University of Virginia Library

16. CHAPTER XVI.

—Tempest.

Our watchful adventurer was not blind to these
well-known and sinister omens. No sooner did the
peculiar atmosphere, by which the mysterious image
that he so often examined was suddenly surrounded,
catch his eye, than his voice was heard in the clear,
powerful, and exciting notes of warning.

“Stand by,” he called aloud, “to in all studding
sails! Down with them!” he added, scarcely giving
his former words time to reach the ears of his
subordinates. “Down with every rag of them, fore
and aft the ship! Man the top-gallant clew-lines, Mr
Earing. Clew up, and clew down! In with every
thing, cheerily, men! In!”

This was a language to which the crew of the
“Caroline” were no strangers, and one which was
doubly welcome; since the meanest seaman of them
all had long thought that his unknown Commander
had been heedlessly trifling with the safety of the
vessel, by the hardy manner in which he disregarded
the wild symptoms of the weather. But they
undervalued the keen-eyed vigilance of Wilder. He
had certainly driven the Bristol trader through the
water at a rate she had never been known to have
gone before; but, thus far, the facts themselves attested
in his favour, since no injury was the consequence
of what they deemed his temerity. At the
quick, sudden order just given, however, the whole
ship was instantly in an uproar. A dozen seamen
called to each other, from different parts of the vessel,
each striving to lift his voice above the roaring
ocean; and there was every appearance of a general

and inextricable confusion; but the same authority
which had aroused them, thus unexpectedly, into
activity, produced order, from their ill-directed
though vigorous efforts.

Wilder had spoken, to awaken the drowsy, and to
excite the torpid. The instant he found each man
on the alert, he resumed his orders, with a calmness
that gave a direction to the powers of all, but still
with an energy that he well knew was called for by
the occasion. The enormous sheets of duck, which
had looked like so many light clouds in the murky
and threatening heavens, were soon seen fluttering
wildly, as they descended from their high places;
and, in a few minutes, the ship was reduced to the
action of her more secure and heavier canvas. To
effect this object, every man in the ship had exerted
his powers to the utmost, under the guidance of the
steady but rapid mandates of their Commander.
Then followed a short and apprehensive breathing
pause. Every eye was turned towards the quarter
where the ominous signs had been discovered; and
each individual endeavoured to read their import,
with an intelligence correspondent to the degree of
skill he might have acquired, during his particular
period of service, on that treacherous element which
was now his home.

The dim tracery of the stranger's form had been
swallowed by the flood of misty light, which, by this
time, rolled along the sea like drifting vapour, semipellucid,
preternatural, and seemingly tangible. The
ocean itself appeared admonished that a quick and
violent change was nigh. The waves had ceased to
break in their former foaming and brilliant crests;
but black masses of the water were seen lifting their
surly summits against the eastern horizon, no longer
relieved by their scintillating brightness, or shedding
their own peculiar and lucid atmosphere around
them. The breeze which had been so fresh, and

which had even blown, at times, with a force that
nearly amounted to a little gale, was lulling and becoming
uncertain, as though awed by the more violent
power that was gathering along the borders of
the sea, in the direction of the neighbouring continent.
Each moment, the eastern puffs of air lost
their strength, and became more and more feeble,
until, in an incredibly short period, the heavy sails
were heard flapping against the masts—a frightful
and ominous calm succeeding. At this instant, a
glancing, flashing gleam lighted the fearful obscurity
of the ocean; and a roar, like that of a sudden burst
of thunder, bellowed along the waters. The seamen
turned their startled looks on each other, and stood
stupid, as though a warning had been given, from
the heavens themselves, of what was to follow. But
their calm and more sagacious Commander put a
different construction on the signal. His lip curled,
in high professional pride, and his mouth moved rapidly,
while he muttered to himself, with a species of
scorn,—

“Does he think we sleep? Ay, he has got it himself,
and would open our eyes to what is coming!
What does he imagine we have been about, since the
middle watch was set?”

Then, Wilder made a swift turn or two on the
quarter-deck, never ceasing to bend his quick glances
from one quarter of the heavens to another; from
the black and lulling water on which his vessel was
rolling, to the sails; and from his silent and profoundly
expectant crew, to the dim lines of spars that were
waving above his head, like so many pencils tracing
their curvilinear and wanton images over the murky
volumes of the superincumbent clouds.

