number--and then I turned my attention to the ship, which I ascertained
to be the _Caribbean_, of London, of twelve hundred and forty-three tons
register, laden with sugar and rum. She was therefore a valuable
recapture. She carried thirty-two passengers, and by great good luck
her own British crew was also on board. It was not necessary,
therefore, for me to weaken my own force by putting a prize crew on
board her; my chief mate being quite sufficient to represent and watch
over the interests of the _Sword Fish_ and her owners. The individual
who had been put on board her as prize-master, when she was captured by
Monsieur Villeneuve's fleet, happened to be a very talkative fellow, and
accordingly I had not much difficulty in extracting from him the
information that it had been rumoured through the fleet that the
suddenness of Monsieur Villeneuve's departure from the West Indies was
due to intelligence that Lord Nelson was in pursuit. This statement, if
true, exactly bore out my theory; and a little more judicious
questioning enabled me to ascertain that it had further been stated
that, at the time of departure from Martinique, the British fleet was
believed to be not more than four days' sail distant. I thus obtained
something in the shape of a clue as to the direction in which my further
search ought to be prosecuted; and accordingly hauled up to the
southward, close-hauled on the starboard tack, with our recapture in
company.
It was more than a week, however, before we contrived to obtain any
definite information as to the whereabouts of the British fleet, and
even then I was four days longer in finding it; but when at length this
was achieved, I had the satisfaction of learning that my information was
the very latest of an authentic character that had been furnished to
Nelson; and it had the effect of causing him instantly to determine to
retrace his steps to Europe. This was good news to me, for it enabled
me to send my recapture across the Atlantic with the British fleet as a
protector, instead of taking her into Kingston, in Jamaica, where the
necessary formalities connected with the capture would have involved us
in a vast amount of trouble and expense. I accordingly wrote a brief
letter or two home, which I forwarded by the _Caribbean_, and parted
company with her and the fleet within an hour of having fallen in with
the latter. And thus terminated, successfully and profitably, the
service which I had undertaken at the instigation of the Admiral
stationed at Jamaica.
I was now my own master once more, free to go wherever my whim prompted
me, and I determined that I would put into effect a plan that had long
commended itself to me; namely, to cruise along the Spanish Main in the
hope of picking up one of the galleons or plate-ships that were still
despatched from time to time from Cartagena. Upon parting company,
therefore, with the British fleet, I cruised along the whole line of the
Windward Islands as far south as Tobago and Trinidad, and then bore up
for the Main. In leisurely fashion and under easy canvas we coasted
along the shore, taking a look into the Cariaco Gulf without finding
anything worth picking up, and thence across to Cape Codera, off which
the wind came out from the westward, compelling us to make a stretch off
the land. This occurred about midnight. I secured an observation for
my longitude at nine o'clock the next morning, and another for my
latitude at noon, about which time I became aware that the barometer was
falling, although not rapidly enough to give cause for any uneasiness.
As the afternoon wore on, however, there were indications that a change
of weather was impending. The sky lost the pure brilliancy of its blue,
and by insensible degrees assumed an ashen pallor, which the sun vainly
struggled to pierce until he merged from a palpitating, rayless ball of
light to a shapeless blotch of dim, watery radiance, and then
disappeared. At the same time the wind died away until we were left
becalmed and rolling rail-under upon a swell that gathered strength
every hour as it came creeping up from the westward. In a short time it
became a fine example of what the Spaniards call a "furious calm", the
schooner rolling so heavily that I deemed it prudent to send the yards
and topmasts down on deck to relieve the lower-masts. And I did this
the more readily because the steady, continuous decline of the mercury
in the tube assured me that we were booked for a stiff blow. Yet hour
succeeded hour until the darkness closed down upon us, and still, beyond
the portents already mentioned, there was no sign of the coming breeze.
The night fell as dark as a wolf's mouth; the air was so close and hot
that the mere act of breathing was performed with difficulty; and the
quick, jerky roll of the schooner at length became positively
distressing in its persistent monotony. Of course, under the
circumstances, turning in was not to be thought of, so far as I was
concerned. I therefore made myself as comfortable as I could upon the
wheel-grating, and awaited developments.
