THE STRANGE ADVENTURE OF THE UNKNOWN SHOALS AND THE DWARF PILOT.
That evening it chanced that I had the mid-watch, and so when the
dead of the night came, I took charge of the deck, and Captain Jem,
and all who were not upon duty went below. The weather was moderate,
with a steady breeze broad upon our larboard beam, as we steered
almost due south. I walked the deck for nearly three hours without
having occasion to give an order to one of the watch. I was weary
and exhausted, for the excitement of the chase had now gone off, and
as for the seamen around me, they were stretched out dozing here
and there upon the deck, and as we had a clear sea, and the wind
held very steady, I was loth to rouse the poor fellows up. There
was an old grey-headed sailor, whom we called Bristol Tom, at the
helm, and I sometimes listened to him as he crooned over ancient sea
ballads, which had been sung by the sailors of Sir Francis Drake, and
sometimes conversed with him upon the clever style in which we had
shaken off the Spaniard. So the night waned slowly away. Every ten
minutes or so I would go forward and cast a long look over the dull
sea, stretching away before us like a heaving sheet of lead, save
where here and there it was broken by a dullish white streak, where
a wave rose higher than common, curled, and broke. At length, it
wanted but half an hour to the time of my relief, and I sat down upon
the weather bulwark with my arm round the stay, and began, according
to my frequent custom, to build very gorgeous castles in the air. I
thought of the happy day when, having made prize-money sufficient in
these far-off seas, I would return to Scotland and hear again the
music which of all others was sweetest to the ear of my memory—the
voices of my kindred, and the whimpling and gurgling of the Balwearie
burn, as it trickled down the broomy knowes into the clear pools,
where, with a running noose made of horsehair, attached to the end
of a switch, I used to mark and catch the speckled pars. During my
meditations, it struck me once or twice that the motion of the sea
was changing; that the flow of the waves was not so uniform, and that
they jerked the schooner sharply as though she were ploughing a cross
sea. Thinking, however, that Bristol Tom might be nodding over the
tiller, I called to him to look sharp and steer fine, to which he
promptly replied, ‘Ay, ay, sir!’ and my spirit fled away again to the
bonny shores of Fife. All at once, a low, dull roaring sound, very
different from the sharp plunges of the schooner, and the seething,
hissing noise of the seas, as they burst in beds of foam from beneath
her bows, came floating on the night wind.
‘Bristol Tom!’ I cried, sharply, ‘did you hear nothing like the roar
of surf?’
‘Lord love ye, sir,’ quoth the steersman, ‘there be no surf but where
there be land near the top of the sea, and hereabouts five hundred
fathom of line would reach no bottom.’
‘It must have been the wind eddying in the sail above me,’ I thought,
but I kept my ears cocked pretty sharply.
Presently, I heard the sound again; there could be no mistake about
it. There was the hollow boom of great seas breaking over banks of
sand. I started up, and swung myself on the ledge of the bulwarks.
Not a quarter of a mile on our weather bow I could see a great bed of
tumbling spray, which gleamed with a pale lustre in the dark.
‘Breakers on the weather bow!’ I shouted. ‘Up, men, up! Keep her
away, Tom, keep her away. Call all hands!—stand by sheets and
brails—see all clear with the anchor.’
In a moment the deck of the schooner was alive with startled men, I
leaped forward, and flung myself on the bowspirit.
‘Breakers right a-head!’ I screamed ‘Up with the helm—hard up.’
‘Breakers on the lee bow!’ sung out two or three voices at once.
We were embayed. The white water tumbled and roared all around us: I
thought all was over, when right a-head I saw a space of dark sea.
This might be our salvation.
‘Hold your luff!’ I shouted—‘hold your luff! but keep her well in
hand. So—steady.’
‘Steady!’ replied Bristol Tom, and the schooner shot through a narrow
channel—so narrow that the drifting foam of a great surge upon our
weather bow flew over us in a salt shower. By this time the whole
crew had tumbled out of their hammocks, and rushed upon deck half
awake, and calling out to know what was the matter?
‘Down with your helm—hard down!’ I cried again. The schooner swept up
into the wind, and a great mass of foam seemed as it were to glide
from beneath her bows.
‘Breakers a-head!’ sung out Nicky Hamstring’s voice as the direction
of the ship was altered.
