Held Fast For England: A Tale of the Siege of Gibraltar (1779-83) by G. A. Henty (novels for beginners txt) 📖

and the shot that had narrowly missed the foremast, and passed through the foresail, had struck the mainmast and brought it, and its sail, overboard. The crew of the brig raised a general cheer. A minute before a French prison had stared them in the face, and now they were free. The helm was instantly put up, and the brig bore straight away from her pursuer.

"What do you say, Probert? Shall we turn the tables, now, and give her a pounding?"

"I should like to, sir, nothing better; but it would be dangerous work. Directly she gets free of that hamper, she will be under command, and will be able to bring her broadside to play on us; and if she had luck, and knocked away one of our spars, she would turn the tables upon us. Besides, even if we made her strike her colours, we could never take her into port. Strong handed as she is, we should not dare to send a prize crew on board."

"You are right, Probert--though it does seem a pity to let her go scot free, when we have got her almost at our mercy."

"Not quite, sir. Look there."

The lugger had managed to bring her head sufficiently up into the wind for her broadside guns to bear, and the shot came hurtling overhead. The yard of the main-topsail was cut in sunder, and the peak halliard of the spanker severed, and the peak came down with a run. They could hear a faint cheer come across the water from the lugger.

"Leave the guns, lads, and repair damages!" the captain shouted.

"Throw off the throat halliards of the spanker, get her down, and send a hand up to reef a fresh rope through the blocks, Mr. Probert.

"Joe, take eight men with you, and stow away the topsail. Send the broken yard down.

"Carpenter, see if you have got a light spar that will do, instead of it. If not, get two small ones, and lash them so as to make a splice of it."

In a minute the guns of the lugger spoke out again but, although a few ropes were cut away, and some more holes made in the sails, no serious damage was inflicted and, before they were again loaded, the spanker was rehoisted. The lugger continued to fire, but the brig was now leaving her fast. As soon as the sail was up, the pivot gun was again set to work; and the lugger was hulled several times but, seeing that her chance of disabling the brig was small, she was again brought before the wind.

In half an hour a new topsail yard was ready, and that sail was again hoisted. The Antelope had now got three miles away from the lugger. As the sail sheeted home, the second mate shouted, from aloft:

"There is a sail on the weather bow, sir! She is close hauled, and sailing across our head."

"I see her," the captain replied.

"We ought to have noticed her before, Mr. Probert. We have all been so busy that we haven't been keeping a lookout.

"What do you make her to be, Joe?" he said to the second mate.

"I should say she was a French frigate, sir."

The captain ascended the shrouds with his glass, remained there two or three minutes watching the ship, and then returned to the deck.

"She is a frigate, certainly, Mr. Probert, and by the cut of her sails I should say a Frenchman. We are in an awkward fix. She has got the weather gage of us. Do you think, if we put up helm and ran due north, we should come out ahead of her?"

The mate shook his head.

"Not if the wind freshens, sir, as I think it will. I should say we had best haul our wind, and make for one of the Spanish ports. We might get into Santander."

"Yes, that would be our best chance.

"All hands 'bout ship!"

The vessel's head was brought up into the wind, and payed off on the other tack, heading south--the frigate being, now, on her weather quarter. This course took the brig within a mile and a half of the lugger, which fired a few harmless shots at her. When she had passed beyond the range of her guns, she shaped her course southeast by east for Santander, the frigate being now dead astern. The men were then piped to dinner.

"Is she likely to catch us, sir?" Bob asked, as they sat down to table.

"I hope not, lad. I don't think she will, unless the wind freshens a good deal. If it did, she would come up hand over hand.

"I take it she is twelve miles off, now. It is four bells, and she has only got five hours' daylight, at most. However fast she is, she ought not to gain a knot and a half an hour, in this breeze and, if we are five or six miles ahead when it gets dark, we can change our course. There is no moon."

They were not long below.

"The lugger is under sail again, sir," the second mate, who was on duty, said as they gained the deck.

"They haven't been long getting up a jury mast," Captain Lockett said. "That is the best of a lug rig. Still, they have a smart crew on board."

He directed his glass towards the lugger, which was some five miles away.

"It is a good-sized spar," he said, "nearly as lofty as the foremast. She is carrying her mainsail with two reefs in it and, with the wind on her quarter, is travelling pretty nearly as fast as she did before. Still, she can't catch us, and she knows it.

"Do you see, Mr. Probert, she is bearing rather more to the north. She reckons, I fancy, that after it gets dark we may try to throw the frigate out; and may make up that way, in which case she would have a good chance of cutting us off. That is awkward, for the frigate will know that; and will guess that, instead of wearing round that way, we shall be more likely to make the other."

"That is so," the mate agreed. "Still, we shall have the choice of either hauling our wind and making south by west, or of running on, and she can't tell which we shall choose."

