THE _LOUISA ANN_
It was on the 4th of June 1805 that a large, handsome three-masted
schooner was softly, with a keen cut-water, rending a way for herself
over a smooth breast of sea. The sound under the bows was that of a
knife shearing through satin, and the note fell softly with a silken
noise upon the ear, without tinkle of bell-bubble, or serpent-like hiss
of expiring foam. Upon the stern of this schooner was painted in long
white letters the word _Aurora_.
The breeze was so light that it was scarcely to be felt on deck.
The gaff topsails faintly swelled with a summer-like softness and
tenderness of gleaming curve and delicately-fingered shadow; but the
heavier canvas hung with an occasional sway of boom only, as though
the little ship was at rest in a harbour into whose water breathed the
slow, low swell of the outer sea.
It was half-past seven in the morning; the sky was blue from line
to line, but the monotony of the morning's brilliance of azure was
relieved by a few little steam-white clouds which floated small violet
island shadows under them. The horizon was a clear line, a sweep of
crystal against the blue crystalline heaven it brimmed to.
The decks had been washed down, the ropes coiled away, and everything
was neat, sparkling with the swabbed brine from pump or bucket, and the
whole a pleasant picture to the eye with its lofty fabric of wide white
canvas, its glossy black sides descending into a ruddy coat of copper
sheathing which charged the water immediately under with a yellow
light as of fire, the canvas forward lifting and drooping in wings of
triangular cloth like the pinions of a sea bird that gently flutters
its plumes as it slowly breasts the water to the impulse of its webbed
feet. Smoke from the chimney of the little galley rose for a space in
a straight line, then curved like the liquid column of a fountain.
The cook was preparing breakfast for the cabin, and the savoury
smell of eggs and bacon in the process of cooking made the scarcely
breeze-disturbed atmosphere in the neighbourhood of the schooner's
kitchen shore-like and home-like, and in every sense delicious to
hungry sailors whose breakfast was black tea, ship's biscuit, and such
remains of yesterday's beef as they might have preserved.
The _Minorca_ had started early on the morning of 3rd May. The _Aurora_
followed her in pursuit on the 8th May, sailing on the afternoon of
that day. Her nimble keel had been delayed by contrary winds, and down
to this date--namely, 4th June--she had failed to even approach the
average daily speed which Captain Weaver had predicted of her in her
chase of the barque. She had met with one adventure only so far: it was
sufficiently filled, however, with excitement and danger to suffice for
twenty.
When in the Chops of the Channel the weather thickened all round: a
dingy drizzle of rain curtained the horizon into the distance of a
cannon shot, and out of this sullen dimness which was not to be shifted
nor broken into spaces showing recesses, the surge came in a steel-dark
curve upon whose polished back the foam that fell from the head of
the billow cast a deeper gloom filled with raven gleams like water at
night. A bright look-out was kept. The _Aurora_ under all plain sail
sprang through these glooming waters, and the brine swept from her
weather-bow in sharp shootings of brilliant hail.
Suddenly a little before eleven o'clock in the forenoon the deck
was hailed from aloft, and a sail reported three points on the
weather-bow. She came out of the thickness like one of the heads of
seas, in a shining light of canvas; she was sailing large; she showed
herself as an iceberg leaps from the snowstorm of the Antarctic ocean.
A brig-of-war with foam to the hawse pipes, and the white band along
her side broken by guns!
She was within a couple of miles when she shaped herself out of the
rain-thickened murkiness. The _Aurora_ was making a free wind, and
every stitch of canvas was doing its work. Was yonder stranger French
or English? The Admiral and Captain Acton, who were both on deck, left
Captain Weaver to his own devices, sensible that they were in the
hands of a shrewd, well-seasoned, practical sailor, who knew his ship
better than they did. "We'll test her," said he, and the tricolour was
run aloft. No flag aboard the brig was to be seen in response. The
schooner was crossing the stranger's bows when the brig suddenly let
fly a shotted gun at her. Whatever her nationality it was plain she was
not satisfied with the show of bunting flying aboard a vessel that any
practised eye could at once see was not of French paternity.
"Keep her away three points!" cried Captain Weaver, which shift of helm
would leave the schooner in fuller possession of her powers of flight.
