University of Virginia Library

1. THE WATER-WITCH.

1. CHAPTER I.

It is not necessary to say, with how mnch interest
Alderman Van Beverout, and his friend the Patroon,
had witnessed all the proceedings on board the Coquette.
Something very like an exclamation of
pleasure escaped the former, when it was known
that the ship had missed the brigantine, and that
there was now little probability of overtaking her that
night.

“Of what use is it to chase your fire-flies, about
the ocean, Patroon?” muttered the Alderman, in the
ear of Oloff Van Staats. “I have no further knowledge
of this `Skimmer of the Seas,' than is decent
in the principal of a commercial house,—but reputation
is like a sky-rocket, that may be seen from afar!
Her Majesty has no ship that can overtake the free-trader,
and why fatigue the innocent vessel for nothing?”

“Captain Ludlow has other desires than the mere
capture of the brigantine;” returned the laconic and
sententious Patroon. “The opinion that Alida de
Barbérie is in her, has great influence with that
gentleman.”

“This is strange apathy, Mr. Van Staats, in one
who is as good as engaged to my niece, if he be not
actually married. Alida Barbérie has great influence
with that gentleman! And pray, with whom,
that knows her, has she not influence?”

“The sentiment in favor of the young lady, in
general, is favorable.”

“Sentiment and favors! Am I to understand, Sir,
by this coolness, that our bargain is broken?—that
the two fortunes are not to be brought together, and
that the lady is not to be your wife?”

“Harkee, Mr. Van Beverout; one who is saving
of his income and sparing of his words, can have no
pressing necessity for the money of others; and, on
occasion, he may afford to speak plainly. Your niece
has shown so decided a preference for another, that
it has materially lessened the liveliness of my regard.”

“It were a pity that so much animation should
fail of its object! It would be a sort of stoppage in
the affairs of Cupid! Men should deal candidly, in
all business transactions, Mr. Van Staats; and you
will permit me to ask, as for a final settlement, if
your mind is changed in regard to the daughter of
old Etienne de Barbérie, or not?”

“Not changed, but quite decided;” returned the
young Patroon. “I cannot say that I wish the successor
of my mother to have seen so much of the
world. We are a family that is content with our situation,
and new customs would derange my household.”

“I am no wizard, Sir; but for the benefit of a son
of my old friend Stephanus Van Staats, I will venture,
for once, on a prophecy. You will marry, Mr.
Van Staats—yes, marry—and you will wive, Sir,
with—prudence prevents me from saying with whom
you will wive; but you may account yourself a lucky
man, if it be not with one who will cause you to
forget house and home, lands and friends, manors
and rents, and in short all the solid comforts of life.
It would not surprise me to hear that the prediction of
the Poughkeepsie fortune-teller should be fulfilled!”

“And what is your real opinion, Alderman Van
Beverout, of the different mysterious events we have
witnessed?” demanded the Patroon, in a manner to

prove that the interest he took in the subject, completely
smothered any displeasure he might otherwise
have felt at so harsh a prophecy. “This sea-green
lady is no common woman!”

“Sea-green and sky-blue!” interrupted the impatient
burgher. “The hussy is but too common,
Sir; and there is the calamity. Had she been satisfied
with transacting her concerns in a snug and
reasonable manner, and to have gone upon the high
seas again, we should have had none of this foolery,
to disturb accounts which ought to have been considered
settled. Mr. Van Staats, will you allow me
to ask a few direct questions, if you can find leisure
for their answer?”

The Patroon nodded his head, in the affirmative.

“What do you suppose, Sir, to have become of
my niece?”

“Eloped.”

“And with whom?”

Van Staats of Kinderhook stretched an arm towards
the open ocean, and again nodded. The Alderman
mused a moment; and then he chuckled, as if
some amusing idea had at once gotten the better of
his ill-humor.

