"Call all hands to repel boarders!" cried Raoul, springing aft to the
capstan and seizing his own arms--"Come up lively, _mes enfans!_--here
is treachery!"
These words were hardly uttered before Raoul was back on the heel of the
bowsprit, and the most active of his men--some five or six at
most--began to show themselves on deck. In that brief space, the felucca
had got within eighty yards, when, to the surprise of all in the lugger,
she luffed into the wind again and drifted down, until it was apparent
that she was foul of the lugger's cable, her stern swinging round
directly on the latter's starboard bow. At that instant, or just as the
two vessels came in actual contact, and Raoul's men were thronging
around him to meet the expected attack, the sound of oars, pulled for
life or death, were heard, and flames burst upward from the open hatch
of the coaster. Then a boat was dimly seen gliding away in a line with
the hull, by the glowing light.
"Un brulot!--un brulot!--a fire-ship!" exclaimed twenty voices together,
the horror that mingled in the cries proclaiming the extent of a danger
which is, perhaps, the most terrific that seamen can encounter.
But the voice of Raoul Yvard was not among them. The moment his eye
caught the first glimpse of the flames he disappeared from the bowsprit.
He might have been absent about twenty seconds. Then he was seen on the
taffrail of the felucca, with a spare shank-painter, which had been
lying on the forecastle, on his shoulder.
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