“I, John Turner,
Am master and owner
Of a high-deck’d schooner.
That’s bound to Carolina—”
etc. etc. etc. etc.
Coasting Song.
It is not necessary to say, with how much interest Alderman Van
Beverout, and his friend the Patroon, had witnessed all the proceedings
on board the Coquette. Something very like an exclamation of pleasure
escaped the former, when it was known that the ship had missed the
brigantine, and that there was now little probability of overtaking her
that night.
“Of what use is it to chase your fire-flies, about the ocean, Patroon?”
muttered the Alderman, in the ear of Oloff Van Staats. “I have no
further knowledge of this ‘Skimmer of the Seas,’ than is decent in the
principal of a commercial house,—but reputation is like a sky-rocket,
that may be seen from afar! Her Majesty has no ship that can overtake
the free-trader, and why fatigue the innocent vessel for no thing?”
“Captain Ludlow has other desires than the mere capture of the
brigantine;” returned the laconic and sententious Patroon. “The opinion
that Alida de Barbérie is in her, has great influence with that
gentleman.”
“This is strange apathy, Mr. Van Staats, in one who is as good as
engaged to my niece, if he be not actually married, Alida Barbérie has
great influence with that gentleman! And pray, with whom, that knows
her, has she not influence?”
“The sentiment in favor of the young lady, in general, is favorable.”
“Sentiment and favors! Am I to understand, sir by this coolness, that
our bargain is broken?—that the two fortunes are not to be brought
together, and that the lady is not to be your wife?”
“Harkee, Mr. Van Beverout; one who is saving of his income and sparing
of his words, can have no pressing necessity for the money of others;
and, on occasion, he may afford to speak plainly. Your niece has shown
so decided a preference for another, that it has materially lessened
the liveliness of my regard.”
“It were a pity that so much animation should fail of its object! It
would be a sort of stoppage in the affairs of Cupid! Men should deal
candidly, in all business transactions, Mr. Van Staats; and you will
permit me to ask, as for a final settlement, if your mind is changed in
regard to the daughter of old Etienne de Barbérie, or not?”
“Not changed, but quite decided;” returned the young Patroon. “I cannot
say that I wish the successor of my mother to have seen so much of the
world. We are a family that is content with our situation, and new
customs would derange my household.”
“I am no wizard, sir; but for the benefit of a son of my old friend
Stephanus Van Staats, I will venture, for once, on a prophecy. You will
marry, Mr. Van Staats—yes, marry—and you will wive, sir, with—prudence
prevents me from saying with whom you will wive; but you may account
yourself a lucky man, if it be not with one who will cause you to
forget house and home, lands and friends, manors and rents, and in
short all the solid comforts of life. It would not surprise me to hear
that the prediction of the Poughkeepsie fortune-teller should be
fulfilled!”
“And what is your real opinion, Alderman Van Beverout, of the different
mysterious events we have witnessed?” demanded the Patroon, in a manner
to prove that the interest he took in the subject, completely smothered
any displeasure he might otherwise have felt at so harsh a prophecy.
“This sea-green lady is no common woman!”
“Sea-green and sky-blue!” interrupted the impatient burgher. “The hussy
is but too common, sir; and there is the calamity. Had she been
satisfied with transacting her concerns in a snug and reasonable
manner, and to have gone upon the high seas again, we should have had
none of this foolery, to disturb accounts which ought to have been
considered settled. Mr. Van Staats, will you allow me to ask a few
direct questions, if you can find leisure for their answer?”
The Patroon nodded his head, in the affirmative.
“What do you suppose, sir, to have become of my niece?”
“Eloped.”
“And with whom?”
Van Staats of Kinderhook stretched an arm towards the open ocean, and
again nodded. The Alderman mused a moment; and then he chuckled, as if
some amusing idea had at once gotten the better of his ill-humor.
