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Six men had already been secured, whether they had volunteered or not it was difficult to say, when a struggle was seen to be taking place forward between some of the lugger's crew and a man who had made his way up the fore hatch. He dashed those who tried to stop him aside, and sprang aft to the lieutenant. A short discussion took place between De Vere and the master of the lugger.
While Toby and I were exchanging remarks, the Frenchmen were talking to each other and occasionally asking us questions, I supposed; but as we did not understand a word of each other's language, neither party was much the wiser. I looked about me. The lugger's decks were crowded with men, and she had several guns cast loose, ready for action. She was, there could be no doubt, a privateer.
Again the canvas flapped, and the trampling of feet was heard on the lugger's deck; then she came sweeping into the wind, within fifty feet of the yawl. Raoul watched the movement; and by the time her way was nearly lost, he was alongside, and had caught a rope. At the next instant, he was on board her. Raoul trod the deck of his lugger again with the pride of a monarch as he ascends his throne.
This soon came from the skipper, whereupon the five guns in our larboard broadside rang out together, five neat holes in the lugger's bulwarks testifying to the accuracy with which they had been aimed. The lugger almost instantly replied with her starboard broadside, and again the shot went humming over us, but this time without doing any damage.
And now, with Glossin's cursed contrivance, my crew have been cut off, my boats destroyed, and I daresay the lugger's taken; there were not men enough left on board to work her, far less to fight her a dredge-boat might have taken her. And what will the owners say? Hagel and sturm! I shall never dare go back again to Flushing. 'You'll never need, said the gipsy.
It seemed so utterly improbable that a French corsair could answer the signals of an English frigate that even Vito Viti felt compelled to acknowledge to the vice-governatore in a whisper that, so far, the circumstance was much in favor of the lugger's loyalty.
The nights had proved that they could not climb the lugger's side, and when he was in her the canoe was laid athwart her gunwales; but at night he had to drop the bit of old iron that served for an anchor, and the very first night a large moccasin not of the dusky kind described in books, but of that yet deadlier black sort, an ell in length, which the swampers call the Congo came up the anchor-rope.
As a last hope, the lugger's course was changed, and she again tried running, but the superior weight and power of the frigate brought her rapidly down. Presently a heavy gun boomed out, and a shot came dancing along the water, a hundred yards away. "Lower the sails," the skipper said. "It is no use going farther. The inside of a prison is better than the bottom of the sea, anyhow."
We both leapt off the poop; he gave me the bight of the halyards. I crept out of the port into the chains and passed it round the lugger's main-mast, as he told me, handing in the bight to him, which he belayed slack to the main-sheet kevel.
They therefore handled their guns very smartly, giving the enemy two broadsides in exchange for their one, and we were now close enough to observe that the second of these two broadsides had dismounted one of the lugger's guns. "Hurrah, lads!" exclaimed the skipper; "look alive and load again. If you are smart we shall just have time to give another broadside, and board in the smoke.
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