Will Weatherhelm: The Yarn of an Old Sailor

by William Henry Giles Kingston

No prospect could have been more cheerless and uninviting. The Mouche, under all sail, was bowling on ahead, (I suspected that the French crew would have no little difficulty in keeping her afloat) while the lugger was acting the part of a whipper-in. I cast my eyes round the horizon. Away to the eastward they encountered a sail just rising above the water. I watched her for some time, till I was convinced that she was a large ship, and standing towards us.

At length she attracted the attention of the second mate, who was the officer of the watch. He began to eye her somewhat anxiously, and in a short time he sent down and called up the first mate. They looked at their own sails, and then at the stranger, and then at the Mouche, as if consulting what was to be done, and then finally called up the captain. They evidently could not at all satisfy themselves as to the character of the approaching ship.

I anxiously scanned their countenances; as I observed them falling, so my own hopes rose, that the sail in sight might prove an English ship of war. I tried in vain to conceal my own anxiety by walking up and down the deck, as I had done the day before.

The French officers seemed at length to have decided on some plan which satisfied them. The Mouche had already made all the sail she could carry; she had royals set and studden sails out on either side, while the lugger followed, under her ordinary canvas, in her wake. While I was walking up and down, the first mate joined me.

“Ah, my friend!” said he, in very good English, “you hope the vessel in sight is a countryman. That is very natural. We hope that if she is, we shall escape her. We intend to do our best to get away, be assured of that. If, however, we are taken, you will remember that all Frenchmen are not savages, and that we were kind to you when you were our prisoners.”

“Indeed we all shall,” I replied. “I hope, indeed, whenever Frenchmen fall into the hands of the English, that my countrymen will always treat them with kindness and consideration.”

“That is good; that is the right thing,” said the mate. “If go to war we must, we need not make it more barbarous than it must be of necessity.”

I was surprised to find these expressions proceeding from the mouth of a privateer’s man. However, I believe that there were not many people of his class like him. I certainly hoped that I might have an opportunity of showing him that I meant what I said, and that we should very soon again change our relative positions.

Mr Randolph, and La Motte, and the rest of the English prisoners, soon afterwards came on deck, and eagerly watched with me the progress of the stranger. There seemed to us very little doubt that she would cut us off before we could possibly reach Saint Malo.

As the day drew on, however, the weather gave signs of changing. The wind, which had been blowing steadily from the northward, chopped round to the north-west, and then to the westward, growing stronger and stronger, and very quickly kicking up an ugly sea, while thick rain began to fall, increasing every instant in density.