The fact is that I was puzzled. I did not know what to make of the
weather. Had it not been for the steady, continuous fall of the mercury
I should have expected nothing worse than a fresh breeze from the
westward, preceded perhaps by a thunder-squall; but the barometer
indicated something more serious than that, yet the sky gave no
verifying sign of the approach of anything like a heavy blow. But I had
long ago taken in everything except the boom-foresail, to save the sails
from beating themselves to pieces, so I was pretty well prepared for any
eventuality.
It was close upon midnight when the change came, and then it was nothing
at all alarming, being merely a sudden but by no means violent squall
out from about due west, followed by a heavy downpour of rain. The rain
lasted about a quarter of an hour, and when it ceased we were again
becalmed. Suddenly I became conscious of a faint luminousness somewhere
in the atmosphere, and looking about me to discover the cause, I
observed what looked like a ball of lambent, greenish flame clinging to
the foremast-head, where it swayed about, elongating and contracting
with the roll of the ship, exactly as a gigantic soap-bubble might have
done. It clung there, swaying, for some moments, and then glided slowly
down the mast until it reached the jib-stay, down which it slid to the
bowsprit, whence, after wavering for a few seconds, it travelled along
the bowsprit, inboard, and vanished, not, however, until it had revealed
by its corpse-like light the horror-stricken features of some half a
dozen of the watch huddled together on the forecastle, in attitudes
every curve and bend of which were eloquent of consternation.
"That's a bad sign, sir; so they say," remarked Saunders, my chief mate,
whose watch it was.
"What? The appearance of that light?" demanded I.
"Not so much the appearance of it, sir, but the way that it travelled.
They say that if a corposant appears aboard a vessel and stays aloft, or
travels upwards, it's all right; but if it comes down from aloft, it
means a heavy gale of wind at the very least," answered Saunders.
"Pooh!" said I; "mere superstition. Everybody knows nowadays that a
corposant is nothing whatever but an electrical phenomenon, and
therefore merely an indication that the atmosphere is surcharged with
electricity. As to whether it travels up or down, that, in my opinion,
is mere chance or accident, call it which you will."
"Have you ever seen any of those things before, sir?" inquired the mate.
"No," said I; "this is the first time that I have ever been shipmates
with one."
"Ah!" remarked the mate, with a distinct accent of superior experience
in his tone; "I've seen 'em often enough; too often, I may say. Why,
there was one time when I was aboard the little _Fox_, bound from
Jamaica to New Providence. We were lying becalmed, just as we are to-
night, close to the Diamond Bank, and with pretty much the same sort of
weather, too, when one of them things boarded us, making its appearance
on the spindle of the vane at our main-topmast head. It wavered about
for a minute or two, exactly like that thing just now, and then rolled,
as it might be, down the spar until it met the topmast-stay, down which
it travelled to the foremast-head, and from thence it came down the
topsail sheet to the deck, where it bursted. Ten minutes after that
happened, sir, we were struck by a squall that hove us over on our beam-
ends. We had to cut both masts away before she would right with us, and
when at length she rose to an even keel, there was five feet of water in
the hold. Of course we could do nothing but scud before it, and, the
squall hardening into a furious gale of wind, we went ashore about two
hours afterwards on South Point, Yuma Island, and out of a crew of
thirty-four men only seven of us was saved! Now, what d'ye think of
that, sir?"
"Why, I think it was a terribly unfortunate affair; but I don't believe
that the corposant had anything to do with it," answered I.
"Well, sir," answered the mate, "I only hope that it hadn't; because,
d'ye see, if your view is the correct one, we needn't fear anything
happening in consequence of--Why, bust me, but there's another of 'em!"
It was true. While Saunders was in the very act of speaking, another of
the strange, weird lights had suddenly become visible, this time on the
mainmast-head, where it hung for a few minutes, finally sliding down the
mast to the deck, where it rolled to and fro for perhaps half a minute,
presenting the appearance of a sphere of luminous mist, the most
brilliant part of which was its centre. I am by no means a
superstitious person, but I am free to admit that the sight of this
weird, uncanny thing gliding about the deck and emitting its ghostly
light, almost at my feet, produced a sufficiently creepy feeling to make
me unfeignedly glad when it presently disappeared.
