TALES OF THE SEA: 12 Maritime Adventure Novels in One Volume (Illustrated)
shuddered, on reaching the deck, while she murmured an expression of strange delight. Even Mrs Wyllys gazed upon the dark waves, that 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; lifter 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 canvas, the females walked apart, leaving the young 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 point with his finger, when the limb suddenly fell 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 assembling 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 the 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,