“Jump, jump, Jean Crapaud!—jump, jump, friends!” they shouted as they got alongside. “We’ll catch you, never fear,” they added, holding out their arms.
Numbers of Frenchmen, begrimed with powder and covered with blood, threw themselves headlong into the boats, and had it not been for the English seamen, would have been severely injured. Some refused to come, and looked through the ports, shouting, “Vive la Nation!”, “Vive la République!”
“Poor fools!” cried Paul Pringle sadly; “they’ll soon be singing a different tune when the water is closing over their heads. That will bring them too late to their senses.”
The boats, as fast as their eager crews could urge them, went backwards and forwards between the sinking Frenchman and the English ships. Some hundreds had been taken off; but still the wounded and many of the drunken remained.
Sir Henry Elmore commanded one of the boats, and True Blue was in her. In one of her early trips an officer appeared at one of the ports, dragging forward a young midshipman.
“Monsieur,” he said, hearing Sir Henry speak French, “I beg that you will take this brave boy in your boat. He wishes to be one of the last to leave the ship, and, as you see, we know not how soon she may go down, and he may be lost. He is our Captain’s son, and where his father is I cannot say.”
“Gladly—willingly,” answered Sir Henry. “And you, my friend, come with the boy.”
The lad showed signs of resistance; but True Blue sprang up into the port, aided by a boathook which he held, and, taking the lad round the waist, leaped with him into the boat. The officer refused to come, saying that he had duties to which he must attend; and the boat being now full, Sir Henry had to return to the frigate.
On hastening back to the ship, the officer again appeared. “I will accompany you now,” he said, leaping in and taking his seat in the sternsheets. “But I have been searching in vain for our brave Captain Renaudin. What can have, become of him I do not know. If he is lost, it will break that poor boy’s heart, they were so wrapped up in each other.”
The boat, as he spoke, was rapidly filling with French seamen.