And immediately afterwards he shouted: "Haul down that lie, and hoist
the British Ensign! She shall have the truth, and it'll make the truth
known to us."
Scarcely was the ensign blowing from its halliards when the brig fired
a second shot, and as the passage of the _Aurora_ and the shifting of
her helm had brought the brig's trysail-gaff into view the schooner's
crew saw the French flag streaming from the end of it.
Immediately the _Aurora's_ change of course was perceived the brig
trimmed her canvas for a chase; she set stun-sails from lower boom to
both topgallant yard-arms; these additional wings threw her out against
the weeping gloom in a large, looming, menacing mass irradiated by an
occasional flash of bow gun which dyed her canvas with a sudden yellow
glare as of lightning. But these explosions were soon stopped, and the
pursuit was continued in silence.
It was idle, however, to call it a pursuit. It was a procession with
the leader walking fast ahead and the follower lagging. On board the
_Aurora_ they saw the brig's round bows bursting the surge into sheets
of brilliant whiteness which raced under her row of iron teeth like the
foaming cascade of a weir; whilst alongside the keen fore-foot and the
clean copper and beautifully moulded run of the _Aurora_ the brine
swept past with no more noise than a shower of rain upon the sea, in a
narrow band on either hand which, uniting at the rudder, rushed off in
a ribbon of wake that shone like pearl.
It was not long before the brig that was chasing on the schooner's
weather-quarter swelled and paled in distortion with the encompassing
thickness, and presently she was a pallid square, and then she became
a smudge, after which the rain curtain dropped upon her, and she
vanished. Then it was that Captain Weaver luffed the schooner to
windward of her course, and she went ahead with flattened-in sheets,
leaning to it and severing the flint-coloured billow with her sharp
tooth of fore-foot: and so she held on, until, had the weather cleared,
the brig, even had she taken in her stun-sails and hauled the wind with
yards sweated fore and aft, would have been found dead to leeward and
far away beyond all dream of prize money amongst the French crew.
"I can't conceive of anything," said Captain Weaver, smiling with
something of pride at the Admiral and Captain Acton, "born--I don't
care in what shipwright's yard, whether British or French or Roosian
or Spaniard--as is going to have more than a look at the _Aurora_ when
it's her pleasure to show nothing but her heels."
Nevertheless it was an adventure fraught with danger to the schooner,
and neither the Admiral nor Captain Acton needed to be informed that
had the weather been a little thicker and the brig a knot or two
faster so that she could have brought the schooner within range of her
broad-side, it was odds if the fall of a mast or the ruin of a sail had
not resulted in the _Aurora's_ company finding a lodging in the brig
or under hatches in their own little ship and sailing for the nearest
French port, with the pursuit of the _Minorca_ immediately ended.
But the essential object of Captain Weaver and the very first desire
of Captain Acton and the Admiral was the overtaking of the _Minorca_,
her capture, and the rescue of Lucy. To this end it was extremely
necessary that they should speak ships to ascertain if the barque whose
rig would make her remarkable had been sighted or spoken, and if so
when and where? They had fallen in with two or three vessels which
after very careful inspection they had considered safe to speak. But
they could obtain no information. Nothing answering to a ship rigged as
the _Minorca_ was had been sighted. So Captain Weaver stuck as best he
could to his course for Rio, though much hindered by opposing winds. It
was to be hoped if the _Aurora_ lay fair in the wake of the _Minorca_
that the winds which had delayed the schooner had also baffled the
barque.
Now, as we have seen, the 4th day of June had come, and the _Aurora_,
with a light air aloft which put a gentle breathing into her gaff
top-sails and lighter canvas, was slowly scoring her way through the
heart of a wide circle of Atlantic ocean, along which the swell ran
gently, whilst the surface at a distance resembled a motionless sheet
of ice under a blue sky.
Admiral Lawrence was walking the deck alone. Captain Weaver stood on
the weather side of the wheel viewing the vessel as she leisurely
floated forward. They had kept a look-out aloft with the perseverance
of a whaler. The signalman was furnished with a glass with which he
continuously swept the sea-line from beam to beam. The Admiral, great
as his trouble was, looked uncommonly well and hearty. His cheeks wore
a deeper dye of colour. He rolled along the deck with enjoyment of the
sensation of the plank, whose motions were timed by the sea.
