LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

manner! and look at these rags of clouds, which darken the heavens! and yet there is light enough, coming from the ocean, for a good scholar to read by!”

      “I’ve often seen the weather as it is now.”

      “Ay, who has not? It is seldom that any man, let him come from what part he will, makes his first voyage as Captain. Let who will be out to-night upon the water, I’ll engage he has been there before. I have seen worse looking skies, and even worse looking water, than this; but I never knew any good come of either. The night I was wreck’d in the bay of”——

      “In the waist there!” cried the calm, authoritative tones of Wilder.

      Had a warning voice arisen from the turbulent and rushing ocean itself, it would not have sounded more alarming, in the startled ears of the conscious seamen, than this sudden hail. Their young Commander found it necessary to repeat it, before even Nighthead, the proper and official spokesman, could muster resolution to answer.

      “Get the fore-top-gallant-sail on the ship, sir,” continued Wilder, when the customary reply let him know that he had been heard.

      The mate and his companions regarded each other, for a moment, in dull admiration; and many a melancholy shake of the head was exchanged, before one of the party threw himself into the weather-rigging, and proceeded aloft, with a doubting mind, in order to loosen the sail in question.

      There was certainly enough, in the desperate manner with which Wilder pressed the canvas on the vessel, to excite distrust, either of his intentions or judgment, in the opinions of men less influenced by superstition than those it was now his lot to command. It had long been apparent to Earing, and his more ignorant, and consequently more obstinate, brother officer, that their young superior had the same desire to escape from the spectral-looking ship, which so strangely followed their movements, as they had themselves. They only differed in the mode; but this difference was so very material, that the two mates consulted together apart, and then Earing, something stimulated by the hardy opinions of his coadjutor, approached his Commander, with the determination of delivering the results of their united judgments, with that sort of directness which he thought the occasion now demanded. But there was that in the steady eye and imposing mien of Wilder, that caused him to touch on the dangerous subject with a discretion and circumlocution that were a little remarkable for the individual. He stood watching the effect of the sail recently spread for several minutes, before he even presumed to open his mouth. But a terrible encounter, between the vessel and a wave that lifted its angry crest apparently some dozen feet above the approaching bows, gave him courage to proceed, by admonishing him afresh of the danger of continuing silent.

      “I do not see that we drop the stranger, though the ship is wallowing through the water so heavily,” he commenced, determined to be as circumspect as possible in his advances.

      Wilder bent another of his frequent glances on the misty object in the horizon, and then turned his frowning eye towards the point whence the wind proceeded, as if he would defy its heaviest blasts; he, however, made no answer.

      “We have ever found the crew discontented at the pumps, sir,” resumed the other, after a pause sufficient for the reply he in vain expected; “I need not tell an officer, who knows his duty so well, that seamen rarely love their pumps.”

      “Whatever I may find necessary to order, Mr Earing, this ship’s company will find it necessary to execute.”

      There was a deep settled air of authority, in the manner with which this tardy answer was given, that did not fail of its impression. Earing recoiled a step, with a submissive manner, and affected to be lost in consulting the driving masses of the clouds; then, summoning his resolution, he attempted to renew the attack in a different quarter.

      “Is it your deliberate opinion, Captain Wilder,” he said, using the title to which the claim of our adventurer might well be questioned, with a view to propitiate him; “is it then your deliberate opinion that the ‘Royal Caroline’ can, by any human means, be made to drop yonder vessel?”

      “I fear not,” returned the young man, drawing a breath so long, that all his secret concern seemed struggling in his breast for utterance.

      “And, sir, with proper submission to your better education and authority in this ship, I know not. I have often seen these matches tried in my time; and well do I know that nothing is gained by straining a vessel, with the hope of getting to windward of one of these flyers!”

      “Take you the glass, Earing, and tell me under what canvas the stranger holds his way, and what may be his distance,” said Wilder, thoughtfully, and without appearing to advert at all to what the other had just observed.

      The honest and well-meaning mate deposed his hat on the quarter-deck, and, with an air of great respect, did as he was desired. Nor did he deem it necessary to give a precipitate answer to either of the interrogatories. When, however, his look had been long, grave, and deeply absorbed, he closed the glass with the palm of his broad hand, and replied, with the manner of one whose opinion was sufficiently matured.

      “If yonder sail had been built and fitted like other mortal craft,” he said, “I should not be backward in pronouncing her a full-rigged ship, under three single-reefed topsails, courses, spanker, and jib.”

      “Has she no more?”

      “To that I would qualify, provided an opportunity were given me to make sure that she is, in all respects, as other vessels are.”

      “And yet, Earing, with all this press of canvas, by the compass we have not left her a foot.”

      “Lord, sir,” returned the mate, shaking his head, like one who was well convinced of the folly of such efforts, “if you should split every cloth in the main-course, by carrying on the ship you will never alter the bearings of that craft an inch, till the sun rises! Then, indeed, such as have eyes, that are good enough, might perhaps see her sailing about among the clouds; though it has never been my fortune be it bad or be it good, to fall in with one of these cruisers after the day has fairly dawned.”

      “And the distance?” said Wilder; “you have not yet spoken of her distance.”

      “That is much as people choose to measure. She may be here, nigh enough to toss a biscuit into our tops; or she may be there, where she seems to be, hull down in the horizon.”

      “But, if where she seems to be?”

      “Why, she seems to be a vessel of about six hundred tons; and, judging from appearances only, a man might be tempted to say she was a couple of leagues, more or less, under our lee.”

      “I put her at the same! Six miles to windward is not a little advantage, in a hard chase. By heavens, Earing, I’ll drive the ‘Caroline’ out of water but I’ll leave him!”

      “That might be done, if the ship had wings like a curlew, or a sea-gull; but, as it is, I think we are more likely to drive her under.”

      “She bears her canvas well, so far. You know not what the boat can do, when urged.”

      “I have seen her sailed in all weathers, Captain Wilder, but”——

      His mouth was suddenly closed. A vast black wave reared itself between the ship and the eastern horizon, and came rolling onward, seeming to threaten to ingulf all before it. Even Wilder watched the shock with breathless anxiety, conscious, for the moment that he had exceeded the bounds of sound discretion in urging his ship so powerfully against such a mass of water. The sea broke a few fathoms from the bows of the “Caroline,” and sent its surge in a flood of foam upon her decks. For half a minute the forward part of the vessel disappeared, as though, unable to mount the swell, it were striving to go through it, and then she heavily emerged, gemmed with a million of the scintillating insects of the ocean. The ship had stopped, trembling in every joint, throughout her massive and powerful frame, like some affrighted courser; and, when she resumed her course, it was with a moderation that appeared to warn those who governed her movements of their indiscretion.

      Earing faced his Commander in silence, perfectly conscious that nothing

Скачать книгу