 | CHAPTER XV. The Red Rover |  |
15. CHAPTER XV.
—“I' the name of truth,
Are ye fantastical, or that indeed
Which outwardly ye show?”
—Macbeth.
The divison of employment that is found in
Europe, and which brings, in its train, a peculiar and
corresponding limitation of ideas, has never yet existed
in our country. If our artisans have, in consequence,
been less perfect in their several handicrafts,
they have ever been remarkable for intelligence
of a more general character. Superstition is,
Few common mariners are exempt from its influence,
in a greater or less degree; though it is found to exist,
among the seamen of different people, in forms
that are tempered by their respective national habits
and peculiar opinions. The sailor of the Baltic has
his secret rites, and his manner of propitiating the
gods of the wind; the Mediterranean mariner tears
his hair, and kneels before the shrine of some impotent
saint, when his own hand might better do the
service he implores; while the more skilful Englishman
sees the spirits of the dead in the storm, and
hears the cries of a lost messmate in the gusts that
sweep the waste he navigates. Even the better instructed
and still more reasoning American has not
been able to shake entirely off the secret influence
of a sentiment that seems the concomitant of his
condition.
There is a majesty, in the might of the great deep,
that has a tendency to keep open the avenues of that
dependant credulity which more or less besets the
mind of every man, however he may have fortified
his intellect by thought. With the firmament above
him, and wandering on an interminable waste of water,
the less gifted seaman is tempted, at every step
of his pilgrimage, to seek the relief of some propitious
omen. The few which are supported by scientific
causes give support to the many that have their
origin only in his own excited and doubting temperament.
The gambols of the dolphin, the earnest and
busy passage of the porpoise, the ponderous sporting
of the unwieldy whale, and the screams of the marine
birds, have all, like the signs of the ancient
soothsayers, their attendant consequences of good
or evil. The confusion between things which are
explicable, and things which are not, gradually brings
the mind of the mariner to a state in which any exciting
and unnatural sentiment is welcome, if it be
on which he passes his life, it bears the impression
of what is thought a supernatural, because it is an
incomprehensible, power.
The crew of the “Royal Caroline” had not even
the advantage of being natives of a land where necessity
and habit have united to bring every man's
faculties into exercise, to a certain extent at least.
They were all from that distant island that has been,
and still continues to be, the hive of nations, which
are probably fated to carry her name to a time when
the sight of her fallen power shall be sought as a
curiosity, like the remains of a city in a desert.
The whole events of that day of which we are
now writing had a tendency to arouse the latent superstition
of these men. It has already been said,
that the calamity which had befallen their former
Commander, and the manner in which a stranger
had succeeded to his authority, had their influence in
increasing their disposition to doubt. The sail to
leeward appeared most inopportunely for the character
of our adventurer, who had not yet enjoyed a
fitting opportunity to secure the confidence of his
inferiors, before such untoward circumstances occurred
as threatened to deprive him of it for ever.
There has existed but one occasion for introducing
to the reader the mate who filled the station in the
ship next to that of Earing. He was called Nighthead;
a name that was, in some measure, indicative
of a certain misty obscurity that beset his superior
member. The qualities of his mind may be appreciated
by the few reflections he saw fit to make on
the escape of the old mariner whom Wilder had intended
to visit with a portion of his indignation. This
individual, as he was but one degree removed from
the common men in situation, so was he every way
qualified to maintain that association with the crew
which was, in some measure, necessary between
to his opportunities of intercourse, and his sentiments
were very generally received with a portion of that
deference which is thought to be due to the opinions
of an oracle.
After the ship had been worn, and during the time
that Wilder, with a view to lose sight of his unwelcome
neighbour, was endeavouring to urge her
through the seas in the manner already described,
this stubborn and mystified tar remained in the waist
of the vessel, surrounded by a few of the older and
more experienced seamen, holding converse on the
remarkable appearance of the phantom to leeward,
and of the extraordinary manner in which their unknown
officer saw fit to attest the enduring qualities
of their own vessel. We shall commence our relation
of the dialogue at a point where Nighthead saw
fit to discontinue his distant inuendos, in order to
deal more directly with the subject he had under
discussion.
“I have heard it said, by older sea-faring men
than any in this ship,” he continued, “that the devil
has been known to send one of his mates aboard a
lawful trader, to lead her astray among shoals and
quicksands, in order that be might make a wreck,
and get his share of the salvage, among the souls of
the people. What man can say who gets into the
cabin, when an unknown name stands first in the
shipping list of a vessel?”
