‘What a very horrid-looking boat,’ observed Miss Jennings.
As the girl said this, I saw the fellow at the stranger’s wheel revolve it with frantic gestures as though some deadly danger had been descried close aboard; the brig came heavily and sluggishly round right athwart our course, showing no colours, and dipping her channels to the run of the folds with the weary motion of a waterlogged vessel, and so lay all aback. Finn looked on, scarcely understanding the manœuvre, then bawled out, ‘Hard down! Hard down! Chuck her right up in the wind! Why, bless my body and soul, what are the fools aiming at?’
The yacht nimbly answering her helm came to a stand, her square canvas to the mast, her fore and aft sails fluttering.
‘Hail her, Finn!’ cried Wilfrid with excitement.
‘No need, sir; they’re coming aboard,’ answered the captain, and sure enough there were the men, the only two besides the man at the helm who were visible, working like madmen to lower away their jolly-boat. In their red-hot haste they let her drop with a run, and the fat fabric smote the water so heavily that I looked to see her floating in staves alongside. Then down one fall with the agility of a monkey dropped the man in the red nightcap into her and unhooked the blocks, jumping about like a madman. His companion swung himself down by the other fall, and in a trice both men, sitting so far in the head of the boat as to cock her stern high up whilst her nose was nearly under, were pulling for the yacht as though the devil himself were in pursuit of them.
‘What do they want? The “Bride”?’ exclaimed Wilfrid, breaking into a huge roar of laughter, with a slap on his knee. He had been eyeing the approach of the boat with a sort of high, lifting stare—head thrown back, nostrils round and quivering like an impatient horse’s.
‘The desire of the moth for the star!’ said I to Miss Jennings.
‘But the simile won’t hold; yonder red nightcap spoils the fancy of the moth.’
‘Shall we receive them aboard, sir?’ exclaimed Captain Finn.
‘Certainly,’ responded Wilfrid, with another short shout of laughter.