The felucca fell broad off, and came down almost in a direct line for the lugger's bows before the wind and current, moving fast enough now to satisfy all Ithuel's scruples.
"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.