TALES OF THE SEA: 12 Maritime Adventure Novels in One Volume (Illustrated)
spoke with such earnestness, as to draw the attention of his companion from the object he was studying to the countenance of the speaker.
“Mr Wilder,” he said quickly, and with an air of decision, “you know the ship?”
“I’ll not deny it. If my opinion be true, she will be found too heavy for the ‘Dolphin,’ and a vessel that offers little inducement for us to attempt to carry.”
“Her size?”
“You heard it from the black.”
“Your followers know her also?”
“It would be difficult to deceive a topman in the cut and trim of sails among which he has passed months, nay years.”
“I understand the ‘new cloths’ in her top-gallant-royal! Mr Wilder, your departure from that vessel has been recent?”
“As my arrival in this.”
The Rover continued silent for several minutes communing with his own thoughts. His companion made no offer to disturb his meditations; though the furtive glances, he often cast in the direction of the other’s musing eye, betrayed some little anxiety to learn the result of his self-communication.
“And her guns?” at length his Commander abruptly demanded.
“She numbers four more than the ‘Dolphin.’”
“The metal?”
“Is still heavier. In every particular is she a ship a size above your own.”
“Doubtless she is the property of the King?”
“She is.”
“Then shall she change her masters. By heaven she shall be mine!”
Wilder shook his head, answering only with an incredulous smile.
“You doubt it,” resumed the Rover. “Come hither, and look upon that deck. Can he whom you so lately quitted muster fellows like these, to do his biddings?”
The crew of the ‘Dolphin’ had been chosen, by one who thoroughly understood the character of a seaman, from among all the different people of the Christian world. There was not a maritime nation in Europe which had not its representative among; that band of turbulent and desperate spirits. Even the descendant of the aboriginal possessors of America had been made to abandon the habits and opinions of his progenitors, to become a wanderer on that element which had laved the shores of his native land for ages, without exciting a wish to penetrate its mysteries in the bosoms of his simple-minded ancestry. All had been suited, by lives of wild adventure, on the two elements, for their present lawless pursuits and, directed by the mind which had known how to obtain and to continue its despotic ascendancy over their efforts, they truly formed a most dangerous and (considering their numbers) resistless crew. Their Commander smiled in exultation, as he watched the evident reflection with which his companion contemplated the indifference, or fierce joy, which different individuals among them exhibited at the appearance of an approaching conflict. Even the rawest of their numbers, the luckless waisters and after-guard, were apparently as confident of victory as those whose audacity might plead the apology of uniform and often repeated success.
“Count you these for nothing?” asked the Rover, at the elbow of his lieutenant, after allowing him time to embrace the whole of the grim band with his eye. “See! here is a Dane, ponderous and steady as the gun at which I shall shortly place him. You may cut him limb from limb, and yet will he stand like a tower, until the last stone of the foundation has been sapped. And, here, we have his neighbours, the, Swede and the Russ, fit companions for managing the same piece; which, I’ll answer, shall not be silent, while a man of them all is left to apply a match, or handle a sponge. Yonder is a square-built athletic mariner, from one of the Free Towns. He prefers our liberty to that of his native city; and you shall find that the venerable Hanseatic institutions shall give way sooner than he be known to quit the spot I give him to defend. Here, you see a brace of Englishmen; and, though they come from the island that I love so little, better men at need will not be often found. Feed them, and flog them, and I pledge myself to their swaggering, and their courage. D’ye see that thought ful-looking, bony miscreant, that has a look of godliness in the midst of all his villany? That fellow fish’d for herring till he got a taste of beef, when his stomach revolted at its ancient fare; and then the ambition of becoming rich got uppermost. He is a Scot, from one of the lochs of the North.”
“Will he fight?”
“For money—the honour of the Macs—and his religion. He is a reasoning fellow, after all: and I like to have him on my own side in a quarrel. Ah! yonder is the boy for a charge. I once told him to cut a rope in a hurry, and he severed it above his head, instead of beneath his feet, taking a flight from a lower yard into the sea, as a reward for the exploit. But, then, he always extols his presence of mind in not drowning! Now are his ideas in a hot ferment; and, if the truth could be known, I would wager a handsome venture, that the sail in sight is, by some mysterious process, magnified to six in his fertile fancy.”
“He must be thinking, then, of escape.”
“Far from it; he is rather plotting the means of surrounding them with the ‘Dolphin.’ To your true Hibernian, escape is the last idea that gives him an uneasy moment. You see the pensive-looking, sallow mortal, at his elbow. That is a man who will fight with a sort of sentiment. There is a touch of chivalry in him, which might be worked into heroism if one had but the opportunity and the inclination. As it is, he will not fail to show a spark of the true Castilian. His companion has come from the Rock of Lisbon; I should trust him unwillingly, did I not know that little opportunity of taking pay from the enemy is given here. Ah! here is a lad for a dance of a Sunday. You see him, at this moment, with foot and tongue going together. That is a creature of contradictions. He wants for neither wit nor good-nature, but still he might cut your throat on an occasion. There is a strange medley of ferocity and bonhommie about the animal. I shall put him among the boarders; for we shall not be at blows a minute before his impatience will be for carrying every thing by a coup-de-main.”
“And who is the seaman at his elbow, that apparently is occupied in divesting his person of some superfluous garments?” demanded Wilder, irresistibly attracted, by the manner of the Rover, to pursue the subject.
“An economical Dutchman. He calculates that it is just as wise to be killed in an old jacket as in a new one; and has probably said as much to his Gascon neighbour, who is, however, resolved to die decently, if die he must. The former has happily commenced his preparations for the combat in good season, or the enemy might defeat us before he would be in readiness. Did it rest between these two worthies to decide this quarrel, the mercurial Frenchman would defeat his neighbour of Holland, before the latter believed the battle had commenced; but, should he let the happy moment pass, rely on it, the Dutchman would give him trouble. Forget you, Wilder, that the day has been when the countrymen of that slow-moving and heavy-moulded fellow swept the narrow seas with a broom at their mast-heads?”
The Rover smiled wildly as he spoke, and what he said he uttered with bitter emphasis. To his companion however, there appeared no such grounds of unnatural exultation, in recalling the success of a foreign enemy, and he was content to assent to the truth of the historical fact with a simple inclination of his head. As if he even found pain in this confession, and would gladly be rid of the mortifying reflection altogether, he rejoined, in some apparent haste,—
“You have overlooked the two tall seamen, who are making out the rig of the stranger with so much gravity of observation.”
“Ay, those are men that came from a land in which we both feel some interest. The sea is not more unstable than are those rogues in their knavery. Their minds are but half made up to piracy.—‘Tis a coarse word, Mr Wilder, but I fear we earn it. But these rascals make a reservation of grace in the midst of all their villainy.”
“They regard the stranger as if they saw reason to distrust the wisdom of letting him approach so near.” “Ah! they are renowned calculators. I fear they have detected the four supernumerary guns you mentioned; for their vision seems supernatural in affairs which