Some sort of confusion seemed to get up, however, about the ship’s taffrail, where Rollock, Ford, and some others were standing together; the planter jumped up all at once on the quarter-mouldings nearest the brig, then jumped down again, and his straw hat could be seen hurrying toward the quarterdeck. Next I caught a bright glimpse of Violet Hyde’s face, as the sun shot on it free of the awnings—her eyes wandering with the brig’s motion, I fancied, along the deck above me; till suddenly she seemed to start, and Westwood appeared behind her. The next thing I saw was the black-faced figure-head of the Seringapatam rising below her bowsprit, about sixty yards from the gun-room port where I was, and down she went again with a heavy plash, as Tom Westwood himself leapt up between the knight-heads at the bow, hailing the brig’s deck with a voice like a trumpet, “Ahoy!—the Podargus ahoy!—for mercy’s sake heave to again, sir!” he sung out; “I’m the man you want!” “The Indiaman ahoy!” I heard Captain Wallis himself hail back, “what d’ye say?” The creak of our yards, with the flap of the jib, and the men’s feet, drowned Westwood’s second hail, as it came sharp up to windward; the sailors in the Indiaman’s bows were grinning at him behind, while the first lieutenant of the brig shouted gruffly that she had no time to wait for more letters; and I heard the gun-room steward say to the marine, on going out with the dirty breakfast cloth, he wondered if “that parson cove thought the Pedarkis vanted a chapling!” or was only “vun of these fellers that’s so troublesome to see the French Hemperor!” “Well,” said the marine, “’twas pretty queer if he took the Pedarkis for the ship to carry him there! I don’t think the captain would let a rat into the island, if he could help it!” “Not he,” said the steward; “plenty of ’em in already, Vite, my man—I do think they used to swim off on board here, by the way the cheese vent!” All this time I never stirred from the port, watching with my chin on the muzzle of the gun till the Indiaman was half a mile to windward of us, her big hull still rising and falling on the same swells, topped with clusters of heads; her topsails lowered in honour of the flag, the ensign blowing out half-mast high for the death of Captain Williamson: a long wash of the water ran outside the brig’s timbers, surge after surge, and the plunge at her bows showed how fast she began to run nor’-westward before the wind. You may well fancy my state, after all I’d done for weeks; in fact, one scarce knew the extent of what he’d felt, what he’d looked forward to, till he found himself fairly adrift from it: ’twould even have been nothing, after all, could I just have thought of Violet Hyde as I’d done two hours ago, on waking, with last night in the river on my mind. As it was, ’twould have taken little to make me jump out of the port into the sweep of blue water swelling toward the brig’s counter; the Seringapatam being by this time astern.