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Updated: June 8, 2025
"I trust you will not," said Lesley; "but as I must, for my own sake, be anxious to divide so heavy a responsibility with a capable assistant, allow me to say, that Lieutenant Taffril's gun-brig is come into the roadstead, and he himself is now at old Caxon's, where he lodges.
On the following morning, soon after daybreak, the Carnation gun-brig was hauled in within point blank gun-shot, and opened a fire on the General Armstrong; but the gallant commander of the privateer, being determined to submit to no other than a superior force, returned the fire with his long twenty-four pounder so effectually, boring the brig through and through at every shot, that she was soon glad to haul off to avoid being sunk at her anchors.
The ruse of hoisting the British flag was legitimate if the Buenaventura substituted her own flag before proceeding to board them. The San Margarita had the flags of more than one nation in her lockers; but the gun-brig had no power to act the policeman in neutral waters. There was the point.
"You will be happy to hear," said Miss Wardour, willing to withdraw her father's mind from the gloomy reflections in which he appeared to be plunged, "you will be happy to hear, sir, that Lieutenant Taffril's gun-brig has got safe into Leith Roads I observe there had been apprehensions for his safety I am glad we did not hear them till they were contradicted."
She contented herself with a harmless shot, and leaving the gun-brig to pursue the chase, bore away for more important business. "Nonplussed the big 'un; shall have trouble with the little 'un," said Master Polwhele to his captain. "She don't draw half a fathom more than we do. No good running inside the shoals. And with this wind, she has the foot of us."
"And what is Taffril and his gun-brig to me?" "Sir!" said Miss Wardour in astonishment; for Sir Arthur, in his ordinary state of mind, took a fidgety sort of interest in all the gossip of the day and country. "I say," he repeated in a higher and still more impatient key, "what do I care who is saved or lost? It's nothing to me, I suppose?"
"Let me see: there were the brig Ridesdale, of 170 tons burthen, sunk off Calshot Castle, and Her Majesty's gun-brig Partridge, 180 tons, and the brig Dauntless, 179 tons, and last, but not least, the Prince Consort, at Aberdeen, an iron paddle-steamer of 607 tons, and the dead weight lifted was 560 tons, including engines and boilers."
On going thoroughly over the whole question I was forced to admit to myself that there was not a particle of evidence incriminating the French gun-brig save what I had manufactured out of my own too vivid imagination; and I clearly foresaw that unless I could get rid of, or, at all events, conquer, this hallucination, I should be doing or saying something which would get me into a serious scrape.
The French gun-brig was by this time crossing our bows, distant about half a mile; her reply was accordingly made from her gaff-end, the fore- topgallant-sail and royal being at the same time sheeted-home and mast- headed. It was to the following effect: "Yes. Brig in question sailed from Congo yesterday, six hours before our arrival, with three hundred slaves on board."
"We must be on the watch for some of these gentlemen when they come out, and capture them," thought Sir Henry as the brig steered away again from the land. True Blue had, however, fixed his eye on a French gun-brig which lay the outermost of all the vessels, and which he thought, by a bold dash, might be carried off. "It can be done I know it can, and I will ask the Captain," he said to himself.
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