As he rounded in one of his fore-breakfast strolls, Captain Acton
stepped out of the deck-house, for this schooner was furnished with a
deck structure a little sunk so that you entered it by a short flight
of steps, and in front of it stood the wheel. The house contained six
berths each lighted with a window; the foremost larboard berth was the
pantry, and next door to it, abutting upon the sleeping place which the
Admiral occupied, was the spare room for Lucy.
Captain Acton's face as he emerged was grave and pale. His restlessness
and anxiety had increased with the voyage and the obstruction of the
wind. Realisation of the loss of his daughter was a pain in him that
was as a wound deeply planted, and there was no remedy but the recovery
of the girl. He joined the Admiral after looking aloft and around him,
and exclaimed: "Very slow work, sir. If it's to be this sort of thing
the _Minorca_ will not find us at Rio; and if she fetches Rio before we
do, my child is lost to me."
"I cannot see that, sir," answered the Admiral. "What can my son do?
She will not have him, and he must therefore leave her at Rio, because
I have never imagined that he will be able to sell the barque and
her cargo without exciting enquiries which he dare not challenge. If
therefore he puts into Rio, it will be with the hope of inducing Miss
Lucy to marry him there and promptly--an issue which he will have
satisfied himself upon before his arrival. And if, as 'tis certain,
she will have nothing to do with him, he will leave her at Rio and
make haste to sail to where he can dispose of your property without
risk. But," he continued cheerily, observing that his companion held
his peace, manifestly unconvinced by the Admiral's arguments, "we have
no right to assume that the weather is always to consist of baffling
breezes or light airs like this; and, sir, consider that what is bad
for the schooner may--indeed should--be bad for the barque. There is
but one course for Rio from the port we hail from. I have watched
Weaver's navigation with anxiety, and have full confidence in his
judgment. I have again and again considered his chart and prickings,
and in all that he said and says I have agreed, and still agree."
"But," said Captain Acton in a tone that marked the depression of his
spirits, "you must remember that this visible girdle of sea has, even
in brilliant weather and from the mast-head, but a narrow width, and we
might even now be abreast of the _Minorca_ which is sailing yonder, or
yonder, hull and spars down to a fathom below the sensible edge."
"We've allowed for that, sir," said the Admiral. "'Tis a contingency
which has had a very full share of contemplation. If we miss her and
pass her in the way you suggest, there is still Rio to receive us,
where we will await the _Minorca's_ arrival. And in that you will get
your way, and crown this struggle with success. So that let us miss her
by failing to sight her as you say, it can but mean that we shall be
first and ready for Mr Lawrence."
"True," answered Captain Acton.
At that moment the man at the mast-head with the telescope still at his
eye, shouted the magic words: "Sail ho!"
"Where away?" yelled Captain Weaver from the side of the wheel.
"Right ahead, sir."
"How standing?" bawled Weaver.
After a brief pause: "Coming for us, sir. We are rising her."
But the schooner might be rising her through overtaking her, and nearly
a quarter of an hour must elapse before the sailor aloft could shout
with emphasis down to the deck that the sail was standing right for
them and that she was square rigged.
The circumstance of a sail heaving into sight was necessarily brimful
of excitement and interest to Captain Acton and the Admiral. She
might prove a peaceful trader or a man-of-war, a friend or an enemy,
a privateer, or as likely as not the _Minorca_ rolling home in charge
of Eagle and her crew, who, conscious of the presence of Lucy on
board, and having learnt that the ship's destination was any port but
Kingston, had mutinied, and locked up the Captain in his cabin, and
turned tail for Old Harbour Town.
But the breakfast bell had been rung, and leaving Captain Weaver and
his mate to keep an eye upon the stranger and to act with the prudence
which was to be expected of a man of Weaver's sagacity and experience,
Captain Acton and his companion entered the deck-house. Here was a
cheerful little interior, gay with sunshine, which sparkled in the
furniture of the breakfast-table, on which smoked as relishable and
hearty a meal as was to be obtained at sea in those days. The two
gentlemen found much to talk about, and perhaps because of an argument
they had fallen into, their sitting was somewhat lengthened: until just
when they were about to rise, Captain Weaver came to the cabin door,
and after, with the old-fashioned courtesy of his period, begging their
pardon, he exclaimed: "The sail's now clear in the glass from the deck."
