“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 been 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.