---"Yet again? What do you here? Shal we give o'er, an drown? Have you a
mind to sink?"--_Tempest._
Our watchful adventurer was not blind to these well-known and sinister
omens. No sooner did the peculiar atmosphere, by which the mysterious
image that he so often examined was suddenly surrounded, catch his eye,
than his voice was heard in the clear, powerful, and exciting notes of
warning.
"Stand by," he called aloud, "to in all studding sails! Down with them!"
he added, scarcely giving his former words time to reach the ears of his
subordinates. "Down with every rag of them, fore and aft the ship! Man the
top-gallant clew-lines, Mr Earing. Clew up, and clew down! In with every
thing, cheerily, men! In!"
This was a language to which the crew of the "Caroline" were no strangers,
and one which was doubly welcome; since the meanest seaman of them all had
long thought that his unknown Commander had been heedlessly trifling with
the safety of the vessel, by the hardy manner in which he disregarded the
wild symptoms of the weather. But they undervalued the keen-eyed vigilance
of Wilder. He had certainly driven the Bristol trader through the water at
a rate she had never been known to have gone before; but, thus far, the
facts themselves attested in his favour, since no injury was the
consequence of what they deemed his temerity. At the quick, sudden order
just given, however, the whole ship was instantly in an uproar. A dozen
seamen called to each other, from different parts of the vessel each
striving to lift his voice above the roaring ocean; and there was every
appearance of a general and inextricable confusion; but the same
authority which had aroused them, thus unexpectedly, into activity,
produced order, from their ill-directed though vigorous efforts.
Wilder had spoken, to awaken the drowsy, and to excite the torpid. The
instant he found each man on the alert, he resumed his orders, with a
calmness that gave a direction to the powers of all, but still with an
energy that he well knew was called for by the occasion. The enormous
sheets of duck, which had looked like so many light clouds in the murky
and threatening heavens, were soon seen fluttering wildly, as they
descended from their high places; and, in a few minutes, the ship was
reduced to the action of her more secure and heavier canvas. To effect
this object, every man in the ship had exerted his powers to the utmost,
under the guidance of the steady but rapid mandates of their Commander.
Then followed a short and apprehensive breathing pause. Every eye was
turned towards the quarter where the ominous signs had been discovered;
and each individual endeavoured to read their import, with an intelligence
correspondent to the degree of skill he might have acquired, during his
particular period of service, on that treacherous element which was now
his home.
The dim tracery of the stranger's form had been swallowed by the flood of
misty light, which, by this time, rolled along the sea like drifting
vapour, semi-pellucid, preternatural, and seemingly tangible. The ocean
itself appeared admonished that a quick and violent change was nigh. The
waves had ceased to break in their former foaming and brilliant crests,
but black masses of the water were seen lifting their surly summits
against the eastern horizon, no longer relieved by their scintillating
brightness, or shedding their own peculiar and lucid atmosphere around
them. The breeze which had been so fresh, and which had even blown, at
times, with a force that nearly amounted to a little gale, was lulling and
becoming uncertain, as though awed by the more violent power that was
gathering along the borders of the sea, in the direction of the
neighbouring continent. Each moment, the eastern puffs of air lost their
strength, and became more and more feeble, until, in an incredibly short
period, the heavy sails were heard flapping against the masts--a frightful
and ominous calm succeeding. At this instant, a glancing, flashing gleam
lighted the fearful obscurity of the ocean; and a roar, like that of a
sudden burst of thunder, bellowed along the waters. The seamen turned
their startled looks on each other, and stood stupid, as though a warning
had been given, from the heavens themselves, of what was to follow. But
their calm and more sagacious Commander put a different construction on
the signal. His lip curled, in high professional pride, and his mouth
moved rapidly while he muttered to himself, with a species of scorn,--
"Does he think we sleep? Ay, he has got it himself and would open our eyes
to what is coming! What does he imagine we have been about, since the
middle watch was set?"