‘Keep her away again,’ cried Captain Jem and myself together. The
bows of the manageable little vessel receded fast from the wind, when
she sunk in the trough of the tumbling swell, with a jerk and a jar
which appeared to shake her very ribs.
‘She has struck!’ cried half the crew at once. But the next sea
hove the ship buoyantly aloft; the wind came down with a heavy
puff; she bent over before its influence, and for near five minutes
rushed madly on amid the broken water which flashed and glanced upon
either side of us; now, by a sudden twitch of the rudder, and a
rapid jibbing of the sails, avoiding a reef, or spit of sand which
lay directly across her course—anon, running along a belt of white
water, until, mayhap, a sudden bend of the reef caused us to whirl
the schooner right into the wind’s eye again, and try to beat slowly
up the tortuous channels, expecting every moment to be flung with
a crash upon a ledge of coral rocks. All this time the men were
working to clear the anchor, and just as the schooner was hove into
the wind to weather the corner of a long shallow point of breakers,
our moorings were let go, our sails sharply brailed up, and we had
soon the satisfaction of finding that we rode easily to our anchor in
about eight fathom water, with a great labyrinth of sand-banks and
low ledges of rock around.
All this appeared to us like a dream; ten minutes before we had been
ploughing along the open ocean, not dreaming that there lay land
within three hundred miles of us, now we were in the midst of an
immense and unknown shoal, and a flaw of wind, or a shift in the set
of the currents which must traverse its intricate channels, might
fling us on a bank of sand or rock, on which we would leave the bones
of ship and men.
Of course, our first business was to make our moorings as secure as
possible. The Mosquito men, who have keen eyes, both by night and
day, pointed out a dark lump upon our starboard bow, which we soon
made out to be a low lying rock, and accordingly manning our light
boat, we speedily carried out a warp, which we made shift to secure
round a jagged projection of the reef, all clustered over with
oysters and sea-weed.
Meantime, Captain Jem, with Bristol Tom, and myself, and sundry of
the oldest mariners, retired into the great cabin to examine the
maps and charts. We certainly did not know the exact position of the
schooner, for in the hurry of yesterday’s chase, no observation
had been taken, but this we knew that no shoal or island, indeed no
soundings at all, were laid down in our charts, near which we could
possibly be.
‘No, comrades,’ quoth Captain Jem, ‘here be rocks and banks, shoals
and sands, which no mariner hath up to this time reported; although,
mayhap, many a brave seaman hath found his long home amongst them.’
We looked long and earnestly to the east, before the blessed light
came out upon the ocean. At length the dawn grew pale in the sky,
then a red, warm glow brightened above the waves; the thin night
mists rolled away; the sea-birds came shrieking and clanging from
their nests and holes, and we, truly, saw a lonely and desolate
sight. All around the schooner, for miles and miles, was a pale
greenish sea, laced, as it were, with bars and streaks of surf, which
spread around like open net-work, and dotted here and there with
great smooth banks of bright sand, and low, long reefs like jagged
walls, rising now and then into a higher point of precipitous rock
which showed, perhaps, some eight or ten feet above the level of the
surf. The blue sea formed the framing of this dismal picture. As
for the Spaniard he was nowhere to be seen, and, sooth to say, we
thought or cared little about him. In regard to our own position,
it was a miracle how we had by chance attained it; when I mounted
the rigging and saw the great chaos of banks and spits of sand,
and white belts of tumbling surf, through which we had reeled and
staggered, as it were, blindfolded, without in the least knowing our
course or the direction of the channels, I felt as if a miracle had
been accomplished in our favour. Having got safely in, however, the
question was now how to get safely out again, and so having called a
council upon the deck, it was determined that the schooner should be
made as snug as possible at her moorings, while the shallop, which
was our smallest boat, went out to survey the shoal, and if possible
hit upon a safe passage to the open sea.
