“I take it for granted, Miles,” Marble remarked, as we pursued our discourse, “that your insurance will completely cover your whole loss?  You did not forget to include freight in the risks?”

“So far from this, Moses, I believe myself to be nearly or quite a ruined man.  The loss of the ship is unquestionably owing to the act of the Speedy, united to our own, in setting those Englishmen adrift on the ocean.  No insurers will meet a policy that has thus been voided.”

“Ah! the blackguards!—­This is worse than I had thought;—­but you can always make a harbour at Clawbonny?”

I was on the point of explaining to Marble how I stood in relation to the paternal acres, when a sort of shadow was suddenly cast on the boat, and I fancied the rushing of the water seemed to be increased at the same instant.  We all three sat with our faces to leeward, and all turned them to windward under a common impulse.  A shout burst from Marble’s throat, and a sight met my eyes, that caused the blood to rush in a torrent through my heart.  Literally within a hundred feet of us, was a large ship, ploughing the ocean with a furrow that rose to her hawse-holes, and piling before her, in her track, a mound of foam, as she came down upon us, with top-mast and lower studding-sails set—­overshadowing the sea, like some huge cloud.  There was scarcely time for more than a glance, ere this ship was nearly upon us.  As she rose on a swell, her black sides came up out of the ocean, glittering and dripping, and the tine of frowning guns seemed as if just lacquered.  Neb was in the bow of the launch, while I was in the stern.  My arm was extended involuntarily, or instinctively would be the better word, to avert the danger, when it seemed to me that the next send of the ship would crush us beneath the bright copper of her bottom.  Without Neb’s strength and presence of mind, we had been lost beyond a hope; for swimming up to the spars against the sea that was on, would have been next to hopeless; and even if there, without food, or water, our fate would have been sealed.  But Neb seized the hawser by which we were riding, and hauled the launch ahead her length, or more, before the frigate’s larboard bower-anchor settled down in a way that menaced crushing us.  As it was, I actually laid a hand on the muzzle of the third gun, while the ship went foaming by.  At the next instant she was past; and we were safe.  Then all three of us shouted together.  Until that moment, none in the frigate were aware of our vicinity.  But the shout gave the alarm, and as the ship cleared us, her taffrail was covered with officers.  Among them was one grey-headed man, whom I recognised by his dress for the captain.  He made a gesture, turning an arm upward, and I knew an order was given immediately after, by the instantaneous manner in which the taffrail was cleared.

“By George!” exclaimed Marble, “I had a generalizing time of it, for half a dozen seconds, Miles.”