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"Keep her away a little, D'Arcy," said Hanks. The smugglers had been watching us without apparently suspecting our intentions. "Now, hard up! ease off the mainsheet! hook on! follow me, my lads!" As Hanks uttered the last words we had run alongside. The next moment he leaped over the bulwarks of the lugger on to her deck, and grappling with her captain, a Frenchman, tripped him up.
If Krok had required the lugger itself as a coffin he would not have said him nay. He wrapped the body carefully in the sail, with great smooth stones from the beach, and with some rope and his knife he sewed it all tightly together, and pulled each knot home with a jerk that was meant to be final, and his hairy old face was crumpled into a frown as he worked.
The Mersey, from Liverpool to Black Rock, a distance of about three miles, was literally covered with vessels of every character and nation, which had taken advantage of the fair wind to clear the harbor. Here might be seen the little French lugger, carrying back to Bordeaux what its fruit and brandy had bought, as frisky in its motions as the nervous monsieur who commanded it.
The following dialogue then passed, the Englishman asking the questions, of course, that being a privilege expressly appropriated to the public vessel on occasions of this sort: "What ship's that? and whither bound?" "Dawn, of New York, Miles Wallingford, from home to Hamburg." "Did not the lugger board you?" "Ay ay for the second time, in three days." "What is she called? and what is her force?"
Nevertheless, the frigate did not seem disposed to alter her course; for, either influenced by a desire to anchor, or by a determination to take a still closer look at the lugger, she stood on, nearing the eastern side of the bay, at the rate of some six miles to the hour. Raoul Yvard now thought it time to look to the safety of le Feu-Follet in person.
Three days afterwards the Serpent came back, having re-captured the lugger and two hundred tubs. I saw Captain Didot, who was very angry at finding that I had escaped, and vowed he would pay me off in a different coin, if he ever caught me again. I told him he might, if he ever did.
"Nay, Signore, we have guns of our own and could easily dispose of so small a vessel, once assured of her being an enemy," returned the vice-governatore, with a little pride and loftiness of manner; "convince us of that fact, and we'll sink the lugger at her anchors." "That is just what we do not wish you to do, Signore," answered the lieutenant, with interest.
The lugger, being piloted with great ability, and using every nautical shift to make her escape, had now reached, and was about to double, the headland which formed the extreme point of land on the left side of the bay, when a ball having hit the yard in the slings, the mainsail fell upon the deck.
The crew of the lugger stood at their stations, ready at a moment to obey their captain's orders. He kept his eye on the topsails, though if blown away the accident would not be of much consequence. The masts were tough, and bent like willow wands. "They'll hold on as long as we want them now," observed Dore. Again and again he looked astern. Presently he shouted, "Lower the topsails!
"I suppose you have been hearing that we had a sharp tussle with the smugglers, and at last captured that confounded lugger that has given us so much trouble for the past two years. Though I am mightily pleased at that, I am more pleased still that among those on board was that fellow Markham. He fought like a tiger.
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