the sail rattling about our ears, and over lurched the yacht. I saw there was no time to lose, so I leaped at once upon the rock, and called upon the rest to follow me. They did so, and were lucky to escape with no more disaster than a ruffling of the cuticle on the basalt; for in two minutes more all was over. Some of the timbers had been staved in at the first concussion. She rapidly filled,—and down went, before my eyes, the Caption the tidiest little craft that ever pitched her broadside into the hull of a Frenchman!"
"Very well told indeed," said I, "only, Anthony, it does strike me that the last paragraph is not quite original. I've heard something like it in my younger days, at the Adelphi. But what became of you afterwards?"
"Faith, we were in a fix, as you may easily conceive. All we could do was to scramble up the rocks,—which, fortunately, were not too precipitous,—until we reached a dry place, where we lay, huddled together, until morning. When light came, we found that we were not on the main land, but on a kind of little stack in the very centre of the channel, without a blade of grass upon it, or the prospect of a sail in sight. This was a nice situation for two members of the Scottish bar! The first thing we did was to inquire into the state of provisions, which found to consist of a couple of biscuits, that little Jim, the boy, happened to have about him. Of course we followed the example of the earlier navigators, and confiscated these pro bono publico. We had not a drop of alcohol among us, but, very luckily, picked up a small keg of fresh water, which, I believe, was our salvation. Strachan did not behave well. He wanted to keep half-a-dozen cigars to himself; but such monstrous selfishness could not be permitted, and the rest of us took them from him by force. I shall always blame myself for having weakly restored to him a cheroot."
"And what followed?"