“Good: Speak to the mariners: Fall to’t yarely, or we run ourselves
aground.”
_Tempest._
A good deal of the day had been wasted during the time occupied by the
scenes just related. The breeze had come in steady, but far from fresh.
So soon, however, as Wilder found himself left without the molestation
of idlers from the shore, and the busy interposition of the consignee,
he cast his eyes about him, with the intention of immediately
submitting the ship to its power. Sending for the pilot, he
communicated his determination, and withdrew himself to a part of the
deck whence he might take a proper survey of the materials of his new
command, and where he might reflect on the unexpected and extraordinary
situation in which he found himself.
The “Royal Caroline” was not entirely without pretensions to the lofty
name she bore. She was a vessel of that happy size in which comfort and
convenience had been equally consulted. The letter of the Rover
affirmed she had a reputation for her speed; and her young and
intelligent Commander saw, with great inward satisfaction, that she was
not destitute of the means of enabling him to exhibit all her finest
properties. A healthy, active, and skilful crew, justly proportioned
spars, little top-hamper, and an excellent trim, with a superabundance
of light sails, offered all the advantages his experience could
suggest. His eye lighted, as it glanced rapidly over these several
particulars of his command, and his lips moved like those of a man who
uttered an inward self-gratulation, or who indulged in some vaunt, that
propriety suggested should go no farther than his own thoughts.
By this time, the crew, under the orders of the pilot, were assembled
at the windlass, and had commenced heaving-in upon the cable. The
labour was of a nature to exhibit their individual powers, as well as
their collective force, to the greatest advantage. Their motion was
simultaneous, quick, and full of muscle. The cry was clear and
cheerful. As if to feel his influence, our adventurer lifted his own
voice, amid the song of the mariners, in one of those sudden and
inspiriting calls with which a sea officer is wont to encourage his
people. His utterance was deep, animated, and full of authority. The
seamen started like mettled coursers when they first hear the signal,
each man casting a glance behind him, as though he would scan the
qualities of his new superior Wilder smiled, like one satisfied with
his success; and, turning to pace the quarter-deck, he found himself
once more confronted by the calm, considerate but certainly astonished
eye of Mrs Wyllys.
“After the opinions you were pleased to express of this vessel,” said
the lady, in a manner of the coldest irony, “I did not expect to find
you filling a place of such responsibility here.”
“You probably knew, Madam,” returned the young mariner, “that a sad
accident had happened to her Master?”
“I did; and I had heard that another officer had been found,
temporarily, to supply his place. Still, I should presume, that, on
reflection, you will not think it remarkable I am amazed in finding who
this person is.”
“Perhaps, Madam, you may have conceived, from our conversations, an
unfavourable opinion of my professional skill. But I hope that on this
head you will place your mind at ease; for”——
“You are doubtless a master of the art! it would seem, at least, that
no trifling danger can deter you from seeking proper opportunities to
display this knowledge. Are we to have the pleasure of your company
during the whole passage, or do you leave us at the mouth of the port?”
“I am engaged to conduct the ship to the end of her voyage.”
“We may then hope that the danger you either saw or imagined is
lessened in your judgment, otherwise you would not be so ready to
encounter it in our company.”
“You do me injustice, Madam,” returned Wilder, with warmth, glancing
his eye unconsciously towards the grave, but deeply attentive Gertrude,
as he spoke; “there is no danger that I would not cheerfully encounter,
to save you, or this young lady, from harm.”
“Even this young lady must be sensible of your chivalry!” Then, losing
the constrained manner with which, until now, she had maintained the
discourse in one more natural, and one far more in consonance with her
usually mild and thoughtful mien, Mrs. Wyllys continued, “You have a
powerful advocate, young man, in the unaccountable interest which I
feel in your truth; an interest that my reason would fain condemn. As
the ship must need your services, I will no longer detain you.
Opportunities cannot be wanting to enable us to judge both of your
inclination and ability to serve us. Gertrude, my love, females are
usually considered as incumbrances in a vessel; more particularly when
there is any delicate duty to perform, like this before us.”
