 | CHAPTER XIV. The Red Rover |  |
14. CHAPTER XIV.
“So foul and fair a day I have not seen.”
—Macbeth.
The first watch of the night was marked by no
change. Wilder had joined his passengers, cheerful,
and with that air of enjoyment which every officer
of the sea is more or less wont to exhibit, when he
has disengaged his vessel from the dangers of the land,
and has fairly launched her on the trackless and fathomless
abyss of the ocean. He no longer alluded
to the hazards of the passage, but strove, by the
thousand nameless assiduities which his station enabled
him to manifest, to expel all recollection of
what had passed from their minds. Mrs Wyllys lent
and one, ignorant of what had occurred
between them, would have thought the little party,
around the evening's repast, was a contented and
unsuspecting group of travellers, who had commenced
their enterprise under the happiest auguries.
Still there was that, in the thoughtful eye and
clouded brow of the governess, as at times she turned
her bewildered look on our adventurer, which
denoted a mind far from being at ease. She listened
to the gay and peculiar, because professional, sallies
of the young mariner, with smiles that were indulgent,
while they were melancholy, as though his
youthful spirits, exhibited as they were by touches
of a humour that was thoroughly and quaintly nautical,
recalled familiar, but sad, images to her fancy.
Gertrude had less alloy in her pleasure. Home, with
a beloved and indulgent father, were before her;
and she felt, while the ship yielded to each fresh impulse
of the wind, as if another of those weary miles,
which had so long separated them, was already conquered.
During these short but pleasant hours, the adventurer,
who had been so oddly called into the command
of the Bristol trader, appeared in a new character.
Though his conversation was characterized
by the frank manliness of a seaman, it was, nevertheless,
tempered by the delicacy of perfect breeding.
The beautiful mouth of Gertrude often struggled to
conceal the smiles which played around her lips and
dimpled her cheeks, like a soft air ruffling the surface
of some limpid spring; and once or twice, when the
humour of Wilder came unexpectedly across her
youthful fancy, she was compelled to yield to the impulses
of an irresistible merriment.
One hour of the free intercourse of a ship can do
more towards softening the cold exterior in which
the world encrusts the best of human feelings, than
He who has not felt this truth, would do well to distrust
his own companionable qualities. It would seem
that man, when he finds himself in the solitude of
the ocean, feels the deepest how great is his dependancy
on others for happiness. Then it is that he
yields to sentiments with which he trifled, in the
wantonness of abundance, and is glad to seek relief
in the sympathies of his kind. A community of hazard
makes a community of interest, whether person
or property composes the stake. Perhaps a metaphysical,
and a too literal, reasoner might add, that,
as in such situations each one is conscious the condition
and fortunes of his neighbour are the mere
indexes of his own, they acquire value in his eyes
from their affinity to himself. If this conclusion be
true, Providence has happily so constituted the best
of the species, that the sordid feeling is too latent to
be discovered; and least of all was any one of the
three, who passed the first hours of the night around
the cabin table of the “Royal Caroline,” to be included
in so selfish a class. The nature of the intercourse,
which had rendered the first hours of their
acquaintance so singularly equivocal, appeared to be
forgotten in the freedom of the moment; or, if it
were remembered at all, it merely served to give the
young seaman additional interest in the eyes of the
females, as much by the mystery of the circumstances
as by the evident concern he had manifested in their
behalf.
The bell had struck eight; and the hoarse long-drawn
call, which summoned the sleepers to the
deck, was heard, before either of the party seemed
aware of the lateness of the hour.
“It is the middle watch,” said Wilder, smiling as
he observed that Gertrude started at the strange
sounds, and sat listening, like a timid doe that catches
the note of the hunter's horn. “We seamen are
of the spokesman on this occasion. There are,
however, ears in the ship to whom his notes are even
more discordant than to your own.”
“You mean the sleepers?” said Mrs Wyllys.
“I mean the watch below. There is nothing so
sweet to the foremast mariner as his sleep; for it is
the most precarious of all his enjoyments; on the
other hand, perhaps, it is the most treacherous companion
the Commander knows.”