After breakfast, this plan was put into execution, and the charge of
the boat was intrusted to me. The day was fine, the sea-breeze cooled
the air. We put into the shallop some beef, biscuit, and a beaker
of water, and rowed off in very tolerable spirits. Our first intent
was to trace the route by which the schooner had arrived at her
present anchorage; but the attempt soon bewildered us; one man was
confident that we had passed to windward of this bank, while another
maintained that we had run under its lee. Here was a reef which our
bowman remembered to have observed perfectly well, while he who
pulled at the stroke oar was equally confident that the schooner had
never passed within a mile of it. We therefore gave up the idea of
taking the ship out as we brought her in, and set to work to discover
another passage into blue water. But sure such a hopeless range of
shoals, banks, reefs, and dangerous points of rock, never bewildered
poor mariners; sometimes we thought that we had hit upon a channel,
but just as we were upon the point of finding our way clearly into
the open ocean, a few specks of white water only seen when the sea
fell into a trough at that place, would stretch across the route, and
reveal the fact, that a ledge of pointed and pinnacled reef barred
the way. Then the currents and sets of the tide puzzled us greatly,
washing up one channel and down another, and boiling round the rocks
in such a puzzling whirl of eddies and counter-eddies, that our boat
was nigh stove more than once upon the sharp coral reefs. At length,
after pulling the best part of the day, and landing upon many of the
rocky plots, we made our way, with weary muscles and aching hearts,
to the schooner, to report our ill success. We found that they had
moored the vessel very snugly—that in case of accidents they had got
the launch into the water, and that she lay in a snug little sandy
cove, well sheltered from the swell, and, at half ebb, locked up, as
it were, in a clear pool, like a shallow caldron.
The afternoon passed away very dully. Captain Jem sent the small
boat out again, with a fresh crew, to look for turtle and sea-birds;
and it was determined that, next day, both the boats should start
upon an exploring expedition. The turtling party soon returned with
half-a-dozen fine turtles, and a great quantity of oysters; they had
shot several ducks, but the greater quantity of birds they saw were
noddies and sea-gulls, which they did not care to disturb.
About an hour before sunset, the men were lounging under the
awning which we had set, fore and aft, some of them fishing in the
clear water beneath us, when, on a sudden, there was a great cry
of astonishment raised; and looking up from the chart which I was
studying, I saw a strange little man, so small, he might almost be
called a dwarf, deliberately climbing over the taffrail. A dozen
of our seamen rushed to lay hold of him, but he waved his hand, as
though there was no necessity for violence, and jumped lightly down
on deck.
‘Where is the captain of this ship?’ quoth he, in a strange
shrill cracked voice, and speaking English with a slight foreign
accent. At this moment, Captain Jem came out of the main cabin and
stared heartily, as indeed we all did, to see so unexpected and
strange-looking a visitor. The creature—who was so queer and dwarfish
a man, that, as I gazed upon him, I thought of old-world stories
of Brownies and uncanny men of the moors—could not have been above
four feet high. He had very broad shoulders, and such long muscular
arms, that they looked like fore legs of an ape. His face was big and
broad, but not by any means ugly. He had light blue twinkling eyes
and long fair hair, and a beard of a flaxen colour. The little man’s
dress was as strange as himself. He wore a broad hat, made of great
ribbons of strong green sea-weed, very neatly plaited and wrought. He
had a linen shirt, not of the cleanest, with a cloth cloak hanging
round his loins, and bound with a broad belt of similar sea-weed to
that which formed his hat, while on his legs, which were very short
and thick, he wore a pair of coarse canvas drawers. His great brown
splay feet were bare. When I say that this strange-looking apparition
had a sort of necklace of coral, mixed with small pieces of gold and
silver money hung round his neck; that his ears were weighed down
with big silver rings; and that in his hand he carried a paddle, with
a broad blade at each end, I have fully described to the reader the
stranger who now advanced towards Captain Jem, pulling off his hat,
and making a very polite bow. Not to be behindhand in good breeding,
Stout Jem was nothing loth to return the salaam; after which, he
asked the little man how the devil he had come on board.
‘Look over the side and you will see,’ quoth the dwarf. We all
rushed to the bulwark, and there sure enough was a light canoe most
beautifully constructed, floating, as it appeared, on the very top of
the water.
‘Well, sir,’ quoth Captain Jem, ‘you seem a countryman of the most of
us here, and you are very welcome. I can’t help, however, thinking
that you must have dropped from the moon. Mayhap you are the man in
it.’
The dwarf waved his hand very impatiently, as who should say, a truce
with your idle jeers, and then quoth he very solemnly—‘I am a pilot.’
At this we all listened greedily enough.
‘Well,’ says Captain Jem, ‘I can’t say that we are not in want of
one. But whereabouts may we be? Is there land nigh; and what do you
call these rocks and sands?’