Then, Wilder made a swift turn or two on the quarter-deck, never ceasing
to bend his quick glances from one quarter of the heavens to another; from
the black and lulling water on which his vessel was rolling, to the sails;
and from his silent and profoundly expectant crew, to the dim lines of
spars that were waving above his head, like so many pencils tracing their
curvilinear and wanton images over the murky volumes of the superincumbent
clouds.
"Lay the after-yards square!" he said, in a voice which was heard by every
man on deck, though his words were apparently spoken but little above his
breath. Even the creaking of the blocks, as the spars came slowly and
heavily round to the indicated position, contributed to the imposing
character of the moment, and sounded, in the ears of all the instructed
listeners, like notes of fearful preparation.
"Haul up the courses!" resumed Wilder, after a thoughtful, brief interval,
with the same eloquent calmness of manner. Then, taking another glance at
the threatening horizon, he added, with emphasis, "Furl them--furl them
both: Away aloft, and hand your courses," he continued, in a shout; "roll
them up, cheerily; in with them, boys, cheerily; in!"
The conscious seamen took their impulses from the tones of their
Commander. In a moment, twenty dark forms were seen leaping up the
rigging, with the alacrity of so many quadrupeds; and, in another minute,
the vast and powerful sheets of canvas were effectually rendered harmless,
by securing them in tight rolls to their respective spars. The men
descended as swiftly as they had mounted to the yards; and then succeeded
another short and breathing pause. At this moment, a candle would have
sent its flame perpendicularly towards the heavens. The ship, missing the
steadying power of the wind, rolled heavily in the troughs of the seas,
which, however began to be more diminutive, at each instant, as though the
startled element was recalling, into the security of its own vast bosom,
that portion of its particles which had, just before, been permitted to
gambol so madly over its surface. The water washed sullenly along the side
of the ship, or, as she labouring rose from one of her frequent falls into
the hollows of the waves, it shot back into the ocean from her decks, in
numberless little glittering cascades. Every hue of the heavens, every
sound of the element, and each dusky and anxious countenance that was
visible, helped to proclaim the intense interest of the moment. It was in
this brief interval of expectation, and inactivity, that the mates again
approached their Commander.
"It is an awful night, Captain Wilder!" said Earing presuming on his rank
to be the first of the two to speak.
"I have known far less notice given of a shift of wind," was the steady
answer.
"We have had time to gather in our kites, 'tis true, sir; but there are
signs and warnings, that come with this change, at which the oldest seaman
has reason to take heed!"
"Yes," continued Nighthead, in a voice that sounded hoarse and powerful,
even amid the fearful accessories of that scene; "yes, it is no trifling
commission that can call people, that I shall not name, out upon the water
in such a night as this. It was in just such weather that I saw the
'Vesuvius' ketch go to a place so deep, that her own mortar would not have
bein able to have sent a bomb into the open air, had hands and fire been
there fit to let it off!"
"Ay; and it was in such a time that the Greenlandman was cast upon the
Orkneys, in as flat a calm as ever lay on the sea."
"Gentlemen," said Wilder, with a peculiar and perhaps an ironical emphasis
on the word, "what is it you would have? There is not a breath of air
stirring, and the ship is naked to her topsails!"
It would have been difficult for either of the two malcontents to have
given a very satisfactory answer to this question. Both were secretly
goaded by mysterious and superstitious apprehensions, that were powerfully
aided by the more real and intelligible aspect of the night; but neither
had so far for gotten his manhood, and his professional pride, as to lay
bare the full extent of his own weakness, at a moment when he was liable
to be called upon for the exhibition of qualities of a far more positive
and determined character. Still, the feeling that was uppermost betrayed
itself in the reply of Earing, though in an indirect and covert manner.
"Yes, the vessel is snug enough now," he said, "though eye-sight has shown
us all it is no easy matter to drive a freighted ship though the water as
fast as one of your flying craft can go, aboard of which no man can say,
who stands at the helm, by what compass she steers, or what is her
draught!"