"What is she, do you think?" said Captain Acton.
"She looks to me, sir, a worn-out bit of a brig about a hundred tons.
Most sartinly there's nothing to be afraid of in her."
"She's not the _Minorca_?" cried the Admiral.
"No, sir, she carries no royals."
On this Captain Acton and his friend went on deck. The schooner was
travelling three or four knots one way, and the stranger was heading
directly for her at some small pace, so that the speed of the two
vessels being combined, the sail might be expected to show a clear
hull; which she did, and with the aid of their telescopes, Captain
Acton and Sir William confirmed the conjecture of Captain Weaver.
She was either a little brig or a brigantine--her after-sails were
concealed; her burden was very small. The dusty and rusty complexion
of her canvas neutralised the brilliance which most ships' sails shine
with when the silver glory of the morning sun pours strong upon them.
By half-past nine, three bells by the schooner's clock, the stranger
was on the larboard-bow with her main topsail to the mast, and so close
that it seemed almost possible to distinguish the faces of her people.
She was a little brig, and an immense but ragged British ensign
fluttered at her trysail gaff-end. She had been painted black, but
the fret of an ocean long kept, the hurl and whirl of prodigious seas
which were like to founder her, the blistering heat of tropic suns,
the viewless fangs of the wind had so worn her sides that she was
mottled with patches of different colour as though she was suffering
from some distemper which ravaged vessels of her sort when the voyage
was of great length. She rolled wearily, as though her old bones were
worn out, and every time she hove her bilge to the eye she disclosed
a very landed estate of weed, long, serpentine, trailing, like the
huge eel-like growths which sway from black rocks in the white wash of
breakers.
"Ho, the schooner ahoy!" shouted a man, standing close to the larboard
main-shrouds.
"Hallo!" was the answer from Captain Weaver.
"We are the brig _Louisa Ann_ of Whitby from Callao, one hundred and
seventy days out, bound to the port we belongs to. We are short of
provisions, and should feel grateful if you could let us have a cask of
beef."
This was clearly delivered, and every syllable caught on board the
_Aurora_. Captain Weaver looked at Captain Acton, who immediately
assented.
"Send a boat and we'll give you what you want!" shouted Weaver.
A few men were to be seen racing aft, and in a minute or two a squab
boat descended from a pair of davits as stout as catheads with four
men in her, two to row, one to bale, and one to steer.
Whilst they were coming Captain Weaver said to Captain Acton: "The
master of that brig, sir, seems to have his wife aboard."
But though Captain Acton and Admiral Lawrence heard him, their eyes
were busy with the boat as she approached, and neither raised a glass
to determine the appearance of the female.
The man who steered the boat was the captain; he climbed over the side
of the _Aurora_, and presented the aspect of a man not unlike Mr John
Eagle; he looked sour with succession of bad weather, with little ships
that made nothing but leeway on a wind, with immensely long voyages,
with shortness of rations and fresh water, and with the aridity of the
ocean which he had been forced to keep for nearly the whole of his life.
"I should be much obliged for a cask of beef, sir," he said, after
touching the narrow penthouse of a queerly constructed fur cap. "It's
still a long way home for that there _Louisa Ann_, whose bin a hundred
and seventy days in bringing us so fur."
"Have you spoke any ships lately?" asked Captain Weaver.
"The last we spoke," answered the man, "was the day before yesterday.
And we took out of her by request of her master, a young female who was
said to have gone mad, but for my part I never met with anybody saner.
She's an additional mouth, and a cask of beef would be grateful."
"A young female!" said Captain Acton. "What was the name of the vessel
you took her from?"
At this point the Admiral levelled his glass at the brig. The master of
the _Louisa Ann_ went to the side and shouted down, received an answer,
returned and said: "Her name was the _Minorca_."
"The _Minorca_!" shouted Captain Acton. "The day before yesterday! And
you received a young lady from her?"
"By God!" cried Admiral Lawrence in a voice of thunder, letting fly the
profanity with the bellows of a boatswain, "why, Acton, there's Lucy
aboard that brig! I can make her out plain in this glass."
