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We were busy all day repairing damages as well as we could at sea; but it was found that they were so considerable that the captain resolved to return to Malta, instead of pursuing our course to Tunis. While the work was going forward, a man in the forechains discovered a jacket and waistcoat, which were known to have belonged to Bobby Smudge.
I cannot listen to you. Sit down, I say, or you will swamp the boat. Stay! hold him, seize him! he is about to spring overboard! There I knew it he is over!" As the Captain said this, Mr. Wyatt, in fact, sprang from the boat, and, as we were yet in the lee of the wreck, succeeded, by almost superhuman exertion, in getting hold of a rope which hung from the forechains.
The gentlemen were soon on board; and the crew of the yawl, having secured her to the forechains on the larboard side of the ship, were permitted to ascend the deck.
Captain Truck had a harpoon ready, and he placed himself in the forechains, with a rope round his waist. He stood with his weapon high poised in the air, ready to strike. We were all on the watch. In a few moments his harpoon flew from his hand. "Pay away, lads!" he shouted out; "the fellow's fast." The porpoise dived, and the line ran out at a rapid rate.
"Why not?" said Don excitedly. "It seems to be our last chance." "Well, I dunno," said Jem, gloomily; "it don't seem to me like a chance at all. But I'll do what you do, my lad. I'll stand by you." "Then let's begin our watch at once, after we've put a rope overboard from the forechains, so as to slip down when the canoe comes." "And what then?"
After a considerable time of intense anxiety it was found that the line was taut. Ben had, it was supposed, reached the forechains of the frigate. Then the question rose, whether he would be able to make himself understood by the Frenchmen.
Staines sprang to the quarter port to see, and craning eagerly out, the lower port chain, which had not been well secured, slipped, the port gave way, and as his whole weight rested on it, canted him headlong into the sea. A smart seaman in the forechains saw the accident, and instantly roared out, "MAN OVERBOARD!" a cry that sends a thrill through a ship's very ribs.
Collier was on his quarter-deck, and saw what would happen long before Robarts did; he gave the needful orders, and it was beautiful to see how in half a minute the frigate's guns were run in, her ports lowered, her yards toppled on end, and a spring carried out and hauled on. The Agra struck abreast her own forechains on the Salamanca's quarter.
He had been at sea but very little, and if he had heard a boatswain order his man to furl the keel, to batten down the shrouds, or to hoist the forechains to the topmast yard, he would have seen nothing out of the way in these commands. He was very fond of history, and very well read in the literature of the day.
At the same moment the captain's voice rang out, "Look out there, you in the watch forward; two men are trying to leave the ship!" "What's to be done, Mas' Don?" whispered Jem, whom this second proof of treachery against them seemed to have robbed of the power to act. "This way," cried a voice, which they recognised as Ramsden's. "By the forechains."
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