Homeward bound, or, The chase a tale of the sea |
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| 10. | CHAPTER X. |
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 | CHAPTER X. Homeward bound, or, The chase |  |
10. CHAPTER X.
I come with mightier things;
Who calls me silent? I have many tones—
The dark sky thrills with low mysterious moans,
Borne on my sweeping winds.
Mrs. Hemans.
The awaking of the winds on the ocean is frequently
attended with signs and portents as sublime as any the fancy
can conceive. On the present occasion, the breeze that had
prevailed so steadily for a week was succeeded by light baffling
puffs, as if, conscious of the mighty powers of the air
that were assembling in their strength, these inferior blasts
were hurrying to and fro for a refuge. The clouds, too,
were whirling about in uncertain eddies, many of the heaviest
and darkest descending so low along the horizon, that
they had an appearance of settling on the waters in quest
of repose. But the waters themselves were unnaturally
agitated. The billows, no longer following each other in
long regular waves, were careering upwards, like fiery
coursers suddenly checked in their mad career. The usual
order of the eternally unquiet ocean was lost in a species
of chaotic tossings of the element, the seas heaving themselves
upward, without order, and frequently without visible
cause. This was the reaction of the currents, and of the
influence of breezes still older than the last. Not the least
fearful symptom of the hour was the terrific calmness of
the air amid such a scene of menacing wildness. Even the
ship came into the picture to aid the impression of intense
expectation; for with her canvas reduced, she, too, seemed
to have lost that instinct which had so lately guided her
along the trackless waste, and was “wallowing,” nearly
helpless, among the confused waters. Still she was a beautiful
and a grand object, perhaps more so at that moment
than at any other; for her vast and naked spars, her well-supported
masts, and all the ingenious and complicated
hamper of the machine, gave her a resemblance to some
for the conflict that was at hand.
“This is an extraordinary scene,” said Eve, who clung
to her father's arm, as she gazed around her equally in admiration
and in awe; “a dreadful exhibition of the sublimity
of nature!”
“Although accustomed to the sea,” returned Mr. Blunt,
“I have witnessed these ominous changes but twice before,
and I think this the grandest of them all.”
“Were the others followed by tempests?” inquired the
anxious parent.
“One brought a tremendous gale, while the other passed
away like a misfortune of which we get a near view, but
are permitted to escape the effects.”
“I do not know that I wish such to be entirely our present
fortune,” rejoined Eve, “for there is so much sublimity in
this view of the ocean unaroused, that I feel desirous of
seeing it when aroused.”
“We are not in the hurricane latitudes, or hurricane
months,” resumed the young man, “and it is not probable
that there is anything more in reserve for us than a hearty
gale of wind, which may, at least, help us to get rid of
yonder troublesome follower.”
“Even that I do not wish, provided he will let us continue
the race on our proper route. A chase across the Atlantic
would be something to enjoy at the moment, gentlemen, and
something to talk of in after life.”
“I wonder if such a thing be possible!” exclaimed Mr.
Sharp; “it would indeed be an incident to recount to
another generation!”
“There is little probability of our witnessing such an
exploit,” Mr. Blunt remarked, “for gales of wind on the
ocean have the same separating influence on consorts of
the sea, that domestic gales have on consorts of the land.
Nothing is more difficult than to keep ships and fleets in
sight of each other in very heavy weather, unless, indeed,
those of the best qualities are disposed to humour those of
the worst.”
“I know not which may be called the best, or which the
worst, in this instance, for our tormentor appears to be as
much better than ourselves in some particulars, as we are
our honest captain, it will be some such humouring as the
spoiled child gets from a capricious parent in moments of
anger.”
Mr. Truck passed the group at that instant, and heard
his name coupled with the word honest, in the mouth of
Eve, though he lost the rest of the sentence.
“Thank you for the compliment, my dear young lady,”
he said; “and I wish I could persuade Captain Somebody,
of his Britannic Majesty's ship Foam, to be of the same
way of thinking. It is all because he will not fancy me
honest in the article of tobacco, that he has got the Montauk
down here, on the Spanish coast, where the man who built
her would not know her; so unnatural and unseemly is it
to catch a London liner so far out of her track. I shall
have to use double care to get the good craft home again.”
