- selves, men of weighty authority in such matters, caught
the infection, and were ready to swear by the brigantine, while it was yet so dark they could scarcely see whether she was a three-masted merchantman or a King's cutter.
But when the breeze freshened towards sunrise, and the tide was once more on the turn, the regard thus freely accorded to their ship was largely shared by their new shipmate. Beaudésir, passing forward in the grey light of morning, truth to tell moved only by the restlessness of a man not yet accustomed to perpetual motion, accompanied by the odours of bilge-water and tar, was greeted with admiring glances and kind words from all alike. Dutchman, Swede, Spaniard, vied with each other in expressions of good-will. Slap-Jack was still below, swaddled in blankets, but his two comrades had tumbled up with the first streaks of dawn, and were loud in their praises, Bottle-Jack vowing Captain Kidd would have made him first-lieutenant on the spot for such a feat, and Smoke-Jack, with more sincerity than politeness, declaring "he couldn't have believed it of a Frenchman!" Nay, the very negro, showing all his teeth as if he longed to eat him, embarked on an elaborate oration in his honour, couched partly in his native language as spoken on the Gold Coast, partly in a dialect he believed to be English, obscured by metaphor, though sublime doubtless in conception, and prematurely cut short by the shrill whistle of the boatswain, warning all hands without delay to their quarters.
It was an enlivening sight, possessing considerable attractions for such a temperament as Beaudésir's. The clear gap of morning low down on the horizon was widening and spreading every moment over the sky; the breeze, cold and bracing, not yet tempered by the coming sun, freshened sensibly off shore, driving out to sea a grand procession of dark rolling clouds, moving steadily and continuously westward before the day. The lighthouse off the harbour showed like a column of chalk against the dull background of this embankment, vanishing so imperceptibly into light; while to landward, far beyond the low level line of coast, a faint quiver of purple already mingled with the dim grey outline of the smooth and swelling downs.
In harbour, human life had not yet woke up, but the white
