During one hour, when we must have made eleven knots, the wind blew strong, and was fresh again after that; so that we set the foresail unreefed and let the great mainsail go not many minutes later. The swift motion was an ecstasy to all of us, an unbounded delight; and even the skipper softened as we stood well out to sea, and looked on a great continent of clouds underlit with the spreading glow of the sunset, their rain setting up the mighty arched bow whose colours stood out with a rich light over the wide expanse of the east. Nor did the breeze fall, but stiffened towards night, so that in the first bell, when we came up from dinner, the Celsis was straining and foaming as she bent under her pressure of canvas, and it needed a sailor's foot to tread her decks. But of this no one thought, for we had hardly come above when we heard Dan hailing—
"Yacht on the port-bow."
"What name?" came from twenty throats.
"La France," said Dan, and the words had scarce left his lips when the skipper roared the order—
"Stand by to go about!"
For some minutes the words "'bout ship" were not spoken. The schooner held her course, and rapidly drew up with the yacht we had set out to seek. From the first there was no doubt about her name, which she displayed in great letters of gold above her figure-head. Dan had read them as he sighted her; and we in turn felt a thrill of delight as we proved his keen vision, watching the big cutter, for such she was, heading, not for Plymouth, but for the nearer coast. But this was not the only strange thing about her course, for when she had made some few hundred yards towards the coast, she jibbed round of a sudden, with an appalling wrench at the horse; and there being, as it appeared, no hand either at the peak halyards or the throat halyards, the mainsail presently showed a great rent near the luff, while the foresail had torn free from the bolt-ropes of the stay, and was presenting a sorry spectacle as the yacht went about, and away towards France again.
Such a display of seamanship astounded our men.
"Close haul, you lubbers; close haul!" roared Dan, in the vain delusion that his voice would be heard a quarter of a mile away. "Keep down yer 'elm and close haul—wash me in rum if he ain't comin' up again, and there she goes right into it. Shake up, you gibbering fools; luff her a bit and make fast. Did ye ever see anythin' like it this side of a Margit steamer?"
The skipper said nothing, but as the yacht luffed right up into the wind again, he groaned as a man who is hurt. Piping Jack looked sorrowful too, and said, almost with tears in his eyes—
"Axin' yer pardon, sir, but hev you got a pair of eyes in your head which can make out anything unusual aboard there?"
"They're a queer lot, if that's what you mean, and they haven't got enough seamanship amongst them to run a washing tub. Is there anything else you make out?"
"A good deal, sir; and look you, there ain't a living soul on her deck, or may I never see shore again."
"By all that's curious, you're right. There isn't a man showing!"
"'Bout ship," roared the skipper, and every man ran to his post, while I touched Captain York on the shoulder and pointed to the seemingly deserted and errant yacht.
But the skipper's eyes were not those of a ground-gazer; he needed no aid from me; what others had seen, he had seen, and he nodded an affirmative to my unspoken question.
"What do you think it means?" I asked, as we came up into the wind, and the men were belaying after close hauling for the beat; "are they hiding from us, or is she deserted?"
But the only answer I got was the one word "Rum," uttered with a jerky emphasis, and taken up by Dan, who said—
"Very rum, and a good many drunk below, or I don't know the taste of it."
The obvious thought that the yacht we had sought and run down was without living men upon her decks had taken the lilt from the seamen's merry tongues, and a gloom settled on us all. Perhaps it was more than a mere surmise, for an uncanny feeling of something dreadful to come took hold of me, and I feared that, finding the yacht, we had also found the devil's work; but I held my peace on that, and made up my mind to act.
"Skipper," said I, "order a boat out; I'm going aboard her."
He looked at me, and shook his head.
"When the wind falls, perhaps; but now!" and he shrugged his shoulders.
"Is there any sign that the breeze will drop?"
"None at present; but I'll tell you more in an hour. Meanwhile," and here he whispered, "get your pistols out and say nothing to the men. I shall follow her."
His advice was wise; and as the dark began to fall and the night breeze to blow fresh, while the yacht ahead of us swung here and there, almost making circles about us, we hove to for the time and watched her. I begged Mary to go below, but she received the suggestion with merriment.
"Go below, when the men say there's fun coming! Why should I go below?"
"Because it may be serious fun."
She took my arm, and linking herself closely to me as to a brother, she said—
"Because there's danger to you and to Roderick; isn't that it, Mark?"
"Not to us any more than to the men; and there may be no danger, of course. It's only a thought of mine."
"And of mine, too. I shall stay where I am, or Roderick will go to sleep."
"What does Roderick say?"
He had joined us on the starboard side, and was gazing over the sea at the pursued yacht, which lay shaking dead in the wind's eye, but Mary's question upset whatever speculation he had entered upon.
"I've got an opinion," he drawled, with a yawn.
"You don't say so——"
"The wind's falling, and it's getting beastly dark."
"Two fairly obvious conclusions; do you think you could keep sufficiently awake to help man the boat?—in another ten minutes we shall see nothing."
"Do you think I'm a fool, that I'm going to stop here?"
"Forgive me, but I'm getting anxious. Martin Hall sailed on that yacht; and I promised to help him—but there's no need for you to do anything, you know."
"No need when you are going—pshaw, I'll fetch my Colt, and Mary shall watch us. I don't think she is afraid of much, are you, Rats?"—he called her "Rats" because they were the one thing on earth she feared—and then he went below, and I followed him, getting my revolver and my oil-skins, for I knew that it would be wet work. I had scarce reached the deck again when I felt the schooner moving; but no break of light showed the place where the other was, and the skipper called presently for a blue flare, which cast a glowing light for many hundred yards, and still left us uncertain.
"She's gone, for sure," said Dan to the men around him, for every soul on board, even including old Chasselot—called by the men "Cuss-a-lot"—our cook, was staring into the thick night; "and I wouldn't stake a noggin that her crew ain't cheated the old un at last an' gone down singing. It's mighty easy to die with your head full o' rum, but I don't go for to choose it meself, not particler."
Billy Eightbells, the second mate, was quite of Dan's opinion. The looks of the others told me then that they began to fear the adventure. Billy was the first really to give expression to the common sentiment.
"Making bold to speak," he said, "it were two years ago come Christmas as I met something like this afore, down Rio way——"
"Was it at eight bells, Billy?" asked Mary mischievously. She knew that all Billy's yarns began at eight bells.
"Well, I think it were, mum, but as I was saying——"
"Flash again," said the skipper, suddenly interrupting the harangue, and as the blue light flashed