“And why is the rest of the superior so much less
grateful than that of the common man?”
“Because he pillows his head on responsibility.”
“You are young, Mr Wilder, for a trust like this
you bear.”
“It is a service which makes us all prematurely
old.”
“Then, why not quit it?” said Gertrude, a little
hastily.
“Quit it!” he replied, gazing at her intently, for
an instant, while he suspended his reply. “It would
be to me like quitting the air we breathe.”
“Have you so long been devoted to your profession?”
resumed Mrs Wyllys, bending her thoughtful
eye, from the ingenuous countenance of her
pupil, once more towards the features of him she
addressed.
“I have reason to think I was born on the sea.”
“Think! You surely know your birth-place.”
“We are all of us dependant on the testimony of
others,” said Wilder, smiling, “for the account of
that important event. My earliest recollections are
blended with the sight of the ocean, and I can hardly
say that I am a creature of the land at all.”
“You have, at least, been fortunate in those who
have had the charge to watch over your education,
and your younger days.”
“I have!” he answered, with strong emphasis.
hands, he arose, and added, with a melancholy
smile: “And now to my last duty for the twenty-four
hours. Have you a disposition to look at the
night? So skilful and so stout a sailor should not
seek her birth, without passing an opinion on the
weather.”
The governess took his offered arm, and, with his
aid, ascended the stairs of the cabin in silence, each
seemingly finding sufficient employment in meditation.
She was followed by the more youthful, and
therefore more active Gertrude, who joined them,
as they stood together, on the weather side of the
quarter-deck.
The night was rather misty than dark. A full and
bright moon had arisen; but it pursued its path,
through the heavens, behind a body of dusky clouds,
that was much too dense for any borrowed rays to
penetrate. Here and there, a straggling gleam appeared
to find its way through a covering of vapour
less dense than the rest, and fell upon the water like
the dim illumination of a distant taper. As the wind
was fresh and easterly, the sea seemed to throw upward,
from its agitated surface, more light than it received;
long lines of white, glittering foam following
each other, and lending, at moments, a distinctness
to the surface of the waters, that the heavens
themselves wanted. The ship was bowed low on
its side; and, as it entered each rolling swell of the
ocean, a wide crescent of foam was driven ahead,
as if the element gambolled along its path. But,
though the time was propitious, the wind not absolutely
adverse, and the heavens rather gloomy than
threatening, an uncertain (and, to a landsman, it
might seem an unnatural) light gave to the view a
character of the wildest loneliness.
Gertrude shuddered, on reaching the deck, while
she murmured an expression of strange delight.
were heaving and setting in the horizon, around
which was shed most of that radiance that seemed
so supernatural, with a deep conviction that she was
now entirely in the hands of the Being who had
created the waters and the land. But Wilder looked
upon the scene as one fastens his gaze on a placid
sky. To him the view possessed neither novelty,
nor dread, nor charm. Not so, however, with his
more youthful and slightly enthusiastic companion.
After the first sensations of awe had a little subsided,
she exclaimed, in the fullest ardour of admiration,—
“One such sight would repay a month of imprisonment
in a ship! You must find deep enjoyment
in these scenes, Mr Wilder; you, who have them
always at command.”
“Yes, yes; there is pleasure to be found in them,
without doubt. I would that the wind had veer'd
a point or two! I like not that sky, nor yonder misty
horizon, nor this breeze hanging so dead at east.”
“The vessel makes great progress,” returned Mrs
Wyllys, calmly, observing that the young man spoke
without consciousness, and fearing the effect of his
words on the mind of her pupil. “If we are going
on our course, there is the appearance of a quick
and prosperous passage.”
“True!” exclaimed Wilder, as though he had just
become conscious of her presence. “Quite probable,
and very true. Mr Earing, the air is getting too
heavy for that duck. Hand all your top-gallant sails,
and haul the ship up closer. Should the wind hang
here at east-with-southing, we may want what offing
we can get.”