Gertrude started, blushed, and proceeded, after her governess, to the
opposite side of the quarter-deck followed by an expressive look from
our adventurer which seemed to say, he considered her presence any
thing else but an incumbrance. As the ladies immediately took a
position apart from every body, and one where they were least in the
way of working the ship, at the same time that they could command an
entire view of all her manoeuvres the disappointed sailor was obliged
to cut short a communication which he would gladly have continued until
compelled to take the charge of the vessel from the hands of the pilot.
By this time, however, the anchor was a-weigh, and the seamen were
already actively engaged in the process of making sail. Wilder lent
himself, with feverish excitement, to the duty; and, taking the words
from the officer who was issuing the necessary orders, he assumed the
immediate superintendence in person.
As sheet after sheet of canvas fell from the yards, and was distended
by the complicated mechanism, the interest that a seaman ever takes in
his vessel began to gain the ascendancy over all other feelings By the
time every thing was set, from the royals down, and the ship was cast
with her head towards the harbour’s mouth, our adventurer had probably
forgotten (for the moment only, it is true) that he was a stranger
among those he was in so extraordinary a manner selected to command,
and how precious a stake was intrusted to his firmness and decision.
After every thing was set to advantage, alow and aloft, and the ship
was brought close upon the wind, his eye scanned every yard and sail,
from the truck to the hull, and concluded by casting a glance along the
outer side of the vessel, in order to see that not even the smallest
rope was in the water to impede her progress. A small skiff, occupied
by a boy, was towing under the lee, and, as the mass of the vessel
began to move, it was skipping along the surface of the water, light
and buoyant as a feather. Perceiving that it was a boat belonging to
the shore, Wilder walked forward, and demanded its owner. A mate
pointed to Joram, who at that moment ascended from the interior of the
vessel, where he had been settling the balance due from a delinquent,
or, what was in his eyes the same thing, a departing debtor.
The sight of this man recalled Wilder to a recollection of all that had
occurred that morning, and of the whole delicacy of the task he had
undertaken to perform. But the publican, whose ideas appeared always
concentrated when occupied on the subject of gain, seemed troubled by
no particular emotions at the interview. He approached the young
mariner and, saluting him by the title of “Captain,” bade him a good
voyage, with those customary wish es which seamen express, when about
to separate on such an occasion.
“A lucky trip you have made of it, Captain Wilder,” he concluded, “and
I hope your passage will be short. You’ll not be without a breeze this
afternoon; and, by stretching well over towards Montauck you’ll be able
to make such an offing, on the other tack, as to run the coast down in
the morning. If I am any judge of the weather, the wind will have more
easting in it, than you may happen to find to your fancy.”
“And how long do you think my voyage is likely to last?” demanded
Wilder, dropping his voice so low as to reach no ears but those of the
publican.
Joram cast a furtive glance aside; and, perceiving that they were
alone, he suffered an expression of hardened cunning to take possession
of a countenance that ordinarily seemed set in dull, physical
contentment, as he replied, laying a finger on his nose while
speaking,—
“Didn’t I tender the consignee a beautiful oath, master Wilder?”
“You certainly exceeded my expectations with your promptitude, and”—
“Information!” added the landlord of the ‘Foul Anchor,’ perceiving the
other a little at a loss for a word; “yes, I have always been
remarkable for the activity of my mind in these small matters; but,
when a man once knows a thing thoroughly, it is a great folly to spend
his breath in too many words.”
“It is certainly a great advantage to be so well instructed. I suppose
you improve your knowledge to a good account.”
“Ah! bless me, master Wilder, what would become of us all, in these
difficult times, if we did not turn an honest penny in every way that
offers? I have brought up several fine children in credit, and it
sha’n’t be my fault if I don’t leave them something too, besides my
good name. Well, well; they say, ‘A nimble sixpence is as good as a
lazy shilling;’ but give me the man who don’t stand shilly-shally when
a friend has need of his good word, or a lift from his hand. You always
know where to find such a man; as our politicians say, after they have
gone through thick and thin in the cause, be it right or be it wrong.”
“Very commendable principles! and such as will surely be the means of
exalting you in the world sooner or later! But you forget to answer my
question: Will the passage be long, or short?”