“And why this particular difficulty, captain?” Eve, who
was amused with Mr. Truck's modes of speech, pleasantly
inquired. “Is it not equally easy to go from one part of
the ocean, as from another?”
“Equally easy! Bless you, my dear young lady, you
never made a more capital mistake in your life. Do you
imagine it is as easy to go from London to New York, now,
as to go from New York to London?”
“I am so ignorant as to have made this ridiculous mistake,
if mistake it be; nor do I now see why it should be
otherwise.”
“Simply because it is up-hill, ma'am. As for our position
here to the eastward of the Azores, the difficulty is
soon explained. By dint of coaxing I had got the good old
ship so as to know every inch of the road on the northern
passage, and now I shall be obliged to wheedle her along
on a new route, like a shy horse getting through a new
stable-door. One might as well think of driving a pig
from his sty, as to get a ship out of her track.”
“We trust to you to do all this and much more at need.
But to what will these grand omens lead? Shall we have a
gale, or is so much magnificent menacing to be taken as an
empty threat of Nature's?”
“That we shall know in the course of the day, Miss
Effingham, though Nature is no bully, and seldom threatens
needs a nicer eye to detect, than your winds.”
“Of the latter I am fully persuaded, captain, for they
are called the `viewless winds,' you will remember, and the
greatest authority we possess, speaks of them as being quite
beyond the knowledge of man: `That we may hear the
sound of the wind, but cannot tell whence it cometh, or
whither it goeth.' ”
“I do not remember the writer you mean, my dear young
lady,” returned Mr. Truck, quite innocently; “but he was
a sensible fellow, for I believe Vattel has never yet dared
to grapple with the winds. There are people who fancy
the weather is foretold in the almanack; but, according to
my opinion, it is safer to trust a rheumatis' of two or three
years' standing. A good, well-established, old-fashioned
rheumatis'—I say nothing of your new-fangled diseases,
like the cholera, and varioloid, and animal magnitudes—
but a good old-fashioned rheumatis', such as people used to
have when I was a boy, is as certain a barometer as that
which is at this moment hanging up in the coach-house
here, within two fathoms of the very spot where we are
standing. I once had a rheumatis' that I set much store
by, for it would let me know when to look out for easterly
weather, quite as infallibly as any instrument I ever sailed
with. I never told you the story of the old Connecticut
horse-jockey, and the typhoon, I believe; and as we are
doing nothing but waiting for the weather to make up its
mind—”
“The weather to make up its mind!” exclaimed Eve,
looking around her in awe at the sublime and terrific grandeur
of the ocean, of the heavens, and of the pent and
moody air; “is there an uncertainty in this?”
“Lord bless you! my dear young lady, the weather is
often as uncertain, and as undecided, and as hard to please,
too, as an old girl who gets sudden offers on the same day,
from a widower with ten children, an attorney with one leg,
and the parson of the parish. Uncertain, indded! Why I
have known the weather in this grandiloquent condition for
a whole day. Mr. Dodge, there, will tell you it is making
up its mind which way it ought to blow, to be popular; so,
as we have nothing better to do, Mr. Effingham, I will tell
yards when there is no wind, is like playing on a Jew'sharp,
at a concert of trombones.”
Mr. Effingham made a complaisant sign of assent, and
pressed the arm of the excited Eve for patience.
“You must know, gentlemen,” the captain commenced,
looking round to collect as many listeners as possible,—for
he excessively disliked lecturing to small audiences, when
he had anything to say that he thought particularly clever,
—“you must know that we had formerly many craft that
went between the river and the islands—”
—“The river?” interrupted the amused Mr. Sharp.
“Certain; the Connecticut, I mean; we all call it the
river down our way—between the river and the West Indies,
with horses, cattle, and other knick-knacks of that description.