“Come, come, Patroon,” he said, in his wonted
amicable tone, when addressing the lord of a hundred
thousand acres, “this business is like a complicated
account, a little difficult till one gets acquainted
with the books, and then all becomes plain as
your hand. There were referees in the settlement
of the estate of Kobus Van Klinck, whom I will not
name; but what between the handwriting of the
old grocer, and some inaccuracy in the figures, they
had but a blind time of it until they discovered
which way the balance ought to come; and then by
working backward and forward, which is the true
spirit of your just referee, they got all straight in the
end. Kobus was not very lucid in his statements,

and he was a little apt to be careless of ink. His
leger might be called a book of the black art; for it
was little else than fly-tracks and blots, though the
last were found of great assistance in rendering the
statements satisfactory. By calling three of the biggest
of them sugar-hogsheads, a very fair balance
was struck between him and a peddling Yankee who
was breeding trouble for the estate; and I challenge,
even at this distant day, when all near interests in
the results may be said to sleep, any responsible man
to say that they did not look as much like those
articles as any thing else. Something they must
have been, and as Kobus dealt largely in sugar, there
was also a strong moral probability that they were
the said hogsheads. Come, come, Patroon; we shall
have the jade back again, in proper time. Thy ardor
gets the better of reason; but this is the way with
true love, which is none the worse for a little delay.
Alida is not one to balk thy merriment; these Norman
wenches are not heavy of foot at a dance, or
apt to go to sleep when the fiddles are stirring!”

With this consolation, Alderman Van Beverout saw
fit to close the dialogue, for the moment. How far
he succeeded in bringing back the mind of the Patroon
to its allegiance, the result must show; though
we shall take this occasion to observe again, that the
young proprietor found a satisfaction in the excitement
of the present scene, that, in the course of a
short and little diversified life, he had never before
experienced.

While others slept, Ludlow passed most of the
night on deck. He laid himself down in the hammock-cloths,
for an hour or two, towards morning;
though the wind did not sigh through the rigging
louder than common, without arousing him from his
slumbers. At each low call of the officer of the watch
to the crew, his head was raised to glance around the
narrow horizon; and the ship never rolled heavily,

without causing him to awake. He believed that
the brigantine was near, and, for the first watch, he
was not without expectation that the two vessels
might unexpectedly meet in the obscurity. When
this hope failed, the young seaman had recourse to
artifice, in his turn, in order to entrap one who appeared
so practised and so expert in the devices of
the sea.

About midnight, when the watches were changed,
and the whole crew, with the exception of the idlers,
were on deck, orders were given to hoist out the
boats. This operation, one of exceeding toil and difficulty
in lightly-manned ships, was soon performed on
board the Queen's cruiser, by the aid of yard and
stay-tackles, to which the force of a hundred seamen
was applied. When four of these little attendants
on the ship were in the water, they were entered by
their crews, prepared for serious service. Officers,
on whom Ludlow could rely, were put in command
of the three smallest, while he took charge of the
fourth in person. When all were ready, and each
inferior had received his especial instructions, they
quitted the side of the vessel, pulling off, in diverging
lines, into the gloom of the ocean. The boat of Ludlow
had not gone fifty fathoms, before he was perfectly
conscious of the inutility of a chase; for the
obscurity of the night was so great, as to render the
spars of his own ship nearly indistinct, even at that
short distance. After pulling by compass some ten
or fifteen minutes, in a direction that carried him to
windward of the Coquette, the young man commanded
the crew to cease rowing, and prepared himself
to await, patiently, for the result of his undertaking.

There was nothing to vary the monotony of such
a scene, for an hour, but the regular rolling of a sea
that was but little agitated, a few occasional strokes of
the oars, that were given in order to keep the barge

in its place, or the heavy breathing of some smaller
fish of the cetaceous kind, as it rose to the surface
to inhale the atmosphere. In no quarter of the heavens
was any thing visible; not even a star was peeping
out, to cheer the solitude and silence of that solitary
place. The men were nodding on the thwarts,
and our young sailor was about to relinquish his design
as fruitless, when suddenly a noise was heard, at
no great distance from the spot where they lay. It
was one of those sounds which would have been inexplicable
to any but a seaman, but which conveyed
a meaning to the ears of Ludlow, as plain as that
which could be imparted by speech to a landsman.
A moaning creak was followed by the low rumbling
of a rope, as it rubbed on some hard or distended
substance; and then succeeded the heavy flap of canvas,
that, yielding first to a powerful impulse, was
suddenly checked.

“Hear ye that?” exclaimed Ludlow, a little above
a whisper. “'Tis the brigantine, gybing his main-boom!
Give way, men—see all ready to lay him
aboard!”

