The Cruise of the Frolic

by William Henry Giles Kingston

I was very much inclined to agree with the old man, that if our Greek friend had escaped drowning, and could discover our whereabout, he would be apt to try his hand at playing us some scurvy trick; but I said nothing to this effect. I, however, resolved to speak to Porpoise, so that we might be prepared to resist any attack he might attempt to make on us. Porpoise was rather inclined to laugh at my fears.

“My belief is that the fellow went to the bottom,” he replied. “Serve him right, too, if he is the rascal you suppose him; or if he got aboard his ship he saw enough of us to know that we should prove rather a tough morsel, should he attempt to swallow us.”

A council of war having been called, it was resolved that we should try to get back to Gibraltar as fast as we could. To effect this, however, it would be necessary to rig jury-masts, and this could not very well be done till daylight. We proposed turning the cutter into a schooner or lugger, and happily, as we had saved most of our spars and canvas, we expected to have no great difficulty in getting sufficient sail on her to navigate with ease the poor little closely-shorn craft.

I have often had in my naval career to pass through nights of toil and anxiety, and this gave every promise of being one of that character. In a few hours we had gathered in all our ruffled feathers, or, in other words, our masts and spars and sails and rigging; and having stowed them along the decks as best we could, there we lay floating helplessly like a log on the water. Not having discarded my suspicions of the polacca-brig, notwithstanding my fatigue I felt no inclination to go to sleep. I now was left in charge of the deck while Porpoise and the rest of my messmates turned in, all standing. I walked the deck for some time, ever and anon turning my gaze upward to the dark blue vault of heaven glittering with a thousand stars, each but a centre of some mighty system, each more complex and marvellous, probably, than our own. I thought of the all-potent Being who made them as well as all the wondrous specimens of animal life which dwell on this globe we call our own, and my heart swelled with gratitude to Him who had preserved me and my shipmates from the danger to which we had been exposed. My spirit, as I thought, seemed to take its flight through the calm atmosphere, and to wander far far away among those distant spheres. How long it was away I know not. I was not conscious of the existence of my body on the surface of the globe. A splash aroused me from my reveries. It was caused by a fish leaping out of its liquid home to avoid some monster of the deep wishing to make a supper off it. It called me back to earth and things earthly. My first impulse was to cast my eye round the horizon. It was rather a circumscribed one at that hour of darkness. Once I made the full circuit and could see nothing. I took a few more turns on deck, and again I swept my eye round the watery circle more slowly than before. As I reached the south-eastern point of the heavens I was certain I saw a dark object. I rubbed my eyes. The sails of a vessel appeared before me, rising up like a thin dark pencil-line against the sky. I wetted my fingers and held up my hand. The cold struck it on that side. Whatever she might be she was well to windward of us. I took the night-glass, which hung on brackets just inside the companion-hatch. She was still too far off to enable me to make out what she was. I had not, however, forgotten my suspicions of the polacca. The stranger was evidently approaching us. If she was the Greek, her crew would scarcely resist the temptation of attempting to plunder us. Still I felt that my suspicions were almost absurd, and I did not like to arouse my friends without some better grounds for my fears. I, however, felt it would be wise not to run the risk of being taken altogether unprepared. I therefore went up alongside old Snow—so we called him, though he was young enough to be old Sleet’s son. I was not long in waking him up to the proper pitch of caution by narrating a variety of stories about pirates and slavers and savages, and such like gentry, with a due admixture of instances where people from carelessness were caught napping and lost their lives.

“Now,” said I, “let us get these spars cleared away enough to work the guns. The watch on deck will do it without rousing the rest. We’ll have a supply up of round-shot and ammunition. The people have not restored their pistols and cutlasses to the arm-chest. Send a couple of hands to collect them all ready, and then if yonder stranger proves to be the polacca, and wishes to taste our quality, we’ll let her have her will, and show her what we are made of.”

I spoke thus confidently that there might be no risk of taking any of the pluck out of the people. I cannot say, however, that I at all liked the notion of a brush with the well-manned and probably well-armed polacca-brig in our present dismantled condition, however little I might have feared her at close quarters had we been all to rights. I watched the approach of the stranger, therefore, with no little anxiety. She was evidently bearing right down upon us, though, as there was but little wind, her progress was slow. The hours of the night wore on. I was leaning against the wreck of the mast which lay fore and aft along the deck, and at length I fell asleep. I do not know how long I had slept when I heard Porpoise’s voice close to me.

“Hillo, Brine! what in the name of wonder is that away there to windward?” he exclaimed.

“The polacca-brig, there’s no doubt about it,” I answered, as I beheld a vessel like a dark phantom stealing up towards us. I then explained to him the preparations I had made in case the brig should really be of the piratical character we suspected, and at the same time inclined to attack us. This relieved his mind not a little. My belief, however, was that the Greek might not have seen us. She might, of course, have calculated our whereabouts. Perhaps even now she might not see us. Perhaps, also, as Porpoise suggested, if the boat was swamped in the squall, the rest of the crew would probably cruise about to look for their companions. He agreed with me, therefore, that we need not yet rouse up Hearty and our other two friends. By the by, in consequence of all the delays we must endure, I was doubly glad that we had not told Hearty of Miss Mizen’s expedition to Malta. It would have made him undergo them with much less than his usual philosophy, I suspect.

“I doubt if even now the brig sees us,” said I as I watched her through the night-glass. So low down in the water as we were, she was very likely to miss us.

“See, she is passing us,” exclaimed Porpoise, after we had watched her for some time. “It is just as well she should miss us, for in our present state we could not exactly do ourselves justice.”