pes and a creaking of blocks the four boats splashed
into the water. Their crews clustered thickly into them: bare-footed
sailors, stolid marines, laughing middies, and in the sheets of each the
senior officers with their stern schoolmaster faces. The captain, his
elbows on the binnacle, still watched the distant brig. Her crew were
tricing up the boarding-netting, dragging round the starboard guns,
knocking new portholes for them, and making every preparation for a
desperate resistance. In the thick of it all a huge man, bearded to the
eyes, with a red nightcap upon his head, was straining and stooping and
hauling. The captain watched him with a sour smile, and then snapping
up his glass he turned upon his heel. For an instant he stood staring.

"Call back the boats!" he cried in his thin, creaking voice.
"Clear away for action there! Cast loose those main-deck guns.
Brace back the yards, Mr. Smeaton, and stand by to go about when she has
weigh enough."

Round the curve of the estuary was coming a huge vessel. Her great
yellow bowsprit and white-winged figure-head were jutting out from the
cluster of palm trees, while high above them towered three immense masts
with the tricolour flag floating superbly from the mizzen. Round she
came, the deep-blue water creaming under her fore foot, until her long,
curving, black side, her line of shining copper beneath and of
snow-white hammocks above, and the thick clusters of men who peered over
her bulwarks were all in full view. Her lower yards were slung, her
ports triced up, and her guns run out all ready for action.
Lying behind one of the promontories of the island, the lookout men of
the _Gloire_ upon the shore had seen the _cul de sac_ into which the
British frigate was headed, so that Captain de Milon had served the
_Leda_ as Captain Johnson had the _Slapping Sal_.

But the splendid discipline of the British service was at its best in
such a crisis. The boats flew back; their crews clustered aboard; they
were swung up at the davits and the fall-ropes made fast. Hammocks were
brought up and stowed, bulkheads sent down, ports and magazines opened,
the fires put out in the galley, and the drums beat to quarters.
Swarms of men set the head-sails and brought the frigate round, while
the gun-crews threw off their jackets and shirts, tightened their belts,
and ran out their eighteen-pounders, peering through the open portholes
at the stately French man. The wind