Among others was old Joe Bunk, who had followed
the trade in a high-decked brig for some twenty-three years,
he and the brig having grown old in company, like man
and wife. About forty years since, our river ladies began
to be tired of their bohea, and as there was a good deal said
in favour of souchong in those days, an excitement was
got up on the subject, as Mr. Dodge calls it, and it was determined
to make an experiment in the new quality, before
they dipped fairly into the trade. Well, what do you suppose
was done in the premises, as Vattel says, my dear
young lady?”
Eve's eyes were still on the grand and portentous aspect
of the heavens, but she civilly answered,
“No doubt they sent to a shop and purchased a sample.”
“Not they; they knew too much for that, since any
rogue of a grocer might cheat them. When the excitement
had got a little headway on it, they formed a tea society,
with the parson's wife for presidentess, and her oldest daughter
for secretary. In this way they went to work, until the
men got into the fever too, and a project was set a-foot to
send a craft to China for a sample of what they wanted.”
“China!” exclaimed Eve, this time looking the captain
fairly in the face.
“China, certain; it lies off hereaway, you know, round
on the other side of the earth. Well, whom should they
choose to go on the errand but old Joe Bunk. The old man
anything of navigation, they thought he was just their man,
as there was no such thing as losing him.”
“One would think he was the very man to get lost,” observed
Mr. Effingham, while the captain fitted a fresh cigar;
for smoke he would, and did, in any company, that was out
of the cabin, although he always professed a readiness to
cease, if any person disliked the fragrance of tobacco.
“Not he, sir; he was just as well off in the Indian Ocean
as he would be here, for he knew nothing about either.
Well, Joe fitted up the brig; the Seven Dollies was her
name; for you must know we had seven ladies in the town,
who were cally Dolly, and they each of them used to send
a colt, or a steer, or some other delicate article to the islands
by Joe, whenever he went; so he fitted up the Seven Dollies,
hoisted in his dollars, and made sail. The last that
was seen or heard of the old man for eight months, was off
Montauk, where he was fallen in with, two days out, steering
south-easterly, by compass.”
“I should think,” observed John Effingham, who began
to arouse himself as the story proceeded, “that Mrs. Bunk
must have been very uneasy all this time?”
“Not she; she stuck to the bohea in hopes the souchong
would arrive before the restoration of the Jews. Arrive it
did, sure enough, at the end of eight months, and a capital
adventure it proved for all concerned. Old Joe got a great
name in the river for the exploit, though how he got to
China no one could say, or how he got back again; or, for
a long time, how he got the huge heavy silver tea-pot, he
brought home with him.”
“A silver tea-pot?”
“Exactly that article. At last the truth came to be
known; for it is not an easy matter to hide anything of
that nature down our way; it is aristocratic, as Mr. Dodge
says, to keep a secret. At first they tried Joe with all sorts
of questions, but he gave them `guess' for `guess.' Then
people began to talk, and finally it was fairly whispered
that the old man had stolen the tea-pot. This brought him
before the meeting.—Law was out of the question, you will
understand, as there was no evidence; but the meeting
deal.”
“And the result?” asked John Effingham, “I suppose
the parish took the tea-pot and left Joe the grounds.”
“You are as far out of the way as we are here, down on
the coast of Spain! The truth is just this. The Seven
Dollies was lying among the rest of them, at anchor, below
Canton, with the weather as fine as young girls love to see
it in May, when Joe began to get down his yards, to house
his masts, and to send out all his spare anchors. He even
went so far as to get two hawsers fastened to a junk that
had grounded a little a-head of him. This made a talk
among the captains of the vessles, and some came on board
to ask the reason. Joe told them he was getting ready for
the typhoon; but when they inquired his reasons for believing
there was to be a typhoon at all, Joe looked solemn,
shook his head, and said he had reasons enough, but they
were his own. Had he been explicit, he would have been
laughed at, but the sight of an old grey-headed man, who
had been at sea forty years, getting ready in this serious
manner, set the others at work too; for ships follow each
other's movements, like sheep running through a breach in
the fence. Well, that night the typhoon came in earnest,
and it blew so hard, that Joe Bunk said he could see the
houses in the moon, all the air having out of the atmosphere.”
