Dick Sands, the Boy Captain Part 13

The wind had now increased to a hurricane; it had veered to the south-west, and had attained a velocity little short of ninety miles an hour. On land, the most substantial of erections could with difficulty have withstood its violence, and a vessel anch.o.r.ed in a roadstead must have been torn from its moorings and cast ash.o.r.e. The memorable storm that had devastated the Island of Guadaloupe on the 25th of July, 1825, when heavy cannon were lifted from their carriages, could scarcely have been more furious, and it was only her mobility before the blast and the solidity of her structure that gave the "Pilgrim" a hope of surviving the tempest.

A few minutes after the topsail had been lost, the small jib was carried away. d.i.c.k Sands contemplated the possibility of throwing out a storm-jib, made of extra strong canvas, as a means of bringing the ship a little more under his control, but abandoned the idea as useless. It was, therefore, under bare poles that the "Pilgrim" was driven along; but in spite of the lack of canvas, the hull, masts, and rigging, gave sufficient purchase to the wind, and the progress of the schooner was prodigiously rapid; sometimes, indeed, she seemed to be literally lifted from the water, and scudded on, scarcely skimming its surface. The rolling was fearful. Enormous waves followed in quick succession, and as they travelled faster than the ship, there was the perpetual risk of one of them catching her astern. Without sail, there were no means of escaping that peril by increase of speed; the adroit management of the helm was the only chance of avoiding the hazardous shocks, and even this repeatedly failed.

To prevent his being washed overboard d.i.c.k lashed himself to his place at the wheel by a rope round his waist, and made Tom and Bat keep close at hand, ready to give him a.s.sistance, in case of emergency. Hercules and Actaeon, clinging to the bitt, kept watch at the bow. Mrs. Weldon and her party, at d.i.c.k's special request, remained inside the stern cabin, although the lady, for her own part, would much rather have stayed on deck; she had, however, yielded to the representation that she would thus be exposing herself to unnecessary danger.

The hatchways were hermetically closed, and it was to be hoped that they would withstand the heavy sea that was dashing over them; only let one of them give way to the pressure, and the vessel must inevitably fill and founder. It was a matter of congratulation that the stowage had been done very carefully, so that notwithstanding all the lurchings of the ship, the cargo did not shift in the least.

The heroic young commander had still further curtailed his periods of rest, and it was only at the urgent entreaty of Mrs. Weldon, who feared that he would exhaust himself by his vigilance, that he was induced to lie down for a few hours' sleep on the night of the 13th.

After Tom and Bat had been left alone at the wheel they were, somewhat to their surprise, joined by Negoro, who very rarely came aft. He seemed inclined to enter into conversation, but found little encouragement to talk on the part either of Tom or his son. All at once a violent roll of the ship threw him off his feet, and he would have gone overboard if he had not been saved by falling against the binnacle.

Old Tom was in a frantic state of alarm lest the compa.s.s should be broken. He uttered a cry of consternation so loud that it roused d.i.c.k from the light slumber into which he had fallen in the cabin, and he rushed to the deck. By the time he had reached the stern, Negoro had not only regained his feet, but had managed successfully to conceal

[Ill.u.s.tration: Quick as lightning, d.i.c.k Sands drew a revolver from his pocket.]

the bit of iron which he had again extracted from beneath the binnacle where he had himself laid it. Now that the wind had shifted to the south-west, it suited his machinations that the magnetic needle should indicate its true direction.

"How now?" asked d.i.c.k eagerly; "what is the meaning of all this noise?"

Tom explained how the cook had fallen against the binnacle, and how he had been terrified lest the compa.s.s should be injured. d.i.c.k's heart sank at the thought of losing his sole remaining compa.s.s, and his anxiety betrayed itself in his countenance as he knelt down to examine its condition; but he breathed freely as he ascertained that the instrument had sustained no damage; by the dim light he saw the needle resting on its two concentric circles, and felt his fears at once relieved; of course, he was quite unconscious of the fact that the removal of the bit of iron had made the magnet change its pointing. The incident, however, excited his misgiving; although he felt that Negoro could not be held responsible for an accidental fall, the very presence of the man in such a place at such a time perplexed him.

"And what brings you here, this hour of the night?" he asked.

"That's not your business," retorted Negoro insolently.

"It is my business," replied d.i.c.k resolutely; "and I mean to have an answer; what brought you here?"

Negoro answered sullenly that he knew of no rule to prevent his going where he liked and when he liked.

"No rule!" cried d.i.c.k; "then I make the rule now. From this time forward, I make the rule that you shall never come astern. Do you understand?"

Roused from his accustomed doggedness, the man seemed to make a threatening movement. Quick as lightning, d.i.c.k Sands drew a revolver from his pocket.

"Negoro, one act, one word of insubordination, and I blow out your brains!"

Negoro had no time to reply; before he could speak he was bowed down towards the deck by an irresistible weight. Hercules had grasped him by the shoulder.

"Shall I put him overboard, captain? he will make a meal for the fishes; they are not very particular what they eat," said the negro, with a grin of contempt.

"Not yet," quietly answered d.i.c.k.

The giant removed his hand, and Negoro stood upright again, and began to retreat to his own quarters, muttering, however, as he pa.s.sed Hercules,-

"You cursed n.i.g.g.e.r! You shall pay for this!"

The discovery was now made that the wind apparently had taken a sudden shift of no less than forty-five degrees; but what occasioned d.i.c.k the greatest perplexity was that there was nothing in the condition of the sea to correspond with the alteration in the current of the air; instead of being directly astern, wind and waves were now beating on the larboard. Progress in this way must necessarily be full of danger, and d.i.c.k was obliged to bring his ship up at least four points before he got her straight before the tempest.

