TALES OF THE SEA: 12 Maritime Adventure Novels in One Volume (Illustrated)
reluctantly suffering himself to be forced from a spot where he fondly felt that he could have continued, without weariness, for ever.
Chapter XXIX
“Let them achieve me, and then sell my bones.”
—Henry V
The Commander of the “Dart,” and his bewildered lieutenant, had gained the quarter-deck before either spoke again. The direction first taken by the eyes of the latter was in quest of the neighbouring ship; nor was the look entirely without that unsettled and vague expression which seems to announce a momentary aberration of the faculties. But the vessel of the Rover was in view, in all the palpable and beautiful proportions of her admirable construction Instead of lying in a state of rest, as when he left her, her head-yards had been swung, and, as the sails filled with the breeze, the stately fabric had he gun to Marve gracefully, though with no great velocity along the water. There was not the slightest appearance however, of any attempt at escape in the evolution. On the contrary, the loftier and lighter sails had all been furled, and men were at the moment actively employed in sending to the deck those smaller spars which were absolutely requisite in spreading the canvas that would be needed in facilitating her flight. Wilder turned from the sight with a sickening apprehension; for he well knew that these were the preparations that skillful mariners are wont to make, when bent on desperate combat.
“Ay, yonder goes your St. James’s seaman, with his three topsails full, and his mizzen out, as if he had already forgotten he is to dine with me, and that his name is to be found at one end of the list of Commanders and mine at the other,” grumbled the displeased Bignall. “But we shall have him coming round all in good time, I suppose, when his appetite tells him the dinner hour. He might wear his colours in presence of a senior, too, and no disgrace to his nobility. By the Lord, Harry Ark, he handles those yards beautifully! I warrant you, now, some honest man’s son is sent aboard his ship for a dry nurse, in the shape of a first lieutenant, and we shall have him vapouring, all dinner time, about ‘how my ship does this,’ and ‘I never suffer that.’ Ha! is it not so, sir? He has a thorough seaman for his First?”
“Few men understand the profession better than does the Captain of yonder vessel himself,” returned Wilder.
“The devil he does! You have been talking with him, Mr Ark, about these matters, and he has got some of the fashions of the ‘Dart.’ I see into a mystery as quick as another!”
“I do assure you, Captain Bignall, there is no safety in confiding in the ignorance of yonder extra ordinary man.”
“Ay, ay, I begin to overhaul his character. The young dog is a quiz, and has been amusing himself with a sailor of what he calls the old school. Am I right, sir? He has seen salt water before this cruise?”
“He is almost a native of the seas; for more than thirty years has he passed his time on them.”
“There, Harry Ark, he has done you handsomely. Now, I have his own assertion for it, that he will not be three-and-twenty until to-morrow.”
“On my word, he has deceived you, sir.”
“I don’t know, Mr Ark; that is a task much easier attempted than performed. Threescore and four years add as much weight to a man’s head as to his heels! I may have undervalued the skill of the younker but, as to his years, there can be no great mistake. But where the devil is the fellow steering to? Has he need of a pinafore from his lady mother to come on board of a man-of-war for his dinner?”
“See! he is indeed standing from us!” exclaimed Wilder, with a rapidity and delight that would have excited the suspicions of one more observant than his Commander.
“If I know the stern from the bows of a ship, what you say is truth,” returned the other, with some austerity. “Hark ye, Mr Ark, I’ve a mind to furnish the coxcomb a lesson in respect for his superiors and give him a row to whet his appetite. By the Lord, I will; and he may write home an account of this manoeuvre, too, in his next despatches. Fill away the after-yards, sir; fill away. Since this honourable youth is disposed to amuse himself with a sailing-match, he can take no offence that others are in the same humour.”
The lieutenant of the watch, to whom the order was addressed, complied; and, in another minute, the “Dart” was also beginning to move a-head, though in a direction directly opposite to that taken by the “Dolphin.” The old man highly enjoyed his own decision, manifesting his self-satisfaction by the infinite glee and deep chuckling of his manner. He was too much occupied with the step he had just taken, to revert immediately to the subject that had so recently been uppermost in his mind; nor did the thought of pursuing the discourse occur to him, until the two ships had left a broad field of water between them, as each moved, with ease and steadiness, on its proper course.
“Let him note that in his log-book, Mr Ark,” the irritable old seaman then resumed, returning to the spot which Wilder had not left during the intervening time. “Though my cook has no great relish for a frog, they who would taste of his skill must seek him. By the Lord, boy, he will have a pull of it, if he undertake to come-to on that tack.—But how happens it that you got into his ship? All that part of the cruise remains untold.”
“I have been wrecked, sir, since you received my last letter.”
“What! has Davy Jones got possession of the red gentleman at last?”
“The misfortune occurred in a ship from Bristol, aboard which I was placed as a sort of prize-master.—He certainly continues to stand slowly to the northward!”
“Let the young coxcomb go! he will have all the better appetite for his supper. And so you were picked up by his Majesty’s ship the ‘Antelope.’ Ay, I see into the whole affair. You have only to give an old sea-dog his course and compass, and he will find his way to port in the darkest night. But how happened it that this Mr Howard affected to be ignorant of your name, sir, when he saw it on the list of my officers?”
“Ignorant! Did he seem ignorant? perhaps”—
“Say no more, my brave fellow, say no more,” interrupted Wilder’s considerate but choleric Commander. “I nave met with such rebuffs myself; but we are above them, sir, far above them and their impertinences together. No man need be ashamed of having earned his commission, as you and I have done, in fair weather and in foul. Zounds, boy, I have fed one of the upstarts for a week, and then had him stare at a church across the way, when I have fallen in with him in the streets of London, in a fashion that might make a simple man believe the puppy knew for what it had been built. Think no more of it, Harry; worse things have happened to myself, I do assure you.”
“I went by my assumed name while in yonder ship,” Wilder forced himself to add. “Even the ladies who were the companions of my wreck, know me by no other.”
“Ah! that was prudent; and, after all, the young sprig was not pretending genteel ignorance. How now, master Fid; you are welcome back to the Dart.’”
“I’ve taken the liberty to say as much already to myself, your Honour,” resumed the topman, who was busying himself, near his two officers, in a manner that seemed to invite their attention. “A wholesome craft is yonder, and boldly is she commanded, and stoutly is she manned; but, for my part, having a character to lose, it is more to my taste to sail in a ship that can shew her commission, when properly called on for the same.”
The colour on Wilder’s cheeks went and came like the flushings of the evening sky, and his eyes were turned in every direction but that which would have encountered the astonished gaze of his veteran friend.
“I am not quite sure that I understand the meaning of the lad, Mr Ark. Every officer, from the Captain to the boatswain, in the King’s fleet, that is, every man of common discretion, carries his authority to act as such with him to sea, or he might find himself in a situation as awkward as that of a pirate.”
“That