"Now, you mark my words, sir, if we don't have some very ugly weather
after this," observed Saunders, producing his tinder-box and lighting
his pipe.
I walked to the skylight and took a squint at the barometer. It was
still falling, and by this time the depression had assumed such
proportions as to fully justify such an expectation as that entertained
by the mate. I thought, therefore, that it might be only prudent to
make some further preparation, and I accordingly gave orders to reef the
foresail and fore-staysail. All this time it continued as dark as
pitch, and so breathlessly calm that the helmsman, wishing to prick up
the wicks of the binnacle-lamps, was able to do so in the open air, the
only wind affecting the naked flame being the draught occasioned by the
heavy roll of the schooner.
But this was not destined to last very long. Some ten minutes or a
quarter of an hour after the second corposant had vanished we felt a
faint movement in the atmosphere which caused our small spread of canvas
to flap heavily once or twice; then came a puff of hot, damp air that
lasted long enough to give the schooner steerage-way; and when this was
on the point of dying, a scuffle of wind swept over us that careened the
schooner to her bearings, and before she had recovered herself the true
breeze was upon us, with a deep, weird, moaning sound that was
inexpressibly dismal, and that somehow seemed to impart a feeling of
dire foreboding to the listener. Not that there was anything in the
least terrifying in the strength of the wind--far from it, indeed,--for
it was no heavier than a double-reefed topsail breeze, to which the
schooner stood up as stiff as a church, but there was a certain
indescribable hollowness in the sound of it--that is the only fitting
term I can find to apply--that was quite unlike anything that I had
heard before, and that somehow seemed, in its weirdness, to indisputably
forebode disaster.
The schooner was now forging through the water at a speed of some four
knots, and looking well up into the wind, which had come out from the
westward. As I have said, there was already a very heavy swell running,
and upon the top of this a very steep, awkward sea soon began to make,
so that within half an hour of the breeze striking us we were pitching
bows under, and the decks to leeward were all afloat. By this time,
too, it had become perfectly apparent that the wind was rapidly gaining
strength; so rapidly, indeed, that about an hour after the first puff it
came down upon us with all the fury of a squall, laying the schooner
down to her rail, and causing her to plunge with fearful violence into
the fast-rising sea. Within the next half-hour the wind had increased
so greatly in strength that I began to think there really might be
something in Saunders's theory after all, and I was inwardly debating
whether I should haul the fore-sheet to windward and heave the schooner
to, or whether it would be better to up helm and run before it until the
weather should moderate a bit, when a third corposant suddenly appeared,
this time on the boom-foresail gaff-end.
"Now, sir," remarked Saunders, "we shall soon know whether we've got the
worst of the blow yet or not. If we have, that thing'll shift higher
up; but if we haven't, it'll come down like the others."
I did not answer him, for I was at the moment straining my eyes into the
blackness on the weather-bow, where I fancied I had caught, a second or
two before, a deeper shadow. There were moments when I thought I saw it
again, but so profound was the darkness that it really seemed absurd to
suppose it possible to discern anything in it; to make sure, however, I
sang out to the look-out men on the forecastle to keep their eyes wide
open, and their answer came so sharp and prompt as to convince me that
they were fully on the alert, and that I had allowed my imagination to
deceive me. I therefore turned to Saunders with some remark upon my
lips in reply to his, when I saw the corposant suddenly leave the gaff-
end and go driving away to leeward on the wings of the gale. I
naturally expected that it would almost immediately vanish, but it did
not; on the contrary, it had all the appearance of having been arrested
in its flight, for I saw it elongating and collapsing again, as it had
done with the motion of the schooner, and it also appeared to me to be
describing long arcs across the sky. For a moment I was puzzled to
account for so strange a phenomenon, and then the explanation came to me
in a flash. I had not been deceived when I believed I caught sight of a
shadowy something sweeping athwart our bows. I had seen a ship, and
there she was to leeward of us, with the corposant clinging to one of
her spars. I had just time to give the order to bear up in pursuit, and
to get the schooner before the wind, when the corposant seemed to settle
down nearer to the water, and in another instant it had vanished.
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE.
A TERRIBLE ADVENTURE.
