Mr. Dodge had no sooner found himself safe in the launch than he felt his courage revive, and with his courage, his ingenuity, self-love and assurance. While in the water, a meeker man there was not on earth; he had even some doubts as to the truth of all his favourite notions of liberty and equality, for men think fast in danger, and there was an instant when he might have been easily persuaded to acknowledge himself a demagogue and a hypocrite in his ordinary practices; one whose chief motive was self, and whose besetting passions were envy, distrust and malice; or, in other words, very much the creature he was. Shame came next, and he eagerly sought an excuse for the want of manliness he had betrayed; but, passing over the language he had held in the launch, and the means Mr. Leach found to persuade him to land again, we shall give his apology in his own words, as he now somewhat hurriedly delivered it, to Captain Truck, in his own person.
"I must have misunderstood your arrangement, captain," he said; "for somehow, though _how_ I do not exactly know--but _somehow_ the alarm of the Arabs was no sooner given than I felt as if I _ought_ to be in the launch to be at my post; but I suppose it was because I knew that the sails and spars that brought us here are mostly there, and that this was the spot to be most resolutely defended. I _do_ think, if they had waded off to us, I should have fought like a tiger!"
"No doubt you would, my dear sir, and like a wild cat too! We all make mistakes in judgment, in war, and in politics, and no fact is better known than that the best soldiers in the end are they who give a little ground at the first attack. But Mr. Leach has explained to you the plan of Mr. Monday, and I rely on your spirit and zeal, which there is now an excellent opportunity to prove, as before it was only demonstrated."
"If it were only an opportunity of meeting the Arabs sword in hand, captain."
"Pooh! pooh! my dear friend, take _two_ swords if you choose. One who is full of fight can never get the battle on his own terms. Fill the Arabs with the _schnaps_ of the poor Dane, and if they should make the smallest symptom of moving down towards us, I rely on you to give the alarm, in order that we may be ready for them. Trust to us for the _overture_ of the _piece_, as I trust to you for the overtures of peace."