The crew started from their slumbers; the plash
of oars was heard, and, in the succeeding moment,
the sails of a vessel, gliding through the obscurity,
nearly across their course, were visible.

“Now spring to your oars, men!” continued Ludlow,
with the eagerness of one engaged in chase.
“We have him to advantage, and he is ours!—a long
pull and a strong pull—steadily, boys, and together!”

The practised crew did their duty. It seemed but
a moment, before they were close upon the chase.

“Another stroke of the oars, and she is ours!”
cried Ludlow.—“Grapple!—to your arms!—away,
boarders, away!”

These orders came on the ears of the men with
the effect of martial blasts. The crew shouted, the
clashing of arms was heard, and the tramp of feet

on the deck of the vessel announced the success of
the enterprise. A minute of extreme activity and
of noisy confusion followed. The cheers of the boarders
had been heard, at a distance; and rockets shot
into the air, from the other boats, whose crews answered
the shouts with manful lungs. The whole
ocean appeared in a momentary glow, and the roar
of a gun from the Coquette added to the fracas. The
ship set several lanterns, in order to indicate her position;
while blue-lights, and other marine signals
were constantly burning in the approaching boats, as
if those who guided them were anxious to intimidate
the assailed by a show of numbers.

In the midst of this scene of sudden awakening
from the most profound quiet, Ludlow began to look
about him, in order to secure the principal objects of
the capture. He had repeated his orders about entering
the cabins, and concerning the person of the
`Skimmer of the Seas,' among the other instructions
given to the crews of the different boats; and the instant
they found themselves in quiet possession of the
prize, the young man dashed into the private recesses
of the vessel, with a heart that throbbed even
more violently than during the ardor of boarding.
To cast open the door of a cabin, beneath the high
quarter-deck, and to descend to the level of its floor,
were the acts of a moment. But disappointment and
mortification succeeded to triumph. A second glance
was not necessary to show that the coarse work and
foul smells he saw and encountered, did not belong
to the commodious and even elegant accommodations
of the brigantine.

“Here is no Water-Witch!” he exclaimed aloud,
under the impulse of sudden surprise.

“God be praised!” returned a voice, which was
succeeded by a frightened face from out a state-room.
“We were told the rover was in the offing, and
thought the yells could come from nothing human!”

The blood, which had been rushing through the
arteries and veins of Ludlow so tumultuously, now
crept into his cheeks, and was felt tingling at his fingers'-ends.
He gave a hurried order to his men to
re-enter their boat, leaving every thing as they found
it. A short conference between the commander of
Her Majesty's ship Coquette, and the seaman of the
state-room, succeeded; and then the former hastened
on deck, whence his passage into the barge occupied
but a moment. The boat pulled away from the fancied
prize, amid a silence that was uninterrupted by
any other sound than that of a song, which, to all
appearance, came from one who by this time had
placed himself at the vessel's helm. All that can be
said of the music is, that it was suited to the words,
and all that could be heard of the latter, was a portion
of a verse, if verse it might be called, which had
exercised the talents of some thoroughly nautical
mind. As we depend, for the accuracy of the quotation,
altogether on the fidelity of the journal of the
midshipman already named, it is possible that some
injustice may be done the writer; but, according to
that document, he sang a strain of the coasting song,
which we have prefixed to this chapter as its motto.

The papers of the coaster did not give a more detailed
description of her character and pursuits, than
that which is contained in this verse. It is certain
that the log-book of the Coquette was far less explicit.
The latter merely said, that `a coaster called
the Stately Pine, John Turner, master, bound from
New-York to the Province of North Carolina, was
boarded at one o'clock, in the morning, all well.' But
this description was not of a nature to satisfy the seamen
of the cruiser. Those who had been actually
engaged in the expedition were much too excited to
see things in their true colors; and, coupled with
the two previous escapes of the Water-Witch, the
event just related had no small share in confirming

their former opinions concerning her character. The
sailing-master was not now alone, in believing that
all pursuit of the brigantine was perfectly useless.

