He turned to speak to the helmsman, and was interrupted by another hail from the masthead.
"Deck there! 'Tis the divil of a fight, sir--I can see the flashes through the smoke!"
Can you see the vessels?" demanded the midshipman. "Only the mastheads, sir! Two of thim's at it, anyway!" O'Neill sounded excited. He had an Irishman's delight in a fight.
"Bear up a little and steer for the smoke," Septimus told Frith, and sprang into the shrouds.
He had the spyglass that had belonged to the Chasseur's captain in his pocket and intended to see for himself. As he clambered hand over fist up the swaying foot-ropes he told himself that the chances were in favour of the Althea's being one of the battling ships. The frigate would be heading for the rendezvous off Toulon today, and the position of the fight could not be more than fifteen miles west of Toulon. If it was the Vengeur which was the other ship, the French captain was a daring or reckless man to come so near the waters where Nelson and the English fleet held sway. It was Captain Gruvel of the Vengeur who had taken Septimus prisoner, and the midshipman well remembered that thin sallow face and the restless glittering eyes. He was a dangerous adversary on even terms--and the Althea would be heavily out-gunned by the French warship.
"Sorra a doubt but the old Althy's yonder, sir," O'Neill greeted him as he swarmed up the last few feet to the truck of the mast. "Sure and I'd know the sound of her guns annywhere!"
Septimus hooked an arm round the stay and got his glass to his eye.
"One gun sounds very like another at five miles distance," he remarked with mild sarcasm, "but in a few minutes, O'Neill, we shall see."
The slight but continual dipping and swaying of the tall mast to which he clung made it very difficult to hold the glass steady. The smoke on the horizon, now a considerable cloud, swung into the narrow circle of vision several times, and out of it again almost at once, before Midshipman Quinn was able to make out more than a dun blur on a dancing line of blue. It was a low, spreading cloud, the drifting smoke of gunfire, not the towering smoke of a burning ship. At last he made out the cross-shaped spars of topmasts--certainly there were two three-masted vessels engaged in close conflict, and one of them was considerably larger than the other. From the heart of the smoke cloud came spurts of orange flame. Even above the singing of the breeze in the rigging and the rush of the waves he could hear the continuous thud-thud-thud of cannon.
He rested his eye from the spyglass for a moment. When he looked again a slight gap had blown in the smoke, and through it showed, for a moment, the side of a big ship, red-brown with a broad black line along it. Septimus had seen that ship emerging from the mist just before he was captured, and he could not mistake it. That was the 6o-gun ship Vengeur, and it was a hundred to one that the vessel she was engaged with was the frigate Althea. He pocketed his glass.
"Is it into the fun we'll be going, sir?" asked O'Neill eagerly. "Stay here," returned the midshipman shortly. "Report what you see."
He climbed down the ratlines, weighing in his mind as he descended the question O'Neill had voiced. The sloop was a fairly valuable prize, and he had only six men. The help she would be able to give the frigate in a battle was very small. No one could blame him if he held his course for Toulon, which was what a prudent officer would do. Nevertheless, Mr. Quinn's decision had been taken-as he realised-before he left the masthead. He leaped down from the shrouds to the deck and saw the faces of the seamen turned towards him with the same eager expression O'Neill's had worn.
"Where is the Frenchman Cartier?" he demanded.
"Asked leave to go below for his topcoat, sir," answered Dobbs. "He should have been escorted," Septimus said sharply.
The man could do little harm, however, since Brunel's cabin was locked.
"Attention, every man," he continued rapidly. "Vengeur and Althea are engaged ahead of us. We're going in, and we shall bear down-"
He was interrupted by the cheer that broke simultaneously from his five listeners. It was echoed by a wild Irish screech from O'Neill at the masthead. Septimus held up his hand for silence.
"We shall bear down from north-east," he went on, "heading straight for the Frenchman. There's just a chance she won't see us until we're almost alongside. Frith will bring the sloop up into the wind and lay us board-and-board. I'll want three grapnels prepared, Mr. Beamish, to lock us together."
"Aye aye, sir," rapped the giant, his eyes agleam.
"That brings our larboard guns against the Vengeur's timbers. They must be loaded and run out, ready. One broadside will be fired. Immediately after it, every man Jack of the sloop's crew will board the Vengeur. Is that understood?"
There was a hoarse growl of assent. Beamish stepped forward. "Begging pardon, sir, but are the two ships grappled?"
"I was unable to see for sure," admitted Septimus. "But they're at close quarters, and if the Vengeur's captain is the man I think him, he'll try to board the frigate as soon as he can. I'm relying on his doing so before we reach the fight. We shall then take the French in the rear, and may do some good work for our shipmates."
He turned to glance at the scene of the battle, now little more than two miles away across the sparkling water. Much of the smoke had drifted clear, and the red hull of the French battleship was in full view, with the torn sails and rigging of the frigate seen on its further side. The thunder of the cannonade sounded very loud now, and its smoke was whirled away to the left instead of hanging about the ships.
"Wind's freshening, sir," said Frith, with a frown at the straining canvas aloft.
O'Neill's yell came on the heels of his words.
"Deck there! Looks to me as if the French are boarding, sir, you can hear the spalpeens screeching!"
The thin high noise of a hundred voices shouting wildly came to the ears of the Chasseur's crew. Septimus whirled round to snap orders.
"Mr. Beamish! Load all guns. See that every man has cutlass and pistol. Dobbs and Wallace! Go below, find Monsieur Cartier, and lock him in his cabin. Eccles, water-buckets on deck. Step lively!"
The seamen sprinted to obey orders. Septimus, stationing himself beside the helmsman, shouted to O'Neill to come down from the masthead and then fixed his gaze on the sea-fight ahead.
The Chasseur was heeling over before the freshening breeze on her starboard quarter, speeding through the water as if she was eager to join the fray. With every few moments the scene grew in clarity and detail, and it was plain that Vengeur and Althea were locked in a death-grapple. Septimus never forgot the dramatic scene.
Between the cloudless sky and the deeper blue, ridged with white crests, of the sea, the red flank of the French warship floated motionless, hiding all but the bows of the British frigate's black hull. The Vengeur's foremast was leaning drunkenly backwards, her sails were torn and her rigging lines hung in loose ends from the yards. Evidently the Althea's gunners had not allowed her to come to close quarters without suffering a good deal of damage. Across the water to leeward drifted a spreading cloud of smoke, and above the vessels hung a brownish haze shot with red flashes and brief white puffs of smoke. A confused uproar of shots, yells, and cheers grew louder every second.