With the disappearance of the corposant there was nothing whatever to
betray the presence of a strange sail in our vicinity; for now, strain
my eyes as I would, I could not be at all certain that I saw anything,
although there were times when the same vague, shapeless blot of deeper
darkness that had previously attracted my attention seemed to loom up
momentarily out of the Stygian murkiness ahead. There were times also
when, the water being highly phosphorescent, it appeared to me that,
among the ghostly gleamings of the breaking surges, I could faintly
discern a more symmetrical space of luminosity, corresponding to the
foaming track of a ship moving at a high rate of speed through the
water. But, to make sure of the matter, I ordered the reef to be shaken
out of the foresail, and also set the mainsail, close-reefed, with the
boom topped well up. This increased the speed of the schooner quite as
much as I thought desirable, more, indeed, than was at all prudent; for,
let me tell you, it is risky work to be flying along before a gale of
wind at a speed of fully nine knots an hour on a pitch-black night, with
a suspicion, amounting almost to absolute certainty, that there is
another vessel directly ahead, and close aboard of you for aught that
you can tell to the contrary. And, indeed, we soon had evidence of
this; for, feeling uneasy upon the matter, I had started to go forward
with the intention of warning the look-out men that I had reason to
believe there was a ship close ahead of us, and that they must therefore
keep an extra bright look-out, when, as I arrived abreast the fore-
rigging, my eyes still straining into the darkness ahead, the schooner
was hove up on the breast of a heavy, following sea, and as she topped
it with the ghostly sea-fire of its fiercely-hissing crest brimming
almost to the rail, a black shape seemed to suddenly solidify out of the
gloom ahead, apparently within biscuit-toss of our jib-boom end, with an
unmistakable wake of boiling foam on each side of it, and the two look-
out men yelled, as with one voice, and in the high-pitched accents of
sudden alarm.
"Hard-a-port! hard a-port! There's a ship right under our bows, sir!"
The helm was promptly put over, the schooner sheered out of the wake of
the black mass ahead--apparently a craft of considerable size,--and we
ranged up on her starboard quarter. It will convey some idea of the
closeness of the shave we made of it when I say that, even above the
howling of the gale, the fierce hiss of the rapidly rising sea, and the
roar of our bow-wave, we caught the sound of an unintelligible hail from
the stranger, which almost immediately displayed a lantern over her
taffrail for a few seconds, as a warning to us, her people being
doubtless under the impression that our encounter had been accidental,
and that we had only that moment seen her for the first time.
Having now established beyond all question the fact of the stranger's
proximity to us, I ordered our mainsail to be hauled down, balance-
reefed, and reset, by which means we presently found that the stranger
was gradually drawing ahead of us again; and the danger of collision
being thus averted, I began to ask myself whether it was advisable to
continue the chase any longer. The fact is, I had followed this craft
instinctively, for I knew that there were so few vessels flying British
colours in that precise part of the world that the presumption was
strongly in favour of this one being either a Spaniard or a Dutchman,
and in either case an enemy. But assuming her to be one or the other,
she was just as likely to be a man-o'-war as a merchantman--she had
appeared to be quite large enough to be the former, in that brief,
indistinct glance that we had caught of her,--and if she happened to be
a man-o'-war we should probably find ourselves in the wrong box when
daylight broke. On the other hand she had not appeared to be so large
as to preclude the possibility of her being a merchantman--a Spanish or
Dutch West Indiaman; and should she prove to be either of these, she
would be well worth fighting for. I considered the question carefully,
and at length came to the conclusion that the risk of following her was
quite worth taking, and we accordingly held all on as we were.
Meanwhile the gale was steadily growing fiercer, and the sea rising
higher and becoming more dangerous with every mile that we traversed in
our blind, headlong flight before it; and it appeared to me that the
option whether I should continue the pursuit of the stranger would soon
be taken from me by the imperative necessity to heave-to if I would
avoid the almost momentarily increasing danger of the schooner being
pooped, when a piercing cry of "Breakers ahead?" burst from the two men
on the look-out forward, instantly followed by the still more startling
cry of "Breakers on the port bow!"
"Breakers on the starboard bow!"
