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The lifeboat bell was rung, a crew was obtained, and the men in their new and untried lifeboat made her first, but not their first, daring attempt at rescue. A few moments before the Deal lifeboat, there launched from the south part of Deal one of the powerful luggers which lay there, owned by Mr. Spears, who himself was aboard; and the lugger was on this occasion steered by John Bailey.
I asked the men if they knew of any spot on the coast where we might find a boat to convey us across the Channel, and after consulting together they decided that the only likely place was the little fishing town of Cancale, about ten miles east of St. Malo. It had a harbor on the Bay of St. Michel, whence the luggers sailed forth a little before sunset.
A fleet of a hundred vessels or more lay together, dotting the surface of the German Ocean, or North Sea, as it is more generally called, upwards of 300 miles from the English shore. They were mostly luggers, of from sixty to eighty tons; each with a crew of from seven to nine men.
And I remember that, before making Deal, we saw a stranded Brig on the Goodwins, which was said to be a Leghorner, very rich with oils and silks; round which were gathered just as you may see obscene Birds of Prey gathered round a dead carcass, and picking the Flesh from its bones at least a score of luggers belonging to the Deal Boatmen.
The French troops, as they did so, followed them along the shore, keeping, however, as well as they could, concealed behind the inequalities of the ground, and only occasionally halting and firing rapid volleys at them. The corvette, and several brigs and schooners, and three armed luggers, were soon seen either at anchor close to the beach or on shore.
As he came up the sloping way, picking his footsteps upon the slimy stones, he gave no heed to the identity of the person before him; and with my mood in no way favourable to polite discourse with the fellow, I gave a pace or two round the elbow of the quay, letting him pass on his way up among the clanking rings and chains of the moored gaberts, the bales of the luggers, and the brawny and crying mariners.
To satisfy this unspoken craving for action he would, from his outlook on the Jerbourg crags where bold Sir Hugh had sat for just such purpose years before watch the Weymouth luggers making bad weather of it beyond the Casquets; or challenge in his own boat the rip-tides between Sark and Brechou, and the combers that romped between St. Sampson and the Isle of Herm.
What circumstances have happened in the last few years in the history of the world, that compel an allusion to this neglect in a speech from the throne? The marking features of our age are the great economy of time, and the practical abbreviation of space. Coal and iron are now transported by other means than by slow-going trains or coast-hugging luggers.
Prudence dictated the adoption of the former course; it being well known that the Channel was just then swarming with French privateers powerful luggers for the most part the captains of which had an unpleasant habit of slipping out of harbour as the evening came on, and stretching across toward the English coast, on the lookout for our merchantmen, very often picking up a valuable prize and getting back into port the next morning.
Almost the last thing I saw that night, as I made up my bed under the half-deck among a few sacks and bolts of canvas, was Marah scowling and muttering, as though uneasy, at the foot of the foremast, from which he watched the other luggers as they worked out of the river ahead of us. "He, too, feels uneasy," I said to myself.
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