Jacka had laid the _Bean
Pheasant's_ head north-and-by-west, and was reaching along nicely for
home with a stiff breeze and nothing to do but keep the pumps going
and attend to his eating and drinking between whiles.

The prize made a good deal of water, but was a weatherly craft for all
that, and on this point of sailing shipped nothing but what she took
in through her seams; the worst of the mischief being forward, where
her stem had worked a bit loose with age and started the bends. Cap'n
Jacka, however, thought less of the sea--that was working up into a
nasty lop--than of the weather, which turned thick and hazy as the
wind veered a little to west of south. But even this didn't trouble
him much. He had sausages for breakfast and sausages for dinner, and,
as evening drew on, and he knew he was well on the right side of the
Channel, he knocked out his pipe and began to think of sausages for
tea.

Just then one of the hands forward dropped pumping, and sang out that
there was a big sail on the starboard bow. "I b'lieve 'tis a frigate,
sir," he said, spying between his hands.

So it was. She had sprung on them out of the thick weather. But now
Cap'n Jacka could see the white line on her and the ports quite plain,
and not two miles away.

"What nation?" he bawled.

"I can't make out as she carries any flag. Losh me! if there bain't
_another_!"

Sure as I'm telling you, another frigate there was, likewise standing
down towards them under easy canvas, on the same starboard tack a mile
astern, but well to windward of the first.

"Whatever they be," said Cap'n Jacka, "they're bound to head us off,
and they're bound to hail us. I go get my tea," he said; "for, if
they're Frenchmen, 'tis my last meal for months to come."

So he fetched out his frying-pan and plenty sausages and fried away
for dear life--with butter too, which was ruinous waste. He shared
round the sausages, two to each man, and kept the _Bean Pheasant_ to
her course until the leading frigate fired a shot across her bows,
and ran up the red-white-and-blue; and then, knowing the worst, he
rounded-to as meek as a lamb.

The long and short of it was that, inside the hour the dozen Frenchmen
were free, and Cap'n Jacka and his men in their place, ironed hand
and foot; and the _Bean Pheasant_ working back to France again with a
young gentleman of the French navy aboard in command of her.

But 'tis better be lucky born, they say, than a rich man's son.