TALES OF THE SEA: 12 Maritime Adventure Novels in One Volume (Illustrated)
of anxious watchfulness on the part of Wilder, during which the whole of his professional knowledge was needed in order to keep the despoiled hull of the Bristol trader from becoming a prey to the greedy waters. His consummate skill, however, proved equal to the task that was required at his hands; and, just as the symptoms of day were becoming visible along the east, both wind and waves were rapidly subsiding together. During the whole of this doubtful period our adventurer did not receive the smallest assistance from any of the crew, with the exception of two experienced seamen whom he had previously stationed at the wheel. But to this neglect he was indifferent; since little more was required than his own judgment, seconded, as it faithfully was, by the exertions of the manners more immediately under his eye.
The day dawned on a scene entirely different from that which had marked the tempestuous deformity of the night. The whole fury of the winds appear ed to have been expended in their precocious effort. From the moderate gale, to which they had fallen by the end of the middle watch, they further altered to a vacillating breeze; and, ere the sun had risen, the changeful air had subsided into a flat calm. The sea went down as suddenly as the power which had raised, it vanished; and, by the time the broad golden light of the sun was shed fairly and fully upon the unstable element, it lay unruffled and polished, though still gently heaving in swells so long and heavy as to resemble the placid respiration of a sleeping infant.
The hour was still early, and the serene appearance of the sky and the ocean gave every promise of a day which might be passed in devising the expedients necessary to bring the ship again, in some measure, under the command of her people.
“Sound the pumps,” said Wilder, observing that the crew were appearing from the different places in which they had bestowed their cares and their persons together, during the later hours of the night.
“Do you hear me, sir?” he added sternly, observing that no one moved to obey his order. “Let the pumps be sounded, and the ship cleared of every inch of water.”
Nighthead, to whom Wilder had now addressed himself, regarded his Commander with an oblique ind sullen eye, and then exchanged singularly intelligent glances with his comrades, before he saw fit to make the smallest motion towards compliance. But there was that, in the authoritative mien of his superior, which finally induced him to comply. The dilatory manner in which the seamen performed the duty was quickened, however, as the rod ascended, and the well-known signs of a formidable leak met their eyes. The experiment was repeated with greater activity, and with far more precision.
“If witchcraft can clear the hold of a ship that is already half full of water,” said Nighthead, casting another sullen glance towards the attentive Wilder “the sooner it is done the better; for the whole cunning of something more than a bungler in the same will be needed, in order to make the pumps of the ‘Royal Caroline’ suck!”
“Does the ship leak?” demanded his superior with a quickness of utterance which sufficiently proclaimed how important he deemed the intelligence.
“Yesterday, I would have boldly put my name to the articles of any craft that floats the ocean; and had the Captain asked me if I understood her nature and character, as certain as that my name is Francis Nighthead, I should have told him, yes. But I find that the oldest seaman may still learn something of the water; though it should be got in crossing a ferry in a flat.”
“What mean you, sir?” demanded Wilder, who, for the first time, began to note the mutinous looks assumed by his mate, no less than the threatening manner in which he was seconded by the crew. “Have the pumps rigged without delay, and clear the ship of the water.”
Nighthead slowly complied with the former part of this order; and, in a few moments, every thing was arranged to commence the necessary, and, as it would seem, urgent duty of pumping. But no man lifted his hand to the laborious employment. The quick eye of Wilder, who had now taken the alarm, was not slow in detecting this reluctance; and he repeated the order more sternly, calling to two of the seamen, by name, to set the example of obedience. The men hesitated, giving an opportunity to the mate to confirm them, by his voice, in their mutinous intentions.
“What need of hands to work a pump in a vessel like this?” he said, with a coarse laugh, but in which secret terror struggled strangely with open malice. “After what we have all seen this night, none here will be amazed, should the vessel begin to spout out the brine like a breathing whale.”
“What am I to understand by this hesitation, and by this language?” said Wilder, approaching Nighthead with a firm step, and an eye too proud to quail before the plainest symptoms of insubordination. “Is it you, sir, who should be foremost in exertion at a moment like this, who dare to set an example of disobedience?”
The mate recoiled a pace, and his lips moved, still he uttered no audible reply. Wilder once more bade him, in a calm and authoritative tone, lay his own hands to the brake. Nighthead then found his voice, in time to make a flat refusal; and, at the next moment, he was felled to the feet of his indignant Commander, by a blow he had neither the address nor the power to resist. This act of decision was succeeded by one single moment of breathless, wavering silence among the crew; and then the common cry, and the general rush of every man upon our defenceless and solitary adventurer, were the signals that open hostility had commenced. A shriek from the quarter-deck arrested their efforts; just as a dozen hands were laid violently upon the person of Wilder, and, for the moment, occasioned a truce. It was the fearful cry of Gertrude, which possessed even the influence to still the savage intentions of a set of beings so rude and so unnurtured as those whose passions had just been awakened into fierce activity. Wilder was released; and all eyes turned, by a common impulse, in the direction of the sound.
During the more momentous hours of the past night, the very existence of the passengers below had been forgotten by most of those whose duty kept them to the deck. If they had been recalled at all to the recollection of any, it was at those fleeting moments when the mind of the young mariner, who directed the movements of the ship, found leisure to catch stolen glimpses of softer scenes than the wild warring of the elements that was so actively raging before his eyes. Nighthead had named them, as he would have made allusion to a part of the cargo, but their fate had little influence on his hardened nature. Mrs Wyllys and her charge had therefore remained below during the whole period, perfectly unapprised of the disasters of the intervening time. Buried in the recesses of their births, they had heard the roaring of the winds, and the incessant washing of the waters; but these usual accompaniments of a storm had served to conceal the crashing of masts, and the hoarse cries of the mariners. For the moments of terrible suspense while the Bristol trader lay on her side, the better informed governess had, indeed, some fearful glimmerings of the truth; but, conscious of her uselessness and unwilling to alarm her less instructed companion she had sufficient self-command to be mute. The subsequent silence, and comparative calm, induced her to believe that she had been mistaken in her apprehensions; and, long ere morning dawned, both she and Gertrude had sunk into sweet and refreshing slumbers. They had risen and mounted to the deck together, and were still in the first burst of their wonder at the desolation which met their gaze, when the long-meditated attack on Wilder was made.
“What means this awful change?” demanded Mrs Wyllys, with a lip that quivered, and a cheek which, notwithstanding the extraordinary power she possessed over her feelings, was blanched to the colour of death.
The eye of Wilder was glowing, and his brow dark as those heavens from which they had just so happily escaped, as he answered, menacing his assailants with an arm,—
“It means mutiny, Madam; rascally, cowardly mutiny!”
“Could mutiny strip a vessel of her masts, and leave her a helpless log upon the sea?”
“Hark ye, Madam!” roughly interrupted the mate ‘to you I will speak freely; for it is well known who you are, and that you came on board the ‘Caroline’ a paying passenger. This night have I seen the heavens and the ocean behave as I have never seen them behave before. Ships have been running afore the wind, light and buoyant as corks, with all their spars stepped and steady, when other ships have been shaved of every mast as close as the razor sweeps the chin. Cruisers have been fallen in with, sailing without living hands to work them; and, all together, no man here has