Everybody was now on the qui vive; the women were, as usual, frightened; the men passengers looked grave, the Lascars rather unsteady; but we had forty English seamen and a hundred invalid soldiers on board, who could all be depended upon.  The guns were loaded and shotted, and the invalid soldiers were mustered; muskets and ammunition handed up; the bayonets fixed, unfixed again; and then they were ordered to remain on the booms with their accouterments on and their muskets by their sides.  The officers still kept their glasses on the lugger, until at last the fog came down and we could see her no more.

The officers who commanded the invalids, after a consultation with the captain at which Bramble assisted, told off their men into two parties, one of them being appointed to assist the seamen with their bayonets in repelling the boarders (should the attempt be made), and the other to fire upon them and into the deck of the vessel when she came alongside.  The Lascars were stationed at the guns, in case they might be required; but no great dependence was placed upon their services.

By the time that these arrangements had been made, the fog had reached the Indiaman, and we were at the same time taken aback with the easterly breeze which brought it down to us; being near to the land, we put the ship’s head off shore.  The wind continued light and the water smooth, but the fog thickened every minute:  at last we could hardly see as far as the foremast of the vessel.

“He’ll be puzzled to find us, I think,” said the captain.

“He’ll find us, never fear,” replied Bramble.  “He has calculated the time of the fog reaching us, and he knows that we must lay our head off-shore—­to be sure, we might give him the go-by if we bore up and ran back again to the Downs.”

“I think I see myself bearing up and running away from a rascally French privateer,” said the captain.  “Keep a sharp lookout there forward.”

“Ay, ay, sir,” replied the chief officer.

Half an hour more passed, and by our calculation the privateer should have been on board of us, but we could see nothing of her, although the fog had cleared up a little.  The soldiers were now ordered to load their muskets.  I was on the poop with Bramble, when, happening to turn and look aft (the very opposite direction from which the privateer was to be expected), I saw her three lugsails looming in the mist, just on the quarter, not half a cable’s length from us.  I jumped down to where the captain was standing, and said to him, “There she is, sir, close on our lee quarter.”  The captain sprang on the poop, saw the vessel, and ordered the men to come aft in silence.  The tramp of the soldiers’ feet was scarcely over when the lugger was alongside of us, her masts banging against our main and mizzen chains as she rolled with the swell under our lee.  The Frenchmen gave a cheer, which told us how very numerous they were:  they climbed up the side