“Heaven bless you, master Wilder! Is it for a poor publican, like me,
to tell the Master of this noble ship which way the wind will blow
next? There is the worthy and notable Commander Nichols, lying in his
state-room below, he could do any thing with the vessel; and why am I
to expect that a gentleman so well recommended as yourself will do
less? I expect to hear that you have made a famous run, and have done
credit to the good word I have had occasion to say in your favour.”
Wilder execrated, in his heart, the wary cunning of the rogue with whom
he was compelled, for the moment, to be in league; for he saw plainly
that a determination not to commit himself a tittle further than he
might conceive to be absolutely necessary, was likely to render Joram
too circumspect, to answer his own immediate wishes. After hesitating a
moment, in order to reflect, he continued hastily,—
“You see that the ship is gathering way too fast to admit of trifling.
You know of the letter I received this morning?”
“Bless me, Captain Wilder! Do you take me for a postmaster? How should
I know what letters arrive at Newport, and what stop on the main?”
“As timid a villain as he is thorough!” muttered the young mariner.
“But this much you may surely say, Am I to be followed immediately? or
is it expected that I should detain the ship in the offing, under any
pretence that I can devise?”
“Heaven keep you, young gentleman! These are strange questions, to come
from one who is fresh off the sea, to a man that has done no more than
look at it from the land, these five-and-twenty years. According to my
memory, sir, you will keep the ship about south until you are clear of
the islands; and then you must make your calculations according to the
wind, in order not to get into the Gulf, where, you know, the stream
will be setting you one way, while your orders say, ‘Go another.’”
“Luff! mind your luff, sir!” cried the pilot, in a stern voice, to the
man at the helm; “luff you can; on no account go to leeward of the
slaver!”
Both Wilder and the publican started, as if they found something
alarming in the name of the vessel just alluded to; and the former
pointed to the skiff, as he said,—
“Unless you wish to go to sea with us, Mr Joram, it is time your boat
held its master.”
“Ay, ay, I see you are fairly under way, and I must leave you, however
much I like your company,” returned the landlord of the ‘Foul Anchor,’
bustling over the side, and getting into his skiff in the best manner
he could. “Well, boys, a good time to ye; a plenty of wind, and of the
right sort; a safe passage out, and a quick return. Cast off.”
His order was obeyed; the light skiff, no longer impelled by the ship,
immediately deviated from its course; and, after making a little
circuit, it became stationary, while the mass of the vessel passed on,
with the steadiness of an elephant from whose back a butterfly had just
taken its flight. Wilder followed the boat with his eyes, for a moment;
but his thoughts were recalled by the voice of the pilot, who again
called, from the forward part of the ship,—
“Let the light sails lift a little, boy; let her lift keep every inch
you can, or you’ll not weather the slaver. Luff, I say, sir; luff.”
“The slaver!” muttered our adventurer, hastening to a part of the ship
whence he could command a view of that important, and to him doubly
interesting ship; “ay, the slaver! it may be difficult, indeed to
weather upon the slaver!”
He had unconsciously placed himself near Mrs Wyllys and Gertrude; the
latter of whom was leaning on the rail of the quarter-deck, regarding
the strange vessel at anchor, with a pleasure far from unnatural to her
years and sex.
“You may laugh at me, and call me fickle, and perhaps credulous, dear
Mrs Wyllys,” the unsuspecting girl cried, just as Wilder had taken the
foregoing position, “but I wish we were well out of this ‘Royal
Caroline,’ and that our passage was to be made in yonder beautiful
ship!”
“It is indeed a beautiful ship!” returned Wyllys; “but I know not that
it would be safer, or more comfortable, than the one we are in.”
“With what symmetry and order the ropes are arranged! and how like a
bird it floats upon the water!”
“Had you particularized the duck, the comparison would have been
exactly nautical,” said the governess, smiling mournfully; “you show
capabilities my love, to be one day a seaman’s wife.”
