Now whatever might be the effect of all that passed, as recorded in the
last chapter, upon the mind of Harry Sherbrooke, it is not in the
slightest degree our intention to induce the reader to believe that the
two personages, the officer and the little boy, whom we saw embark for
the brig which was wrecked, were amongst the persons who perished upon
that occasion. True it is that every person the ship contained found a
watery grave, between sunset and sunrise on the night in question. But
to explain how the whole took place, we must follow the track of the
voyagers in the boat.
As soon as they were seated, Lennard Sherbrooke threw his arms
affectionately round the boy, drew him a little closer to his bosom, and
kissed his broad fair forehead; while the boy, on his part, with his
hand leaning on the officer's knee, and his shoulder resting confiding
on his bosom, looked up in his face with eyes of earnest and deep
affection. In such mute conference they remained for some five or ten
minutes; while the hardy sailors pulled away at the oars, their course
towards the vessel lying right in the wind's eye. After a minute or two
more, Lennard Sherbrooke turned round, and gazed back towards the shore,
where he could now plainly perceive his cousin beginning to climb the
little path up the cliff. After watching him for a moment with a look of
calculating thought, he turned towards the boy again, and saw that there
were tears in his eyes, which sight caused him to bend down, saying, in
a low voice, "You are not frightened, my dear boy?"
"Oh no, no!" replied the boy--"I am only sorry to go away to a strange
place."
Lennard Sherbrooke turned his eyes once more towards the shore, but the
form of his cousin had now totally disappeared. He then remained musing
for a minute or two, while the fishermen laboured away, making no very
great progress against the wind. At the distance of about a mile or a
mile and a half from the shore, Lennard Sherbrooke turned round towards
the man who was steering, and made some remarks upon the excellence of
the boat. The man, proud of his little vessel, boasted her capabilities,
and declared that she was as sea-worthy as any frigate in the navy.
"I should like to see her tried," said Sherbrooke. "I should not wonder
if she were well tried to-night," replied the man.
For a moment or two the officer made no rejoinder; but then approaching
the steersman nearer still, he said, in a low voice, "Come, my man, I
have something to tell you. We must alter our course very soon; I am not
going to yon Frenchman at all."
"Why, then, where the devil are you going to?" demanded the fisherman;
and he proceeded, in tones and in language which none but an Irishman
must presume to deal with, to express his astonishment, that after
having been hired by the other gentleman to carry the person who spoke
to him and the boy to the French brig of war, where berths had been
secured for them, he should be told that they were not going there at
all.
The stranger suffered him to expend all his astonishment without moving
a muscle, and then replied, with perfect calmness, "My good friend, you
are a Catholic, I have been told, and a good subject to King James--"
"God bless him!" interrupted the man, heartily; but Sherbrooke
proceeded, saying, "In these days one may well be doubtful of one's own
relations; and I have a fancy, my man, that unless I prevent any one
from knowing my course, and where I am, I may be betrayed where I go,
and betrayed if I stay. Now what I want you to do is this, to take me
over to the coast of England, instead of to yonder French brig."
The man's astonishment was very great; but he seemed to enter into the
motives of his companion with all the quick perception of an Irishman.
There were innumerable difficulties, however, which he did not fail to
start; and he asserted manfully, that it was utterly impossible for them
to proceed upon such a voyage at once. In the first place, they had no
provisions; in the next place, there was the wife and children, who
would not know what was become of them; in the third place, it was
coming on to blow hard right upon the coast. So that he proved there
was, in fact, not only danger and difficulty, but absolute
impossibility, opposed to the plan which the gentleman wished to follow.
In the meanwhile, the four seamen, who were at the oars, laboured away
incessantly, but with very slow and difficult efforts. Every moment the
wind rose higher and higher, and the sun's lower limb touched the
waters, while they were yet two miles from the French brig.
A part of the large red disk of the descending orb was seen between the
sea and the edge of the clouds that hung upon the verge of the sky,
pouring forth from the horizon to the very shore a long line of
blood-red light, which, resting upon the boiling waters of the ocean,
seemed as if the setting star could indeed "the multitudinous sea
incarnadine, making the green one red."
That red light, however, showed far more clearly than before how the
waters were already agitated; for the waves might be seen distinctly,
even to the spot in the horizon where they seemed to struggle with the
sun, heaving up their gigantic heads till they appeared to overwhelm him
before he naturally set.
The arguments of the fisherman apparently effected that thing which is
so seldom effected in this world; namely, to convince the person to whom
they were addressed. I say SELDOM, for there have been instances known,
in remote times, of people being convinced. They puzzled him, however,
and embarrassed him very much, and he remained for full five minutes in
deep and anxious thought.
His reverie, however, was brought to an end suddenly, by a few words
which the fisherman whispered to him. His countenance brightened; a
rapid and brief conversation followed in a low tone, which ended in his
abruptly holding out his hand to the good man at the helm, saying, "I
trust to your honour."
"Upon my soul and honour," replied the fisherman, grasping his proffered
hand.
The matter now seemed settled,--no farther words passed between the
master of the boat and his passenger; but the seaman gave a rapid glance
to the sky, to the long spit of land called the Battery Point, and to
the southward, whence the wind was blowing so sharply.
"We can do it," he muttered to himself, "we can do it;" and he then gave
immediate orders for changing the boat's course, and putting out all
sail. His companions seemed as much surprised by his change of purpose,
as he had been with the alteration of his passenger's determination. His
orders were nevertheless obeyed promptly, the head of the boat was
turned away from the wind, the canvas caught the gale, and away she went
like lightning, heeling till the little yard almost touched the water.
Her course, however, was not bent back exactly to the same spot from
which she started, and it now became evident that it was the fisherman's
intention to round the Battery Point.
Lennard Sherbrooke was not at all aware of the dangerous reef that lay
so near their course; but it soon became evident to him that there was
some great peril, which required much skill and care to avoid; and, as
night fell, the anxiety of the seamen evidently became greater. The wind
by this time was blowing quite a hurricane, and the rushing roaring
sound of the gale and the ocean was quite deafening. But about half an
hour after sunset that peculiar angry roar, which is only heard in the
neighbourhood of breakers, was distinguished to leeward; and looking in
that direction, Sherbrooke perceived one long white line of foam and
surf, rising like an island in the midst of dark and struggling waters.
Not a word was said: it seemed as if scarcely a breath was drawn. In a
few minutes the sound of the breakers became less distinct; a slight
motion was perceivable in the arm of the man who held the tiller, and in
about ten minutes the effect of the neighbouring headlands was found in
smoother water and a lighter gale, as the boat glided calmly and
steadily on, into a small bay, not many hundred miles from Baltimore.
The rest of their voyage, till they reached the shore again, was safe
and easy: the master of the boat and his men seemed to know every creek,
cove, and inlet, as well as their own dwelling places; and, directing
their coarse to a little but deep stream, they ran in between two other
boats, and were soon safely moored.
The boy, by Sherbrooke's direction, had lain himself down in the bottom
of the boat, wrapped up in a large cloak; and there, with the happy
privilege of childhood, he had fallen sound asleep, nor woke till danger
and anxiety were passed, and the little vessel safe at the shore.
Accommodation was easily found in a neighbouring village, and, on the
following day, one, and only one, of the boat's crew went over to the
spot from which they had set out on the preceding evening. He returned
with another man, both loaded with provisions. There was much coming and
going between the village and the boat during the day. By eventide the
storm had sobbed itself away; the sea was calm again, the sky soft and
clear; and beneath the bright eyes of the watchful stars, the boat once
more took its way across the broad bosom of the ocean, with its course
laid directly towards the English shore.