lashed his guns inboard; yet she rolled so that you would not have trusted a cat on her storm-washed decks. They were desolate but for the captain and helmsman on the poop; the helmsman, a mere lad—the one, in fact, who had pulled the bow-oar to our rescue—lashed and gripping the spokes pluckily, but with a white face which told that, though his eyes were strained on the binnacle, his mind ran on the infernal seas astern. Over him, in sea-boots and oilskins, towered Captain Colenso—rejuvenated, transfigured; his body swaying easily to every lurch and plunge of the brig, his face entirely composed and cheerful, his saltrimmed eyes contracted a little, but alert and even boyishly bright. An heroical figure of a man!
My heart warmed to Captain Colenso; and next morning, as we bowled forward again with a temperate breeze on our beam, I took occasion to compliment him on the Lady Nepean's behaviour.
"Ay," said he, abstractedly; "the old girl made pretty good weather of it!"
"I suppose we were never in what you would call real danger?"
He faced me with sudden earnestness. "Mr. Ducie, I have served the Lord all my days and He will not sink the ship that carries my honour." Giving me no time to puzzle over this, he changed his tone. "You'll scarcely believe it, but in her young days she had a very fair turn of speed."
"Her business surely demands it still," said I. Only an arrant landsman could have reconciled the lumbering old craft with any idea of privateering; but this was my only theory, and I clung to it.
"We shall not need to test her"
"You rely on your guns then?" I had observed the care lavished on these. They were of brass, and shone like the door-plates in the main cabin.