‘There is no land that I know of nigher than New Providence,’
answered the dwarf, ‘and it lies a good hundred leagues to the
westward and southward; and as for these rocks and sands, I cannot
tell you their name, because they have got none.’
‘Then what ships come hither that you act as pilot for?’ asked I.
‘None at all,’ replied the little man, very briskly. ‘There is
nothing to take ships hither, unless it be a few turtle, and these
they can get in far less dangerous places.’
At this we all stared at each other, and the men murmured that the
dwarf was mad; and Bristol Tom whispered that mayhap the creature
had been marooned—that is, deserted—upon these rocks, and that he
had lost his reason. After a short pause, however, the dwarf-pilot
resumed his discourse.
‘There never was a ship,’ quoth he, ‘which came to these shoals but
stayed there. There be plenty of room for a navy to lie on these
sands and reefs, and then the first gale of wind that comes, smashes
them faster than e’er a ship-breaker in Limehouse.’
Captain Jem now began to lose patience, so he cried very wrathfully.
‘If you talk more riddles to us, little man, God smite me! but I will
run you up to the yard-arm by the breech of your galligaskins, and so
dip you into the brine, as men serve a mangy monkey!’
‘Nay,’ answered the dwarf, ‘I came on board to help you out of a
scrape. You are discourteous, so get you to sea as you best can.’
‘Well, well!’ replied Captain Jem, ‘I was in the wrong; but tell us
frankly, man, what you are, and how you come to live amongst these
accursed shoals?’
‘What I will do for you is this,’ quoth the dwarf—‘and I will do
neither more nor less; I will pilot your ship out to sea, and I will
ask nothing for it, but that you make me rid of you without loss of
time.’
‘Why,’ quoth I, ‘you must be very fond of solitude to propose
anything of the sort; and if you obstinately refuse to tell us what
you are, or what you do here, how can we trust the ship and all our
lives to your management?’
‘You will have me on board,’ said the dwarf, ‘and I give you free
leave to hang me up by the neck, not by the breech, if I as much as
scrape a barnacle from the bottom of the schooner.
This proposition certainly looked reasonable.
‘What will you do, when we get to sea?’ asked Bristol Tom.
‘What is that to you, old man?’ quoth the dwarf; ‘go your ways, and
leave me to go mine. I warrant I should have had more wit than to
come blundering in here against my will.’
‘So you landed here on purpose?’ says I.
‘Whether I did or no,’ says the dwarf, ‘is nothing to you. Do you
want a pilot, or do you not?’
Here, Captain Jem whispered to me that there might be more in this
scene than met the eye, and that we should do well to secure the
strange pilot who crowed so smugly. I assenting, the captain tipped
the wink to half a dozen of the crew, who thereupon advanced towards
the little man. But he was sharper than we, for, observing what we
intended, he made but two jumps, one upon the bulwark, and the other
into the canoe below, the bottom of which I thought would be driven
out by his weight; but not a bit of it—the little bark-built skiff
gave a great surge, and then floated tranquilly a couple of fathoms
from the side.
‘Call you that seamen’s hospitality?’ says the little man, grinning.
Captain Jem flew into a great rage. ‘Get your muskets, men,’ he
cried; but directly after, controlling himself, he directed us
to give chase in the shallop, and bring back the pilot by force.
Anticipating this order, I leaped into the boat, and calling out for
four young men, who were the best rowers and the most muscular and
long-winded fellows in the schooner, they jumped into the shallop
with great glee, just as the dwarf, thinking he might as well have a
start, dipped his paddle into the water and glided away. We were soon
in chase, straining at the oars with right good will, and sending
the shallop dancing at a great rate through the sea. Meantime our
shipmates on board the schooner mounted into the rigging that they
might observe the race the better, and encouraged us with abundance
of cheers and exhortations not to spare our muscles. We brought the
boat gradually to its full speed, the canoe being then only a dozen
or so fathoms a-head. The dwarf was kneeling in the bottom of his
craft, striking the water alternately on either side with the broad
double blades of his paddle. Of course he had his back towards us,
but he went, as the Spaniards phrase it, ‘with his beard upon his
shoulder,’ that is to say, constantly looking back, with a provoking
grin upon his face. We soon found that if we caught the gentleman at
all, it would not be until after a hot chase and a long one. But we
gave a shout and buckled to our work in good earnest. Meantime, the
dwarf seemed to keep ahead almost without an effort—his light vessel
skimming the very surface, while our heavier shallop was driving
the sea into tiny ridges of foam, and leaving a wake of dancing
agitated water. So, encouraging my men to pull long and strong, and
steady strokes, we flew at a great rate through the intricacies of
the shoal, speedily leaving the schooner far behind. It must have
been a brave sight for a spectator to see—the light canoe, with its
strange rower, spinning along, followed through all its windings and
doublings by the shallop, impelled by cracking oars and straining
muscles. Now and then we would cross bays and creeks only partially
sheltered from the swing of the sea, the canoe jumping as it were,
over the broken and sweltering waves, like a cork upon the parchment
of a beaten drum, while the shallop would plunge, and jerk, and
thrash, amid the cross surges, taking them on board over the larboard
and starboard gunwales at once. Still, I think we would have caught
the dwarf, nervous as was his arm, and swift as was his boat, had it
not been for the rapidity with which he could wheel her round and
round, following the crooked channels, and threading the narrow and
intricate passages of the shoal, while he managed all the time to
keep the canoe at great speed. Of course our boat was not so handy.
