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There he stood full of life and energy, now hauling on a gun-tackle, now looking along a gun. The next moment there was a whistling and crash of shot, and I saw several mangled forms sent flying along the deck. One was that of the brave captain. I ran to assist him, but though there was a convulsive movement of the limbs, he was perfectly dead. At the same moment down came the lugger's mainyard.
"'That's just it, George, the other calls across the water, 'and the best joke I've enjoyed since I saw Black Diamond brand you with the hot iron you'd just branded the lugger's kitten with. "'What I mean, whines Fat George, 'you wouldn't go for to leave a lot o pore blokes on a dead foul lee-shore what got there through trying to sarve you. "'Sarve me! says the Gentleman.
The English expected every moment to hear the explosion of the lugger's magazine; but, as it did not happen, they came to the conclusion it had been drowned. As for Griffin, he pulled in-shore, both to avoid the fire of le Feu-Follet, in passing her broadside, and in the hope of intercepting Raoul while endeavoring to escape in a boat.
They were now fast approaching the cutter, which, when she was within a quarter of a mile, changed her course and was brought up again into the wind, firing the four guns she carried on her broadside as she came round. The lugger's head was paid off, and this placed the cutter on her starboard quarter, both going free.
She must have beaten back as soon as it was dark enough for her not to be seen from the hills, and had been crawling along on the look-out close to the shore, when she may have caught sight of the lugger's signal. Indeed, we heard afterwards that it called back the coast-guard men, for they had passed Lulworth and were watching at a spot between that and St.
I just glanced round and saw what looked like two French fishermen, and thought that you must be two of the lugger's crew who, for some reason or other, had turned the guns against their own ship. "It will be a triumph, indeed, for us when we enter Saint Helier. The Annette has been the terror of our privateers.
"Heave, and get ready! Be watchful now's your time! Heave, and rip the planks off the lugger's bottom heave, men, heave!" This time the effort answered the emergency; the swell rolled in, the men threw out their strength, a surge was felt, it was followed up by a strain, and le Feu-Follet shot off her bed into deep water, rolling, for want of ballast, nearly to her hammock-cloths.
This sail had begun to fill, but a man ran to the tiller, and the lugger's position changed slowly, the sails flapping and the bows pointing gradually in our direction again. All this while the men in the cutter's gig were pulling with all their might, and rapidly shortened the distance, till the bow man picked up a boat-hook, and stood ready to hold on.
"Where did you pass the night, Clinch?" demanded the captain, after they had discussed the probability of the lugger's escape. "Not on the heights, under the canopy of heaven?" "On the heights, and under the great canopy that has covered us both so often, Captain Cuffe; but with a good Neapolitan mud-roof between it and my head.
He grasped it as we passed by, and quickly clambered into the wherry. The moment after, with the stretcher, which he had never let out of his grasp, he was again on the lugger's deck, belabouring both right and left those of the crew who still resisted.
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