Chapter 17 - Page 2

main-mast was in, I had the fore-mast rigged, the jib-boom in its
place, the sprit-sail yard crossed--everything carried a spar under
its bowsprit then--and the lower yard up. It is true, the French had
got everything ready for us; and when we turned the hands to, after
dinner, we actually began to strike in cargo, water, provisions, and
such other things, as it was intended to carry away. At dusk, when we
knocked off work, the Emily looked like a sea-going craft, and there
was every prospect of our having her ready for sea, by the following
evening. But, the duty had been carried on, in silence. Napoleon said
there had been more noise made in the little schooner which carried
him from l'Orient to Basque Roads, than was made on board the
line-of-battle ship that conveyed him to St. Helena, during the whole
passage. Since that memorable day, the French have learned to be
silent on board ship, and the fruits remain to be seen.

That night, Marble and myself consulted together on the aspect of
things--or, as he expressed it, "we generalized over our prospects."
Monsieur Le Compte had done one thing which duty required of him. He
did not leave us a kernel of the gunpowder belonging to either ship;
nor could we find a boarding-pike, cutlass, or weapon of any sort,
except the officers' pistols. We had a canister of powder, and a
sufficiency of bullets for the last, which had been left as, out of an
_esprit de corps_, or the feeling of an officer, which told him
we might possibly need these means to keep our own crew in order. Such
was not the fact, however, with the particular people we happened to
have; a more orderly and reasonable set of men never sailing together.
But, Monsieur Le Compte knew it was his duty to put it out of their
power to trouble us, so far as it lay in his; but, at the same time,
while he left us the means of safety, he provided against our doing
any further injury to his own countrymen. In this he had pretty
effectually succeeded, so far as armament was concerned.

The next morning I was up with the appearance of the dawn, and, having
suffered much from the heat the preceding day, I walked to a suitable
spot, threw off my clothes, and plunged into the basin. The water was
transparent almost as air; and I happened to select a place where the
coral grew within a few yards of the surface. As I dove, my eye fell
on a considerable cluster of large oysters that were collected on the
rock, and, reaching them, I succeeded in bringing up half a dozen that
clung to each other. These dives I repeated, during the next quarter
of an hour, until I had all the oysters, sixty or eighty in number,
safe on the shore. That they were the pearl oysters, I knew
immediately; and beckoning to Neb,