"She's a beautiful young lady--highly eddicated," said the master of
_Louisa Ann_.
Captain Acton levelled his telescope. He did not need to long survey
the figure of the woman who was standing near the tiller that was
grasped by a man. The lenses brought her face close to him.
"It is Lucy!" he said, in a voice in which awe and amazement were so
mingled that one should say the apparition of a ghost, of something
spiritual and fearful to the observer, could not have filled the hollow
of his mouth with that tone.
He was now seized with a passion of delight.
"Lower a boat, Captain Weaver! Lower a boat!" he shouted, losing his
habitual gentlemanlike coolness and calm in the overwhelming sensations
of that moment. "Bear a hand now! Be quick! It is the lady for whom we
have been chasing the _Minorca_. Quick, I say!" He stamped his foot.
"She is waving her handkerchief!" cried the Admiral, with his eye at
the telescope. "God bless her! God bless us all! What a miracle of
discovery!"
"A relation, sir?" said the master of the _Louisa Ann_, addressing
Captain Weaver, whom he had immediately perceived was not of the
standing of the two Naval gentlemen.
"My daughter, sir!" cried Captain Acton.
"Then I'm proud and 'appy to have been the instrument of a-bringing her
to you. I'm a father myself and can understand your feelings, sir,"
said the captain of the brig.
But congratulations were not in place in such a moment as this. A fine
boat of the _Aurora_ was alongside manned by five sailors, who being
clad in much the same sort of apparel, carried a sort of warlike
aspect as though the boat was proceeding from something heavily armed
and much to be feared. Captain Acton and the Admiral sprang into
her with the agility of boys, thanks to the energy infused by the
apparition of Lucy waving her pocket-handkerchief, and whilst they were
being swept to the brig Captain Weaver asked her master one or two
questions.
This was the story his interrogatories elicited. On the day before
yesterday the brig that was very short of provisions and water sighted
a vessel, which on her approach proved to be so rigged that the master
declared he had never seen the like.
"She carried nothing but fore-and-aft sails on her mizzen-mast," said
he.
On which Captain Weaver exclaimed: "The _Minorca_, of course. She was
French, and what's called barque-rigged."
Well, the _Louisa Ann_ backed her topsail, and the strangely rigged
ship backed her's, and the master of the brig, not choosing to ask too
many favours at once, hailed to know if she could spare some fresh
water, as they had run to an allowance that was close upon famine. He
was received on board by a tall, commanding, handsome man, who, on the
arrival of the master of the _Louisa Ann_, said he was welcome to a
supply of fresh water, and that in return he would ask him to receive a
young lady who had gone mad during the voyage from England, and convey
her to that country. Her name was Miss Acton. She was a daughter of
Captain Acton of Old Harbour Town, and the captain of the _Louisa Ann_
might make sure of a handsome reward for his services from the father.
The lady, the tall, handsome man said, had consented to elope with him,
and they were to be married at Rio de Janeiro; but she had gone out
of her mind. The fine, handsome man felt he could do nothing better
than to restore her as soon as possible to her friends. The captain of
the brig said that he had but a poor accommodation for a lady of her
quality, but wanting the fresh water very badly and likewise reflecting
that he might receive a handsome reward, and learning from the fine,
handsome man that Miss Acton was by no means violent, but on the
contrary gentle and melancholy, he consented.
"And how did she seem," said Captain Weaver, "when she got into the
boat?"
"She never spoke nor smiled," answered the captain of the brig, "but
got quietly in and sat quietly down, and kept her eyes fixed upon
the thwart that was next her's whilst the water was being lowered;
but afterwards when I got her over the side and put her into the
best cabin we could accommodate her with, she began to talk, said she
thanked God for her deliverance, and was grateful indeed to Him for
now being on her way home. And she spoke as clear and collected as I
do, and is no more mad than I am. But she did not let me into the job
whatever it was. She hasn't given me an idea as to her elopement and
the reason of her being sent aboard me, and I'm always a-wondering what
the trick is."
The _Aurora's_ boat was swept alongside the brig, and Captain Acton and
the Admiral clambered over the side up a short flight of steps, and in
an instant Lucy was clasped in the devouring embrace of her father.
