Bob Strong's Holidays Part 44

When, however, the rays of the bright morning sun sent this nightmare of a mist to the right-about, a small French fishing lugger might have been seen working out towards the offing from Saint Malo, giving the "Casquettes" a pretty wide berth you may be sure; those who have to do with seafaring matters across Channel knowing full well of the dangerous race that runs by the fatal rocks, ever seeking in its malice to engulph pa.s.sing crafts and bear them away to destruction!

Two men were in the lugger; one, as usual, attending to the helm, the other minding the sheets and sitting midway between the bows and stern of the vessel, so as to be handy when required and thus save unnecessary locomotion.

Sailors, it may here be mentioned in confidence, especially those hailing from la belle France, never give themselves more trouble than they can help; which philosophic way of going through life might be studied to advantage, perhaps, by some sh.o.r.e folk!

These mariners, consequently, were taking it very easy, the one forward sitting on the break of the "fo'c's'le" and smoking a pipe, there not being much to do in the rope-hauling or letting go, as the lugger was only creeping lazily along through the almost still water with the aid of the light breeze then blowing.

Presently, this latter gentleman, casting a casual eye around, spied the poor mastless, derelict-looking little yacht, rolling about in the heavy tide-race that was taking her on to the rocks.

Instantly, sailor-like, he became all animation; taking his pipe out of his mouth and shouting out to his fellow-voyager astern with much gesticulation.

"Tiens, Jacques!" he cried, "voila un bateau qui courre sur les brisants!"

"Quoi?" carelessly asked the other. "Vous moquez vous!"

But the one who had first spoken repeated what he'd said, to the effect that there was "a boat drifting on the rocks, and likely to be wrecked."

"Jacques," however, as his comrade had called him, did not seem much interested in the matter, merely shrugging his shoulders, implying that it was "none of his concern."

"C'est bien," said he. "Pas mon affaire."

The other, though, seemed more taken with the little craft, climbing up a couple of steps into the rigging in order to have a better look at her.

He had not gazed a moment when his excitement became intensified.

"Mon Dieu, Jacques!" he sang out. "Il-y-a quelqu'un a bord! Deux personnes, et des garcons je crois; mais, ils sont morts!"

"Pas possible," cried the helmsman, showing a little more interest.

"Really?"

"Parbleu, c'est vrai! Vire que nous nous en approchions."

"C'est fait," exclaimed Jacques, now quite as much excited--as the other, and eager to rescue any one in peril or distress, as every sailor of every nationality always is--that is, a true sailor. "Starboard it is!"

"Babord!" cried out Antoine, as the helmsman called him, telling the latter he was to put the tiller over. "Port."

Jacques replied by a counter order.

"Toi, Antoine," shouted he, "lache la grande voile!" meaning him to "slacken off the mainsheets," whereupon the lugger was brought alongside the wreck of the cutter.

Our friend Antoine, without wasting a moment, at once stepped on board, exclaiming, "Tenez bon dessus--Hold on."

The man was shocked at what he saw, the dead bodies, as he thought, of Bob and d.i.c.k lying across each other on the floor of the little cabin, half in and half out of which the boys were exposed to his view at the first glance.

"Pauvres garcons!" he cried in a husky voice, wiping away a tear that sprang unbidden to his eye, with the characteristic ready emotional sympathy of his countrymen. "Pauvres garcons."

Jacques, who was a little longer in coming to inspect the derelict, hearing what his companion said, called out for further information.

"De quel pays sont-ils?" he asked. "Can you tell their nationality?"

"Anglais, sans doute!" was his reply. "Je le crois par leur air."

This made Jacques p.r.i.c.k up his ears.

"Comment?" said he; and, without waiting to hear anything else he, too, jumped down into the boat. "Anglais? Mon Dieu!"

Jacques was a man of common-sense; so, instead of contenting himself with staring at the apparently lifeless boys, as Antoine did, he bent down to see whether they yet breathed.

"Bete! Quant aux enfants, ils ne sont pas plus morts que toi ou moi!"

he sang out indignantly. "You fool! The boys are no more dead than you or me."

But Jacques was a kind-hearted man as well as one possessed of common- sense.

So, under his directions, he and Antoine between them transshipped the apparently lifeless but still animate forms of Bob and d.i.c.k from the wrecked cutter into the fo'c's'le of the lugger, where a charcoal, fire was smouldering in a small stove on which simmered a saucepan containing something savoury, judging by its smell.

Here Jacques proceeded to rub the bodies of the boys alternately with a piece of flannel dipped in spirit, which he first held in front of the stove to warm; Maitre Antoine, meanwhile, attending to the navigation of the lugger and guarding lest she should run upon the Casquettes, or get led astray out of her course by Alderney Race, a current of these regions which, like the Saint Malo stream, is not to be played with when the wind's on sh.o.r.e!

Not content with merely rubbing them down with the spirit, Jacques presently varied his external application of some brandy, a remedy with him for most complaints to which flesh is heir, by administering to each boy in turn a few drops internally of the spirit, forcing it dexterously between their lips as soon as respiration was restored and they began to breathe with some regularity; Bob, however, progressing much more rapidly than d.i.c.k, whose pulse obstinately remained feeble and barely perceptible, while the author of all the mischief was nearly all right.

Bob opened his eyes almost as soon as he tasted the brandy.

"Where am I?" he stammered out, gazing round the little fo'c's'le of the lugger in wonder. "Where am I?"

CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT.

JIM CRADDOCK.

"Ah, le pet.i.t bon homme vit encore!" cried Antoine, hearing the voice and bending over from his seat on the after-thwart, being anxious as to the condition of the patients to whom Jacques was ministering. "Donnez lui encore d'eau de vie, mon ami!"

Jacques thereupon repeated the dose of brandy to Bob, who closed his eyes again and leant back, the spirit and the sound of the strange language, with the queer surroundings that had met his gaze on looking round the fo'c's'le of the lugger, making him believe he was still in a dream.

"Where am I?" he presently repeated, rousing up again. "Where am I?"

"In France," replied Jacques in English as good as his own, smiling as he spoke. "At least, you're aboard a French vessel; and, that's as good as being in France!"

"But, you are English," replied Bob freely. "You are English, eh?"

"Yes, I'm English," answered the other. "But, you had better not talk now. Wait till after you've taken some nice soup which I've got cooking here that will put new strength into you, and then we'll tell each other all about ourselves."

He then left Bob to attend to d.i.c.k, whom it took considerably longer to bring round; although by administering a few drops of brandy at intervals, varied by an occasional spoonful every now and then of the savoury soup from the saucepan on the fire, which was really a regular French stew, d.i.c.k became ultimately, as Bob already was through the same regimen, much better--the poor boy now recovering his consciousness and being able to speak.

The two invalids were then put to bed comfortably in a couple of bunks on either side of the fo'c's'le; while the lugger, whose name, by the way, was the _Jeanne d'Arc_, reached over towards the English coast, to see what fishing she could get in those prohibited waters.

Late in the afternoon, Bob and d.i.c.k both woke up refreshed; when, each had another jorum of the savoury soup, which Bob said subsequently was the nicest thing, he believed, he had ever tasted in his life! The boys, then, feeling quite well, so to speak, went on to tell the kind sailors all about their adventures, Bob, of course, being the princ.i.p.al spokesman.

"Ah!" observed Jacques. "You are living at Portsmouth, then?"

"No, I've only been stopping there for the season," replied Bob. "But, I like it very much!"