‘It will give us so much to talk about,’ exclaimed Colledge. ‘I want to see what sort of a ship it was that frightened us so abominably the other day.’
‘What do you say, Mr. Dugdale?’ said Miss Temple.
‘I am thinking of the lonely sentinel this gentleman was telling us about as we came along,’ said I.
‘Oh, one peep! one peep at him, just one peep!’ cried Colledge: ‘don’t let us go back to the Indiaman too soon. At this rate,’ he added, turning up his slightly flushed face to the sky, ‘we may have another six months of her.’
The lieutenant laughed, and, anxious to please him, as I supposed, quietly pulled a yoke-line and swept the boat’s head fair for the hull. His making nothing of the appearance I had called his attention to was reassuring. I should have thought nothing of it either but for the indent in the horizon that morning, and the recollection that grew out of it, as I have told you. But then old Keeling had let us start from his ship without a hint, and Sir Edward had uttered no caution, though, to be sure, in those days the barometer was not the shaper of marine speculations it has since become; and the silence of these two skippers, and the smile and careless rejoinder of the lieutenant, should have been amply satisfying. Nevertheless, there was no question but that the light swell heaving out of the north-west was sensibly gaining in volume and speed, and that it was the mere respiration of the ocean I could by no means persuade myself, though it might signify nothing.
Colledge grew somewhat frolicsome; indeed, I seemed to find an artificiality in his spirits, as though he would clear Miss Temple’s memory of Captain Panton’s badinage by laughter and jokes. The lieutenant fell in with his humour, said some comical things, and told one or two lively anecdotes of the blacks of that part of the coast the corvette was fresh from. The men-of-war’s men pulled steadily, and the keen stem of the cutter sheared through the oil-smooth surface with a noise as of the ripping of satin; but now and again she would swing down into a hollow that put the low sides of the wreck out of sight, whilst, as we approached, I noticed that the hull was leaning from side to side in a swing which did not need to greatly increase to put the lieutenant to his trumps to get Miss Temple aboard.
But by this time the girl was showing some vivacity, smiling at the lieutenant’s jokes, laughing lightly in her clear, rich, trembling tones at Colledge’s remarks. It seemed to me as if her previous quietude had produced a resolution which she was now acting up to. She was apparently eager to inspect the wreck, and said that such an adventure would make a heroine of her at home when she came to tell the story of it.
It was a long, dragging pull over that heaving, breathless sea, and through that sweltering afternoon, with its sky of the complexion of brass about the zenith. The three craft, as they lay, formed a right-angled triangle, the apex, to call it so, being the derelict, and the getting to her involved a longer stretching of the Jacks’ backs than, as I suspected, the lieutenant had calculated on. The sweat poured from the men’s brows, and their faces were like purple rags under their straw hats as they swung with the precision and the monotony of the tick of a clock over the looms of their oars.
‘She’s rather unsteady, isn’t she?’ exclaimed Colledge as we approached the hulk.
‘So much the better,’ said the lieutenant; ‘her bulwarks are gone, and every dip inclines her bare deck as a platform for a jump.’