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Here we shall leave him, pacing the quarter-deck, in moody silence alone, too much disturbed to smoke even, while the mate of the watch sat in the mizzen-rigging, like a monkey, keeping a look-out to windward and ahead. In the mean time, we will return to the cabin of the Effinghams.
But within three days of our speaking the second of the two vessels we sighted a third, a large barque, who at once backed her topsail to our signals, and hailed us to know what we wanted. My captain, Mr. Roger Blow, stood up in the mizzen-rigging and asked for water. They asked how much we needed; Captain Blow responded that whatever they could spare would be a god-send.
Even with this little sail the hull was glancing through the raging seas, or rather in their company, at a rate a little short of ten miles in the hour. Captain Truck was in the mizzen-rigging, bare-headed, every lock of hair he had blowing out like a pennant.
When we came to haul it up, I was astonished at the force necessary to perform the work. The whole watch pulled at the line, which was rove through a block in the mizzen-rigging, as if we were hauling up a fat porpoise.
I took up my place by the mizzen-rigging, near which there were no seamen at work, so that I could puzzle out a new hiding-place for my letters. I noticed, as I stood there, that some men were getting a boat over the side. It seemed a queer thing to be doing in the Channel, so far from the port to which we were bound; but I did not pay much attention to it at the time, as I was very anxious.
Before he could answer a voice hailed us over stern, and we hurried aft to find Billy Priske dragging himself towards the ship by the raffle of mizzen-rigging. We hoisted him in over the quarter, and he dropped upon deck in a sitting posture. "Is my head on?" he asked, taking it in both hands. "You are hurt, Billy?" "Not's I know by," answered Billy, and stared about him.
Captain Swarth swung himself into the mizzen-rigging and answered through his hands with an excellent cockney accent: "Tryde Wind o' Lunnon, Cappen Quirk, fifty-one dyes out fro' Liverpool, bound to Callao, gen'ral cargo." "You were not heading for the Horn." "Hi'm a-leakin' badly. Hi'm a-goin' to myke the coast to careen. D'ye happen to know a good place?"
As the Druid approached the flag-ship, Captain Blewet had appeared in her weather mizzen-rigging, conning his vessel in person; and the order to luff, or keep off, had been given by his own voice, or by a gesture of his own hand.
Then, in the midst of it all, just as the ship went surging past us, with a great rustling of canvas and lashing of loose cordage in the wind, a man sprang into her mizzen-rigging and hailed us in French, ordering us to follow until he could heave-to, when he would send a boat on board us.
By so doing, his glance accidentally fell on a young Spanish sailor, a coil of rope in his hand, just stepped from the deck to the first round of the mizzen-rigging.
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