"Ay," resumed Nighthead, "I call the 'Caroline' fast for an honest trader,
and few square-rigged boats are there, who do not wear the pennants of the
King, that can eat her out of the wind, or bring her into their wake, with
studding-sails abroad. But this is a time, and an hour, to make a seaman
think. Look at yon hazy light, here, in with the land, that is coming so
fast down upon us, and then tell me whether it comes from the coast of
America, or whether it comes from out of the stranger who has been so long
running under our lee, but who has got, or is fast getting, the wind of us
at last, and yet none here can say how, or why. I have just this much, and
no more, to say: Give me for consort a craft whose Captain I know, or give
me none!"
"Such is your taste, Mr Nighthead," said Wilder, coldly; "mine may, by
some accident, be very different."
"Yes, yes," observed the more cautious and prudent Earing, "in time of
war, and with letters of marque aboard, a man may honestly hope the sail
he sees should have a stranger for her master; or otherwise he would never
fall in with an enemy. But though an Englishman born myself, I should
rather give the ship in that mist a clear sea, seeing that I neither know
her nation nor her cruise. Ah, Captain Wilder, yonder is an awful sight
for the morning watch! Often, and often, have I seen the sun rise ill the
east, and no harm done; but little good can come of a day when the light
first breaks in the west. Cheerfully would I give the owners the last
month's pay, hard as I have earned it with my toil, did I but know under
what flag yonder stranger sails."
"Frenchman, Don, or Devil, yonder he comes!" cried Wilder. Then, turning
towards the silent an attentive crew, he shouted, in a voice that was
appalling by its vehemence and warning, "Let run the after halyards! round
with the fore-yard! round with it, men, with a will!"
These were cries that the startled crew perfectly understood. Every nerve
and muscle were exerted to execute the orders, in time to be in readiness
for the approaching tempest. No man spoke; but each expended the utmost of
his power and skill in direct and manly efforts. Nor was there, in verity,
a moment to lose, or a particle of human strength expended here, without a
sufficient object.
The lucid and fearful-looking mist, which, for the last quarter of an
hour, had been gathering in the north-west, was now driving down upon them
with the speed of a race-horse. The air had already lost the damp and
peculiar feeling of an easterly breeze; and little eddies were beginning
to flutter among the masts--precursors of the coming squall. Then, a
rushing, roaring sound was heard moaning along the ocean, whose surface
was first dimpled, next ruffled, and finally covered, with one sheet of
clear, white, and spotless foam. At the next moment the power of the wind
fell full upon the inert and labouring Bristol trader.
As the gust approached, Wilder had seized the slight opportunity, afforded
by the changeful puffs of air, to get the ship as much as possible before
the wind; but the sluggish movement of the vessel met neither the wishes
of his own impatience nor the exigencies of the moment. Her bows had
slowly and heavily fallen off from the north, leaving her precisely in a
situation to receive the first shock on her broadside. Happy it was, for
all who had life at risk in that defenceless vessel, that she was not
fated to receive the whole weight of the tempest at a blow. The sails
fluttered and trembled on their massive yards, bellying and collapsing
alternately for a minute, and then the rushing wind swept over them in a
hurricane.
The "Caroline" received the blast like a stout and buoyant ship, yielding
readily to its impulse, until her side lay nearly incumbent on the element
in which she floated; and then, as if the fearful fabric were conscious of
its jeopardy, it seemed to lift its reclining masts again, struggling to
work its way heavily through the water.
"Keep the helm a-weather! Jam it a-weather, for your life!" shouted
Wilder, amid the roar of the gust.
The veteran seaman at the wheel obeyed the order with steadiness, but in
vain he kept his eyes riveted on the margin of his head sail, in order to
watch the manner the ship would obey its power. Twice more, in as many
moments, the tall masts fell towards the horizon, waving as often
gracefully upward and then they yielded to the mighty pressure of the
wind, until the whole machine lay prostrate on the water.
"Reflect!" said Wilder, seizing the bewildered Earing by the arm, as the
latter rushed madly up the steep of the deck; "it is our duty to be calm:
Bring hither an axe."
Quick as the thought which gave the order, the admonished mate complied,
jumping into the mizzen-channels of the ship, to execute, with his own
hands, the mandate that he well knew must follow.
"Shall I cut?" he demanded, with uplifted arms, and in a voice that
atoned for his momentary confusion, by its steadiness and force.