Gertrude blushed a little; and, turning back her head to answer in the
playful vein of her governess, her eye met the riveted look of Wilder,
fastened on herself. The colour on her cheek deepened to a carnation,
and she was mute; the large gipsy hat she wore serving to conceal both
her face and the confusion which so deeply suffused it.
“You make no answer, child, as if you reflected seriously on the
chances,” continued Mrs Wyllys, whose thoughtful and abstracted mien,
however, sufficiently proved she scarcely knew what she uttered.
“The sea is too unstable an element for my taste,” Gertrude coldly
answered. “Pray tell me, Mrs Wyllys, is the vessel we are approaching a
King’s ship? She has a warlike, not to say a threatening exterior.”
“The pilot has twice called her a slaver.”
“A slaver! How deceitful then is all her beauty and symmetry! I will
never trust to appearances again, since so lovely an object can be
devoted to so vile a purpose.”
“Deceitful indeed!” exclaimed Wilder aloud, under an impulse that he
found as irresistible as it was involuntary. “I will take upon myself
to say, that a more treacherous vessel does not float the ocean than
yonder finely proportioned and admirably equipped”——
“Slaver,” added Mrs Wyllys, who had time to turn, and to look all her
astonishment, before the young man appeared disposed to finish his own
sentence.
“Slaver;” he said with emphasis, bowing at the same time, as if he
would thank her for the word.
After this interruption, a profound silence occurred Mrs Wyllys studied
the disturbed features of the young man, for a moment, with a
countenance that denoted a singular, though a complicated, interest;
and then she gravely bent her eyes on the water, deeply occupied with
intense, if not painful reflection The light symmetrical form of
Gertrude continued leaning on the rail, it is true, but Wilder was
unable to catch another glimpse of her averted and shadowed lineaments.
In the mean while, events, that were of a character to withdraw his
attention entirely from even so pleasing a study, were hastening to
their accomplishment.
The ship had, by this time, passed between the little island and the
point whence Homespun had embarked, and might now be said to have
fairly left the inner harbour. The slaver lay directly in her track,
and every man in the vessel was gazing with deep interest, in order to
see whether they might yet hope to pass on her weather-beam. The
measure was desirable; because a seaman has a pride in keeping on the
honourable side of every thing he encounters but chiefly because, from
the position of the stranger, it would be the means of preventing the
necessity of tacking before the “Caroline” should reach a point more
advantageous for such a manoeuvre. The reader will, however, readily
understand that the interest of hear new Commander took its rise in far
different feelings from those of professional pride, or momentary
convenience.
Wilder felt, in every nerve, the probability that a crisis was at hand.
It will be remembered that he was profoundly ignorant of the immediate
intentions of the Rover. As the fort was not in a state for present
service, it would not be difficult for the latter to seize upon his
prey in open view of the townsmen and bear it off, in contempt of their
feeble means of defence. The position of the two ships was favourable
to such an enterprise. Unprepared, find unsuspecting, the “Caroline,”
at no time a natch for her powerful adversary, must fall an easy
victim; nor would there be much reason to apprehend that a single shot
from the battery could reach them, before the captor, and his prize,
would be at such a distance as to render the blow next to impotent if
not utterly innocuous. The wild and audacious character of such an
enterprise was in full accordance with the reputation of the desperate
freebooter on whose caprice, alone, the act now seemed solely to
depend.
Under these impressions, and with the prospect of such a speedy
termination to his new-born authority it is not to be considered
wonderful that our adventurer awaited the result with an interest far
exceeding that of any of those by whom he was surrounded He walked into
the waist of the ship, and endeavoured to read the plan of his secret
confederates by some of those indications that are familiar to a
seaman. Not the smallest sign of any intention to depart, or in any
manner to change her position, was, however, discoverable in the
pretended slaver. She lay in the same deep, beautiful, but treacherous
quiet, as that in which she had reposed throughout the whole of the
eventful morning. But a solitary individual could be seen amid the
mazes of her rigging, or along the wide reach of all her spars. It was
a seaman seated on the extremity of a lower yard, where he appeared to
busy himself with one of those repairs that are so constantly required
in the gear of a large ship. As the man was placed on the weather side
of his own vessel, Wilder instantly conceived the idea that he was thus
stationed to cast a grapnel into the rigging of the “Caroline,” should
such a measure become necessary, in order to bring the two ships foul
of each other. With a view to prevent so rude an encounter, he
instantly determined to defeat the plan. Calling to the pilot, he told
him the attempt to pass to windward was of very doubtful success, and
reminded him that the safer way would be to go to leeward.
