I told the people that I was gratified at the good opinion they had formed of me, and sent them back to their stations. I did not like the look of things. The chances of escaping were very small, and the prospects of a French prison in the climate of the West Indies was anything but pleasant.
The breeze freshened, and we went tearing away through the smooth blue sea, sending up the white sparkling foam on either side of our bows, and leaving a long line of white astern; but I now sadly felt the want of a square-sail and topsails. Had I possessed them to set, I fancied that I could easily have kept ahead of my pursuers. My glass was seldom off them, while I also kept it sweeping round ahead in the hopes, though they were not very sanguine, of discovering the British squadron, for which I had at first mistaken the enemy. On we flew, but the sharp line of the horizon on every side was unbroken by the slightest dot or line which might indicate an approaching sail. I watched the enemy. It was soon too evident that they were coming up with us at a speed which sadly lessened our prospects of escape. Still we kept beyond the range of their guns. Unless, however, fortune changed in our favour, this could not long be the case. Gradually I saw the chance of getting away diminishing, and the conviction forced itself on me that we should all be soon prisoners of war. I called Grampus to me; he was of the same opinion.
“Well, then,” said I with a sigh, “our first duty is to destroy all the letters and despatches with which I have been entrusted. Bring them up at once.”
Grampus dived below, and returned with the despatches delivered to me by Sir Peter Parker, as well as with some thirty or forty letters from the merchants of Jamaica, addressed to the masters of their privateers cruising off the island, with none of which I had hitherto fallen in. I tied the whole of the documents up in a piece of canvas, with a shot in it ready to heave overboard when the last ray of hope had disappeared. I stamped with rage as I saw my enemies overtaking me; I could not help it. My men, too, eyed them as if they felt that if they had been on board a ship in any way able to cope with such opponents, they would speedily have given a good account of them. I scarcely knew what to wish for. A tornado was the only thing just then likely to serve me. It might have sent the schooner to the bottom, but if she weathered it, I hoped that I had a chance of escaping from the big ships, which were very likely to be widely scattered before it.
The sky, however, gave no indication of any change of the sort. Grampus and Tom I saw pulling very long faces at each other, as much as to say, “It’s all up with us.” They were too right. On came the headmost ship with the Dolphin hand over hand, the flag of France flaunting proudly at her peak. A shot from one of her bow guns was a significant notice to me to heave-to. I did so with a very bad grace, and as I put down my helm, I could not help wishing that France and all Frenchmen were swept away into the ocean.
“They always have been, and always will be, an unmitigated nuisance to old England!” I exclaimed, as I took a turn on the deck, while my little craft lay bobbing away slowly at our big opponent, which, having also hove-to, was lowering a boat to board us. Then I took up the bundle of letters and hove them overboard, when down they sank, probably to find a tomb in the stomach of some hungry shark.
“At all events, Messieurs Crapauds, you will not be much the wiser for what is in them,” I exclaimed with a feeling of no little bitterness.
If I did not feel inclined exactly to cut my own throat, I certainly had a very strong wish to knock the fellows on the head whom I saw pulling towards me. It did not take me many minutes to pack up my own wardrobe. My people, as is usual, put on all the clothes they possessed, one over the other, and then we all stood ready to receive our most unwelcome visitors.
Their boat was soon alongside, and a well-dressed, gentlemanly-looking officer jumped on board, and announced to me in English that I was a prize to the French frigate Chermente of thirty-two guns, Captain McNamara, an Irishman in the French service.
“It is the fortune of war,” he observed. “You did your best to escape us when you found out that we were not your friends. You and your people will come on board my ship; the schooner may be useful to us.”