Produced by Charles Aldarondo. HTML version by Al Haines.
THE SEA-WITCH:
OR, THE AFRICAN QUADROON A STORY OF THE SLAVE COAST.
BY LIEUTENANT MURRAY.
NEW YORK:
CONTENTS
I. OUTWARD BOUND.
II. CAPTAIN WILL RATLIN.
III. THE GALE.
IV. BRAMBLE PARK.
V. THE NAVAL OFFICER.
VI. THE WRECK.
VII. THE SEA WITCH.
VIII. THE QUADROON.
IX. THE ATTACK.
X. THE DUEL.
XI. THE HUES OF LOVE.
XII. THE CONFLICT.
XIII. THE TRIAL.
XIV. THE BROTHERS.
XV. THE ESCAPE.
XVI. THE CANNIBALS.
XVII. THE POISONED BARB.
XVIII. THE DENOUEMENT.
LA TARANTULA. BY GIDDINGS H. BALLOU.
THE GOLDSMITH OF PARIS. BY H. W. LORING.
MISS HENDERSON'S THANKSGIVING DAY. BY HORATIO ALGER, JR.
THE FIREMAN. BY MISS M. C. MONTAIGNE.
PREFACE.
LET the reader peruse the following story with the same spirit in which
it was written, and not conceive that it is either a pro-slavery or
anti-slavery tale. The "peculiar institution" which is herein
introduced, is brought forward simply as an auxiliary, and not as a
feature of the story. It is only referred to where the plot and locality
upon the slave coast have rendered this necessary, and the careful
reader will observe that the subject is treated with entire
impartiality. These few remarks are introduced, because we desire to
appear consistent. Our paper shall neither directly nor indirectly
further any sectional policy or doctrine, and in its conduct shall be
neutral, free and independent.--Editor of The Flag of our Union.
THE SEA-WITCH.
CHAPTER I.
OUTWARD BOUND.
OUR story opens in that broad, far-reaching expanse of water which lies
deep and blue between the two hemispheres, some fifteen degrees north of
the equator, in the latitude of Cuba and the Cape Verd Islands. The
delightful trade winds had not fanned the sea on a finer summer's day
for a twelvemonth, and the waves were daintily swelling upon the heaving
bosom of the deep, as though indicating the respiration of the ocean. It
was scarcely a day's sail beyond the flow of the Caribbean Sea, that one
of those noblest results of man's handiwork, a fine ship, might have
been seen gracefully ploughing her course through the sky-blue waters of
the Atlantic. She was close-hauled on the larboard tack, steering
east-southeast, and to a sailor's eye presented a certain indescribable
something that gave her taut rig and saucy air a dash of mystery, which
would have set him to speculating at once as to her character and the
trade she followed.
Few things can be named that more potently challenge our admiration than
a full-sized ship under way; her myriad of ropes, sails and
appointments, all so complete and well-controlled, the power of her
volition, the promptness with which she obeys the slightest movement of
the helm, the majestic grace of her inclination to the power of the
winds, and the foaming prow and long glistening wake, all go to make up
the charm and peculiarity of a nautical picture. There is true poetry in
such a scene as this, beauty fit to move the heart of an anchorite. No
wonder the sailor loves his ship like a mistress; no wonder he
discourses of her charms with the eloquence of true love and confiding
trust; no landsman can be more enamored of his promised bride.
But the craft to which we especially refer at the present writing, was a
coquette of the first class, beautiful in the extreme, and richly
meriting the name that her owners had placed in golden letters on her
stern--the "Sea Witch." She was one of that class of vessels known as
flat upon the floor, a model that caused her to draw but little water,
and enabled her to run free over a sandbar or into an inlet, where an
ordinary ship's long boat would have grounded. She was very long and
sharp, with graceful concave lines, and might have measured some five
hundred tons. Speed had evidently been the main object aimed at in her
construction, the flatness of her floor giving her great buoyancy, and
her length ensuring fleetness. These were points that would at once have
struck a sailor's eye, as he beheld the ship bowling gracefully on her
course by the power of the trade winds that so constantly befriend the
mariners in these latitudes.
We have said that the "Sea Witch" was of peculiar model, and so indeed
she was. Contrary to the usual rig of what are called clipper ships, her
masts, instead of raking, were perfectly upright, for the purpose of
enabling her to carry more press of sail when need be, and to hold on
longer when speed should be of vital importance--that the straighter
construction of the masts furthers this object, is a fact long since
proven in naval architecture. She was very low, too, in her rigging,
having tremendous square yards; enabling the canvass to act more
immediately upon the hull, instead of operating as a lever aloft, and
keeping the ship constantly off an even keel. Though low in the waist,
yet her ends rose gracefully in a curve towards the terminations fore
and aft, making her very dry on either the quarter-deck or forecastle.
She might have numbered fifty men for her crew, and if you had looked in
board over her bulwarks you would have seen that her complement was made
up of men. There were none there but real able-bodied seamen--sea dogs,
who had roughed it in all weather, and on all sorts of allowance.