“But what has this to do with the teapot, Captain
Truck?”
“It is the life and soul of it. The captains in port were
so delighted with Joe's foreknowledge, that they clubbed,
and presented him this pot as a testimony of their gratitude
and esteem. He'd got to be popular among them, Mr.
Dodge, and that was the way they proved it.”
“But, pray, how did he know the storm was approaching?”
asked Eve, whose curiosity had been awakened in
spite of herself. “It could not have been that his `fore-knowledge'
was supernatural.”
“That no one can say, for Joe was presbyterian-built, as
we say, kettle-bottomed, and stowed well. The truth was
not discovered until ten years afterwards, when the old fellow
got to be a regular cripple, what between rheumatis',
first complaint, and in one of its most severe paroxysms,
when nature is apt to wince, he roared three times, `a
typhoon! a typhoon! a typhoon!” and the murder was out.
Sure enough, the next day we had a regular north-easter;
but old Joe got no sign of popularity that time. And now,
when you get to America, gentlemen and ladies, you will
be able to say you have heard the story of Joe Bunk and
his tea-pot.”
Thereupon Captain Truck took two or three hearty whiffs
of the cigar, turned his face upwards, and permitted the
smoke to issue forth in a continued stream until it was exhausted,
but still keeping his head raised in the inconvenient
position it had taken. The eye of the master, fastened
in this manner on something aloft, was certain to draw
other eyes in the same direction, and in a few seconds all
around him were gazing in the same way, though none but
himself could tell why.
“Turn up the watch below. Mr. Leach,” Captain Truck
at length called out, and Eve observed that he threw away
the cigar, although a fresh one; a proof, as she fancied,
that he was preparing for duty.
The people were soon at their places, and an effort was
made to get the ship's head round to the southward.
Although the frightful stillness of the atmosphere rendered
the manœuvre difficult, it succeeded in the end, by profiting
by the passing and fitful currents, that resembled so many
sighings of the air. The men were then sent on the yards,
to furl all the canvas, with the exception of the three topsails
and the fore-course, most of it having been merely
hauled up to await the result. All those who had ever been
at sea before, saw in these preparations proof that Captain
Truck expected the change would be sudden and severe:
still, as he betrayed no uneasiness, they hoped his measures
were merely those of prudence. Mr. Effingham could not
refrain from inquiring, however, if there existed any immediate
motives for the preparations that were so actively,
though not hurriedly, making.
“This is no affair for the rheumatis',” returned the facetious
master, “for, look you here, my worthy sir, and you,
my dear young lady,”—this was a sort of parental familiarity
his unmarried female passengers, in virtue of his office,
and of his being a bachelor drawing hard upon sixty;—
“look you here, my dear young lady, and you, too, ma'amselle,
for you can understand the clouds, I take it, if they
are not French clouds; do you not see the manner in which
those black-looking rascals are putting their heads together?
They are plotting something quite in their own way, I'll
warrant you.”
“The clouds are huddling, and rolling over each other,
certainly,” returned Eve, who had been struck with the wild
beauty of their evolutions, “and a noble, though fearful picture
they present; but I do not understand the particular
meaning of it, if there be any hidden omen in their airy
flights.”
“No rheumatis' about you, young lady,” said the captain,
jocularly; “too young, and handsome, and too modern,
too, I dare say, for that old-fashioned complaint. But
on one category you may rely, and that is, that nothing in
nature conspires without an object.”
“But I do not think vapour whirling in a current of air
is a conspiracy,” answered Eve, laughing, “though it may
be a category.”
“Perhaps not,—who knows, however; for it is as easy
to suppose that objects understand each other, as that horses
and dogs understand each other. We know nothing about
it, and, therefore, it behooves us to say nothing. If mankind
conversed only of the things they understood, half the
words might be struck out of the dictionaries. But, as I
was remarking, those clouds, you can see, are getting together,
and are making ready for a start, since here they
will not be able to stay much longer.”
“And what will compel them to disappear?”