The mate replied in the prompt and obedient
manner which seamen use to their superiors; and,
after scanning the signs of the weather for a moment,
he promptly proceeded to see the order executed.
While the men were on the yards furling the light
Commander to the uninterrupted discharge of his
duty. But Wilder, so far from deeming it necessary
to lend his attention to so ordinary a service, the moment
after he had spoken, seemed perfectly unconscious
that the mandate had issued from his mouth.
He stood on the precise spot where the view of the
ocean and the heavens had first caught his eye, and
his gaze still continued fastened on the aspect of the
two elements. His look was always in the direction
of the wind, which, though far from a gale, often
fell upon the sails of the ship in heavy and sullen
puffs. After a long and anxious examination, the
young mariner muttered his thoughts to himself, and
commenced pacing the deck with rapid footsteps.
Still he would make sudden and short pauses, and
again rivet his gaze on the point of the compass
whence the blasts came sweeping across the waste
of waters; as though he distrusted the weather, and
would fain cause his keen glance to penetrate the
gloom of night, in order to relieve some painful
doubts. At length his step became arrested, in one
of those quick turns that he made at each end of his
narrow walk. Mrs Wyllys and Gertrude stood nigh,
and were enabled to read something of the anxious
character of his countenance, as his eye became
suddenly fastened on a distant point of the ocean,
though in a quarter exactly opposite to that whither
his former looks had been directed.
“Do you so much distrust the weather?” asked
the governess, when she thought his examination
had endured long enough to become ominous of evil.
“One looks not to leeward for the signs of the
weather, in a breeze like this,” was the answer.
“What see you, then, to fasten your eye on thus
intently?”
Wilder slowly raised his arm, and was about to
again.
“It was delusion!” he muttered, turning quickly
on his heel, and pacing the deck still more rapidly
than ever.
His companions watched the extraordinary, and
apparently unconscious, movements of the young
Commander, with amazement, and not without a
little secret dismay. Their own looks wandered
over the expanse of troubled water to leeward, but
nowhere could they see more than the tossing element,
capped with those ridges of garish foam which
served only to make the chilling waste more dreary
and imposing.
“We see nothing,” said Gertrude, when Wilder
again stopped in his walk, and once more gazed, as
before, on the seeming void.
“Look!” he answered, directing their eyes with
his finger: “Is there nothing there?”
“Nothing.”
“You look into the sea. Here, just where the heavens
and the waters meet; along that streak of misty
light, into which the waves are tossing themselves,
like little hillocks on the land. There; now 'tis
smooth again, and my eyes did not deceive me. By
heavens, it is a ship!”
“Sail, ho!” shouted a voice, from out atop, which
sounded in the ears of our adventurer like the
croaking of some sinister spirit, sweeping across the
deep.
“Whereaway?” was the stern demand.
“Here on our lee-quarter, sir,” returned the seaman,
at the top of his voice. “I make her out a
ship close-hauled; but, for an hour past, she has
looked more like mist than a vessel.”
“Ay, he is right,” muttered Wilder; “and yet
'tis a strange thing that a ship should be just there.”
“And why stranger than that we are here?”
“Why!” said the young man, regarding Mrs
Wyllys, who had put this question, with a perfectly
unconscious eye. “I say, 'tis strange she should be
there. I would she were steering northward.”
“But you give no reason. Are we always to have
warnings from you,” she continued, with a smile,
“without reasons? Do you deem us so utterly unworthy
of a reason? or do you think us incapable
of thought on a subject connected with the sea?
You have failed to make the essay, and are too quick
to decide. Try us this once. We may possibly deceive
your expectations.”
Wilder laughed faintly, and bowed, as if he recollected
himself. Still he entered into no explanation;
but again turned his gaze on the quarter of the
ocean where the strange sail was said to be. The
females followed his example, but ever with the
same want of success. As Gertrude expressed her
disappointment aloud, the soft tones of the complainant
found their way to the ears of our adventurer.
“You see the streak of dim light,” he said, again
pointing across the waste. “The clouds have lifted
a little there, but the spray of the sea is floating between
us and the opening. Her spars look like the
delicate work of a spider, against the sky, and yet
you see there are all the proportions, with the three
masts, of a noble ship.”