Such an old-world scene taxes the highest gifts of the pen or the
brush. This _Louisa Ann_ was about fifty years old; she was nearly as
broad as she was long. Her fore-mast was stepped far in the bows; her
decks were stained and grimy; the paint had faded out of the inside of
her bulwarks. Her sails were patched and so dingy that they might have
been coloured as a smack's. Her rusty sides were lined with yawning
seams amid which three little circular windows were merged with no
accentuation from the dirt-shrouded glass which prevented the sea from
entering the blistered, worn, mani-coloured hull. Her sailors looked as
though they were shipwrecked: long-haired, bearded, sallow, in clothes
considerably tattered, in aspect melancholy and dejected with lack of
nourishment, dullness of sailing and ceaseless motion: for here was
the tub wallowing like a buoy in a popple upon a smooth sea, and the
frightful weather she would make off Cape Horn or in a gale of wind the
imagination of a sailor could readily picture by witnessing her motions
now.
On the stage of this little marine theatre the father clasped his
daughter, whilst the Admiral, with emotion damp in his eyes, looked on.
Captain Acton released his child and surveyed her, whilst the Admiral
seizing both her hands, raised them to his lips, one after the other,
mumbling in broken tones: "May God bless you! I thank God we have found
thee!"
She was dressed, of course, in the costume in which she had been
kidnapped, and like the sailors she looked very much the worse for
wear and tear. Her jockey-shaped hat, so modish and even rakish when
purchased, had fallen into a confusion of headgear, a something that
might have wanted a name had it been found on the highway. Her hair
looked wild in the inartistic dressing it suffered from. Her rich
and characteristic bloom had faded, and what lingered was but as a
delicate faint flush of expiring sunset. But even as she stood, not
the most cynical and aspish of her own sex would have challenged her
beauty, the charms of her figure, the melting sweetness of her eyes on
whose dark-brown irids the white lids, rich in eyelash, reposed. Those
eyes were wet now, and tears were upon her cheeks.
But what was to be said aboard that loutish old brig, with a crew of
half-starved, weedy mariners looking on agape? In a very few minutes
Lucy was handed into the _Aurora's_ boat, and the party were making for
the schooner as swiftly as the dip and sweep of oars could impel the
keen-bowed little fabric.
"What a wonderful meeting!" cried Captain Acton, blessing his daughter
with a smile sweet and good with the pulse of the heart of a father who
adores his only child. "You will have much to tell us, my darling."
"Much," said the Admiral.
"Oh yes. It is a story that will make you wonder," said Lucy. "I fear
Aunt Caroline was terribly upset when she found me missing."
"Oh, we'll soon stand her up again," said Captain Acton. "Did you
recognise the _Aurora_?"
"Oh yes, sir; how could she be mistaken?" answered Lucy. "How
beautiful she looked as she came towards us!"
"You have been half-starved in that brig," said Captain Acton,
searching his daughter's face, and running his eyes over her dress.
"We'll soon have her back again to her old moorings," cried the
Admiral. "She cannot gain in beauty, but the schooner will give her the
colour she lacks."
There was very little to be said in that boat where there were
five oarsmen to listen. The few of the crew who remained on board
the schooner greeted Miss Lucy's recovery and arrival alongside by
springing into the rigging and delivering cheer after cheer with
much demonstration of arm and cap. She was carefully handed over the
side, Captain Weaver receiving her, hat in hand and a succession of
congratulatory bows, and without more ado she was conducted into the
cabin that had been assigned her by her father, who embraced her again
and again when he had her alone, saying that she looked tired, that she
must take some repose before she began to tell him and the Admiral what
had happened to her. He held her by the hands. He looked at her face;
his affection, his gratitude, his delight overwhelmed him.
"Oh, my dear, dear Lucy," he cried, "little can you conceive how the
man who carried you off has made your aunt and me, and his father,
suffer!"
"He acted wickedly in luring me on board only to steal me," said Lucy,
"and he is wicked to rob you of your property. But oh, father, villain
as he seems, his behaviour to me was that of a gentleman--and--and I am
sorry for him."