There was a quiet and orderly mien about the deck and among the watch,
that spoke of the silent yet potent arm of authority. The men spoke to
each other now and then, but it was in an under tone, and there was no
open levity. A few men were lounging about the heel of the bowsprit on
the forecastle, one or two were busy in the waist coiling cable; an
officer of second or third caste a quiet, but decided character, to
judge from his features, stood with folded arms just abaft the
mizzen-mast, and a youthful figure, almost too young seemingly for so
responsible a post, leaned idly against the monkey-rail, near the sage
old tar who was at the helm. At first you might have supposed him a
supercargo, an owner's son as passenger, or something of that sort, from
the quite-at-home air he exhibited; but now and then he cast one of
those searching and understanding glances aloft and fore and aft, taking
in the whole range of the ship's trim, and the way she did her duty,
that you realized at once the fact of his position; and you could not
mistake the fact that he was her commander.
He wore a glazed tarpaulin hat of coarse texture, and his dress was of
little better material than that of the crew he commanded, but it set it
somehow quite jauntily upon his fine, well-developed form, and there
was an unmistakable air of conscious authority about him that showed him
to be no stranger to control, or the position which he filled. The hair,
escaping in glossy curls from beneath his hat, added to a set of very
regular features a fine effect, while a clear, full blue eye, and an
open, ingenuous expression of countenance, told of manliness of heart
and chivalric hardihood of character. Exposure to the elements had
bronzed his skin, but there were no wrinkles there, and Captain Will
Ratlin could not have seen more than two and twenty years, though most
of them had doubtless been passed upon the ocean, for his well-knit form
showed him to be one thoroughly inured to service.
"She does her work daintily, Captain Ratlin," said he who was evidently
an officer, and who had been standing by the mainmast, but now walked
aft.
"Yes, Mr. Faulkner, 'daintily' is the word. I wish our beauty could be a
little more spunky, time is money in our business, sir," was the prompt
reply.
"But the willing craft does all she can, sir."
"I don't know, Mr. Faulkner, we can make her do almost anything."
"But talk," added the mate.
"Ay, she will do that in her own way, and eloquently, too," continued
his superior.
"In coming out of Matanzas, when you made her back and fill like a
saddle horse, I thought she was little less than a human being," said
the mate, honestly.
"She minds her helm like a beauty, and feels the slightest pull upon her
sheets."
"I never saw a vessel lie closer to the wind," said the mate; "she eats
right into it, and yet has not shaken a foot of canvass this half hour."
"That is well."
"It's uncommon, sir," continued the other.
"She must and can do better, though," said the young commander, with an
air of slight impatience. "Call the watch below, Mr. Faulkner, we will
treat our mistress to a new dress this bright day, and flatter her pride
a little; she is of the coquette school, and will bear a little
dalliance."
"Ay, ay, sir," responded the officer, without further parley, walking
forward to the fore hatch, and with a few quick blows with a handspike,
and a clear call, he summoned that portion of the crew whose hours of
release from duty permitted them below. The signal rang sharply through
the ship, and caused an instant response.
A score of dark forms issued forth from the forecastle, embracing
representatives from nearly half the nations of the globe; but they were
sturdy sailors, and used to obey the word of command, men to be relied
upon in an emergency, rough in exterior, but within either soft as women
or hard as steel, according to the occasion.
Now it was that an observer not conversant with the "Sea Witch," and
looking at her from a distance, would have naturally concluded that she
was most appropriately named, for how else could her singular manouvres
and the result that followed be explained? Suddenly the mizzen royal
disappeared, followed by the top-gallant sail, topsail, and cross-jack
courses, seeming to melt away under the eye like a misty veil, while,
almost in a moment of time, there appeared a spanker, gaff topsail and
gaff top-gallantsail in their place, while the vessel still held on her
course.
A moment later, and the royal top-gallantsail, topsail and mainsail
disappear from the main mast, upon which appears a regular fore and aft
suit of canvass, consisting of mainsail, gaff topsail, and gaff
top-gallantsail, reducing the vessel to a square rig forward, and a
plain fore and aft rig aft. A few minutes more, and the foremast passed
through the same metamorphose, leaving the "Sea Witch" a three-masted
schooner, with fore and aft sails on every mast and every stay. All this
had been accomplished with a celerity that showed the crew to be no
strangers to the manouvres through which they had just passed, each man
requiring to work with marked intelligence. Fifty well drilled men,
thorough sea dogs, can turn a five hundred ton ship "inside out," if the
controlling mind understands his position on the quarter-deck.
"She wears that dress as though it suited her taste exactly, Mr.
Faulkner," said the captain, running his eye over the vessel, and
glancing over the side to mark her headway.
"Any rig becomes the 'Sea Witch,'" answered the officer, with evident
pride.
"That is true," returned the captain. "Luff, sir, luff a bit, so, well,"
he continued to the man at the helm; "we will have all of her weatherly
points that site will give."
"The wind is rather more unsteady than it was an hour past," said Mr.
Faulkner.
"Rather puffy, and twice I thought it would haul right about, but here
we have it still from the north'rd and east'rd," replied the captain.
"Here it is again," added the mate, as the wind hauled once more.
The immediate object of the change in the vessel's rig, which we have
described, was at once apparent, enabling the vessel to lie nearer the
wind in her course, as well its giving her increased velocity by
bringing more canvass to draw than a square rig could do when close
hauled. But a shrewd observer would have been led to ask, what other
reason, save that of disguise, could have been the actuating motive in
thus giving to the "Sea Witch" a double character in her rig? For though
temporary and somewhat important advantage could at times be thus
gained, as we have seen, yet such an object alone would not have
warranted the increased outlay that was necessarily incurred, to say
nothing of the imperative necessity of a vessel's being very strongly
manned in order to enable her to thus change her entire aspect with any
ordinary degree of celerity, and as had just been accomplished.