Aided by these minute directions, Gertrude at
length caught a glimpse of the faint object, and soon
succeeded in giving the true direction to the look of
her governess also. Nothing was visible but the dim
outline, not unaptly described by Wilder himself as
resembling a spider's web.
“It must be a ship!” said Mrs Wyllys; “but at a
vast distance.”
“Hum! Would it were farther. I could wish that
vessel any where but there.”
“And why not there? Have you reason to dread
an enemy has been waiting for us in this particular
spot?”
“No: Still I like not her position. Would to God
she were going north!”
“It is some vessel from the port of New York,
steering to his Majesty's islands in the Caribbean
sea.”
“Not so,” said Wilder, shaking his head; “no
vessel, from under the heights of Never-sink, could
gain that offing with a wind like this!”
“It is then some ship going into the same place,
or perhaps bound for one of the bays of the Middle
Colonies!”
“Her road would be too plain to be mistaken.
See; the stranger is close upon a wind.”
“It may be a trader, or a cruiser coming from
one of the places I have named.”
“Neither. The wind has had too much northing,
the last two days, for that.”
“It is a vessel that we have overtaken, and which
has come out of the waters of Long Island Sound.”
“That, indeed, may we yet hope,” muttered Wilder,
in a smothered voice.
The governess, who had put the foregoing questions,
in order to extract from the Commander of
the “Caroline” the information he so pertinaciously
withheld, had now exhausted all her own knowledge
on the subject, and was compelled to await his
further pleasure in the matter, or resort to the less
equivocal means of direct interrogation. But the
busy state of Wilder's thoughts left her no immediate
opportunity to pursue the subject. He soon summoned
the officer of the watch to his councils, and
they consulted together, apart, for many minutes.
filled the second station in the ship saw nothing so
remarkable in the appearance of a strange sail, in
the precise spot where the dim and nearly aerial
image of the unknown vessel was still visible; nor
did he hesitate to pronounce her some honest trader,
bent, like themselves, on her purpose of lawful
commerce. It would seem that his Commander
thought otherwise, as will appear by the short dialogue
that passed between them.
“Is it not extraordinary that she should be just
there?” demanded Wilder, after they had, each in
turn, made a closer examination of the faint object,
by the aid of an excellent night-glass.
“She would be better off, here,” returned the literal
seaman, who only had an eye for the nautical
situation of the stranger; “and we should be none
the worse for being a dozen leagues more to the
eastward, ourselves. If the wind holds here at eastby-south-half-south,
we shall have need of all that
offing. I got jammed once between Hatteras and
the Gulf”—
“But, do you not perceive that she is where no
vessel could or ought to be, unless she has run exactly
the same course with ourselves?” interrupted
Wilder. “Nothing, from any harbour south of New
York, could have such northing, as the wind has
been; while nothing, from the Colony of York,
would stand on this tack, if bound east; or would be
here, if going southward.”
The plain-going ideas of the honest mate were
open to a reasoning which the reader may find a little
obscure; for his mind contained a sort of chart
of the ocean, to which he could at any time refer,
with a proper discrimination between the various
winds, and all the different points of the compass.
When properly directed, he was not slow to see, as
a mariner, the probable justice of his young Commander's
began to take possession of his more obtuse faculties.
“It is downright unnatural, truly, that the fellow
should be there!” he replied, shaking his head, but
meaning no more than that it was entirely out of the
order of nautical propriety; “I see the philosophy
of what you say, Captain Wilder; and little do I
know how to explain it. It is a ship, to a mortal
certainty!”
“Of that there is no doubt. But a ship most
strangely placed!”
“I doubled the Good-Hope in the year '46,” continued
the other, “and saw a vessel lying, as it might
be, here, on our weather-bow—which is just opposite
to this fellow, since he is on our lee-quarter—
but there I saw a ship standing for an hour across
our fore-foot, and yet, though we set the azimuth,
not a degree did he budge, starboard or larboard,
during all that time, which, as it was heavy weather,
was, to say the least, something out of the common
order.”
