Frenchman's Creek

"Ho, there," he called, and the night-watchman turned at his voice and hurried to meet him.

"Have you seen a lad run this way?" said Rashleigh, but the watchman shook his head. "I have seen no one," he said, "but there is something amiss yonder, sir, it looks as though your vessel had broken away from the buoy."

"What's that?" said Rashleigh, making towards the quay, and Godolphin, following him, said, "Then the lad did not lie after all." Dona crouched back in the doorway. They were past her now, and onto the quay, never once looking in the direction of the cottage. She watched them from the cover of the door, and they were standing with their backs to her, staring across the harbour as the watchman had done, and Godolphin's cape was billowing in the gusty wind, while the rain streamed down upon their heads.

"Look, sir," called the watchman, "they are getting sail on her, the master must be going to take her up river."

"The fellow is crazy," shouted Rashleigh, "there are not a dozen men on board, three-quarters of the fellows are sleeping ashore, they'll have her aground before they've finished. Go rouse some of 'em, Joe, we must get all hands on to her. Blast that incompetent fool Dan Thomas, what in the name of the Almighty does he think he is doing."

He put his hands to his mouth and bellowed across the harbour.

"Ahoy, there! Merry Fortune, ahoy!" and the night-watchman sped across the quay, and seized the rope of a ship's bell that was hanging there beside the lantern, and the sound of it clanged in the air, loud and insistent, compelling enough to waken every sleeping soul in Fowey. Almost at once a window was thrust open in a cottage up the street, and a head looked out and said, "What ails you, Joe, is anything wrong?" and Rashleigh, stamping up and down in a blind fury shouted back, "Put your breeches on, damn you, and get your brother too, the Merry Fortune is adrift there in the harbour."

A figure came out from a doorway in another cottage, struggling into a coat as he emerged, and another man came running down the street, and all the while the ship's bell clanged, and Rashleigh shouted, and the rain and the wind tore at his cloak and the swaying lantern he carried in his hand.

Lights appeared now in the windows of the cottages beneath the church and voices shouted, and voices called, and men appeared from nowhere, running onto the quay. "Get me a boat, can't you?" yelled Rashleigh, "put me aboard, one of you, put me aboard."

Someone was astir in the cottage where Dona had been hiding, she heard the patter of footsteps on the stairs, and she left the doorway and came out upon the quay. In the darkness and confusion, in the whistling wind and the streaming rain, she was only another figure mixing with the rest, staring out towards the ship that with sails hoisted on her yards was bearing down now towards the centre of the channel, her bows pointing to the harbour mouth.

"Look, she's helpless," cried a voice, "the tide is taking her to the rocks, they must be mad aboard, or dead drunk, all of them."

"Why doesn't he wear ship and get up, out of it," shouted another, and "Look, the tide has her," came the answer, and someone else, shrieking in Dona's ear, "The tide is stronger than the wind yet, the tide has her every time."

Some of the men were struggling now with the boats moored beneath the quay, she could hear them swear as they fumbled with a frape, and Rashleigh and Godolphin, peering down from the side of the quay, cursed them for the delay. "Someone's monkey'd here with the frape," shouted one of the men, "the rope is parting, someone must have cut it with a knife," and suddenly Dona had a vision of little Pierre Blanc, grinning to himself in the darkness, while the great bell clanged and jangled on the quay.

"Swim, one of you," yelled Rashleigh, "swim and bring me at boat. By God, I'll thrash the fellow who played the trick, I'll have him hanged."

Now the ship was coming closer, Dona could see the men on the yards, and the great topsail shaking out, and someone was at the wheel there giving orders, someone with head thrown back, watching the sail draw taut.

"Ahoy, there! Ahoy!" yelled Rashleigh, and Godolphin too added his cry, "Wear ship, man, wear ship before you lose your chance."

And still the Merry Fortune held to her course; straight down channel and across the harbour she came, the ebb-tide ripping under her keel. "He's crazy," screamed someone, he's making for the harbour mouth, look there, all of you, look there." For now that the ship was within hail Dona could see that there were three boats out in a line abreast, with a warp from the ship to each of them, and every man in them bent double to his oars, and still the topsail filled and pulled, and the courses too, and the ship heeled to a great puff of wind that came from the hills behind the town.