“The stranger is shut in by a cloud!” exclaimed
one of the mariners, who, while he listened to the
philosophy of his officer, still kept an eye riveted on
the mysterious object to leeward.
“Ay, ay; it would occasion no surprise to see that
craft steering into the moon! Luck is like a flyblock
and its yard: when one goes up, the other
comes down. They say the red-coats ashore have
had their turn of fortune, and it is time we honest
the Horn, brothers, in a King's ship, and I have seen
the bright cloud that never sets, and have held a
living corposant in my own hand: But these are
things which any man may look on, who will go upon
a yard in a gale, or ship aboard a Southseaman: Still,
I pronounce it uncommon for a vessel to see her
shadow in the haze, as we have ours at this moment;
for there it comes again!—hereaway, between the
after-shroud and the backstay—or for a trader to
carry sail in a fashion that would make every knee
in a bomb-ketch work like a tooth-brush fiddling
across a passenger's mouth, after he had had a smart
bout with the sea sickness.”
“And yet the lad holds the ship in hand,” said the
oldest of all the seamen, who kept his gaze fastened
on the proceedings of Wilder; “he is driving her
through it in a mad manner, I will allow; but yet,
so far, he has not parted a yarn.”
“Yarns!” repeated the mate, in a tone of strong
contempt; “what signify yarns, when the whole cable
is to snap, and in such a fashion as to leave no
hope for the anchor, except in a buoy rope? Hark
ye, old Bill; the devil never finishes his jobs by
halves: What is to happen will happen bodily; and
no easing-off, as if you were lowering the Captain's
lady into a boat, and he on deck to see fair play.”
“Mr Nighthead knows how to keep a ship's reckoning
in all weathers!” said another, whose manner
sufficiently announced the dependance he himself
placed on the capacity of the second mate.
“And no credit to me for the same. I have seen
all services, and handled every rig, from a lugger to
a double-decker! Few men can say more in their
own favour than myself; for the little I know has
been got by much hardship, and small schooling.
But what matters information, or even seamanship,
against witchcraft, or the workings of one whom I
offending any gentleman unnecessarily? I say, brothers,
that this ship is packed upon in a fashion that
no prudent seaman ought to, or would, allow.”
A general murmur announced that most, if not all,
of his hearers accorded in his opinion.
“Let us examine calmly and reasonably, and in a
manner becoming enlightened Englishmen, into the
whole state of the case,” the mate continued, casting
an eye obliquely over his shoulder, perhaps to
make sure that the individual, of whose displeasure
he stood in such salutary awe, was not actually at
his elbow. “We are all of us, to a man, native-born
islanders, without a drop of foreign blood among us;
not so much as a Scotchman or an Irishman in the
ship. Let us therefore look into the philosophy of
this affair, with that sort of judgment which becomes
our breeding. In the first place, here is honest
Nicholas Nichols slips from this here water-cask,
and breaks me a leg! Now, brothers, I've known
men to fall from tops and yards, and lighter damage
done. But what matters it, to a certain person, how
far he throws his man, since he has only to lift a finger
to get us all hanged? Then, comes me aboard
here a stranger, with a look of the colonies about
him, and none of your plain-dealing, out-and-out,
smooth English faces, such as a man can cover with
the flat of his hand.”—
“The lad is well enough to the eye,” interrupted
the old mariner.
“Ay, therein lies the whole deviltry of this matter!
He is good-looking, I grant ye; but it is not
such good-looking as an Englishman loves. There
is a meaning about him that I don't like; for I never
likes too much meaning in a man's countenance,
seeing that it is not always easy to understand what
he would be doing. Then, this stranger gets to be
Master of the ship, or, what is the same thing, next
his orders, in a time like this, is lying in his birth unable
to tack himself, much less to put the vessel
about; and yet no man can say how the thing came
to pass.”