“Come, come, Patroon,” he said, in his wonted amicable tone, when
addressing the lord of a hundred thousand acres, “this business is like
a complicated account, a little difficult till one gets acquainted with
the books, and then all becomes plain as your hand. There were referees
in the settlement of the estate of Kobus Van Klinck, whom I will not
name; but what between the handwriting of the old grocer, and some
inaccuracy in the figures, they had but a blind time of it until they
discovered which way the balance ought to come; and then by working
backward and forward, which is the true spirit of your just referee,
they got all straight in the end. Kobus was not very lucid in his
statements, and he was a little apt to be careless of ink. His leger
might be called a book of the black art; for it was little else than
fly-tracks and blots, though the last were found of great assistance in
rendering the statements satisfactory. By calling three of the biggest
of them sugar-hogsheads, a very fair balance was struck between him and
a peddling Yankee who was breeding trouble for the estate; and I
challenge, even at this distant day, when all near interests in the
results may be said to sleep, any responsible man to say that they did
not look as much like those articles as anything else. Something they
must have been, and as Kobus dealt largely in sugar, there was also a
strong moral probability that they were the said hogsheads. Come, come,
Patroon; we shall have the jade back again, in proper time. Thy ardor
gets the better of reason; but this is the way with true love, which is
none the worse for a little delay. Alida is not one to balk thy
merriment; these Norman wenches are not heavy of foot at a dance, or
apt to go to sleep when the fiddles are stirring!”
With this consolation, Alderman Van Beverout saw fit to close the
dialogue, for the moment. How far he succeeded in bringing back the
mind of the Patroon to its allegiance, the result must show; though we
shall take this occasion to observe again, that the young proprietor
found a satisfaction in the excitement of the present scene, that, in
the course of a short and little diversified life, he had never before
experienced.
While others slept, Ludlow passed most of the night on deck. He laid
himself down in the hammock-cloths, for an hour or two, towards morning
though the wind did not sigh through the rigging louder than common,
without arousing him from his slumbers. At each low call of the officer
of the watch to the crew, his head was raised to glance around the
narrow horizon; and the ship never rolled heavily without causing him
to awake. He believed that the brigantine was near, and, for the first
watch, he was not without expectation that the two vessels might
unexpectedly meet in the obscurity. When this hope failed, the young
seaman had recourse to artifice, in his turn, in order to entrap one
who appeared so practised and so expert in the devices of the sea.
About midnight, when the watches were changed, and the whole crew, with
the exception of the idlers, were on deck, orders were given to hoist
out the boats. This operation, one of exceeding toil and difficulty in
lightly-manned ships, was soon performed on board the Queen’s cruiser,
by the aid of yard and stay-tackles, to which the force of a hundred
seamen was applied. When four of these little attendants on the ship
were in the water, they were entered by their crews, prepared for
serious service. Officers, on whom Ludlow could rely, were put in
command of the three smallest, while he took charge of the fourth in
person. When all were ready, and each inferior had received his
especial instructions, they quitted the side of the vessel, pulling
off, in diverging lines, into the gloom of the ocean. The boat of
Ludlow had not gone fifty fathoms, before he was perfectly conscious of
the inutility of a chase; for the obscurity of the night was so great,
as to render the spars of his own ship nearly indistinct, even at that
short distance. After pulling by compass some ten or fifteen minutes,
in a direction that carried him to windward of the Coquette, the young
man commanded the crew to cease rowing, and prepared himself to await,
patiently, for the result of his undertaking.
There was nothing to vary the monotony of such a scene, for an hour,
but the regular rolling of a sea that was but little agitated, a few
occasional strokes of the oars, that were given in order to keep the
barge in its place, or the heavy breathing of some smaller fish of the
cetaceous kind, as it rose to the surface to inhale the atmosphere. In
no quarter of the heavens was anything visible; not even a star was
peeping out, to cheer the solitude and silence of that solitary place.
The men were nodding on the thwarts and our young sailor was about to
relinquish his design as fruitless, when suddenly a noise was heard, at
no great distance from the spot where they lay. It was one of those
sounds which would have been inexplicable to any but a seaman, but
which conveyed a meaning to the ears of Ludlow, as plain as that which
could be imparted by speech to a landsman. A moaning creak was followed
by the low rumbling of a rope, as it rubbed on some hard or distended
substance; and then succeeded the heavy flap of canvas, that, yielding
first to a powerful impulse, was suddenly checked.
“Hear ye that?” exclaimed Ludlow, a little above a whisper. “’Tis the
brigantine, gybing his main-boom! Give way, men—see all ready to lay
him aboard!”