“Do me the favour to turn your eyes here, to the nor'-west.
You see an opening there that looks like a crouching
lion; is it not so?”
“There is certainly a bright clear streak of sky along
the margin of the ocean, that has quite lately made its appearance;
does it prove that the wind will blow from that
quarter?”
“Quite as much, my dear young lady, as when you open
of it.”
“An act a well-bred young woman very seldom performs,”
observed Mademoiselle Viefville; “and never in a
town.”
“No? Well, in our town on the river, the women's
heads are half the time out of the windows. But I do not
pretend, ma'amselle, to be expert in proprieties of this sort,
though I can venture to say that I am somewhat of a judge
of what the winds would be about when they open their
shutters. This opening to the nor'-west, then, is a sure
sign of something coming out of the window, well-bred or
not.”
“But,” added Eve, “the clouds above us, and those farther
south, appear to be hurrying towards your bright opening,
captain, instead of from it.”
“Quite in nature, gentlemen; quite in nature, ladies.
When a man has fully made up his mind to retreat, he
blusters the most; and one step forward often promises two
backward. You often see the stormy petterel sailing at a
ship as if he meant to come aboard, but he takes good care
to put his helm down before he is fairly in the rigging. So
it is with clouds, and all other things in nature. Vattel
says you may make a show of fight when your necessities
require it, but that a neutral cannot fire a gun, unless
against pirates. Now, these clouds are putting the best face
on the matter, but in a few minutes you will see them
wheeling as St. Paul did before them.”
“St. Paul, Captain Truck!”
“Yes, my dear young lady; to the right about.”
Eve frowned, for she disliked some of these nautical
images, though it was impossible not to smile in secret at
the queer associations that so often led the well-meaning
master's discursive discourse. His mind was a strange
jumble of an early religious education,—religious as to
externals and professions, at least,—with subsequent loose
observation and much worldly experience, and he drew on
his stock of information, according to his own account of
the matter, “as Saunders, the steward, cut the butter from
the firkins, or as it came first.”
His prediction concerning the clouds proved to be true,
out of the way of the nor'-wester,” to use the captain's
figure, “like sheep giving play to the dogs.” The
horizon brightened with a rapidity almost supernatural, and,
in a surprisingly short space of time, the whole of that
frowning vault that had been shadowed by murky and menacing
vapour, sporting its gambols in ominous wildness,
was cleared of everything like a cloud, with the exception
of a few white, rich, fleecy piles, that were grouped in the
north, like a battery discharging its artillery on some devoted
field.
The ship betrayed the arrival of the wind by a cracking
of the spars, as they settled into their places, and then the
huge hull began to push aside the waters, and to come
under control. The first shock was far from severe, though,
as the captain determined to bring his vessel up as near his
course as the direction of the breeze would permit, he soon
found he had as much canvas spread as she could bear.
Twenty minutes brought him to a single reef, and half an
hour to a second.
By this time attention was drawn to the Foam. The old
superiority of that cruiser was now apparent again, and
calculations were made concerning the possibility of avoiding
her, if they continued to stand on much longer on the
present course. The captain had hoped the Montauk would
have the advantage from her greater bulk, when the two
vessels should be brought down to close-reefed topsails, as
he foresaw would be the case; but he was soon compelled
to abandon even that hope. Further to the southward he
was resolved he would not go, as it would be leading him
too far astray, and, at last, he came to the determination to
stand towards the islands, which were as near as might be
in his track, and to anchor in a neutral road-stead, if too
hard pressed.
“He cannot get up with us before midnight, Leach,” he
concluded the conference held with the mate by saying;
“and by that time the gale will be at its height, if we are
to have a gale, and then the gentleman will not be desirous
of lowering his boats. In the mean time, we shall be driving
in towards the Azores, and it will be nothing out of the
course of nature, should I find an occasion to play him a
altar of tobacco, as old Deacon Hourglass used to say in
his prayers, it is a category to be averted by any catastrophe
short of condemnation.”
| CHAPTER X. Homeward bound, or, The chase | |