“No fear, no fear, Captain,” returned the stubborn conductor of the
ship, who, as his authority was so brief, was only the more jealous of
its unrestrained exercise, and who, like an usurper of the throne, felt
a jealousy of the more legitimate power which he had temporarily
dispossessed; “no fear of me, Captain. I have trolled over this ground
oftener than you have crossed the ocean, and I know the name of every
rock on the bottom, as well as the town-crier knows the streets of
Newport. Let her luff, boy; luff her into the very eye of the wind;
luff, you can”——
“You have the ship shivering as it is, sir,” said Wilder, sternly:
“Should you get us foul of the slaver who is to pay the cost?”
“I am a general underwriter,” returned the opinionated pilot; “my wife
shall mend every hole I make in your sails, with a needle no bigger
than a hair, and with such a palm as a fairy’s thimble!”
“This is fine talking, sir, but you are already losing the ship’s way;
and, before you have ended your boasts, she will be as fast in irons as
a condemned thief. Keep the sails full, boy; keep them a rap full,
sir.”
“Ay, ay, keep her a good full,” echoed the pilot, who, as the
difficulty of passing to windward became at each instant more obvious,
evidently began to waver in his resolution. “Keep her full-and-by,—I
have always told you full-and-by,—I don’t know, Captain, seeing that
the wind has hauled a little, but we shall have to pass to leeward yet;
but you will acknowledge, that, in such case, we shall be obliged to go
about.”
Now, in point of fact, the wind, though a little lighter than it had
been, was, if anything, a trifle more favourable; nor had Wilder ever,
in any manner, denied that the ship would not have to tack, some twenty
minutes sooner, by going to leeward of the other vessel, than if she
had succeeded in her delicate experiment of passing on the more
honourable side; but, as the vulgarest minds are always the most
reluctant to confess their blunders, the discomfited pilot was disposed
to qualify the concession he found himself compelled to make, by some
salvo of the sort, that he might not lessen his reputation for
foresight, among his auditors.
“Keep her away at once,” cried Wilder, who was beginning to change the
tones of remonstrance for those of command; “keep the ship away, sir,
while you have room to do it, or, by the”——
His lips became motionless; for his eye happened to fall on the pale,
speaking, and anxious countenance of Gertrude.
“I believe it must be done, seeing that the wind is hauling. Hard up,
boy, and run her under the stern of the ship at anchor. Hold! keep your
luff again; eat into the wind to the bone, boy; lift again; let the
light sails lift. The slaver has run a warp directly across our track.
If there’s law in the Plantations, I’ll have her Captain before the
Courts for this!”
“What means the fellow?” demanded Wilder, jumping hastily on a gun, in
order to get a better view.
His mate pointed to the lee-quarter of the other vessel, where, sure
enough, a large rope was seen whipping the water, as though in the very
process of being extended. The truth instantly flashed on the mind of
our young mariner. The Rover lay secret-moored with a spring, with a
view to bring; his guns more readily to bear upon the battery, should
his defence become necessary, and he now profited, by the circumstance,
in order to prevent the trader from passing to leeward. The whole
arrangement excited a good deal of surprise, and not a few execrations
among the officers of the “Caroline;” though none but her Commander had
the smallest twinkling of the real reason why the kedge had thus been
laid, and why a warp was so awkwardly stretched across their path. Of
the whole number, the pilot alone saw cause to rejoice in the
circumstance. He had, in fact, got the ship in such a situation, as to
render it nearly as difficult to proceed in one way as in the other;
and he was now furnished with a sufficient justification, should any
accident occur, in the course of the exceedingly critical manoeuvre,
from whose execution there was now no retreat.
“This is an extraordinary liberty to take in the mouth of a harbour,”
muttered Wilder, when his eyes put him in possession of the fact just
related. “You must shove her by to windward, pilot; there is no
remedy.”