“Lay the after-yards square!” he said, in a voice
which was heard by every man on deck, though his
words were apparently spoken but little above his
breath. Even the creaking of the blocks, as the

spars came slowly and heavily round to the indicated
position, contributed to the imposing character of
the moment, and sounded, in the ears of all the instructed
listeners, like notes of fearful preparation.

“Haul up the courses!” resumed Wilder, after a
thoughtful, brief interval, with the same eloquent
calmness of manner. Then, taking another glance
at the threatening horizon, he added, with emphasis,
“Furl them—furl them both: Away aloft, and hand
your courses,” he continued, in a shout; “roll them
up, cheerily; in with them, boys, cheerily; in!”

The conscious seamen took their impulses from
the tones of their Commander. In a moment, twenty
dark forms were seen leaping up the rigging, with
the alacrity of so many quadrupeds; and, in another
minute, the vast and powerful sheets of canvas were
effectually rendered harmless, by securing them in
tight rolls to their respective spars. The men descended
as swiftly as they had mounted to the yards;
and then succeeded another short and breathing
pause. At this moment, a candle would have sent
its flame perpendicularly towards the heavens. The
ship, missing the steadying power of the wind, rolled
heavily in the troughs of the seas, which, however,
began to be more diminutive, at each instant;
as though the startled element was recalling, into the
security of its own vast bosom, that portion of its
particles which had, just before, been permitted to
gambol so madly over its surface. The water washed
sullenly along the side of the ship, or, as she labouring
rose from one of her frequent falls into the
hollows of the waves, it shot back into the ocean
from her decks, in numberless little glittering cascades.
Every hue of the heavens, every sound of
the element, and each dusky and anxious countenance
that was visible, helped to proclaim the intense interest
of the moment. It was in this brief interval

of expectation, and inactivity, that the mates again
approached their Commander.

“It is an awful night, Captain Wilder!” said Earing,
presuming on his rank to be the first of the two
to speak.

“I have known far less notice given of a shift of
wind,” was the steady answer.

“We have had time to gather in our kites, 'tis
true, sir; but there are signs and warnings, that come
with this change, at which the oldest seaman has
reason to take heed!”

“Yes,” continued Nighthead, in a voice that sounded
hoarse and powerful, even amid the fearful accessories
of that scene; “yes, it is no trifling commission
that can call people, that I shall not name, out
upon the water in such a night as this. It was in
just such weather that I saw the `Vesuvius' ketch
go to a place so deep, that her own mortar would
not have been able to have sent a bomb into the
open air, had hands and fire been there fit to let it
off!”

“Ay; and it was in such a time that the Greenlandman
was cast upon the Orkneys, in as flat a calm
as ever lay on the sea.”

“Gentlemen,” said Wilder, with a peculiar and
perhaps an ironical emphasis on the word, “what is
it you would have? There is not a breath of air
stirring, and the ship is naked to her topsails!”

It would have been difficult for either of the two
malcontents to have given a very satisfactory answer
to this question. Both were secretly goaded by
mysterious and superstitious apprehensions, that
were powerfully aided by the more real and intelligible
aspect of the night; but neither had so far forgotten
his manhood, and his professional pride, as to
lay bare the full extent of his own weakness, at a
moment when he was liable to be called upon for

the exhibition of qualities of a far more positive and
determined character. Still, the feeling that was
uppermost betrayed itself in the reply of Earing,
though in an indirect and covert manner.

“Yes, the vessel is snug enough now,” he said,
“though eye-sight has shown us all it is no easy matter
to drive a freighted ship though the water as fast
as one of your flying craft can go, aboard of which
no man can say, who stands at the helm, by what
compass she steers, or what is her draught!”

“Ay,” resumed Nighthead, “I call the `Caroline'
fast for an honest trader, and few square-rigged boats
are there, who do not wear the pennants of the King,
that can eat her out of the wind, or bring her into
their wake, with studding-sails abroad. But this is
a time, and an hour, to make a seaman think. Look
at yon hazy light, here, in with the land, that is
coming so fast down upon us, and then tell me
whether it comes from the coast of America, or
whether it comes from out of the stranger who has
been so long running under our lee, but who has
got, or is fast getting, the wind of us at last, and yet
none here can say how, or why. I have just this
much, and no more, to say: Give me for consort a
craft whose Captain I know, or give me none!”