“He drove a bargain with the consignee for the
station, and right glad did the cunning merchant
seem to get so tight a youth to take charge of the
`Caroline.' ”
“Ah! a merchant is, like the rest of us, made of
nothing better than clay; and, what is worse, it is
seldom that, in putting him together, he is dampened
with salt water. Many is the trader that has douzed
his spectacles, and shut his account-books, to step
aside to over-reach his neighbour, and then come
back to find that he has over-reached himself. Mr
Bale, no doubt, thought he was doing the clever
thing for the owners, when he shipped this Mr Wilder;
but then, perhaps, he did not know that the
vessel was sold to — It becomes a plain-going
seaman to have a respect for all he sails under;
so I will not, unnecessarily, name the person who, I
believe, has got, whether he came by it in a fair
purchase or not, no small right in this vessel.”
“I have never seen a ship got out of irons more
handsomely than he handled the `Caroline' this
very morning.”
Nighthead now indulged in a low, but what to his
listeners appeared to be an exceedingly meaning,
laugh.
“When a ship has a certain sort of Captain, one
is not to be surprised at any thing,” he answered,
the instant his significant merriment had ceased.
“For my own part, I shipped to go from Bristol to
the Carolinas and Jamaica, touching at Newport
out and home; and I will say, boldly, I have no wish
to go any where else. As to backing the `Caroline'
from her awkward birth alongside the slaver, why,
mariner. Had I done the thing myself, it could not
have been much better. But what think you, brothers,
of the old man in the skiff? There was a
chase, and an escape, such as few old sea-dogs have
the fortune to behold! I have heard of a smuggler
that was chased a hundred times by his Majesty's
cutters, in the chops of the Channel, and which always
had a fog handy to run into, but out of which
no man could truly say he ever saw her come again!
This skiff may have plied between the land and that
Guernseyman, for any thing I know to the contrary;
but it is not a boat I wish to pull a scull in.”
“That was a remarkable flight!” exclaimed the
elder seaman, whose faith in the character of our adventurer
began to give way gradually, before such
an accumulation of testimony.
“I call it so; though other men may possibly
know better than I, who have only followed the water
five-and-thirty years. Then, here is the sea getting
up in an unaccountable manner! and look at
these rags of clouds, which darken the heavens! and
yet there is light enough, coming from the ocean, for
a good scholar to read by!”
“I've often seen the weather as it is now.”
“Ay, who has not? It is seldom that any man,
let him come from what part he will, makes his first
voyage as Captain. Let who will be out to-night
upon the water, I'll engage he has been there before.
I have seen worse looking skies, and even worse
looking water, than this; but I never knew any good
come of either. The night I was wreck'd in the
bay of”—
“In the waist there!” cried the calm, authoritative
tones of Wilder.
Had a warning voice arisen from the turbulent
and rushing ocean itself, it would not have sounded
more alarming, in the startled ears of the conscious
found it necessary to repeat it, before even
Nighthead, the proper and official spokesman, could
muster resolution to answer.
“Get the fore-top-gallant-sail on the ship, sir,”
continued Wilder, when the customary reply let
him know that he had been heard.
The mate and his companions regarded each other,
for a moment, in dull admiration; and many a melancholy
shake of the head was exchanged, before
one of the party threw himself into the weather-rigging,
and proceeded aloft, with a doubting mind, in
order to loosen the sail in question.
There was certainly enough, in the desperate manner
with which Wilder pressed the canvas on the
vessel, to excite distrust, either of his intentions or
judgment, in the opinions of men less influenced by
superstition than those it was now his lot to command.
It had long been apparent to Earing, and
his more ignorant, and consequently more obstinate,
brother officer, that their young superior had the
same desire to escape from the spectral-looking ship,
which so strangely followed their movements, as
they had themselves. They only differed in the
mode; but this difference was so very material, that
the two mates consulted together apart, and then
Earing, something stimulated by the hardy opinions
of his coadjutor, approached his Commander, with
the determination of delivering the results of their
united judgments, with that sort of directness which
he thought the occasion now demanded. But there
was that in the steady eye and imposing mien of
Wilder, that caused him to touch on the dangerous
subject with a discretion and circumlocution that
were a little remarkable for the individual. He
stood watching the effect of the sail recently spread,
for several minutes, before he even presumed to
open his mouth. But a terrible encounter, between
some dozen feet above the approaching
bows, gave him courage to proceed, by admonishing
him afresh of the danger of continuing silent.
“I do not see that we drop the stranger, though
the ship is wallowing through the water so heavily,”
he commenced, determined to be as circumspect as
possible in his advances.
Wilder bent another of his frequent glances on
the misty object in the horizon, and then turned his
frowning eye towards the point whence the wind
proceeded, as if he would defy its heaviest blasts;
he, however, made no answer.