But these were conclusions that the people of the
Coquette made at their leisure, rather than those
which suggested themselves on the instant. The boats,
led by the flashes of light, had joined each other,
and were rowing fast towards the ship, before the
pulses of the actors beat with sufficient calmness to
allow of serious reflection; nor was it until the adventurers
were below, and in their hammocks, that
they found suitable occasion to relate what had occurred
to a wondering auditory. Robert Yarn, the
fore-top-man who had felt the locks of the sea-green
lady blowing in his face during the squall, took advantage
of the circumstance to dilate on his experiences;
and, after having advanced certain positions
that particularly favored his own theories, he produced
one of the crew of the barge, who stood ready
to affirm, in any court in Christendom, that he actually
saw the process of changing the beautiful and
graceful lines that distinguished the hull of the smuggler,
into the coarser and more clumsy model of the
coaster.

“There are know-nothings,” continued Robert,
after he had fortified his position by the testimony in
question, “who would deny that the water of the
ocean is blue, because the stream that turns the
parish-mill happens to be muddy. But your real
mariner, who has lived much in foreign parts, is a man
who understands the philosophy of life, and knows
when to believe a truth and when to scorn a lie. As
for a vessel changing her character when hard pushed
in a chase, there are many instances; though having
one so near us, there is less necessity to be roving
over distant seas, in search of a case to prove it. My
own opinion concerning this here brigantine, is much

as follows;—that is to say, I do suppose there was
once a real living hermaphrodite of her build and rig,
and that she might be employed in some such trade
as this craft is thought to be in; and that, in some
unlucky hour, she and her people met with a mishap,
that has condemned her ever since to appear on this
coast at stated times. She has, however, a natural
dislike to a royal cruiser; and no doubt the thing is
now sailed by those who have little need of compass
or observation! All this being true, it is not wonderful
that when the boat's-crew got on her decks, they
found her different from what they had expected.
This much is certain, that when I lay within a boat-hook's
length of her spritsail-yard-arm, she was a half-rig,
with a woman figure-head, and as pretty a show
of gear aloft, as eye ever looked upon; while every
thing below was as snug as a tobacco-box with the
lid down:—and here you all say that she is a high-decked
schooner, with nothing ship-shape about her!
What more is wanting to prove the truth of what
has been stated?—If any man can gainsay it, let him
speak.”

As no man did gainsay it, it is presumed that the
reasoning of the top-man gained many proselytes.
It is scarcely necessary to add, how much of mystery
and fearful interest was thrown around the redoubtable
`Skimmer of the Seas,' by the whole transaction.

There was a different feeling on the quarter-deck.
The two lieutenants put their heads together, and
looked grave; while one or two of the midshipmen,
who had been in the boats, were observed to whisper
with their messmates, and to indulge in smothered
laughter. As the captain, however, maintained his
ordinary dignified and authoritative mien, the merriment
went no farther, and was soon entirely repressed.

While on this subject, it may be proper to add,

that, in course of time, the Stately Pine reached the
capes of North Carolina, in safety; and that, having
effected her passage over Edenton bar, without
striking, she ascended the river to the point of her
destination. Here the crew soon began to throw out
hints, relative to an encounter of their schooner
with a French cruiser. As the British empire, even
in its most remote corners, was at all times alive to
its nautical glory, the event soon became the discourse
in more distant parts of the colony; and in
less than six months, the London journals contained
a very glowing account of an engagement, in which
the names of the Stately Pine, and of John Turner,
made some respectable advances towards immortality.

If Captain Ludlow ever gave any further account
of the transaction than what was stated in the log-book
of his ship, the bienséance, observed by the
Lords of the Admiralty, prevented it from becoming
public.

Returning from this digression, which has no other
connexion with the immediate thread of the narrative,
than that which arises from a reflected interest,
we shall revert to the further proceedings on board
the cruiser.

When the Coquette had hoisted in her boats, that
portion of the crew which did not belong to the
watch was dismissed to their hammocks, the lights
were lowered, and tranquillity once more reigned in
the ship. Ludlow sought his rest, and although there
is reason to think that his slumbers were a little disturbed
by dreams, he remained tolerably quiet in the
hammock-cloths, the place in which it has already
been said he saw fit to take his repose, until the
morning watch had been called.

Although the utmost vigilance was observed among
the officers and look-outs, during the rest of the
night, there occurred nothing to arouse the crew
from their usual recumbent attitudes between the

guns. The wind continued light but steady, the sea
smooth, and the heavens clouded, as during the first
hours of darkness.