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The weather came on thick, but we found a pilot, and ran into St. Helen's Roads and anchored. The captain got into his boat, and taking four men pulled ashore, to look for his orders at Cowes. That afternoon it cleared off, and we found a pilot lying a little outside of us. About sunset a man-of-war's cutter came alongside, and Mr. Irish was ordered to muster the crew.
The swaying sleigh was just ahead now. Walter drew Prince to one side so that the cutter would clear the sleigh in passing. The chums could see poor, frightened Linda crouching in the bottom of the sleigh, clinging with both hands to one of the straps from which the plumes streamed. Her face was white and she looked almost ready to faint.
"No," I answered; "but they don't suppose I can get on board without a boat." "You can have mine, with pleasure;" and the Consul, addressing his little son, desired that a boat should be kept in readiness. "Oh! there! look there," exclaimed two, or three ladies, pointing towards the cutter.
"Give way together!" commanded Frank, and the cutter, propelled by twelve oars, shot alongside the approaching boat, and the sailors seized the gunwale and held her fast. Resistance was useless. Three rebels quietly delivered up their weapons, and one large, well-filled mail-bag was stowed away under the stern sheets of the cutter.
"McElvina, my dear fellow, I am glad to see that you have had better luck than I have had this last trip. Curses on the cutter. Sacristie," continued Captain Debriseau, who was a native of Guernsey, "the wind favoured her three points after we were about, or I should have doubled him ay, and have doubled the weight of the leathern bag too.
We asked him about kith and kin. Beside him sat a sprightly damsel of sixty, his daughter. "She is all I have," he murmured plaintively, "and she has no children living." The cutter was a small, sloop-rigged affair, but large it seemed alongside Tehei's canoe.
Even Arrowhead, accustomed as he was to intercourse with the whites on both sides of the lakes, fancied there was something ominous in the appearance of this unmanned vessel, and he would gladly at that moment have been landed again on the main. In the meantime the progress of the cutter was steady and rapid.
The work of securing the pilots was to be done by two squads of twenty men each, one under command of Captain Benton's executive officer, the second being led by an acting ensign from the other vessel. Mr. Watkins's boat was first in the line and the boy Jonas, who crouched in the bow of his cutter, was the guide and pilot.
The cutter continued firing at regular intervals, and once we thought that the lugger was hit.
The darkness of the night had also favoured the slaver's escape, and, when morning came, her commander felt quite sure that the cutter was cruising far to the north of him, and beyond the range of the most powerful telescope. The deviation which the Pandora had made from her course did not signify much to such a light sailer as she.
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