“We have ever found the crew discontented at
the pumps, sir,” resumed the other, after a pause
sufficient for the reply he in vain expected; “I need
not tell an officer, who knows his duty so well, that
seamen rarely love their pumps.”
“Whatever I may find necessary to order, Mr
Earing, this ship's company will find it necessary to
execute.”
There was a deep settled air of authority, in the
manner with which this tardy answer was given, that
did not fail of its impression. Earing recoiled a step,
with a submissive manner, and affected to be lost in
consulting the driving masses of the clouds; then,
summoning his resolution, he attempted to renew the
attack in a different quarter.
“Is it your deliberate opinion, Captain Wilder,”
he said, using the title to which the claim of our adventurer
might well be questioned, with a view to
propitiate him; “is it then your deliberate opinion,
that the `Royal Caroline' can, by any human means,
be made to drop yonder vessel?”
“I fear not,” returned the young man, drawing a
breath so long, that all his secret concern seemed
struggling in his breast for utterance.
“And, sir, with proper submission to your better
education and authority in this ship, I know not. I
have often seen these matches tried in my time; and
well do I know that nothing is gained by straining a
vessel, with the hope of getting to windward of one
of these flyers!”
“Take you the glass, Earing, and tell me under
what canvas the stranger holds his way, and what
may be his distance,” said Wilder, thoughtfully, and
without appearing to advert at all to what the other
had just observed.
The honest and well-meaning mate deposed his
hat on the quarter-deck, and, with an air of great
respect, did as he was desired. Nor did he deem it
necessary to give a precipitate answer to either of
the interrogatories. When, however, his look had
been long, grave, and deeply absorbed, he closed the
glass with the palm of his broad hand, and replied,
with the manner of one whose opinion was sufficiently
matured.
“If yonder sail had been built and fitted like other
mortal craft,” he said, “I should not be backward
in pronouncing her a full-rigged ship, under three
single-reefed topsails, courses, spanker, and jib.”
“Has she no more?”
“To that I would qualify, provided an opportunity
were given me to make sure that she is, in all respects,
as other vessels are.”
“And yet, Earing, with all this press of canvas,
by the compass we have not left her a foot.”
“Lord, sir,” returned the mate, shaking his head,
like one who was well convinced of the folly of
such efforts, “if you should split every cloth in the
main-course, by carrying on the ship you will never
alter the bearings of that craft an inch, till the sun
rises! Then, indeed, such as have eyes, that are
good enough, might perhaps see her sailing about
be it bad or be it good, to fall in with one of
these cruisers after the day has fairly dawned.”
“And the distance?” said Wilder; “you have not
yet spoken of her distance.”
“That is much as people choose to measure. She
may be here, nigh enough to toss a biscuit into our
tops; or she may be there, where she seems to be,
hull down in the horizon.”
“But, if where she seems to be?”
“Why, she seems to be a vessel of about six hundred
tons; and, judging from appearances only, a
man might be tempted to say she was a couple of
leagues, more or less, under our lee.”
“I put her at the same! Six miles to windward
is not a little advantage, in a hard chase. By heavens,
Earing, I'll drive the `Caroline' out of water,
but I'll leave him!”
“That might be done, if the ship had wings like
a curlew, or a sea-gull; but, as it is, I think we are
more likely to drive her under.”
“She bears her canvas well, so far. You know
not what the boat can do, when urged.”
“I have seen her sailed in all weathers, Captain
Wilder, but”—
His mouth was suddenly closed. A vast black
wave reared itself between the ship and the eastern
horizon, and came rolling onward, seeming to threaten
to ingulf all before it. Even Wilder watched the
shock with breathless anxiety, conscious, for the moment,
that he had exceeded the bounds of sound
discretion in urging his ship so powerfully against
such a mass of water. The sea broke a few fathoms
from the bows of the “Caroline,” and sent its surge
in a flood of foam upon her decks. For half a minute,
the forward part of the vessel disappeared, as
though, unable to mount the swell, it were striving
with a million of the scintillating insects of the
ocean. The ship had stopped, trembling in every
joint, throughout her massive and powerful frame,
like some affrighted courser; and, when she resumed
her course, it was with a moderation that appeared
to warn those who governed her movements of their
indiscretion.