"Hold! Does the ship mind her helm at all?"
"Not an inch, sir."
"Then cut," Wilder clearly and calmly added.
A single blow sufficed for the discharge of the momentary act. Extended to
the utmost powers of endurance, by the vast weight it upheld, the lanyard
struck by Earing no sooner parted, than each of its fellows snapped in
succession, leaving the mast dependant on itself alone for the support of
all its ponderous and complicated hamper. The cracking of the wood came
next; and then the rigging fell, like a tree that had been sapped at its
foundation, the little distance that still existed between it and the sea.
"Does she fall off?" instantly called Wilder to the observant seaman at
the wheel.
"She yielded a little, sir; but this new squall is bringing her up again."
"Shall I cut?" shouted Earing from the main rigging whither he had leaped,
like a tiger who had bounded on his prey.
"Cut!" was the answer.
A loud and imposing crash soon succeeded this order, though not before
several heavy blows had been struck into the massive mast itself. As
before, the seas received the tumbling maze of spars, rigging and sails;
the vessel surging, at the same instant from its recumbent position, and
rolling far and heavily to windward.
"She rights! she rights!" exclaimed twenty voices which had been hitherto
mute, in a suspense that involved life and death.
"Keep her dead away!" added the still calm but deeply authoritative voice
of the young Commander "Stand by to furl the fore-topsail--let it hang a
moment to drag the ship clear of the wreck--cut cut--cheerily,
men--hatchets and knives--cut _with_ all, and cut _off_ all!"
As the men now worked with the freshened vigour of revived hope, the ropes
that still confined the fallen spars to the vessel were quickly severed;
and the "Caroline," by this time dead before the gale, appeared barely to
touch the foam that covered the sea, like a bird that was swift upon the
wing skimming the waters. The wind came over the waste in gusts that
rumbled like distant thunder, and with a power that seemed to threaten to
lift the ship and its contents from its proper element, to deliver it to
one still more variable and treacherous. As a prudent and sagacious seaman
had let fly the halyards of the solitary sail that remained, at the moment
when the squall approached, the loosened but lowered topsail was now
distended in a manner that threatened to drag after it the only mast which
still stood. Wilder instantly saw the necessity of getting rid of this
sail, and he also saw the utter impossibility of securing it. Calling
Earing to his side, he pointed out the danger, and gave the necessary
order.
"Yon spar cannot stand such shocks much longer," he concluded; "and,
should it go over the bows, some fatal blow might be given to the ship at
the rate she is moving. A man or two must be sent aloft to cut the sail
from the yards."
"The stick is bending like a willow whip," returned the mate, "and the
lower mast itself is sprung. There would be great danger in trusting a
life in that top, while such wild squalls as these are breathing around
us."
"You may be right," returned Wilder, with a sudden conviction of the truth
of what the other had said: "Stay you then here; and, if any thing befal
me, try to get the vessel into port as far north as the Capes of Virginia,
at least;--on no account attempt Hatteras, in the present condition
of"----
"What would you do, Captain Wilder?" interrupted the mate laying his hand
powerfully on the shoulder of his Commander, who, he observed, had already
thrown his sea-cap on the deck, and was preparing to divest himself of
some of his outer garments.
"I go aloft, to ease the mast of that topsail, without which we lose the
spar, and possibly the ship."
"Ay, ay, I see that plain enough; but, shall it be said, Another did the
duty of Edward Earing? It is your business to carry the vessel into the
Capes of Virginia, and mine to cut the topsail adrift. If harm comes to
me, why, put it in the log, with a word or two about the manner in which I
played my part: That is always the best and most proper epitaph for a
sailor."
Wilder made no resistance, but resumed his watchful and reflecting
attitude, with the simplicity of one who had been too long trained to the
discharge of certain obligations himself, to manifest surprise that
another should acknowledge their imperative character. In the mean time,
Earing proceeded steadily to perform what he had just promised. Passing
into the waist of the ship, he provided himself with a suitable hatchet,
and then, without speaking a syllable to any of the mute but attentive
seamen, he sprang into the fore-rigging, every strand and rope-yarn of
which was tightened by the strain nearly to snapping. The understanding
eyes of his observers comprehended his intention; and, with precisely the
same pride of station as had urged him to the dangerous undertaking, four
or five of the older mariners jumped upon the ratlings, to mount with him
into an air that apparently teemed with a hundred hurricanes.