“I wash my hands of the consequences, as I call all on board to
witness,” returned the other, with the air of a deeply offended man,
though secretly glad of the appearance of being driven to the very
measure he was a minute before so obstinately bent on executing, “Law
must be called in here, if sticks are snapped, or rigging parted. Luff
to a hair, boy; luff her short into the wind, and try a half-board.”
The man at the helm obeyed the order. Releasing his hold of its spokes,
the wheel made a quick evolution; and the ship, feeling a fresh impulse
of the wind, turned her head heavily towards the quarter whence it
came, the canvas fluttering with a noise like that produced by a flock
of water-fowl just taking wing. But, met by the helm again, she soon
fell off as before, powerless from having lost her way, and settling
bodily down toward the fancied slaver, impelled by the air, which
seemed, however, to have lost much of its force, at the critical
instant it was most needed.
The situation of the “Caroline” was one which a seaman will readily
understand. She had forged so far ahead as to lie directly on the
weather-beam of the stranger, but too near to enable her to fall-off in
the least, without imminent danger that the vessels would come foul.
The wind was inconstant, sometimes blowing in puffs, while at moments
there was a perfect lull. As the ship felt the former, her tall masts
bent gracefully towards the slaver, as if to make the parting salute;
but, relieved from the momentary pressure of the inconstant air, she as
often rolled heavily to windward, without advancing a foot. The effect
of each change, however, was to bring her still nigher to her dangerous
neighbour, until it became evident, to the judgment of the youngest
seaman in the vessel, that nothing but a sudden shift of wind could
enable her to pass ahead, the more especially as the tide was on the
change.
As the inferior officers of the “Caroline” were not delicate in their
commentaries on the dulness which had brought them into so awkward and
so mortifying a position, the pilot endeavoured to conceal his own
vexation, by the number and vociferousness of his orders. From
blustering, he soon passed into confusion, until the men themselves
stood idle, not knowing which of the uncertain and contradictory
mandates they received ought to be first obeyed. In the mean time,
Wilder had folded his arms with an appearance of entire composure, and
taken his station near his female passengers. Mrs Wyllys closely
studied his eye, with the wish of ascertaining, by its expression, the
nature and extent of their danger, if danger there might be, in the
approaching collision of two ships in water that was perfectly smooth,
and where one was stationary and the motion of the other scarcely
perceptible. The stern, determined look she saw settling about the brow
of the young man excited an uneasiness that she would not otherwise
have felt, perhaps, under circumstances that, in themselves, bore no
very vivid appearance of hazard.
“Have we aught to apprehend, sir?” demanded the governess, endeavouring
to conceal from her charge the nature of her own disquietude.
“I told you, Madam, the ‘Caroline’ would prove an unlucky ship.”
Both females regarded the peculiarly bitter smile with which Wilder
made this reply as an evil omen, and Gertrude clung to her companion as
to one on whom she had long been accustomed to lean.
“Why do not the mariners of the slaver appear, to assist us—to keep us
from coming too nigh?” anxiously exclaimed the latter.
“Why do they not, indeed! but we shall see them, I think, ere long.”
“You speak and look, young man, as if you thought there would be danger
in the interview!”
“Keep near to me,” returned Wilder, in tones that were nearly smothered
by the manner in which he compressed his lips. “In every event, keep as
nigh my person as possible.”
“Haul the spanker-boom to windward,” shouted the pilot; “lower away the
boats, and tow the ship’s head round—clear away the stream anchor—aft
gib-sheet—board main tack, again.”
The astonished men stood like statues, not knowing whither to turn,
some calling to the rest to do this or that, and some as loudly
countermanding the order; when an authoritative voice was heard calmly
to say,—
“Silence in the ship.”
