"Dark night," the Captain continued, after a short silence, "and a
heavy sea, about mid-channel off Dieppe. We sighted a French
fishing-boat yawing about abandoned. Something queer about her, the
skipper thought. Those were queer times in France. We hailed her,
and getting no answer put out a boat and boarded her. There was
nobody on board but a woman and a child. Woman was half mad with
fear. I have seen many afraid, but never one like that. I was only
a boy myself, but I remember thinking it wasn't the sea and drowning
she was afraid of. We couldn't find out the smack's name. It had
been painted out with a tar-brush, and she was half full of water.
The skipper took the woman and child off, and left the fishing-smack
as we found her yawing about--all sail set. They reckoned she would
founder in a few minutes. But there was one old man on board, the
boatswain, who had seen many years at sea, who said that she wasn't
making any water at all, because he had been told to look for the
leak and couldn't find it. He said that the water had been pumped
into her so as to waterlog her; and it was his belief that she had
not been abandoned many minutes, that the crew were hanging about
somewhere near in a boat waiting to see if we sighted her and put
men on board."

Mr. Dormer Colville was attending to the claret, and pressed Captain
Clubbe by a gesture of the hand to empty his glass.

"Something wrong somewhere?" he suggested, in a conversational way.

"By daylight we were ramping up channel with three French men-of-war
after us," was Captain Clubbe's comprehensive reply. "As chance had
it, the channel squadron hove in sight round the Foreland, and the