Great Britain -- History, Naval -- 18th century -- Fiction; Nore Mutiny, 1797 -- Fiction
"I hardly know what we have--something has been saved from the wreck,"
replied Seymour, "and shall cheerfully be shared with you with all the
assistance we can afford. We were enemies, but we are now brothers in
affliction. I must quit you to bring up our wounded men; there is
sufficient room, I perceive, for all of us. _Adieu, pour le moment_!"
"_Savez-vous que c'est un brave garcon ce lieutenant-la_?" observed the
Frenchman to his companions, as Seymour and his party quitted the hut.
Seymour returned to the beach, and, collecting his men, found the
survivors to consist of forty-four seamen and marines, the boatswain and
himself. Of these, fifteen were helpless, from wounds and fractured
limbs. The articles which had been collected were a variety of spars
and fragments of wood, some of the small sails which had been triced up
in the rigging, one or two casks of beef and pork, and a puncheon of
rum, which had miraculously steered its course between the breakers, and
had been landed without injury. The sails which had been spread out to
dry, were first carried up to form a bed for the sick and wounded, who,
in the space of an hour, were all made as comfortable as circumstances
would admit, a general bed having been made on the floor of the hut,
upon which they and the wounded Frenchmen shared the sails between them.
The spars and fragments were then brought up, and a fire made in the
long deserted hearth, while another was lighted outside for the men to
dry their clothes. The cask of rum was rolled up to the door, and a
portion, mixed with the water from a rill that trickled down the sides
of the adjacent mountain, served out to the exhausted parties. The
seamen, stripping off their clothes, and spreading them out to dry
before the fire which had been made outside, collected into the hut to
shield their naked bodies from the inclemency of the weather.
The spirits, which had been supplied with caution to the survivors of
the French vessel, had been eagerly seized by the one who had first
addressed our hero, and in half an hour he seemed to be quite revived.
He rose, and after trying his limbs, by moving slowly to and fro,
gradually recovered the entire use of them; and by the time that the
circulation of his blood had been thoroughly restored by a second dose
of spirits, appeared to have little to complain of. He was a powerful,
well-looking man, with a large head, covered with a profusion of shaggy
hair. Seymour looked at him earnestly, and thought he could not well be
mistaken, long as it was since they had been in company.
"Excuse me--but I think we once met at Cherbourg. Is not your name
Debriseau?"
"_Sacristie_!" replied the Frenchman, seizing himself by the hair, "_je
suis connu_! And who are you?"
"Oh! now I'm sure it's you," replied Seymour, laughing--"that's your old
trick--do you not recollect the boy that Captain McElvina took off the
wreck?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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