me to save him!

"On noticing this--a fact, of course, which showed plainly enough that he
was still alive--without thinking of what I was doing, I jumped on a
projecting bollard and dived from the deck of the ship into the sea.

"I soon rose to the surface, when, swimming up to the almost lifeless
body in a few strokes, I caught hold of a portion of the poor fellow's
clothing and commenced turning it towards the stern of the vessel just
underneath the davits, whence the boat we had been preparing for our
flight was suspended all ready for lowering, and with the French sailors
standing by above.

"`Look sharp!' I sang out to them from the water. `Look sharp, there!
Lower away!'

"In their haste and flurry, however, the men mistook my order, and
thinking I had said `cut away,' instead of `lower away,' one of the
fools, who held a cutlass he had caught up to defend himself with when
those infernal niggers rushed at us, the confounded idiot made a
sweeping cut at the falls from which the boat hung, severing them at one
blow!

"Down came the little craft at once with a splash, almost on the top of
me; and though she managed to ship some water through her sudden
immersion, she quickly righted herself on an even keel, right side up."

"By George, I'd have keel-hauled 'em wrong side down!" cried the
skipper, out of all patience at hearing of this piece of gross
stupidity. "The damned awkward lubbers!"

"Yes, sir; French sailors are not like English ones, nor do they
resemble our American shellbacks, who do know a thing or two!" replied
the colonel. "Well, gentlemen, to make an end of my story, I may tell
you that I had some difficulty in lifting the body of poor Captain
Alphonse into the boat when I had clutched hold of the gunwale; but
after a time I succeeded in getting him into the bows, rolling him over
the side anyhow.

"Then I tried to get in myself by the stern, and had just flung one of
my legs over when that villain the black `marquis,' catching sight of me
from the forecastle, ahead of which the boat somehow or other had
drifted by this time, fired at me with probably the last cartridge he
had left in his pistol, and which the devil no doubt had reserved for
me."

"Be jabers!" exclaimed Garry O'Neil, unable to keep silent any longer.
"The baste! An', sure, that's how you came by that wound in the groin,
faith?"

"Yes, sir, doctor. The shot struck me when I was all of a heap, and
where it went hea