“It was remarkable!” returned Wilder, with an
air so vacant, as to prove that he rather communed
with himself than attended to his companion.
“There are mariners who say that the flying
Dutchman cruises off that Cape, and that he often
gets on the weather side of a stranger, and bears
down upon him, like a ship about to lay him aboard.
Many is the King's cruiser, as they say, that has
turned her hands up from a sweet sleep, when the
look-outs have seen a double decker coming down
in the night, with ports up, and batteries lighted;
but then this can't be any such craft as the Dutchman,
since she is, at the most, no more than a large
sloop of war, if a cruiser at all.”
“No, no,” said Wilder, “this can never be the
Dutchman.”
“Yon vessel shows no lights; and, for that matter,
question its being a ship at all. Then, again, the
Dutchman is always seen to windward, and the
strange sail we have here lies broad upon our lee-quarter!”
“It is no Dutchman,” said Wilder, drawing a long
breath, like a man a waking from a trance. “Main-topmast-cross-trees,
there!”
The man who was stationed aloft answered to
this hail in the customary manner, the short conver-sation
that succeeded being necessarily maintained
in shouts, rather than in speeches.
“How long have you seen the stranger?” was the
first demand of Wilder.
“I have just come aloft, sir; but the man I relieved
tells me more than an hour.”
“And has the man you relieved come down? or
what is that I see sitting on the lee side of the mast-head?”
“ 'Tis Bob Brace, sir; who says he cannot sleep,
and so he stays upon the yard to keep me company.”
“Send the man down. I would speak to him.”
While the wakeful seaman was descending the
rigging, the two officers continued silent, each seeming
to find sufficient occupation in musing on what
had already passed.
“And why are you not in your hammock?” said
Wilder, a little sternly, to the man who, in obedience
to his order, had descended to the quarter-deck.
“I am not sleep-bound, your Honour, and therefore
I had the mind to pass another hour aloft.”
“And why are you, who have two night-watches
to keep already, so willing to enlist in a third?”
“To own the truth, sir, my mind has been a little
misgiving about this passage, since the moment we
lifted our anchor.”
Mrs Wyllys and Gertrude, who were auditors, insensibly
which betrayed itself by the thrilling of nerves,
and an accelerated movement of the pulse.
“And you have your doubts, sir!” exclaimed the
Captain, in a tone of slight contempt. “Pray, may
I ask what you have seen, on board here, to make
you distrust the ship.”
“No harm in asking, your Honour,” returned the
seaman, crushing the hat he held between two hands
that had a gripe like a couple of vices, “and so I
hope there is none in answering. I pulled an oar
in the boat after the old man this morning, and I
cannot say I like the manner in which he got from
the chase. Then, there is something in the ship to
leeward that comes athwart my fancy like a drag,
and I confess, your Honour, that I should make but
little headway in a nap, though I should try the
swing of a hammock.”
“How long is it since you made the ship to leeward?”
gravely demanded Wilder.
“I will not swear that a real living ship has been
made out at all, sir. Something I did see, just before
the bell struck seven, and there it is, just as
clear and just as dim, to be seen now by them that
have good eyes.”
“And how did she bear when you first saw her?”
“Two or three points more toward the beam
than it is now.”
“Then we are passing her!” exclaimed Wilder,
with a pleasure too evident to be concealed.
“No, your Honour, no. You forget, sir, the ship
has come closer to the wind since the middle watch
was set.”
“True,” returned his young Commander, in a
tone of disappointment; “true, very true. And her
bearing has not changed since you first made her?”
“Not by compass, sir. It is a quick boat that, or
it would never hold such way with the `Royal
which every body knows is the real play of this
ship.”
“Go, get you to your hammock. In the morning
we may have a better look at the fellow.”
“And—you hear me, sir,” added the attentive
mate, “do not keep the men's eyes open below, with
a tale as long as the short cable, but take your own
natural rest, and leave all others, that have clear
consciences, to do the same.”
