in a
grey-green mountain of foam and flying spray that left her spouting
cascades of water from her scuppers; one moment, as she rose, heaving
her fore-foot clean out of the water, showing the glint of the copper on
her bottom; the next, plunging wildly down, till some mighty billow,
roaring aloft between the vessels, hid each from the other's ken as
effectually as if the ocean had swallowed them.

The stranger had hoisted French colours, and the _Sirius_ beat to
quarters. But as far as possibility of engaging was concerned, the ships
might have been a hundred leagues apart: the sea ran far too high. And
so there all day they lay, impotent to harm each other.

When grey dawn came on the second morning, bringing with it weather more
moderate, the French frigate was seen under easy sail far to leeward,
evidently repairing damage aloft, and, in spite of every effort on the
part of the _Sirius_, it was late afternoon ere the first shot was
fired.

Darkness had begun to fall as the French ship struck her colours after a
bloody action in which her losses mounted to over one hundred men,
including her captain and several officers. In less degree the _Sirius_
suffered; and of those who fell, Watty was one. Early in the engagement
he was carried below, badly torn by a severe and dangerous splinter
wound in the head.

"There goes poor Watty--out of his trouble, anyhow," cried one of the
three friends.

Thereafter, the life in him hovered long 'twixt this world and the next,
and weeks passed ere, in the house of a friend at Kingston, Jamaica, he
came once more to his full senses. Even then his progress was but
dilatory.

"I can't make the boy out," said his doctor. "He _ought_ to get well
now. Yet he doesn't. Doesn't seem to make an effort, somehow. If he was
a bit older you'd think he didn't _want_ to live. It's not natural. If
he were to get any little complication now, he'd go."

And so the listless weeks dragged on, and it was but a ghost of the once
merry boy that each morning crept wearily and with infinite labour from
his room to the wide, pleasant verandah. And there he would pass his
days, vacantly listening with dull ears to the cool sea-breeze
whispering through the trees, or brooding over his misery. Sometimes, in
his weak state, tears of self-pity would roll unheeded down his cheeks;
he pined for the heather of his native hills, for the murmur of Tweed
and Teviot, and for the faces of his own people. Never ag