“Such is your taste, Mr Nighthead,” said Wilder,
coldly; “mine may, by some accident, be very different.”

“Yes, yes,” observed the more cautious and prudent
Earing, “in time of war, and with letters of
marque aboard, a man may honestly hope the sail
he sees should have a stranger for her master; or
otherwise he would never fall in with an enemy. But,
though an Englishman born myself, I should rather
give the ship in that mist a clear sea, seeing that I
neither know her nation nor her cruise. Ah, Captain
Wilder, yonder is an awful sight for the morning
watch! Often, and often, have I seen the sun

rise in the east, and no harm done; but little good
can come of a day when the light first breaks in the
west. Cheerfully would I give the owners the last
month's pay, hard as I have earned it with my toil,
did I but know under what flag yonder stranger
sails.”

“Frenchman, Don, or Devil, yonder he comes”
cried Wilder. Then, turning towards the silent and
attentive crew, he shouted, in a voice that was appalling
by its vehemence and warning, “Let run
the after halyards! round with the fore-yard! round
with it, men, with a will!”

These were cries that the startled crew perfectly
understood. Every nerve and muscle were exerted
to execute the orders, in time to be in readiness for
the approaching tempest. No man spoke; but each
expended the utmost of his power and skill in direct
and manly efforts. Nor was there, in verity, a moment
to lose, or a particle of human strength expended
here, without a sufficient object.

The lucid and fearful-looking mist, which, for the
last quarter of an hour, had been gathering in the
north-west, was now driving down upon them with
the speed of a race-horse. The air had already
lost the damp and peculiar feeling of an easterly
breeze; and little eddies were beginning to flutter
among the masts—precursors of the coming squall.
Then, a rushing, roaring sound was heard moaning
along the ocean, whose surface was first dimpled,
next ruffled, and finally covered, with one sheet of
clear, white, and spotless foam. At the next moment,
the power of the wind fell full upon the inert
and labouring Bristol trader.

As the gust approached, Wilder had seized the
slight opportunity, afforded by the changeful puffs of
air, to get the ship as much as possible before the
wind; but the sluggish movement of the vessel met
neither the wishes of his own impatience nor the exigencies

of the moment. Her bows had slowly and
heavily fallen off from the north, leaving her precisely
in a situation to receive the first shock on her
broadside. Happy it was, for all who had life at
risk in that defenceless vessel, that she was not fated
to receive the whole weight of the tempest at a blow.
The sails fluttered and trembled on their massive
yards, bellying and collapsing alternately for a minute,
and then the rushing wind swept over them in a hurricane.

The “Caroline” received the blast like a stout
and buoyant ship, yielding readily to its impulse, until
her side lay nearly incumbent on the element in
which she floated; and then, as if the fearful fabric
were conscious of its jeopardy, it seemed to lift its
reclining masts again, struggling to work its way
heavily through the water.

“Keep the helm a-weather! Jam it a-weather,
for your life!” shouted Wilder, amid the roar of the
gust.

The veteran seaman at the wheel obeyed the
order with steadiness, but in vain he kept his eyes
riveted on the margin of his head sail, in order to
watch the manner the ship would obey its power.
Twice more, in as many moments, the tall masts fell
towards the horizon, waving as often gracefully upward,
and then they yielded to the mighty pressure
of the wind, until the whole machine lay prostrate
on the water.

“Reflect!” said Wilder, seizing the bewildered
Earing by the arm, as the latter rushed madly up
the steep of the deck; “it is our duty to be calm:
Bring hither an axe.”

Quick as the thought which gave the order, the
admonished mate complied, jumping into the mizzen-channels
of the ship, to execute, with his own
hands, the mandate that he well knew must follow.

“Shall I cut?” he demanded, with uplifted arms,

and in a voice that atoned for his momentary confusion,
by its steadiness and force.

“Hold! Does the ship mind her helm at all?”