Our utmost endeavours would not always suffice to keep her clear of a
spit of sand, or to alter her course in time to avail ourselves of a
shortcut into which the canoe would suddenly diverge. At length, my
men began to show symptoms of distress; they panted at their toil,
and, looking over their shoulders, began to murmur that there was
no use in chasing the devil. All this while, the pilot had never
ceased his impudent grin, and he seemed to be as fresh as when he had
started from the side of the schooner. At length, we found ourselves
in a pretty long open passage, with impassable barriers of reefs on
either hand. The canoe was not more than a few fathoms ahead, for as
we had flagged in our efforts, so had the dwarf relaxed in his. I
thought that now was the time for a grand push, and shouting to the
men that the game was in our hands, the brave fellows made a great
rally—the ashen staves of the oars cracked, the water buzzed and
foamed, and in a moment the boats were not more than a few feet apart.
‘Huzza, we have him now!’ I shouted.
The men pulled like devils, the dwarf worked hard with his paddle;
but nothing could keep before us in such a chaise—foot by foot, we
overhauled the canoe.
‘Three strokes more, comrades, and he is ours.’ The men shouted, but
the breath had hardly left their lips when—crack!—the bows of the
shallop went smash upon a submerged spit of sand. The men were flung
higgledy-piggledy, head over heels, sprawling into the bottom of the
boat, while a couple of oars snapped like pistol shots. We had run
upon a bar which crossed the passage, some six inches under water.
The canoe, thanks to her light draught, had floated over it unhurt,
and was now lying a few yards a-head—the abominable little dwarf
grinning more furiously than ever.
‘If we had a musket in the boat, you should laugh on the wrong side
of your mouth,’ I shouted, gathering myself up and wiping my nose,
which was bleeding famously. One of our men caught up a broken shaft
of oar and hurled it at the canoe. The little man, who was as quick
as light in his movements, parried the missile with the broad blade
of his paddle, and called out—
‘Ho! ho! pretty fellows to think of taking a ship out to sea without
a pilot, when they can’t row a boat without running their noses
against a post.’
The answer to this was a simultaneous salute from all the fragments
of the broken oars, one of which, despite his adroitness, gave the
little man a very tolerable thwack across the shoulders, upon which,
not choosing to risk the consequences of another broadside, the
dwarf called out—
‘Good night; you had better pull to the schooner if you don’t want to
sleep among the noddies and the boobies. Ho! ho!—good night.’
He then coolly paddled off, whistling. To have attempted to
follow him would be sheer nonsense. We had our wings, as it were,
clipped, and if we could not catch the canoe with four fresh men
and four oars, there was little chance of overhauling him with
four wearied men and two oars, so we addressed ourselves to get
back to the schooner. The chase had lasted nearly an hour, and
upon looking around we saw the mast of the ‘Will o’ the Wisp’ at
a distance which somewhat startled us. There was a flag flying at
her main-topmast-head which we supposed was a signal of recall. We
therefore began to retrace our course, manning the remaining oars
double.
‘I hope we may make the schooner, Will Thistle,’ said Edward
Lanscriffe, one of the boat’s crew.
‘So do I,’ said Paul Williamson, who tugged at the same oar with him;
‘it would be ill sleeping among desert rocks and sands, and them
haunted too.’