"Lie down out of that fore-rigging," shouted Wilder, through a
deck-trumpet; "lie down; all, but the mate, lie down!" His words were
borne past the inattentive ears of the excited and mortified followers of
Earing, but they failed of their effect. Each man was too much bent on his
own earnest purpose to listen to the sounds of recall. In less than a
minute, the whole were scattered along the yards, prepared to obey the
signal of their officer. The mate cast a look about him; and, perceiving
that the time was comparatively favourable, he struck a blow upon the
large rope that confined one of the angles of the distended and bursting
sail to the lower yard. The effect was much the same as would be produced
by knocking away the key-stone of an ill-cemented arch. The canvas broke
from all its fastenings with a loud explosion, and, for an instant, was
seen sailing in the air ahead of the ship, as though sustained on the
wings of an eagle. The vessel rose on a sluggish wave--the lingering
remains of the former breeze--and then settled heavily over the rolling
surge, borne down alike by its own weight and the renewed violence of the
gusts. At this critical instant while the seamen aloft were still gazing
in the direction in which the little cloud of canvas had disappeared, a
lanyard of the lower rigging parted with a crack that even reached the
ears of Wilder.
"Lie down!" he shouted fearfully through his trumpet; "down by the
backstays; down for your lives; every man of you, down!"
A solitary individual, of them all, profited by the warning, and was seen
gliding towards the deck with the velocity of the wind. But rope parted
after rope, and the fatal snapping of the wood instantly followed. For a
moment, the towering maze tottered, and seemed to wave towards every
quarter of the heavens; and then, yielding to the movements of the hull,
the whole fell, with a heavy crash, into the sea. Each cord, lanyard, or
stay snapped, when it received the strain of its new position, as though
it had been made of thread, leaving the naked and despoiled hull of the
"Caroline" to drive onward before the tempest, as if nothing had occurred
to impede its progress.
A mute and eloquent pause succeeded this disaster It appeared as if the
elements themselves were appeased by their work, and something like a
momentary lull in the awful rushing of the winds might have been fancied.
Wilder sprang to the side of the vessel, and distinctly beheld the
victims, who still clung to their frail support. He even saw Earing waving
his hand, in adieu, with a seaman's heart, and like a man who not only
felt how desperate was his situation, but one who knew how to meet his
fate with resignation. Then the wreck of spars, with all who clung to it,
was swallowed up in the body of the frightful, preternatural-looking mist
which extended on every side of them, from the ocean to the clouds.
"Stand by, to clear away a boat!" shouted Wilder, without pausing to think
of the impossibility of one's swimming, or of effecting the least good, in
so violent a tornado.
But the amazed and confounded seamen who remained needed not instruction
in this matter. No man moved, nor was the smallest symptom of obedience
given. The mariners looked wildly around them, each endeavouring to trace,
in the dusky countenance of the other, his opinion of the extent of the
evil; but not a mouth was opened among them all.
"It is too late--it is too late!" murmured Wilder to himself; "human skill
and human efforts could not save them!"
"Sail, ho!" Nighthead muttered at his elbow, in a voice that teemed with a
species of superstitious awe.
"Let him come on," returned his young Commander bitterly; "the mischief is
ready finished to his hands!"
"Should yon be a mortal ship, it is our duty to the owners and the
passengers to speak her, if a man can make his voice heard in this
tempest," the second mate continued, pointing, through the haze at the dim
object that was certainly at hand.
"Speak her!--passengers!" muttered Wilder, involuntarily repeating his
words. "No; any thing is better than speaking her. Do you see the vessel
that is driving down upon us so fast?" he sternly demanded of the watchful
seaman who still clung to the wheel of the "Caroline."
"Ay, ay, sir," was the brief, professional reply.