The crew started from their slumbers; the splash of oars was heard,
and, in the succeeding moment, the sails of a vessel, gliding through
the obscurity, nearly across their course, were visible.
“Now spring to your oars, men!” continued Ludlow, with the eagerness of
one engaged in chase. “We have him to advantage, and he is ours!—a long
pull and a strong pull—steadily, boys, and together!”
The practised crew did their duty. It seemed but a moment, before they
were close upon the chase.
“Another stroke of the oars, and she is ours!” cried
Ludlow.—“Grapple!—to your arms!—away, boarders, away!”
These orders came on the ears of the men with the effect of martial
blasts. The crew shouted, the clashing of arms was heard, and the tramp
of feet on the deck of the vessel announced the success of the
enterprise. A minute of extreme activity and of noisy confusion
followed. The cheers of the boarders had been heard, at a distance; and
rockets shot into the air, from the other boats, whose crews answered
the shouts with manful lungs. The whole ocean appeared in a momentary
glow, and the roar of a gun from the Coquette added to the fracas. The
ship set several lanterns, in order to indicate her position; while
blue-lights, and other marine signals were constantly burning in the
approaching boats, as if those who guided them were anxious to
intimidate the assailed by a show of numbers.
In the midst of this scene of sudden awakening from the most profound
quiet, Ludlow began to look about him, in order to secure the principal
objects of the capture. He had repeated his orders about entering the
cabins, and concerning the person of the ‘Skimmer of the Seas,’ among
the other instructions given to the crews of the different boats; and
the instant they found themselves in quiet possession of the prize, the
young man dashed into the private recesses of the vessel, with a heart
that throbbed even more violently than during the ardor of boarding. To
cast open the door of a cabin, beneath the high quarter-deck, and to
descend to the level of its floor, were the acts of a moment. But
disappointment and mortification succeeded to triumph. A second glance
was not necessary to show that the coarse work and foul smells he saw
and encountered, did not belong to the commodious and even elegant
accommodations of the brigantine.
“Here is no Water-Witch!” he exclaimed aloud under the impulse of
sudden surprise.
“God be praised!” returned a voice, which was succeeded by a frightened
face from out a state-room. “We were told the rover was in the offing,
and thought the yells could come from nothing human!”
The blood, which had been rushing through the arteries and veins of
Ludlow so tumultuously now crept into his cheeks, and was felt tingling
at his fingers’-ends. He gave a hurried order to his men to re-enter
their boat, leaving everything as they found it. A short conference
between the commander of Her Majesty’s ship Coquette, and the seaman of
the state-room, succeeded; and then the former hastened on deck, whence
his passage into the barge occupied but a moment. The boat pulled away
from the fancied prize, amid a silence that was uninterrupted by any
other sound than that of a song, which, to all appearance, came from
one who by this time had placed himself at the vessel’s helm. All that
can be said of the music is, that it was suited to the words, and all
that could be heard of the latter, was a portion of a verse, if verse
it might be called, which had exercised the talents of some thoroughly
nautical mind. As we depend, for the accuracy of the quotation,
altogether on the fidelity of the journal of the midshipman already
named, it is possible that some injustice may be done the writer; but,
according to that document, he sang a strain of the coasting song,
which we have prefixed to this chapter as its motto.
The papers of the coaster did not give a more detailed description of
her character and pursuits, than that which is contained in this verse.
It is certain that the log-book of the Coquette was far less explicit.
The latter merely said, that ‘a coaster called the Stately Pine, John
Turner, master, bound from New-York to the Province of North Carolina,
was boarded at one o’clock, in the morning, all well.’ But this
description was not of a nature to satisfy the seamen of the cruiser.
Those who had been actually engaged in the expedition were much too
excited to see things in their true colors; and, coupled with the two
previous escapes of the Water-Witch, the event just related had no
small share in confirming their former opinions concerning her
character. The sailing-master was not now alone, in believing that all
pursuit of the brigantine was perfectly useless.