‘Haunted?’ said I, ‘what do you mean? Haunted by whom?’
‘By whom but the dwarf who paddled that canoe,’ answered the bowman,
a sailor from Penzance.
‘Why,’ quoth I, ‘do you think he is anything but a man like
ourselves—only, perhaps, for the matter of that, a trifle shorter?’
All the men shook their heads gloomily, and one of them replied—
‘No, no; it is no mortal that lives alone amongst these reefs, and
refused the help of Christian men to carry him away from the middle
of the sea.’
‘That is over true,’ quoth Paul Williamson, ‘and greatly do I fear
that his coming boded no good to ship or crew. He ought not to have
been allowed on board.’
I tried to laugh at all this, but somehow I was startled and put
out of spirits myself, not that I much heeded the fancies of the
superstitious sailors, but the whole thing seemed to me so wild,
and strange, and uncommon, that I mused and mused hardly knowing
what to think of it. Meantime, we were making the best of our way to
the ship; of course our progress was slow, for we had to fish out a
channel amid the shoals, and the tide being then low, the task was
the more difficult. The accursed dwarf seemed to have led us into
the most puzzling nook of all the reefs. We rowed and poled, and
sometimes waded, dragging the boat along slippery ledges of rock, or
smooth banks of fine white sand; but the schooner was still separated
from us by a good couple of miles of rock, and sand, and sea, when
the sun went down, and in less than half an hour we were groping
in the darkness. The ship then fired a gun, and hoisted a light to
one of the mast-heads as a signal. The twinkle of this light was,
however, so faint, that had we not observed the lantern run up, we
might well have taken it for a star, and therefore I kept my eyes
steadily fixed upon the tiny spark, intending not to let it get out
of sight. Directing the men, therefore, how to row, and continually
bumping against points of rock and sand, we jogged on until, just
as we rounded a long belt of reef, along which we had been running,
the rush of a current of the young flood tide, which had just began
to set in, sheered the shallop’s bows violently round, bore us some
yards away out of our course, and then tossing us into a sort of
boiling caldron, or rather slight whirlpool, we were swung round and
round until our heads were giddy, and every idea of our proper course
gone. Pulling at last clear of this vortex, we tried to discover the
signal-light from the schooner, but in vain. The sky was now gemmed
with stars down to the very horizon, and we knew not where to look
for the guiding ray. It was then that I recollected how easily I
might have set the position of the schooner by the constellations,
but I had not thought of doing so, and now it was too late. The men
began to look startled, and one of them said, in a low voice—
‘I told you so; no schooner for us to-night.’
‘Why do they not continue firing guns?’ I muttered, impatiently.
‘Come, boys, let us give them a cheer.’
The night was calm, and I thought our voices might be heard on board
the ship, so standing up, and putting our hands trumpet-fashion to
our mouths, we gave a long shrill halloo, and then listened intently.
For a moment we heard nothing but the surging of the currents as the
tide came washing along the channels of the reef, and the low sound
of the surf outside. But then was heard distinctly the answering
halloo. We shouted again, and shoved off in the direction of the
voice, making very good way, for we had struck a tolerably open
channel, along which the tide was setting fast. Presently we heard
the hail again much closer.
‘Come, come,’ quoth I, ‘Paul Williamson, you will swing in your
hammock to-night, for all that is come and gone.’
‘Boat ahoy!’ said the voice a third time. ‘Sheer to port, and keep
along that belt of surf on your starboard beam. Have you caught the
dwarf?’
‘No, confound him!’ I shouted; ‘and we thought we should never have
got to the schooner again. Why did you not keep firing?’
To this no answer was given, and Edward Lanscriffe asked, in a
low tone, which of our comrades it was who had hailed. This was a
puzzler. We none of us knew the voice.
‘Will-o’-the-Wisp, ahoy!’ I shouted. ‘Halloo!’ was the reply. ‘Why
the devil don’t you come aboard? Have you fallen asleep over your
oars?’
‘We can’t see,’ we replied, standing up, and peering into the
darkness. ‘Show a light, man—show a light!’
Immediately a lantern gleamed ahead of us. We pulled towards it. It
shone from a dark object. I was in the act of telling the men to lay
on their oars, when grit, grit, grit! the boat’s keel scrunched upon
the sand, and at the same time the lantern was extinguished.