"That is right enough. It is just a toss up. If we run, and she runs, she will overtake us; if we haul up close into the wind, and she does the same, she will overtake us, again; but if we do one thing, and she does the other, we are safe.

"Then again, we may give her more westing, after it gets dark, and bear the same course the lugger is taking. She certainly won't gain on us, and I fancy we shall gain a bit on her. Then in the morning, if the frigate is out of sight, we can make for Santander, which will be pretty nearly due south of us, then; or, if the lugger is left well astern we can make a leg north, and then get on our old course again, for Cape Ortegal. The lugger would see it was of no use chasing us, any further."

"Yes, I think that is the best plan of the three, captain.

"I see the frigate is coming up. I can just make out the line of her hull. She must be a fast craft."

The hours passed on slowly. Fortunately the wind did not freshen, and the vessels maintained their respective positions towards each other. The frigate was coming up, but, when it began to get dusk, she was still some six miles astern. The lugger was five miles away, on the lee quarter, and three miles northeast of the frigate. She was still pursuing a line that would take her four miles to the north of the brig's present position. The coast of Spain could be seen stretching along to the southward. Another hour and it was perfectly dark and, even with the night glasses, the frigate could no longer be made out.

"Starboard your helm," the captain said, to the man at the wheel. "Lay her head due east."

"I fancy the wind is dying away, sir," Mr. Probert said.

"So long as it don't come a stark calm, I don't care," the captain replied. "That would be the worst thing that could happen, for we should have the frigate's boats after us; but a light breeze would suit us, admirably."

Two hours later, the wind had almost died out.

"We will take all the sails off her, Mr. Probert. If the frigate keeps on the course she was steering when we last saw her, she will go two miles to the south of us; and the lugger will go more than that to the north. If they hold on all night, they will be hull down before morning; and we shall be to windward of them and, with the wind light, the frigate would never catch us; and we know the lugger wouldn't, with her reduced sails."

In a few minutes all the sails were lowered, and the brig lay motionless. For the next two hours the closest watch was kept, but nothing was seen of the pursuing vessels.

"I fancy the frigate must have altered her course more to the south," the captain said, "thinking that, as the lugger was up north, we should be likely to haul our wind in that direction. We will wait another hour, and then get up sail again, and lay her head for Cape Ortegal."

When the morning broke, the brig was steering west. No sign of the lugger was visible but, from the tops, the upper sails of the frigate could be seen, close under the land, away to the southeast.

"Just as I thought," the captain said, rubbing his hands in high glee. "She hauled her wind, as soon as it was dark, and stood in for the coast, thinking we should do the same.

"We are well out of that scrape."

Two days later the brig dropped her anchor in the Tagus, where three English ships of war were lying. A part of the cargo had to be discharged, here; and the captain at once went ashore, to get a spar to replace the topmast carried away in the gale.

"We may fall in with another Frenchman, before we are through the Straits," he said, "and I am not going to put to sea again like a lame duck."

Bob went ashore with the captain, and was greatly amused at the scenes in the streets of Lisbon.

"You had better keep with me, as I shall be going on board, in an hour. Tomorrow you can come ashore and see the sights, and spend the day. I would let Joe come with you, but he will be too busy to be spared, so you will have to shift for yourself."

Before landing in the morning, the captain advised him not to go outside the town.

"You don't know the lingo, lad, and might get into trouble. You see, there are always sailors going ashore from our ships of war, and they get drunk and have sprees; and I don't fancy they are favourites with the lower class, here, although the shopkeepers, of course, are glad enough to have their money--but I don't think it would be safe for a lad like you, who can't speak a word of the language, to wander about outside the regular streets. There will be plenty for you to see, without going further."

As Bob was a good deal impressed with the narrow escape he had had from capture, he was by no means inclined to run any risk of getting into a scrape, and perhaps missing his passage out. He therefore strictly obeyed the captain's instructions; and when--just as he was going down to the landing stage, where the boat was to come ashore for him--he came upon a party of half drunken sailors, engaged in a vigorous fight with a number of Portuguese civil guards, he turned down a side street to avoid getting mixed up in the fray--repressing his strong impulse to join in by the side of his countrymen.

On his mentioning this to the captain, when he reached the brig, the latter said:

"It is lucky that you kept clear of the row. It is all nonsense, talking about countrymen. It wasn't an affair of nationality, at all. Nobody would think of interfering, if he saw a party of drunken sailors in an English port fighting with the constables. If he did interfere, it ought to be on the side of the law. Why, then, should anyone take the part of drunken sailors, in a foreign port, against the guardians of the peace? To do so is an act of the grossest folly.

"In the first place, the chances are in favour of getting your head laid open with a sword cut. These fellows know they don't stand