lowly away as
if he were bobbing like a vessel through the flood which covered the
deck and was streaming away from the scuppers.

As the skipper went right forward and stood by the bowsprit, looking
straight ahead through the haze formed by the streaming rain, Rodd was
thrown back upon Joe Cross, with whom, almost from the day when the man
had joined, he had begun to grow intimate; and as he went close up to
him, the sailor gave his head a toss to distribute some of the rain that
was splashing down upon his sou'-wester, and grinning visibly now, he
cried--

"Why, Mr Rodd, sir, you've forgot your umbrella."

"Get out!" cried Rodd good-humouredly. "But I say, Joe, how long is
this rain going to last?"

"Looks as if it means to go on for months, sir, but may leave off
to-night. I say, though, that's a splendid fit, sir. You do look fine!
Are you comfortable in there?"

Rodd did not answer, for he was trying to pierce the streaming haze and
make out whether the brig was visible.

For a few moments he could not make it out, but there it was, looking
faint and strange, about a hundred yards away.

"That's the brig, isn't it, yonder?" he said at last.

"Yes, sir, that's she, and they seem to have got her fast now; but she
wouldn't hurt us if she broke from her moorings, for the wind's veered a
point or two, and it would take her clear away."

Rodd remained silent as he stood thinking, he did not know why, unless
it was that the vessel with the tall, dimly-seen tapering spars bore a
French name, and somehow--again he could not tell why, only that it
seemed to him very ridiculous--the shadowy vessel associated itself with
the two French officers he had encountered in the darkness of the
previous night, when he heard one of them after brushing against him
murmur the word "Pardon!" And he found himself thinking that if the
vessel had been swept up against the schooner when her anchor was
dragging, it would have been no use for her crew to cry "Pardon!" as
that would not have cured the damage.

"Well, sir, what do you make of her?" cried the sailor, putting an end
to the lad's musings.

"Can't see much," said Rodd, "for the rain, but she seems beautifully
rigged."

"Yes, sir, and she can sail well too--for a brig--but I should set her
down as being too heavily sparred, and likely to be top-heavy. If she
was going along full sail, and was caught in such a squall as we had
yesterday, and laid flat like the schoo