"My lads," he began, about to give an order, and then, suddenly catching sight of Tom, ceased abruptly. Casting his eye over the heads of the men, he soon picked out the somewhat miserable figure of Higgins.
"Ah," he said, "a fight! My lads, strictly against orders. But I've news for you--we've rounded up a Frenchman. Clear these decks."
He was gone in a twinkling, his coat tails swinging behind him. But as he turned he contrived to smile at our hero.
"Licked that young man Higgins. That's good," he was saying as he raced up the ladder. "Young Clifford has courage. Wonder how he'll behave when shot and cannon balls come crashing amongst us; he's just the boy for this service."
When Tom had washed his face and had clambered to the deck he saw a large vessel some four miles away, bearing up towards the frigate, while a smaller one sailed behind her.
"Ship o' the line, mate," said Jim, who was leader of the squad of men of whom our hero was one, who had the working of one gun. "It'll be tough business, and ef she wasn't so big I doubt as she'd sail up so cocky towards us. But we'll give her what for; we're fair death on Frenchies."
A magnificent sight the Frenchman made as the distance between the two vessels decreased. Tom peeped at her through the wide-open port and admired the enormous spread of white above her, the seething foam at her forefoot, and the gleam of her broad decks that came into view now and again as the ship heaved to the swell of the ocean. Then a spout of white smoke burst from her fo'castle; a flash severed it in twain and was followed after a distinct interval by a dull reverberating report. The shot reached its mark almost at the same moment. There was a crash within ten feet of Tom. The side of the vessel at that point burst inward in a hundred splinters, and the iron messenger struck the very next gun to his, slithered and crashed across the 'tween decks, and finally brought up short against the opposite side. It roused a cheer of excitement from the crew.
"That's shootin'!" cried Jim. "She's the sort for our money. In a jiffy we'll be layin' into her. Just take a sight along the gun, Tom, and larn now how to pitch a ball into a Frenchie."
In the ordinary way the immediate prospect of an encounter at sea might be expected to rouse qualms in the breast of a novice, and we cannot affirm that Tom would have been any exception to the rule on this his first meeting aboard an English frigate with a French man-of-war. But there was so much else to attract his attention. Even in those days the wooden walls of our stout ships contained sufficient to interest even a dullard, and to a lad of active brain, as was our hero, there were things to watch and marvel at, while the men themselves grouped in the 'tween decks were quite a study. They stood about their guns stripped to the waist, joking and merry, the master of each gun with his eye on the sights. Close at hand a lad sat on a long narrow tub filled to the brim with powder.