Earing faced his Commander in silence, perfectly
conscious that nothing he could utter contained an argument
like this. The seamen no longer hesitated to
mutter their disapprobation aloud, and many a prophetic
opinion was ventured concerning the consequences
of such reckless risks. To all this Wilder
turned a deaf or an insensible ear. Firm in his own
secret purpose, he would have braved a greater hazard,
to accomplish his object. But a distinct though
smothered shriek, from the stern of the vessel, reminded
him of the fears of others. Turning quickly
on his heel, he approached the still trembling Gertrude
and her governess, who had both been, throughout
the whole of those long and tedious hours, inobtrusive,
but deeply interested, observers of his smallest
movements.
“The vessel bore that shock so well, I have great
reliance on her powers,” he said in a soothing voice,
but with words that were intended to lull her into a
blind security. “With a firm ship, a thorough seaman
is never at a loss!”
“Mr Wilder,” returned the governess, “I have
seen much of this terrible element on which you
live. It is therefore vain to think of deceiving me.
I know that you are urging the ship beyond what
is usual. Have you sufficient motive for this hardihood?”
“Madam,—I have!”
“And is it, like so many of your motives, to continue
we, who are equal participators in its consequences,
claim to share equally in the reason?”
“Since you know so much of the profession,” returned
the young man, slightly laughing, but in tones
that were rendered perhaps more alarming by the
sounds produced in the unnatural effort, “you need
not be told, that, in order to get a ship to windward,
it is necessary to spread her canvas.”
“You can, at least, answer one of my questions
more directly: Is this wind sufficiently favourable to
pass the dangerous shoals of the Hatteras?”
“I doubt it.”
“Then, why not go to the place whence we
came?”
“Will you consent to return?” demanded the
youth, with the swiftness of thought.
“I would go to my father,” said Gertrude, with a
rapidity so nearly resembling his own, that the ardent
girl appeared to want breath to utter the little
she said.
“And I am willing, Mr Wilder, to abandon the
ship entirely,” calmly resumed the governess. “I
require no explanation of all your mysterious warnings;
restore us to our friends in Newport, and no
further questions shall ever be asked.”
“It might be done!” muttered our adventurer;
“it might be done!—A few busy hours would do it,
with this wind.—Mr Earing!”—
The mate was instantly at his elbow. Wilder
pointed to the dim object to leeward; and, handing
him the glass, desired that he would take another
view. Each looked, in his turn, long and closely.
“He shows no more sail!” said the Commander
impatiently, when his own prolonged gaze was
ended.
“Not a cloth, sir. But what matters it, to such a
blows?”
“Earing, I think there is too much southing in
this breeze; and there is more brewing in yonder
streak of dusky clouds on our beam. Let the ship
fall off a couple of points, or more, and take the
strain off the spars, by a pull upon the weather
braces.”
The simple-minded mate heard the order with an
astonishment he did not care to conceal. There
needed no explanation, to teach his experienced faculties,
that the effect would be to go over the same
track they had just passed, and that it was, in substance,
abandoning the objects of the voyage. He
presumed to defer his compliance, in order to remonstrate.
“I hope there is no offence for an elderly seaman,
like myself, Captain Wilder, in venturing an opinion
on the weather,” he said. “When the pocket of
the owner is interested, my judgment approves of
going about, for I have no taste for land that the
wind blows on, instead of off. But, by easing the
ship with a reef or two, she would be jogging seaward;
and all we gain would be clear gain; because
it is so much off the Hatteras. Besides, who can
say that to-morrow, or the next day, we sha'n't have
a puff out of America, here at north-west?”
“A couple of points fall off, and a pull upon your
weather braces,” said Wilder, with startling quickness.
It would have exceeded the peaceful and submissive
temperament of the honest Earing, to have delayed
any longer. The orders were given to the inferiors;
and, as a matter of course, they were obeyed—
though ill-suppressed and portentous sounds of discontent,
at the undetermined, and seemingly unreasonable,
changes in their officer's mind, might have
and other veterans of the crew.