‘Ho! ho! Do you want a pilot? I think you do, indeed,’ exclaimed the
shrill, cracked voice we knew so well.
‘The dwarf, by God!’ ejaculated Paul Williamson. ‘I told you so. It
is a demon, and we are bewitched.’
I was in a great rage. ‘You skulking vagabond,’ I shouted out, ‘wait
till daylight to-morrow, and we’ll see whether an ounce of lead won’t
catch that canoe of yours, quick as it is.’
To this there was no answer made, although we sat listening for near
ten minutes. What was to be done? We hardly knew; but anything was
better than lying idly where we were. The night breeze now struck
cold and chill; the men had been overheated at their oars, and
their teeth began to chatter. There was a very cordial response of
‘Amen,’ therefore, as I said, ‘I wish we had put a bottle of brandy
into the boat.’ For half an hour or so we pulled at random, the men
whispering and muttering to each other, when I saw a faint flash in
the distance, and presently heard the report of a gun. ‘There goes
the schooner, at length,’ I cried. The boat’s head was promptly put
into the proper direction, and we recommenced our weary pull with
something like energy. We must have been near the outward edge of the
shoals, for the surf thundered loud, and great broken swells often
came rolling past us in a multitude of uneven undulations. All at
once the confounded voice of the dwarf hailed us.
‘You are going the wrong way, my brave fellows. If you expect to
reach the schooner on that course, you must pull the boat round the
world, and carry her over Asia.’
‘Never mind the spiteful creature,’ I said, in a low tone; ‘he is but
attempting to mislead us. It is his turn to-night; it will be ours
to-morrow, when the sun rises.’
Ten minutes more elapsed, then another musket was discharged, almost
due ahead. ‘See,’ I exclaimed, in great triumph; ‘we are keeping the
exact course; we shall be on board in a jiffey.’
Paul Williamson shook his head. ‘The schooner,’ quoth he, ‘is
anchored near the centre of the shoals, and you hear how heavy and
how near the surf is beating.’
I was somewhat troubled at this, I confess, but I saw nothing for it
but to pull on. So we did, until having coasted for some time along
a succession of rocks, on the opposite side of which the sea was
running heavily, we suddenly shot out from beyond their shelter, and
immediately the boat was hove up upon the crest of so high and long
a swell, that we all exclaimed at once, that we were out in the open
sea. Just then, the pernicious dwarf hailed again, his voice now
seeming to come from astern.
‘You are better pilots than I reckoned,’ shouted the spiteful atomy,
‘only that when you would keep at sea you come ashore; and when you
would hug the land you start off right into the ocean.’
This time, at all events, he was clearly not deceiving us, so we
promptly pulled the boat about, and were soon in the comparatively
smooth water of the reef. One thing we now knew pretty well—the dwarf
was armed, for it must have been he who fired the muskets, and,
not doubting but that his optics were far more accustomed to the
darkness than ours, we thought it extremely probable that he might
amuse himself by plumping a shot or two into the boat. This was not a
comfortable idea to cherish, so I hailed at random—
‘Pilot! pilot—ahoy!’ no answer. We repeated the summons a dozen of
times, but heard no sound save the heavy beat of the surf and the
wild cry of sea-birds.
‘Why, the scoundrel has gone home to bed,’ quoth I; ‘and, to tell you
the truth, comrades, I think we may give up playing at blind man’s
buff for the night, and wait peaceably until we see the schooner in
the morning.’
This counsel was followed. We presently found a sandy cove, in which
we lay very snugly, and then, after setting a watch, dropped off to
sleep, weary, hungry, thirsty, and vexed.
The day dawned, and we speedily discovered the schooner, about as far
off as she was when we lost sight of her after sundown, the evening
before. A pull of an hour brought us alongside, upon which there was
a great outcry to know whether we had caught the pilot, and why we
had not returned betimes.
‘Why,’ quoth I, ‘we could not see you in the dark.’
‘There was a light all night at the main-topmast-head,’ says Captain
Jem.
‘Yes, but we lost sight of it once, and then we could not tell your
lantern from a star. Why did you not fire?’
‘We were clearing away the bow gun,’ answered Captain Jem, ‘when we
heard you fire a musket.’
‘We fire! that was the dwarf. We had no musket.’
‘By the Lord!’ says Captain Jem, ‘I think we are all bewitched among
these cursed reefs, which no one ever saw or heard of before.’