Without lifting my head I could see, not far away, the ship we had fought, gaunt, stark, the ruins of the masterful craft that had raced so boldly for us two hours before.

Her rigging was a vast tangle of loose ropes and broken spars, and some of her drooping sails were smouldering.
Her trim black-and-white sides were shattered and scorched and blackened.
It looked as though she had sheered off just a moment before the explosion, and so had missed the full force of it, but still had suffered terribly.
Some of her lower sails still stood, and her crew were busily at work cutting loose the raffle and beating out the flames.

But damaged as their own ship was, they still had thought for possible survivors of their enemy, and two boats dropped into the water as I looked, and came picking their way through the floating wreckage, with kneeling men in the bows examining everything they saw.
They promptly lifted me in, and from their lips I saw that they spoke to me.

But I was encased in silence and could not hear a sound.
I had long since made up my mind that if we were captured I would take my chance as prisoner of war rather than risk being shot as a renegade or pressed into the King's service.

For it seemed to me that the chances of being shot were considerable, since none would credit my story that I had been five months aboard a French warship except of my own free will.