“Ods life, then we shall have to fight her after all,” exclaimed the colonel, with animation. “It’s a pity we didn’t have it out yesterday, and have enjoyed a quiet night’s rest after it.”
“I wish we had, sir,” said the master, his spirits a little cheered by the colonel’s coolness. “We should have had an advantage we shall not enjoy to-day. She has the weather gauge, and may select her own time to engage us, and is, I suspect, but waiting till the sea goes down, when she may run us alongside, and take advantage of the great superiority of men she has, depend on it, on board her.”
“We must see, however, what we can do,” replied the colonel. “But, after all, the fellow may be an Austrian. He has hoisted those colours.”
“Merely to blind us, sir, depend on it,” answered the master. “He is even now edging down upon us.”
As he spoke, the stranger at length set his topgallant-sails and royals; but if his intention was to run alongside, it was frustrated.
The varying wind, which had been gradually lulling, now on a sudden died away completely, even before the sea created by the gale had had time to go down, and the two vessels lay rolling from side to side like logs on the water, without power to progress, just beyond the range of each other’s guns.
Those who have cruised in the Mediterranean Sea must have lively recollections of the calms which have stopped their onward progress—the slow rolling of the vessel without any apparent cause, the loud flapping of the canvas against the masts seemingly feeling anger at its inaction, the hot sun striking down on the decks and boiling up the pitch in the seams between the planks, the dazzling glare too bright for the eyes to endure from the mirror-like surface of the water, and, above all, the consequent feelings of discontent, lassitude, and weariness.
Notwithstanding the heat and the motion, and the excessive weariness they felt from their incessant toil, Bowse and his bold crew set manfully to work to repair the damage the Zodiac had received during the storm. All hands laboured cheerfully, for they saw that everything might depend on the speed with which they could get the ship to rights again. Although the damage on deck was considerable, yet their first care was to get up a new topmast, and another jib-boom out, for both which purposes they fortunately had spare ones on board. Bowse had gone for a minute below, where Timmins speedily followed him.
“A boat shoving off from the polacca brig, sir,” said the mate.
He was on deck in a minute; by his glass he saw a six-oared gig rapidly approaching; she had in the stern-sheets four persons, three of whom were dressed as officers, and wore cocked hats.