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What now, Monsieur Etooell! are you, too, a lover of holy music?" "This is rare singing, Captain Rule; but we have different business on hand.
We have several men in ze Ving-and-Ving who were in that glorious battle, particularly our sailing-master, Etooell Bolt, who was on board Nelson's own ship, having been accidentally sent on service from the frigate to which he properly belonged, and carried off expressly to share, as it might be, in the glory of this famous battle."
"La Proserpine!" repeated Raoul, who was familiar with his shipmate's adventures, and did not require to be told his meaning; "if you are not mistaken, Etooell, le Feu-Follet needs put her lantern under a shade. This is only a forty, if I can count her ports." "I care nothing for ports or guns; it is the Proserpine; and the only harm I wish her is, that she were at the bottom of the ocean.
"Pardie!" exclaimed Raoul, "that ensign is the tri-color, or my eyes are untrue to my own country. Let me see, Etooell; what ship of forty-two, or forty-four, has the republic on this coast?"
Monsieur Lieutenant, clap on the hawser, and run the lugger ahead, over her anchor, and see everything clear for spreading our pocket-handkerchiefs. No one knows when le Feu-Follet may have occasion to wipe her face. Ah! now, Etooell, we can make out his broadside fairly, he is heading more to the westward." The two seamen levelled their glasses, and renewed their examinations.
"I am not madman enough, Etooell, to dream of fighting a frigate, or even a heavy sloop-of-war, with the force you have just mentioned; but I have followed the sea too long to be alarmed before I am certain o£ my danger. La Railleuse is just such a ship as that."
"Sa-a-c-r-r-r-e," muttered Raoul between his teeth; "Etooell, if an Englishman, he may very well take it into his head to come in here, and perhaps anchor within half-a-cable's length of us! What think you of that, mon brave Américain?" "That it may very well come to pass; though one hardly sees, either, what is to bring a cruiser into such a place as this.
"Peste!" exclaimed Raoul Yvard, as soon as he had gazed a minute at the stranger in silence; "a pretty cul de sac are we in, if that gentleman should happen to be an Englishman! What say you, Etooell; can you make out anything of that ensign your eyes are the best in the lugger?"
English ships make a cheerful fire!" "And that would be a useless waste of property, and perhaps of blood, and would do no one any good, Etooell." "But it would do the accursed English harm, and that counts for a something, in my reckoning. Nelson wasn't so over-scrupulous, at the Nile, about burning your ships, Mr. Rule " "Tonnerre! why do you always bring in that malheureux Nile?
"'Tis nothing but a Corsican coaster, after all, Etooell: I hardly think the English would risk our canister again, for the pleasure of being beaten off in another attempt to board!" "They're a spiteful set, aboard the frigate; and the Lord only knows!
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