The young captain felt that he must be more than ever on the alert; he could not shake off the suspicion that Negoro had been concerned in the loss of the first compa.s.s, and had some further designs upon the second. Still he was utterly at a loss to imagine what possible motive the man could have for so criminal an act of malevolence, as there was no plausible reason to be a.s.signed why he should not be as anxious as all the rest to reach the coast of America. The suspicion continued, however, to haunt him, and when he mentioned it to Mrs. Weldon he found that a similar feeling of distrust had agitated her, although she, like himself, was altogether unable to allege a likely motive why the cook should contemplate so strange an act of mischief. It was determined that a strict surveillance should be kept upon all the fellow's movements.

Negoro, however, manifested no inclination to disobey the captain's peremptory order; he kept strictly to his own part of the ship; but as Dingo was now regularly quartered on the stern, there was a tolerably sure guarantee that the cook would not be found wandering much in that direction.

A week pa.s.sed, and still the tempest showed no signs of abating; the barometer continued to fall, and not once did a period of calmer weather afford an opportunity of carrying sail. The "Pilgrim" still made her way northeast. Her speed could not be less than two hundred miles in twenty-four hours. But no land appeared. Vast as was the range of the American continent, extending for 120 degrees between the Atlantic and the Pacific, it was nowhere to be discerned. Was he dreaming? was he mad? d.i.c.k would perpetually ask himself: had he been sailing in a wrong direction? had he failed to steer aright?

But no: he was convinced there was no error in his steering. Although he could not actually see it for the mist, he knew that day after day the sun rose before him, and that it set behind him. Yet he was constrained in bewilderment to ask, what had become of those sh.o.r.es of America upon which, when they came in sight, there was only too great a fear the ship should be dashed? what had become of them? where were they? whither had this incessant hurricane driven them? why did not the expected coast appear?

To all these bewildering inquiries d.i.c.k could find no answer except to imagine that his compa.s.s had misled him. Yet he was powerless to put his own misgivings to the test; he deplored more than ever the destruction of the duplicate instrument which would have checked his registers. He studied his chart; but all in vain; the position in which he found himself as the result of Negoro's treachery, seemed to baffle him the more, the more he tried to solve the mystery.

The days were pa.s.sing on in this chronic state of anxiety, when one morning about eight o'clock, Hercules, who was on watch at the fore, suddenly shouted,-

"Land!"

d.i.c.k Sands had little reliance upon the negro's inexperienced eye, but hurried forward to the bow.

"Where's the land?" he cried; his voice being scarcely audible above the howling of the tempest.

"There! look there!" said Hercules, nodding his head and pointing over the larboard side, to the north-east.

d.i.c.k could see nothing.

Mrs. Weldon had heard the shout. Unable to restrain her interest, she had left her cabin and was at d.i.c.k's side. He uttered an expression of surprise at seeing her, but could not hear anything she said, as her voice was unable to rise above the roaring of the elements; she stood, her whole being as it were concentrated in the power of vision, and scanned the horizon in the direction indicated by Hercules. But all to no purpose.

Suddenly, however, after a while, d.i.c.k raised his hand.

"Yes!" he said; "yes; sure enough, yonder is land."

He clung with excitement to the netting; and Mrs Weldon, supported by Hercules, strained her eyes yet more vehemently to get a glimpse of a sh.o.r.e which she had begun to despair of ever reaching.

Beyond a doubt an elevated peak was there. It must be about ten miles to leeward. A break in the clouds soon left it more distinct. Some promontory it must be upon the American coast. Without sails, of course, the "Pilgrim" had no chance of bearing down direct upon it; but at least there was every reason to believe that she would soon reach some other portion of the sh.o.r.e; perhaps before noon, certainly in a few hours, they must be close to land.

The pitching of the ship made it impossible for Mrs. Weldon to keep safe footing on the deck; accordingly, at a sign from d.i.c.k, Hercules led her back again to her cabin.

d.i.c.k did not remain long at the bow, but went thoughtfully back to the wheel.

He had, indeed, a tremendous responsibility before him. Here was the land, the land for which they had longed so eagerly; and now that their antic.i.p.ations were on the point of being realized, what was there, with a hurricane driving them on towards it, to prevent that land being their destruction? What measures could he take to prevent the schooner being dashed to pieces against it?

[Ill.u.s.tration: "There! look there!"]

At the very moment when the promontory was just abreast of them, Negoro appeared on deck; he nodded to the peak familiarly, as he might have saluted a familiar friend, and retired as stealthily as he had come.

Two hours later, and the promontory was lying to the larboard wake. d.i.c.k Sands had never relaxed his watchfulness, but he had failed to discover any further indications of a coast-line. His perplexity could only increase; the horizon was clear; the Andes ought to be distinct; they would be conspicuous twenty miles or more away. d.i.c.k took up his telescope again and again; he scrutinized the eastern horizon with minutest care; but there was nothing to be seen; and as the afternoon waned away the last glimpse had been taken of the promontory that had awakened their expectation; it had vanished utterly from their gaze; no indication of sh.o.r.e could be seen from the "Pilgrim's" deck.

d.i.c.k Sands uttered a sigh of mingled amazement and relief. He went into Mrs. Weldon's cabin, where she was standing with her party.

"It was only an island!" he said; "only an island!"

"How? why? what island? what do you mean?" cried Mrs. Weldon incredulously; "what island can it be?"

"The chart perhaps will tell us," replied d.i.c.k; and hurrying off to his own cabin, he immediately returned with the chart in his hands.