“Mr Earing,” said Wilder, as the seaman reluctantly
proceeded towards his place of rest, “we
will bring the ship upon the other tack, and get
more easting, while the land is so far from us.
This course will be setting us upon Hatteras. Besides”—
“Yes, sir,” the mate replied, observing his superior
to hesitate, “as you were saying,—besides, no
one can foretel the length of a gale, nor the real
quarter it may come from.”
“Precisely. No one can answer for the weather.
The men are scarcely in their hammocks; turn them
up at once, sir, before their eyes are heavy, and we
will bring the ship's head the other way.”
The mate instantly sounded the well-known cry,
which summoned the watch below to the assistance
of their shipmates on the deck. Little delay occurred,
and not a word was uttered, but the short, authoritative
mandates which Wilder saw fit to deliver from
his own lips. No longer pressed up against the
wind, the ship, obedient to her helm, gracefully began
to incline her head from the waves, and to bring
the wind abeam. Then, instead of breasting and
mounting the endless hillocks, like a being that toiled
heavily along its path, she fell into the trough of the
sea, from which she issued like a courser, who, having
conquered an ascent, shoots along the track with
redoubled velocity. For an instant the wind appeared
which rolled along on each side the vessel's bows,
sufficiently proclaimed that she was skimming lightly
before it. In another moment, the tall spars began
to incline again to the west, and the vessel came
swooping up to the wind, until her plunges and shocks
against the seas were renewed as violently as before.
When every yard and sheet were properly trimmed
to meet the new position of the vessel, Wilder turned
anxiously to get a glimpse of the stranger. A
minute was lost in ascertaining the precise spot
where he ought to appear; for, in such a chaos of
water, and with no guide but the judgment, the eye
was apt to deceive itself, by referring to the nearer
and more familiar objects by which the spectator
was surrounded.
“The stranger has vanished!” said Earing, with
a voice in whose tones mental relief and distrust
were both, at the same moment, oddly manifesting
themselves.
“He should be on this quarter; but I confess I
see him not!”
“Ay, ay, sir; this is the way that the midnight
cruiser off the Hope is said to come and go. There
are men who have seen that vessel shut in by a fog,
in as fine a star-light night as was ever met in a
southern latitude. But then this cannot be the
Dutchman, since it is so many long leagues from the
pitch of the Cape to the coast of North-America.
“Here he lies; and, by heaven! he has already
gone about!” cried Wilder.
The truth of what our young adventurer had just
affirmed was indeed now sufficiently evident to the
eye of any seaman. The same diminutive and misty
tracery, as before, was to be seen on the light back-ground
of the threatening horizon, looking not unlike
the faintest shadows cast upon some brighter surface
by the deception of the phantasmagoria. But to the
the different lines of her masts, it was very
evident that her course had been suddenly and dexterously
changed, and that she was now steering no
longer to the south and west, but, like themselves,
holding her way towards the north-east. The fact
appeared to make a sensible impression on them
all; though probably, had their reasons been sifted,
they would have been found to be entirely different.
“That ship has truly tacked!” Earing exclaimed,
after a long, meditative pause, and with a voice in
which distrust, or rather awe, was beginning to get
the ascendancy. “Long as I have followed the sea,
have I never before seen a vessel tack against such
a head-beating sea. He must have been all shaking
in the wind, when we gave him the last look, or we
should not have lost sight of him.”
“A lively and quick-working vessel might do it,”
said Wilder; “especially if strong handed.”
“Ay, the hand of Beelzebub is always strong; and
a light job would he make of it, in forcing even a
dull craft to sail.”
“Mr Earing,” interrupted Wilder, “we will pack
upon the `Caroline,' and try our sailing with this
taunting stranger. Get the main tack aboard, and
set the top-gallant-sail.”
The slow-minded mate would have remonstrated
against the order, had he dared; but there was that,
in the calm, subdued, but deep tones of his young
Commander, which admonished him of the hazard.
