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Well, not thinking of him or his tea or that it was time for me to go on watch, but awed by the majesty of God's handiwork in the wonderful colouring, of the afterglow, which no mortal artist could have painted, no, none but He who limns the rainbow, I stood there so long by the gangway, gazing at the glorious panorama outspread before me, that I declare I clean forgot Spokeshave's very existence, all-important though he considered himself, and I was only recalled to myself by the voice of Mr Fosset, our first officer, who had approached without my seeing him, speaking close beside me.
Mr Fosset and I helped up Blanchard, the other fireman, he, luckily, not requiring to be carried; and we then went down for Mr Stokes, who had refused to leave the stoke-hold until his men had been attended to.
"And we'll find your little girl yet for you all right, and restore her to you, and we'll settle matters too, with those scoundrels, I promise. Now tell me how far off do you think the ship must have drifted from us by now, Mr Fosset." "Between twenty and thirty miles, sir," replied the first mate.
Mr Fosset, I could see, and with him myself also, who shared his belief, saw that the injury was not irreparable and that it might certainly have been worse. "Of course it can't be done in a day!" Stoddart said; "still it can be patched up." "That's all very well," interposed Mr Stokes, holding to his despondent view of the situation.
"I say, Fosset, what did you think of that ship just now?" The other's answer, however, bewildered the skipper more than Masters and I had done previously. "Ship!" said the first mate. "What ship?" "That vessel that lit the flare-up awhile ago." "I didn't see any flare-up!" replied Mr Fosset, "and certainly no ship has passed us to my knowledge since I've been on deck."
"I thought of getting them in just now, but waited to call you first." "Well, you needn't wait any longer, Fosset," rejoined the skipper. "Pass the word for the bo'sun forrad." "Yes, yes, sir. Quartermaster, call Masters!" "Bo'sun, pipe all hands to hoist spars aboard!"
"Stay, cap'en," cried Mr Fosset as the boatswain went bustling off, I suppose, though of course from my position I could not see him, to carry out this plan of his. "The davits here amidship are all right, as well as the tackle of our cutter that had got washed away in the gale.
"Aye, aye, sir?" answered Weston, promptly putting his head out of his pantry, where he had been listening. "Cup of cocoa, sir? yezzir." "I say, Fosset," said the captain, who had lingered near awhile, as if in deep thought, as he stood with one foot on the lower step of the companion as if he were trying to recollect something, "I say, we must make some points to-day on the chart, you know!"
The skipper was unable to spare Mr Fosset, and Garry was all the more fit in every way for the part, as he would be able to look after the wounded French sailors, who would naturally go in the ship as they were the principal witnesses against the blacks on the charges that would be brought against them of "piracy on the high seas."
"Where away, Haldane?" cried Mr Fosset, the first to notice my shout, catching up a telescope that lay handy on the top of the wheel-house of the bridge; and, in his hurry, eagerly scanning every portion of the horizon but the right one. "I don't see her!"
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