Ralph with an anxious heart hurried down to the quay, where a number of people were already collected. A ruddy glare extended far and wide over the harbour from a fiery mass which floated on its surface, lighting up the buildings and the figures of the people on the shore, and the ships at anchor off it. Among them lay the Falcon, her sides and lofty masts and rigging brought prominently into view. At some distance from her was the Penguin; and what was Ralph’s dismay when he discovered that the burning ship was the Eagle. His impulse was to go off at once to her—but what aid could he render? Already the flames were bursting through her hatchways and ports and encircling her masts and spars. The oil and casks in her hold once having ignited, no human means could extinguish the conflagration. He looked for his boat. A boy alone was in her; the men, as was to be expected, had gone off to a wine-house, and only just having heard that a ship was on fire, came reeling down to the quay, uttering exclamations of surprise when they discovered that she was their own. Having tumbled into the boat they were sufficiently sober to row, and Ralph ordering them to shove off, steered for the unfortunate Eagle. Numerous boats were moving about, and some around her, and he hoped, therefore, that the people on board had been rescued. It made him fear, however, that all hope of saving the ship had been abandoned. Still it was his duty to get on board if he could, to ascertain that every possible effort had been made. He had passed through an outer circle of native boats, and was dashing on, when he was hailed by a man-of-war’s boat, but not hearing what was said, he was still continuing his course, and would soon have been close to the ship, when there came a thundering report as if a whole broadside had been fired. Her mizen mast shot up into the air, followed by a large portion of the afterpart of her deck and bulwarks and interior fittings; some parts in large pieces, others rent into numberless burning fragments, which hung suspended in the air, and then in a thick fiery shower came hissing down into the water, the lighter bits reaching considerably beyond where the boats lay. Ralph had scarcely time even to get his boat round before the shattered pieces of burning wood began to fall thickly round his boat, threatening in an instant to sink her, and to kill any one who might be struck. Happily no one was hurt. The downfall of the wreck ceased; still the fire in the forepart of the ship was raging on, when the bows and bowsprit rose in the air surrounded by flames which, tapering up into a vast cone of fire, suddenly disappeared as, the stern sinking first, the water swept over the remainder of this hapless ship, and all was instantly dark, except here and there where the smouldering ends of spars and planks floated above the calm surface of the harbour. Ralph with a sad heart pulled on board the Falcon, feeling himself reduced from the position of captain of a fine ship to that of a master’s assistant; and what weighed still more on his spirits, that he had no longer the prospect of returning to England and to his dear Jessie. He was thankful to find that the boatswain and most of the crew of the Eagle had been rescued, with the exception of three unhappy men who, overcome by liquor, had been suffocated below. The whole of the survivors entered on board the Falcon—indeed, they were not offered a choice. A dozen of her best hands were also taken out of the Penguin—such being the custom of the times, when a King’s ship wanted men. Their places were filled by Portuguese and other foreigners, thirty of whom were shipped by the Falcon to make up her complement, in addition to a few runaway English seamen reduced to beggary, and sent on board by the consul. The exploring party returned without a survivor from the Concorde, a few pieces of wreck alone having been found as evidence of her fate. Such is the sad result of warfare. Three hundred human beings had lost their lives on board the four ships, two only of which now remained afloat. Ralph did his utmost to discover Dick, but without success, and at length he began to fear that he had been drowned in trying to make his escape, or had—not an unlikely occurrence—been murdered on shore. The Falcon, her repairs being completed, and Mr Handsel having written his despatches to send home by the Penguin, and having given himself an acting order as commander, sailed for the East Indies.
Ralph, as may be supposed, did not fail to write to Jessie and Captain Mudge by the Penguin, and to leave duplicates of two letters with the consul, to be forwarded by another opportunity.
Chapter Eight.
Poor Jessie Flamank had good cause to be sad. For long she hoped against hope. Whenever the door opened her heart beat quick, and she looked up half ready to spring from her seat in expectation that her Ralph would appear. Her kind granny was unwilling to say anything which might quench the hope which kept up her spirits, yet the dame knew full well that Ralph was too good a seaman to be allowed his liberty. Captain Mudge looked in every evening when his work on board the Amity was over for the day, and did his utmost to comfort Jessie. He would not say, however, whether he thought that Ralph would come back soon, but he told her that he was sure to get on well, and be better off in many respects than on board the brig. “As to danger,” he continued, “to my mind a man is as safe in one place as in another. God, remember, looks after those who trust in Him; they would be in a bad case if they had no other protection than such as they can find for themselves; so I don’t see, Jessie, that any of us can do more for him than we are doing, that is, praying heartily for him. As I always say, it’s a blessed thing that we can do that for ourselves and others, though we can do nothing else for our own or their help.”
Jessie did trust to God, but her trial was hard to bear notwithstanding. Still it made her throw herself more than she might otherwise have done on His fatherly care, and she felt her heart lightened in a way she had not supposed possible. She had abundance of occupation; for Mrs Treviss was accustomed to take in needlework, to assist her limited means, and as her eyesight had of late become dim, Jessie endeavoured to relieve her by labouring with redoubled diligence.
Kind-hearted Captain Mudge seldom came to the cottage without some welcome present, which he said he had received as a gift from a brother skipper just returned from a foreign voyage. One day it was a Dutch cheese, another a few pounds of choice tea, or a box of dried fruit or some bottles of wine, and so on. One day, when the package was larger than would have been becoming for him, master of the good brig Amity, to carry through the streets, he was followed by a boy wheeling it along in a barrow. The lad, who was dressed in a neat sailor-like costume, set it down in the passage and was going away, when Jessie recognised, in spite of his changed appearance, her young tatterdemalion boatman, Peter Puddle. “What, Peter, I scarcely knew you again,” she said. “You must stop and have something to eat.”
“Thank ye, miss, I’m not hungry, as I used to be,” he answered, in a tone of satisfaction. “Captain Mudge has taken me aboard the Amity, and I get as much grub as I want, though I shouldn’t mind a bit of bread and cheese, thank you.”
Jessie invited Peter into the kitchen and placed before him a loaf of bread and some cheese, to which, notwithstanding his assertion, he did ample justice. She observed that he had improved in his manners as well as in his appearance. Before beginning to eat, he said grace exactly in the words the captain used and in the same tone. He told her that Captain Mudge had given him an outfit, and was teaching him to read and say his prayers, and was ever so kind in all sorts of ways. “Oh, miss, there isn’t no one like him,” he added. “And only to think if I’d gone off at once that night and hadn’t picked those fellows up, I might have saved your young man from going to sea in the frigate. I be main sorry, you may depend on’t; but I’ll do all the captain tells me, that I will.”