The tones-were of that sort which, while they denote the
self-possession of the speaker, never fail to inspire the inferior with
a portion of the confidence of him who commands. Every face was turned
towards the quarter of the vessel whence the sound proceeded, as if
each ear was ready to catch the smallest additional mandate. Wilder was
standing on the head of the capstan, where he could command a full view
on every side of him. With a quiet and understanding glance, he had
made himself a perfect master of the situation of his ship. His eye was
at the instant fixed anxiously on the slaver, as if it would pierce the
treacherous calm which still reigned on all about her, in order to know
how far his exertions might be permitted to be useful. But it appeared
as if the stranger lay like some enchanted vessel on the water, not a
human form even appearing about all her complicated machinery, except
the seaman already named, who still continued his employment, as though
the “Caroline” was not within a hundred miles of the place where he
sat. The lips of Wilder moved: it might be in bitterness; it might be
in satisfaction; for, a smile of the most equivocal nature lighted his
features, as he continued, in the same deep, commanding voice as
before,—
“Throw all aback—lay every thing flat to the masts, forward and aft.”
“Ay!” echoed the pilot, “lay every thing flat to the masts.”
“Is there a shove-boat alongside the ship?” demanded our adventurer.
The answer, from a dozen voices, was in the affirmative.
“Show that pilot into her.”
“This is an unlawful order,” exclaimed the other, “and I forbid any
voice but mine to be obeyed.”
“_Throw_ him in,” sternly repeated Wilder.
Amid the bustle and exertion of bracing round the yards, the resistance
of the pilot produced little or no sensation. He was soon raised on the
extended arms of the two mates; and, after exhibiting his limbs in
sundry contortions in the air, he was dropped into the boat, with as
little ceremony as though he had been a billet of wood. The end of the
painter was cast after him; and then the discomfited guide was left,
with singular indifference, to his own meditations.
In the mean time, the order of Wilder had been executed. Those vast
sheets of canvas which, a moment before, had been either fluttering in
the air, or were bellying inward or outward, as they touched or filled,
as it is technically called, were now all pressing against their
respective masts, impelling the vessel to retrace her mistaken path.
The manoeuvre required the utmost attention, and the nicest delicacy in
its direction. But her young Commander proved himself, in every
particular, competent to his task. Here, a sail was lifted; there,
another was brought with a flatter surface to the air; now, the lighter
canvas was spread; and now it disappeared, like thin vapour suddenly
dispelled by the sun. The voice of Wilder, throughout, though calm, was
breathing with authority. The ship itself seemed, like an animated
being, conscious that her destinies were reposed in different, and more
intelligent, hands than before. Obedient to the new impulse they had
received the immense cloud of canvas, with all its tall forest of spars
and rigging, rolled to and fro; and then, having overcome the state of
comparative rest in which it had been lying, the vessel heavily yielded
to the pressure, and began to recede.
Throughout the whole of the time necessary to extricate the “Caroline,”
the attention of Wilder was divided between his own ship and his
inexplicable neighbour. Not a sound was heard to issue from the
imposing and death-like stillness of the latter. Not a single anxious
countenance, not even one lurking eye, was to be detected, at any of
the numerous outlets by which the inmates of an armed vessel can look
abroad upon the deep. The seaman on the yard continued his labour, like
a man unconscious of any thing but his own existence. There however, a
slow, though nearly imperceptible, motion in the ship itself, which was
apparently made, like the lazy movement of a slumbering whale, more by
listless volition, than through any agency of human hands.
Not the smallest of these changes escaped the keen and understanding
examination of Wilder. He saw that, as his own ship retired, the side
of the slaver was gradually exposed to the “Caroline.” The muzzles of
the threatening guns gaped constantly on his vessel, as the eye of the
crouching tiger follows the movement of its prey; and at no time, while
nearest, did there exist a single instant that the decks of the latter
ship could not have been swept, by a general discharge from the battery
of the former. At each successive order issued from his own lips, our
adventurer turned his eye, with increasng interest, to ascertain
whether he would be permitted to execute it; and never did he feel
certain that he was left to the sole management of the “Caroline” until
he found that she had backed from her dangerous proximity to the other;
and that, obedient to a new disposition of her sails, she was falling
off, before the light air, in a place where he could hold her entirely
at command.
Finding that the tide was getting unfavourable and the wind too light
to stem it, the sails were then drawn to her yards in festoons, and an
anchor was dropped to the bottom.