Fortunately, however, Beaudésir, after he had fulfilled the Captain’s orders by personating him at the hold, remained studiously on watch. It was a peculiarity of this man that his faculties seemed always on the stretch, as is often to be observed with those over whom some constant dread impends, or who suffer from the tortures of remorse. At the moment he heard the shot, he sprang to the side, threw off hat and cloak, as if anticipating danger, and kept his eyes eagerly fixed on the water, ready, if need be, for a pounce. The tide was still flowing, the brigantine’s head lay to seaward, where all was dark, and fortunately the little light on the ruffled surface was towards the shore. Slap-Jack’s inanimate form was carried inwards by the flood, and crossed the moorings of that huge red buoy which Eugène remembered gazing on listlessly in the morning. Either the contact with its rope woke an instinctive consciousness in the drowning man, or some swirl of the water below brought his body to the surface, but for a few seconds Slap-Jack’s form became dimly visible, heaving like a wisp of seaweed on a wave. In those few seconds Eugène dashed overboard, cleaving the water to reach him with the long springing strokes of a powerful swimmer. A drowning man is not to be saved but at the imminent risk of his life who goes in for the rescue, and this gallant feat indeed can only be accomplished by a thorough proficient in the art; so on the present occasion it was well that Beaudésir felt as much at home in the water as on dry land. How the crew cheered the Frenchman while he was hauled on board with his dripping burden; how the two Jacks who had remained in the brigantine, and were now thoroughly sobered, vowed eternal gratitude to the landsman who had dived for their messmate; how the harbour-guard was once more disturbed by the cheering, and cheered lustily in reply; how Captain George clapped his comrade on the shoulder while he took him below to change his wet garments, and vowed he was fit to be King of France, adding, with a meaning smile, “If ever I go to school again, I’ll ask them to give me a berth at Avranches in Normandy!”—all this it is unnecessary to relate; but if the Captain gained the respect of the crew by the promptitude with which he resented an attempt at insubordination, the gallant self-devotion of his friend, clerk, supercargo, cabin-passenger, or whatever he was, won their affection and good-will for the rest of the voyage. This was especially apparent about sunrise, when Captain George beat to quarters and paraded his whole crew on deck, preparatory to weighing anchor and standing out down Channel with a fair wind and a following tide. He calculated that the King’s ship, even if on watch, must be still some distance from land, and he had such implicit confidence in the sailing qualities of his brigantine that if he could only get a fair start he feared a chase from no craft that swam.