‘I fear not,’ I answered.
On this he put his arm around me and fairly carried me up the steps on to the deck.
When I was on deck I looked round. Many large clouds floated under the sky, and their shadows darkened the face of the ocean; but in the east was a corner of misty sun with an atmosphere of rose betwixt it and the sea-line, and a delicate pink glittered on the brows of the swell as the dusky green folds rolled to the risen luminary. The brig was a complete wreck. I could not believe that I was on board the same vessel that had rescued me. There was a great rift in her deck high above the water, though she sometimes rolled the black chasm dangerously close to the sea. Many feet of her bulwarks on the left-hand side were smashed into splinters. Her top-masts were broken, and they were washing at her side, held by lengths of rope which resembled eels of inordinate length crawling overboard. The white boat that used to stand in the fore part of the deck was gone, and the sort of sentry-box in which the food had been cooked was beaten into pieces. The hull was indeed the most perfect figure of a wreck that the imagination could conceive.
‘A pretty collision, certainly!’ said the young mate; ‘but these dirty old coasting foreigners never will show a light.’
At the distance of about a quarter of a mile was a large ship. She was a far more beautiful vessel than the ship which had passed the brig, admirably graceful, swelling and swanlike as I had thought her. She was a long black ship, her sides as glossy as the hide of a well curried Arabian steed. So mirror-like was her length that the light that was upon the water trembled in cloudy flames in her sides. There was a radiant device of gold under the white bowsprit, and a line of gilt ran under the bulwarks from the radiant device to her stern, that likewise flamed with decorations in gilt. Her masts were white, and she had several white boats hanging at the extremities of curved iron bars at her sides. Some of the sails were pointed one way and some another, that one set might neutralise the impulse of the rest, and the noble and swelling and queenly ship lay without progress, softly leaning and gently bowing upon the swell whilst her spaces of canvas of a cream white softness showed like a large summer cloud against the shadowed sky of the horizon. She was close enough to enable me to distinguish a few figures moving about her, both in her fore and in her after parts.
‘Oh! what is that ship?’ I cried eagerly, the instant I saw her.
‘She is the Deal Castle,’ answered the young officer. ‘She is the vessel that was in collision with this brig last night. After the collision we hove to, for there was nothing to be seen, and therefore nothing to be done. It was blowing fresh. We burnt a flare and sent up rockets, but nothing came of them. If the Frenchmen after launching their boat were not drowned they must have been blown away to a distance that lost them the sight of our rockets. Probably they were picked up in the small hours. There was nothing to be seen of their boat at daybreak this morning from yonder mastheads.’
He stepped to the side of the brig where the bulwarks were crushed, looked over, and then turning to me called out: ‘Come along, if you please.’
I approached him, and looking down saw a large handsome white boat with five sailors in her, rising and falling at the side of the wreck.
‘Stand by to catch hold of the lady,’ exclaimed the young officer, and he lifted me over the edge of the wreck into the powerful grasp of a couple of sailors who received and seated me. In a few moments he had placed himself at the helm, and the seamen were rowing the boat to the ship.