"Give her a birth--sheer away hard to port--perhaps he may pass us in the
gloom, now we are no higher than our decks. Give the ship a broad sheer, I
say, sir."
The same laconic answer as before was given and, for a few moments, the
Bristol trader was seen diverging a little from the line in which the
other approached; but a second glance assured Wilder that the attempt was
useless. The strange ship (and every man on board felt certain it was the
same that had so long been seen hanging in the north-western horizon) came
on, through the mist, with a swiftness that nearly equalled the velocity
of the tempestuous winds themselves. Not a thread of canvas was seen on
board her. Each line of spars, even to the tapering and delicate
top-gallant-masts, was in its place, preserving the beauty and symmetry of
the whole fabric; but nowhere was the smallest fragment of a sail opened
to the gale. Under her bows rolled a volume of foam, that was even
discernible amid the universal agitation of the ocean; and, as she came
within sound, the sullen roar of the water might have been likened to the
noise of a cascade. At first, the spectators on the decks of the
"Caroline" believed they were not seen, and some of the men called madly
for lights, in order that the disasters of the night might not terminate
in the dreaded encounter.
"No!" exclaimed Wilder; "too many see us there already!"
"No, no," muttered Nighthead; "no fear but we are seen; and by such eyes,
too, as never yet looked out of mortal head!"
The seamen paused. In another instant, the long-seen and mysterious ship
was within a hundred feet of them. The very power of that wind, which was
wont usually to raise the billows, now pressed the element, with the
weight of mountains, into its bed. The sea was every where a sheet of
froth, but no water swelled above the level of the surface. The instant a
wave lifted itself from the security of the vast depths, the fluid was
borne away before the tornado in driving, glittering spray. Along this
frothy but comparatively motionless surface, then, the stranger came
booming, with the steadiness and grandeur with which a dark cloud is seen
to sail before the hurricane. No sign of life was any where discovered
about her. If men looked out, from their secret places, upon the
straitened and discomfited wreck of the Bristol trader, it was covertly,
and as darkly as the tempest before which they drove. Wilder held his
breath, for the moment the stranger drew nighest, in the very excess of
suspense; but, as he saw no signal of recognition, no human form, nor any
intention to arrest, if possible, the furious career of the other, a smile
of exultation gleamed across his countenance, and his lips moved rapidly,
as though he found pleasure in being abandoned to his distress. The
stranger drove by, like a dark vision and, ere another minute, her form
was beginning to grow less distinct, in a thickening body of the spray to
leeward.
"She is going out of sight in the mist!" exclaimed Wilder, when he drew
his breath, after the fearful suspense of the few last moments.
"Ay, in mist, or clouds," responded Nighthead, who now kept obstinately at
his elbow, watching with the most jealous distrust, the smallest movement
of his unknown Commander.
"In the heavens, or in the sea, I care not, provided she be gone."
"Most seamen would rejoice to see a strange sail, from the hull of a
vessel shaved to the deck like this."
"Men often court their destruction, from ignorance of their own interests.
Let him drive on, say I, and pray I! He goes four feet to our one; and now
I ask no better favour than that this hurricane may blow until the sun
shall rise."
Nighthead started, and cast an oblique glance which resembled
denunciation, at his companion. To his blunted faculties, and
superstitious mind, there was profanity in thus invoking the tempest, at a
moment when the winds seemed already to be pouring out their utmost wrath.
"This is a heavy squall, I will allow," he said, "and such an one as many
mariners pass whole lives without seeing; but he knows little of the sea
who thinks there is not more wind where this comes from."
"Let it blow!" cried the other, striking his hands together a little
wildly; "I pray only for wind!"
All the doubts of Nighthead, as to the character of the young stranger who
had so unaccountably got possession of the office of Nicholas Nichols, if,
indeed, any remained, were now removed. He walked forward among the silent
and thoughtful crew with the air of a man whose opinion was settled.
Wilder, however, paid no attention to the movements of his subordinate,
but continued pacing the deck for hours; now casting his eyes at the
heavens or now sending frequent and anxious glances around the limited
horizon, while the "Royal Caroline" still continued drifting before the
wind, a shorn and naked wreck.