“Is it the ‘Jolly Roger,’ sir?” he asked.
But the captain was furious. “He may hang where his breeches are hanging before I have done with him,” said he. “What boats will you want, Mr. Wharton?”
“We should do it with the launch and the jolly-boat.”
“Take four and make a clean job of it. Pipe away the crews at once, and I’ll work her in and help you with the long eighteens.”
With a rattle of ropes and a creaking of blocks the four boats splashed into the water. Their crews clustered thickly into them—bare-footed sailors, stolid marines, laughing middies, and in the sheets of each the senior officers with their stern, schoolmaster faces. The captain, his elbows on the binnacle, still watched the distant brig. Her crew were tricing up the boarding netting, dragging round the starboard guns, knocking new portholes for them, and making every preparation for a desperate resistance. In the thick of it all a huge man, bearded to the eyes, with a red night-cap upon his head, was straining and stooping and hauling. The captain 209 watched him with a sour smile, and then snapping up his glass he turned upon his heel. For an instant he stood staring.
“Call back the boats!” he cried, in his thin, creaking voice. “Clear away for action there! Cast loose those main-deck guns. Brace back the yards, Mr. Smeaton, and stand by to go about when she has weigh enough.”
Round the curve of the estuary was coming a huge vessel. Her great yellow bowsprit and white-winged figure-head were jutting out from the cluster of palm-trees, while high above them towered three immense masts, with the tricolor flag floating superbly from the mizzen. Round she came, the deep-blue water creaming under her fore-foot, until her long, curving, black side, her line of shining copper beneath, and of snow-white hammocks above, and the thick clusters of men who peered over her bulwarks were all in full view.
Her lower yards were slung, her ports triced up, and her guns run out all ready for action. Lying behind one of the promontories of the island the look-out men of the “Gloire” upon the shore had seen the cul-de-sac into which the British frigate had headed, so that Captain de Milon had observed the “Leda” as Captain Johnson had the “Slapping Sal.”