He was not wrong, however, in considering the duty
he was now to perform as one not without some
risk. The ship was already moving under quite as
much canvas as he deemed it prudent to show at
such an hour, and with so many threatening symptoms
of heavier weather hanging about the horizon.
The necessary orders were, however, repeated as
promptly as they had been given. The seamen had
among themselves concerning his appearance
and situation; and they obeyed with an alacrity that
might perhaps have been traced to a secret but common
wish to escape from his vicinity. The sails
were successively and speedily set; and then each
man folded his arms, and stood gazing steadily and
intently at the shadowy object to leeward, in order
to witness the effect of the change.
The “Royal Caroline” seemed, like her crew,
sensible of the necessity of increasing her speed.
As she felt the pressure of the broad sheets of canvas
that had just been distended, the ship bowed
lower, and appeared to recline on the bed of water
which rose under her lee nearly to the scuppers. On
the other side, the dark planks, and polished copper,
lay bare for many feet, though often washed by the
waves that came sweeping along her length, green
and angrily, still capped, as usual, with crests of lucid
foam. The shocks, as the vessel tilted against
the billows, were becoming every moment more severe;
and, from each encounter, a bright cloud of
spray arose, which either fell glittering on the deck,
or drove, in brilliant mist, across the rolling water,
far to leeward.
Wilder long watched the ship, with an excited
mien, but with all the intelligence of a seaman.
Once or twice, when she trembled, and appeared to
stop, in her violent encounter with a wave, as
suddenly as though she had struck a rock, his lips
severed, and he was about to give the order to
reduce the sail; but a glance at the misty looking
image on the western horizon seemed ever to cause
his mind to change its purpose. Like a desperate
adventurer, who had cast his fortunes on some hazardous
experiment, he appeared to await the issue
with a resolution that was as haughty as it was unconquerable.
“That top-mast is bending like a whip,” muttered
the careful Earing, at his elbow.
“Let it go; we have spare spars to put in its
place,” was the answer.
“I have always found the `Caroline' leaky after
she has been strained by driving her against the sea.”
“We have our pumps.”
“True, sir; but, in my poor judgment, it is idle
to think of outsailing a craft that the devil commands,
if he does not altogether handle it.”
“One will never know that, Mr Earing, till he
tries.”
“We gave the Dutchman a chance of that sort;
and, I must say, we not only had the most canvas
spread, but much the best of the wind: And what
good did it all do? there he lay, under his three topsails,
driver, and jib; and we, with studding sails
alow and aloft, couldn't alter his bearing a foot.”
“The Dutchman is never seen in a northern latitude.”
“Well, I cannot say he is,” returned Earing, in a
sort of compelled resignation; “but he who has put
that flyer off the Cape may have found the cruise so
profitable, as to wish to send another ship into these
seas.”
Wilder made no reply. He had either humoured
the superstitious apprehension of his mate enough,
or his mind was too intent on its principal object, to
dwell longer on a foreign subject.
Notwithstanding the seas that met her advance,
in such quick succession as greatly to retard her progress,
the Bristol trader had soon toiled her way
through a league of the troubled element. At every
plunge she took, the bow divided a mass of water,
that appeared, at each instant, to become more vast
and more violent in its rushing; and more than once
the struggling hull was nearly buried forward, in
or penetrating.
The mariners narrowly watched the smallest movements
of their vessel. Not a man left her deck, for
hours. The superstitious awe, which had taken such
deep hold of the untutored faculties of the chief mate,
had not been slow to extend its influence to the
meanest of her crew. Even the accident which had
befallen their former Commander, and the sudden
and mysterious manner in which the young officer,
who now trod the quarter-deck, so singularly firm
and calm, under circumstances deemed so imposing,
had their influence in heightening the wild impression.
The impunity with which the “Caroline”
bore such a press of canvas, under the circumstances
in which she was placed, added to their kindling admiration;
and, ere Wilder had determined, in his
own mind, on the powers of his ship, in comparison
with those of the vessel that so strangely hung in
the horizon, he was himself becoming the subject
of unnatural and revolting suspicions to his own
crew.
| CHAPTER XIV. The Red Rover | |