But to all these symptoms of disaffection Wilder
remained, as before, utterly indifferent. If he heard
them at all, he either disdained to yield them any
notice, or, guided by a temporizing policy, he chose
to appear unconscious of their import. In the mean
time, the vessel, like a bird whose wing had wearied
with struggling against the tempest, and which inclines
from the gale to dart along an easier course,
glided swiftly away, quartering the crests of the
waves, or sinking gracefully into their troughs, as
she yielded to the force of a wind that was now
made to be favourable. The sea rolled on, in a direction
that was no longer adverse to her course; and,
as she receded from the breeze, the quantity of sail
she had spread was no longer found trying to her
powers of endurance. Still she had, in the opinion
of all her crew, quite enough canvas exposed to a
night of such a portentous aspect. But not so, in
the judgment of the stranger who was charged with
the guidance of her destinies. In a voice that still
admonished his inferiors of the danger of disobedience,
he commanded several broad sheets of studding-sails
to be set, in quick succession. Urged by
these new impulses, the ship went careering over
the waves; leaving a train of foam, in her track,
that rivalled, in its volume and brightness, the tumbling
summit of the largest swell.
When sail after sail had been set, until even Wilder
was obliged to confess to himself that the “Royal
Caroline,” staunch as she was, would bear no
more, our adventurer began to pace the deck again,
and to cast his eyes about him, in order to watch the
fruits of his new experiment. The change in the
course of the Bristol trader had made a corresponding
change in the apparent direction of the stranger,
who yet floated in the horizon like a diminutive and
watchful mariner, that she continued to maintain the
same relative position as when first seen. No effort,
on the part of Wilder, could apparently alter her
bearing an inch. Another hour soon passed away,
during which, as the log told him, the “Caroline” had
rolled through more than three leagues of water, and
still there lay the stranger in the west, as though it
were merely a lessened shadow of herself, cast by
the “Caroline” upon the distant and dusky clouds.
An alteration in his course exposed a broader surface
of his canvas to the eyes of the spectators, but
in nothing else was there any visible change. If his
sails had been materially increased, the distance and
the obscurity prevented even the understanding Earing
from detecting it. Perhaps the excited mind of
the worthy mate was too much disposed to believe
in the miraculous powers possessed by his unaccountable
neighbour, to admit of the full exercise
of his experienced faculties on the occasion; but
even Wilder, who vexed his sight, in often-repeated
examinations, was obliged to confess to himself, that
the stranger seemed to glide, across the waste of
waters, more like a body floating in the air, than a
ship resorting to the ordinary expedients of mariners.
Mrs Wyllys and her charge had, by this time, retired
to their cabin; the former secretly felicitating
herself on the prospect of soon quitting a vessel that
had commenced its voyage under such sinister circumstances
as to have deranged the equilibrium of
even her well-governed and highly-disciplined mind.
Gertrude was left in ignorance of the change. To
her uninstructed eye, all appeared the same on the
wilderness of the ocean; Wilder having it in his
power to alter the direction of his vessel as often as
he pleased, without his fairer and more youthful
passenger being any the wiser for the same.
Not so, however, with the intelligent Commander
obscurity nor doubt, in the midst of his midnight
path. His eye had long been familiar with
every star that rose from out the waving bed of the
sea, to set in another dark and ragged outline of the
element; nor was there a blast, that swept across
the ocean, that his burning cheek could not tell from
what quarter of the heavens it poured out its power.
He knew, and understood, each inclination made by
the bows of his ship; his mind kept even pace with
her windings and turnings, in all her trackless wanderings;
and he had little need to consult any of
the accessories of his art, to tell him what course to
steer, or in what manner to guide the movements of
the nice machine he governed. Still was he unable
to explain the extraordinary evolutions of the stranger.
His smallest change seemed rather anticipated
than followed; and his hopes of eluding a vigilance,
that proved so watchful, was baffled by a facility of
manœuvring, and a superiority of sailing, that really
began to assume, even to his intelligent eyes, the
appearance of some unaccountable agency.
While our adventurer was engaged in the gloomy
musings that such impressions were not ill adapted
to excite, the heavens and the sea began to exhibit
another aspect. The bright streak which had so
long hung along the eastern horizon, as though the
curtain of the firmament had been slightly opened
to admit a passage for the winds, was now suddenly
closed; and heavy masses of black clouds began to
gather in that quarter, until vast volumes of the vapour
were piled upon the water, blending the two
elements in one. On the other hand, the dark canopy
lifted in the west, and a long belt of lurid light
was shed over the view. In this flood of bright and
portentous mist the stranger still floated, though there
were moments when his faint and fanciful outlines
seemed to be melting into thin air.
| CHAPTER XV. The Red Rover | |