“Not an inch, sir.”

“Then cut,” Wilder clearly and calmly added.

A single blow sufficed for the discharge of the
momentary act. Extended to the utmost powers of
endurance, by the vast weight it upheld, the lanyard
struck by Earing no sooner parted, than each of its
fellows snapped in succession, leaving the mast dependant
on itself alone for the support of all its
ponderous and complicated hamper. The cracking
of the wood came next; and then the rigging fell,
like a tree that had been sapped at its foundation,
the little distance that still existed between it and
the sea.

“Does she fall off?” instantly called Wilder to
the observant seaman at the wheel.

“She yielded a little, sir; but this new squall is
bringing her up again.”

“Shall I cut?” shouted Earing from the main rigging,
whither he had leaped, like a tiger who had
bounded on his prey.

“Cut!” was the answer.

A loud and imposing crash soon succeeded this
order, though not before several heavy blows had
been struck into the massive mast itself. As before,
the seas received the tumbling maze of spars, rigging,
and sails; the vessel surging, at the same instant,
from its recumbent position, and rolling far
and heavily to windward.

“She rights! she rights!” exclaimed twenty
voices, which had been hitherto mute, in a suspense
that involved life and death.

“Keep her dead away!” added the still calm but
deeply authoritative voice of the young Commander.
“Stand by to furl the fore-topsail—let it hang
a moment to drag the ship clear of the wreck—cut,

cut—cheerily, men—hatchets and knives—cut with
all, and cut off all!”

As the men now worked with the freshened vigour
of revived hope, the ropes that still confined the
fallen spars to the vessel were quickly severed; and
the “Caroline,” by this time dead before the gale,
appeared barely to touch the foam that covered the
sea, like a bird that was swift upon the wing skimming
the waters. The wind came over the waste
in gusts that rumbled like distant thunder, and with
a power that seemed to threaten to lift the ship and
its contents from its proper element, to deliver it to
one still more variable and treacherous. As a prudent
and sagacious seaman had let fly the halyards
of the solitary sail that remained, at the moment
when the squall approached, the loosened but lowered
topsail was now distended in a manner that
threatened to drag after it the only mast which still
stood. Wilder instantly saw the necessity of getting
rid of this sail, and he also saw the utter impossibility
of securing it. Calling Earing to his side, he
pointed out the danger, and gave the necessary order.

“Yon spar cannot stand such shocks much longer,”
he concluded; “and, should it go over the bows,
some fatal blow might be given to the ship at the
rate she is moving. A man or two must be sent aloft
to cut the sail from the yards.”

“The stick is bending like a willow whip,” returned
the mate, “and the lower mast itself is sprung.
There would be great danger in trusting a life in
that top, while such wild squalls as these are breathing
around us.”

“You may be right,” returned Wilder, with a
sudden conviction of the truth of what the other had
said: “Stay you then here; and, if any thing befal
me, try to get the vessel into port as far north as the
Capes of Virginia, at least;—on no account attempt
Hatteras, in the present condition of”—

“What would you do, Captain Wilder?” interrupted
the mate, laying his hand powerfully on the
shoulder of his Commander, who, he observed, had
already thrown his sea-cap on the deck, and was
preparing to divest himself of some of his outer garments.

“I go aloft, to ease the mast of that topsail, without
which we lose the spar, and possibly the ship.”

“Ay, ay, I see that plain enough; but, shall it be
said, Another did the duty of Edward Earing? It
is your business to carry the vessel into the Capes
of Virginia, and mine to cut the topsail adrift. If
harm comes to me, why, put it in the log, with a
word or two about the manner in which I played my
part: That is always the best and most proper epitaph
for a sailor.”

Wilder made no resistance, but resumed his watchful
and reflecting attitude, with the simplicity of one
who had been too long trained to the discharge of
certain obligations himself, to manifest surprise that
another should acknowledge their imperative character.
In the mean time, Earing proceeded steadily
to perform what he had just promised. Passing into
the waist of the ship, he provided himself with a
suitable hatchet, and then, without speaking a syllable
to any of the mute but attentive seamen, he
sprang into the fore-rigging, every strand and rope-yarn
of which was tightened by the strain nearly to
snapping. The understanding eyes of his observers
comprehended his intention; and, with precisely the
same pride of station as had urged him to the dangerous
undertaking, four or five of the older mariners
jumped upon the ratlings, to mount with him
into an air that apparently teemed with a hundred
hurricanes.

