TALES OF THE SEA: 12 Maritime Adventure Novels in One Volume (Illustrated)
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, have conquered an ascent, shoots along the track with redoubled velocity. For an instant the wind appear ed to have lulled, though the wide ridge of foam 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 background of the threatening horizon, looking not unlike the faintest shadows cast upon some brighter surface by the deception of the phantasmagoria. But to the mariners, who so well knew how to distinguish between 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 already begun to consider the stranger, and to converse 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 topmast 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 some wave which it had equal difficulty in mounting 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