Captain Acton's face changed with the astonishment wrought in him by
his daughter's words and manner of speaking, and instantly to his
memory recurred the remark of his sister that, if Mr Lawrence was in
love with Lucy, she was equally in love with him, though she made no
sign save to the scrutinising eye of an old maid.
"We'll talk of that later, my dear one," he said. "You'll find several
changes of apparel in those boxes. I left it to your aunt to pack them.
She would know what you needed, though we had no hope of falling in
with you in this way. Some breakfast shall be got for you in the cabin
when you are ready, and then you will tell the Admiral and me your
story."
After further endearments between this devoted father and his daughter,
Captain Acton closed her cabin door and went on deck.
He found Captain Weaver, the master of the brig, and the captain of
the brig in conversation. The skipper of the brig had made no entry
touching his falling in with the _Minorca_. He could depend upon
nothing but his memory, and to the best of his recollection he had
given to Captain Weaver the latitude and longitude in which he had
spoken the _Minorca_ on the morning before the previous day. It was
at least certain that the barque was within easy sailing reach of the
schooner; it was equally sure that the schooner was almost directly
in the tail of the wake of the _Minorca_, and that if Captain Weaver
continued the course he had been steering he was bound to overhaul her,
providing the schooner was the swifter vessel.
Leaving Captain Weaver to converse with the skipper and to supply his
wants, Captain Acton passed his arm through the Admiral's and led him
aft.
"Now," said he in a soft voice full of the emotion which his daughter's
preservation and restoration had filled him with--"now that my dear
child, by the mercy and goodness of Almighty God, has been returned
to me I am for heading straight for Old Harbour Town, for she has had
enough of the sea--more than enough, and I am for having her at home,
safe again. She has gone through much, she looks ill, she needs the
rest and nursing she can only get at home."
The Admiral was violently agitated. He exclaimed in broken tones: "If
this is your decision I implore you to reconsider it. You, sir, who are
the soul of benevolence would not act with heartless cruelty towards
an old friend, but heartlessly cruel you must prove to me if, with the
opportunity which this schooner provides and with the _Minorca_ within
a few hours' reach, you suffer my worthless, ungrateful son to make
away with your property, and render me hopeless and helpless as a man
who has no means to repay you the loss you must sustain."
Captain Acton was silent for a few moments. He then said: "My dear
friend, have you reflected upon all that your son's return to England
must signify to him?"
"Your property must be recovered. My son must take the consequences
of his acts. I know what it means, sir--the gibbet and chains--for
thus they serve the pirate," exclaimed the poor old Admiral, grim and
desperate.
"God forbid!" exclaimed Captain Acton, whose spirits, it could be seen,
were suddenly and violently disordered by the Admiral's speech. "They
hang no pirate without a prosecution. Who is to prosecute? Admiral
Lawrence's old friend, Captain Acton? No, sir, by the holy name of
that good God who has restored my child to me, not I!"
"Oh, Acton, Acton, you overwhelm me!" murmured the Admiral, turning
his head away to sea, and speaking with a voice that trembled with the
tears of a man's heart.
"What I meant was," said Captain Acton, tenderly pressing his friend's
arm, "if your son returns to England he may be arrested for debt, in
which case his actions of abduction and piracy may be brought to light,
and if I was not compelled to prosecute, I should be held guilty of
conniving at a crime. All this must be avoided, and can be avoided."
"It can be avoided, and still your property may be preserved to you,"
exclaimed the Admiral. "My unhappy son will throw him self upon your
mercy----"
"It shall be extended sir, it shall be extended," broke in Captain
Acton.
"And we can land him privately," continued the Admiral, "at an English
port, where habited in the clothes of a common sailor he will seek a
berth before the mast, and sail away--to be heard of no more."
Here this fine old seaman fairly broke down, and stepping to the
bulwarks, hid his face in his hands, whilst convulsion after convulsion
seemed to rend his sturdy figure.
Captain Acton waited until this unconquerable fit of grief should have
abated. He then went to his friend's side, and, passing his arm round
his neck, said: "My dear old friend, keep up your heart! We will pursue
the _Minorca_ and regain her if possible, and depend upon it, your son
shall be made to suffer as little as can be helped. Meanwhile, let us
wait until we hear Lucy's story."