The surgeon, who had noted Gipples for some time and guessed his character, very quickly ascertained that there was nothing whatever the matter with him. Taking up a splint, he bestowed a few hearty cuts with it on his bare body, and then, telling him to jump up and slip on his clothes, he sent him up on deck to attend to his duty. Poor Gipples would gladly have hid himself away; but he was watched, and started from deck to deck till he had resumed the charge of his powder tub. Meantime Paul Pringle was keeping an anxious eye on True Blue. There he sat as composed and fearless as if nothing unusual was going forward, only jumping up with alacrity and handing out the powder to the crews of the guns he was ordered to serve. Never was his eye brighter. Never had he seemed more full of life and animation.
“Ay, he’s of the right sort,” said Paul to himself; “I knew he’d be.”
The moment his tub was empty, down he ran to the magazine, and speedily again sprang with it on deck. His friend Harry imitated his example as well as he could; but he could not avoid stopping short when a shot crashed in just before him, carrying off the head of a seaman, whose body fell across the deck along where he had to pass.
The cry of “Powder, powder, boy!” from the captain of the gun made him move on, but his knees trembled so that he could scarcely reach his post. After he had delivered the amount of powder required and sat down on his tub, his tranquillity of mind and nerve returned. Another shot came whizzing by; he merely bobbed his head. When the next passed near him, he sat perfectly still. After that he scarcely moved eyelid or muscle, in spite of all the missiles and splinters and fragments flying about.
Not so the miserable Gipples. Compelled to stay on deck he was; but nothing could keep his head from bobbing at every shot which struck the ship or passed over her, while his whole body was continually shrinking down on the deck. Several times he lay flat along it, and so confused was he, that, when called on to deliver the powder, he often did not appear to hear, or ran off to the wrong gun; till at last, had there been anybody to supply his place, he would have been kicked below and declared unfit to be even a powder-monkey. Even Tim Fid, when the firing began, was not altogether as steady as usual; but though he bobbed and sprang about with the feeling that he was dodging the shot, which he could not do in reality, it was much in the same way that he would have dodged a big play fellow whom he did not wish to touch him; and as he never for a moment was found wanting at his post, no one complained.
The action began at a quarter-past six that bright summer morning, and for about a quarter of an hour the two frigates ran along parallel to each other, exchanging broadsides with the greatest rapidity of which their respective crews were capable. They were keeping all the time directly before the wind, and within hailing distance of each other. In that short period great had been the carnage on both sides. One of the English lieutenants and two midshipmen, besides a dozen men or more, had been killed, and half as many again had been wounded; while the bulwarks of the lately trim frigate were shattered and torn, her crew begrimed with powder, perspiration, and blood, and her white decks slippery with gore, torn up with shot, and covered with fragments from the yards and the rent woodwork around. The mainmast, too, had been severely wounded; and though some of the carpenter’s crew were busy in lashing and otherwise strengthening it, great fears were felt for its safety.
“If that goes,” exclaimed Paul Pringle, who saw the accident, “those rascally Monsieurs will get off after all!”
At about half-past six the Belle Citoyenne hauled up about eight points from the wind, thus increasing her distance from the Ruby.
“I thought how it would be!” exclaimed Paul Pringle when he saw the manoeuvre. “The Monsieurs can’t stand our fire. Wing him, boys, wing him! Don’t let the Frenchman get away from us. Here, Billy, you come here. You all know that there isn’t a better eye in the ship. Let him have a shot, boys.”
True Blue, thus summoned, sprang with delight to the gun. The mass of smoke which hung round them, and the death of the officer in charge of his division, enabled Paul to accomplish his object without question.