“Lie down out of that fore-rigging,” shouted
Wilder, through a deck-trumpet; “lie down; all, but
the mate, lie down!” His words were borne past

the inattentive ears of the excited and mortified followers
of Earing, but they failed of their effect.
Each man was too much bent on his own earnest
purpose to listen to the sounds of recall. In less
than a minute, the whole were scattered along the
yards, prepared to obey the signal of their officer.
The mate cast a look about him; and, perceiving
that the time was comparatively favourable, he struck
a blow upon the large rope that confined one of the
angles of the distended and bursting sail to the lower
yard. The effect was much the same as would be
produced by knocking away the key-stone of an illcemented
arch. The canvas broke from all its fastenings
with a loud explosion, and, for an instant, was
seen sailing in the air ahead of the ship, as though sustained
on the wings of an eagle. The vessel rose on
a sluggish wave—the lingering remains of the former
breeze—and then settled heavily over the rolling
surge, borne down alike by its own weight and the
renewed violence of the gusts. At this critical instant,
while the seamen aloft were still gazing in the
direction in which the little cloud of canvas had
disappeared, a lanyard of the lower rigging parted
with a crack that even reached the ears of Wilder.

“Lie down!” he shouted fearfully through his
trumpet; “down by the backstays; down for your
lives; every man of you, down!”

A solitary individual, of them all, profited by the
warning, and was seen gliding towards the deck with
the velocity of the wind. But rope parted after
rope, and the fatal snapping of the wood instantly
followed. For a moment, the towering maze tottered,
and seemed to wave towards every quarter of
the heavens; and then, yielding to the movements
of the hull, the whole fell, with a heavy crash, into
the sea. Each cord, lanyard, or stay snapped, when
it received the strain of its new position, as though
it had been made of thread, leaving the naked and

despoiled hull of the “Caroline” to drive onward
before the tempest, as if nothing had occurred to
impede its progress.

A mute and eloquent pause succeeded this disaster.
It appeared as if the elements themselves were
appeased by their work, and something like a momentary
lull in the awful rushing of the winds might
have been fancied. Wilder sprang to the side of the
vessel, and distinctly beheld the victims, who still
clung to their frail support. He even saw Earing
waving his hand, in adieu, with a seaman's heart,
and like a man who not only felt how desperate was
his situation, but one who knew how to meet his
fate with resignation. Then the wreck of spars,
with all who clung to it, was swallowed up in the
body of the frightful, preternatural-looking mist
which extended on every side of them, from the
ocean to the clouds.

“Stand by, to clear away a boat!” shouted
Wilder, without pausing to think of the impossibility
of one's swimming, or of effecting the least good, in
so violent a tornado.

But the amazed and confounded seamen who remained
needed not instruction in this matter. No
man moved, nor was the smallest symptom of obedience
given. The mariners looked wildly around
them, each endeavouring to trace, in the dusky countenance
of the other, his opinion of the extent of
the evil; but not a mouth was opened among them all.

“It is too late—it is too late!” murmured Wilder
to himself; “human skill and human efforts could
not save them!”

“Sail, ho!” Nighthead muttered at his elbow, in
a voice that teemed with a species of superstitious
awe.

“Let him come on,” returned his young Commander,
bitterly; “the mischief is ready finished
to his hands!”

`Should yon be a mortal ship, it is our duty to
the owners and the passengers to speak her, if a
man can make his voice heard in this tempest,” the
second mate continued, pointing, through the haze,
at the dim object that was certainly at hand.

“Speak her!—passengers!” muttered Wilder, involuntarily
repeating his words. “No; any thing is
better than speaking her. Do you see the vessel
that is driving down upon us so fast?” he sternly demanded
of the watchful seaman who still clung to
the wheel of the “Caroline.”

“Ay, ay, sir,” was the brief, professional reply.

“Give her a birth—sheer away hard to port—
perhaps he may pass us in the gloom, now we are
no higher than our decks. Give the ship a broad
sheer, I say, sir.”