But these were conclusions that the people of the Coquette made at
their leisure, rather than those which suggested themselves on the
instant. The boats, led by the flashes of light, had joined each other,
and were rowing fast towards the ship, before the pulses of the actors
beat with sufficient calmness to allow of serious reflection; nor was
it until the adventurers were below, and in their hammocks, that they
found suitable occasion to relate what had occurred to a wondering
auditory. Robert Yarn, the fore-top-man who had felt the locks of the
sea-green lady blowing in his face during the squall, took advantage of
the circumstance to dilate on his experiences; and, after having
advanced certain positions that particularly favored his own theories,
he produced one of the crew of the barge, who stood ready to affirm, in
any court in Christendom, that he actually saw the process of changing
the beautiful and graceful lines that distinguished the hull of the
smuggler, into the coarser and more clumsy model of the coaster.
“There are know-nothings,” continued Robert, after he had fortified his
position by the testimony in question, “who would deny that the water
of the ocean is blue, because the stream that turns the parish-mill
happens to be muddy. But your real mariner, who has lived much in
foreign parts, is a man who understands the philosophy of life, and
knows when to believe a truth and when to scorn a lie. As for a vessel
changing her character when hard pushed in a chase, there are many
instances; though having one so near us, there is less necessity to be
roving over distant seas, in search of a case to prove it. My own
opinion concerning this here brigantine, is much as follows;—that is to
say, I do suppose there was once a real living hermaphrodite of her
build and rig, and that she might be employed in some such trade as
this craft is thought to be in; and that, in some unlucky hour, she and
her people met with a mishap, that has condemned her ever since to
appear on this coast at stated times. She has, however, a natural
dislike to a royal cruiser; and no doubt the thing is now sailed by
those who have little need of compass or observation! All this being
true, it is not wonderful that when the boat’s-crew got on her decks,
they found her different from what they had expected. This much is
certain, that when I lay within a boat-hook’s length of her
sprit-sail-yard-arm, she was a half-rig, with a woman figure-head, and
as pretty a show of gear aloft, as eye ever looked upon; while
everything below was as snug as a tobacco-box with the lid down:—and
here you all say that she is a high-decked schooner, with nothing
ship-shape about her! What more is wanting to prove the truth of what
has been stated?—If any man can gainsay it, let him speak.”
As no man did gainsay it, it is presumed that the reasoning of the
top-man gained many proselytes. It is scarcely necessary to add, how
much of mystery and fearful interest was thrown around the redoubtable
‘Skimmer of the Seas,’ by the whole transaction.
There was a different feeling on the quarter-deck. The two lieutenants
put their heads together, and looked grave; while one or two of the
midshipmen, who had been in the boats, were observed to whisper with
their messmates, and to indulge in smothered laughter. As the captain,
however, maintained his ordinary dignified and authoritative mien, the
merriment went no further, and was soon entirely repressed.
While on this subject, it may be proper to add that, in course of time,
the Stately Pine reached the capes of North Carolina, in safety; and
that, having effected her passage over Edenton bar, without striking,
she ascended the river to the point of her destination. Here the crew
soon began to throw out hints, relative to an encounter of their
schooner with a French cruiser. As the British empire, even in its most
remote corners, was at all times alive to its nautical glory, the event
soon became the discourse in more distant parts of the colony; and in
less than six months, the London journals contained a very glowing
account of an engagement, in which the names of the Stately Pine, and
of John Turner, made some respectable advances towards immortality.
If Captain Ludlow ever gave any further account of the transaction than
what was stated in the log-book of his ship, the bienséance, observed
by the Lords of the Admiralty, prevented it from becoming public.
Returning from this digression, which has no other connexion with the
immediate thread of the narrative, than that which arises from a
reflected interest, we shall revert to the further proceedings on board
the cruiser.
When the Coquette had hoisted in her boats, that portion of the crew
which did not belong to the watch was dismissed to their hammocks, the
lights were lowered, and tranquillity once more reigned in the ship.
Ludlow sought his rest, and although there is reason to think that his
slumbers were a little disturbed by dreams, he remained tolerably quiet
in the hammock-cloths, the place in which it has already been said he
saw fit to take his repose, until the morning watch had been called.
Although the utmost vigilance was observed among the officers and
look-outs, during the rest of the night, there occurred nothing to
arouse the crew from their usual recumbent attitudes between the guns.
The wind continued light but steady, the sea smooth, and the heavens
clouded, as during the first hours of darkness.