I sprang to the rail and looked ahead. Merciful Heaven! it was true,
right athwart our path, as far as the eye could penetrate the gloom on
either bow, there stretched a barrier of wildly-leaping breakers and
spouting foam, gleaming spectrally against the midnight blackness of the
murky heavens; and even as I gazed, spell-bound, at the dreadful
spectacle I saw the black bulk of the strange ship outlined against the
ghostly whiteness, and in another instant she had swung broadside-on;
and as a perfect mountain of white foam leaped upon her, enfolding her
in its snowy embrace, her masts fell, and methought that, mingled with
the sudden, deafening roar of the trampling breakers, I caught the sound
of a despairing wail borne toward us against the wind.
Oh! the horror of that moment! I shall never forget it. There was
nothing to be done, no means of escape; for the walls of white water had
seemed to leap at us out of the darkness so suddenly that they were no
sooner seen than we were upon them; and the only choice left us was
whether we would plunge into them stem-on, or be hove in among them
broadside-on, as had been the case of the strange ship. With the
lightning-like celerity of decision that seems to be instinct in moments
of sudden, awful peril, I determined to drive the schooner ashore stem-
on; hoping that, aided by our light draught of water, we might be hove
up high enough on the beach, or whatever it was, to permit of the escape
of at least a few of us with our lives; and I shouted to the helmsman to
steady his helm, the breakers right ahead of us seeming to be less high
and furious than those on either bow. There was no time for more; no
time to order all hands on deck; no time even to utter a warning cry to
those already on deck to grasp the nearest thing to hand and cling for
their lives, for my cry to the helmsman was still on my lips when the
schooner seemed to leap down upon the barrier of madly-plunging
breakers, and in an instant we were hemmed about with a crashing fury of
white water that boiled and leaped about us, smiting the schooner in all
parts of her hull at once, foaming in over the rail here, there, and
everywhere like a pack of hungry wolves, spouting high in air and flying
over us in blinding deluges of spray until the poor little craft seemed
to be buried; while I, without knowing how I got there, found myself on
the wheel-grating, assisting the helmsman, with the yeasty water
swirling about our knees as it boiled in over the taffrail. I caught a
momentary glimpse of the strange ship as we swept athwart her stern at a
distance of less than a hundred fathoms. Her black bulk was sharply
outlined against the luminous loam as a whelming breaker passed inshore
of her, and left her, for a second, up-hove on the breast of the next
one; and I could see that she was on her beam-ends--a large ship of
probably twelve hundred tons. I could see no sign of people on board
her, but that was not surprising; they had probably been all swept
overboard by the first mountain--wall of water that swept over her after
she had broached-to.
And such was to be our fate also. My only wonder was that it had not
come already; but come it must, and I braced myself for the shock,
already feeling in imagination the terrific grinding concussion, the
sickening jar, the awful upheaval of the schooner's quivering frame, and
the wrenching of her timbers asunder. But second after second sped, and
the shock did not come; and half-buried in the boiling swirl of maddened
waters, the schooner swept ahead, now up-hove on the breast of a fiery
breaker that swept her from stem to stern as it flung her forward like a
cork, now struggling and staggering in a hollow of seething, yeasty
foam. At length, as the schooner settled down into one of these
swirling hollows, she actually did strike, but the blow was a light one,
only just sufficient to swear by and not enough to check her headlong
rush for the smallest fraction of a second; and shortly afterwards I
became aware that the breakers were perceptibly less weighty, so much so
that in about another minute they ceased to break inboard.
It now dawned upon me that we must be passing over a submerged reef of
considerable extent, and my hopes began to revive; for since we had
traversed it thus far in safety, there was just the ghost of a chance
that we might manage to blunder across the remainder of it without
serious damage. As my thoughts took this direction my eyes fell upon a
figure clinging to the main rigging, and I made it out to be Saunders,
my chief mate. I shouted to him, and by good luck my voice reached him,
and he came staggering aft to me. Without relaxing my grip on the
wheel, I hurriedly explained to him my impression with regard to our
situation, and directed him to go forward and see both anchors clear for
letting go; for I had determined that, should my supposition prove
correct, and should we be so extremely fortunate as to traverse the
remaining portion of the reef in safety, I would anchor immediately that
we should emerge into clear water. Fortunately for us all in our
present strait, our cables were always kept bent, so that there was not
very much to be done; and in a few minutes Saunders returned aft with
the intelligence that all was ready for anchoring at any moment.