The same laconic answer as before was given;
and, for a few moments, the Bristol trader was seen
diverging a little from the line in which the other approached;
but a second glance assured Wilder that
the attempt was useless. The strange ship (and
every man on board felt certain it was the same that
had so long been seen hanging in the north-western
horizon) came on, through the mist, with a swiftness
that nearly equalled the velocity of the tempestuous
winds themselves. Not a thread of canvas was seen
on board her. Each line of spars, even to the tapering
and delicate top-gallant-masts, was in its place,
preserving the beauty and symmetry of the whole
fabric; but nowhere was the smallest fragment of a
sail opened to the gale. Under her bows rolled a
volume of foam, that was even discernible amid the
universal agitation of the ocean; and, as she came
within sound, the sullen roar of the water might
have been likened to the noise of a cascade. At
first, the spectators on the decks of the “Caroline”
believed they were not seen, and some of the men

called madly for lights, in order that the disasters of
the night might not terminate in the dreaded encounter.

“No!” exclaimed Wilder; “too many see us
there already!”

“No, no,” muttered Nighthead; “no fear but we
are seen; and by such eyes, too, as never yet looked
out of mortal head!”

The seamen paused. In another instant, the long-seen
and mysterious ship was within a hundred feet
of them. The very power of that wind, which was
wont usually to raise the billows, now pressed the
element, with the weight of mountains, into its bed.
The sea was every where a sheet of froth, but no
water swelled above the level of the surface. The
instant a wave lifted itself from the security of the
vast depths, the fluid was borne away before the
tornado in driving, glittering spray. Along this frothy
but comparatively motionless surface, then, the stranger
came booming, with the steadiness and grandeur
with which a dark cloud is seen to sail before the
hurricane. No sign of life was any where discovered
about her. If men looked out, from their secret
places, upon the straitened and discomfited wreck
of the Bristol trader, it was covertly, and as darkly
as the tempest before which they drove. Wilder
held his breath, for the moment the stranger drew
nighest, in the very excess of suspense; but, as he
saw no signal of recognition, no human form, nor
any intention to arrest, if possible, the furious career
of the other, a smile of exultation gleamed across
his countenance, and his lips moved rapidly, as
though he found pleasure in being abandoned to his
distress. The stranger drove by, like a dark vision;
and, ere another minute, her form was beginning to
grow less distinct, in a thickening body of the spray
to leeward.

“She is going out of sight in the mist!” exclaimed
Wilder, when he drew his breath, after the fearful
suspense of the few last moments.

“Ay, in mist, or clouds,” responded Nighthead,
who now kept obstinately at his elbow, watching,
with the most jealous distrust, the smallest movement
of his unknown Commander.

“In the heavens, or in the sea, I care not, provided
she be gone.”

“Most seamen would rejoice to see a strange sail,
from the hull of a vessel shaved to the deck like
this.”

“Men often court their destruction, from ignorance
of their own interests. Let him drive on,
say I, and pray I! He goes four feet to our one;
and now I ask no better favour than that this hurricane
may blow until the sun shall rise.”

Nighthead started, and cast an oblique glance,
which resembled denunciation, at his companion.
To his blunted faculties, and superstitious mind,
there was profanity in thus invoking the tempest, at
a moment when the winds seemed already to be
pouring out their utmost wrath.

“This is a heavy squall, I will allow,” he said,
“and such an one as many mariners pass whole lives
without seeing; but he knows little of the sea who
thinks there is not more wind where this comes
from.”

“Let it blow!” cried the other, striking his hands
together a little wildly; “I pray only for wind!”

All the doubts of Nighthead, as to the character
of the young stranger who had so unaccountably got
possession of the office of Nicholas Nichols, if, indeed,
any remained, were now removed. He walked
forward among the silent and thoughtful crew,
with the air of a man whose opinion was settled.
Wilder, however, paid no attention to the movements

of his subordinate, but continued pacing the
deck for hours; now casting his eyes at the heavens,
or now sending frequent and anxious glances around
the limited horizon, while the “Royal Caroline”
still continued drifting before the wind, a shorn and
naked wreck.