For Treasure Bound Part 13

Indeed, to satisfy myself _thoroughly_ upon this point I climbed so high (with the utmost difficulty, and at very great risk of being blown overboard), and whilst looking over the cross-trees, I saw the crest of more than one sea rearing itself between my eye and the horizon.

So far the _Water Lily_ had weathered the gale scatheless; there was not so much as a ropeyarn out of its place or carried away; and as there seemed to be no greater danger than there had been through the night, and as I had taken a good look round when aloft without seeing anything, we both went below to enjoy the comfort of the cabin, for on deck everything was cold, wet, and dismal in the extreme.

I was anxious to get a sight of the sun at noon, if possible, so as to ascertain our exact lat.i.tude. I knew we were not very far to the southward of Staten; and I did not know but there might be a current setting us toward it, in which case we might find ourselves very awkwardly situated.

It looked half inclined to break away two or three times during the morning; but as mid-day approached it became as bad as ever, and I had the vexation of seeing noon pa.s.s by without so much as a momentary glimpse of the sun.

Towards evening, therefore, I took advantage of an exceptionally clear moment, and again scrambled aloft and took a thorough good look all round, and especially to the northward. There was nothing in sight, and with this I was obliged to rest satisfied.

We noticed just about this time that the seas were beginning to break on board again, so I concluded that our bottle of oil was exhausted, and accordingly got out another, and having bored holes in the cork, as I had done with the first, it was bent on to the cable, more cable paid out, and we again rode all the easier. Our anchor-light was trimmed and lighted and hoisted up, and we went below to our tea, or _supper_, as sailors generally term it.

We had found the day dreadfully tedious, cooped up as we were in our low cabin, and a meal was a most welcome break in the monotony.

We sat long over this one, therefore, prolonging it to its utmost extent; and when it was over, we both turned to and cleared up the wreck.

By the time that all was done it was intensely dark; but, before settling down below for the night, we both put our heads up through the companion to take a last look round.

Bob was rather beforehand with me, and he had no sooner put his head outside than he pulled it in again, exclaiming, in an awe-struck tone:

"Look here, Harry; what d'ye think of this?"

I looked in the direction he indicated, and there, upon our lower-mast- head, and also upon the trysail gaff-end, was a globe of pale, sickly green light, which wavered to and fro, lengthening out and flattening in again as the cutter tossed wildly over the mountainous seas.

It had not the appearance of flame, but rather of highly luminous mist, brilliant at the core, and softening off and becoming more dim as the circ.u.mference of the globe was reached; and it emitted a feeble and unearthly light of no great power.

I had never seen such a thing before, but I had often heard of it, and I recognised our strange visitors at once as _corposants_, or "lamps of Saint Elmo," as they are called by the seamen of the Mediterranean; though our own sailors call them by the less dignified name of "Davy Jones' lanterns."

"What d'ye think of bein' boarded by the likes of that?" again queried Bob, in a hoa.r.s.e whisper. "Old Davy is out on a cruise to-night, I reckon; and it looks as though he meant to pay _us_ a visit, by his h'isting them two lanterns of his'n in our rigging. Did ye ever see anything like it afore, Harry, lad?"

"Never," replied I, "but I have often heard them spoken of, old man; and though they certainly _are_ rather queer to look at, they are easily accounted for. I have heard, it said that they are the result of a peculiar electrical condition of the atmosphere, and that the electricity, attracted by any such points as the yard-arms or mast-heads of a ship, acc.u.mulates there until it becomes visible in the form we are now looking at."

"And is the light never visible except at the end of a spar?" queried Bob.

"I believe not," I replied; "but--"

"Then sail ho!" exclaimed Bob excitedly, pointing in the direction of our starboard-bow.

I looked in the direction he indicated, but was too late: we were on the very summit of a wave at the moment that Bob spoke, but were now settling into the trough. As we rose to the next sea, however, I not only saw the ghostly light, but also got an indistinct view of the ship herself.

She was fearfully close, but appeared to be at the moment sheering away from us. She looked long enough for a three-masted vessel, but one mast only was standing, evidently the mainmast. The corposant appeared to have attached itself to the stump of her foremast, which had been carried away about fifteen or twenty feet from the deck, and I thought her bowsprit seemed also to be missing.

She was scudding under close-reefed maintopsail, and, from her sluggish movements, was evidently very much overloaded, or, what I thought more probable, had a great deal of water in her. I was the more inclined to this opinion from the peculiar character of her motions.

As she rose on the back of a sea, her stern seemed at first to be _pinned down_, as it were, until it appeared as though the following wave would run clean over her; but gradually her stern rose until it was a considerable height above the water, whilst her bow in its turn seemed weighed down, as would be the case with a large body of water rushing from aft forward.

They evidently saw our light, for a faint hail of "-- ahoy!" came down the wind to us from her.

"In distress and wants a.s.sistance, by the look of it," remarked Bob.

"But, poor chaps, it's little of that we can give 'em. Heaven and 'arth! look at that, Harry."

As he spoke, the ship, which was rushing forward furiously on the back of a sea, suddenly sheered wildly to port, until she lay broadside-to; the crest of the sea overtook her, and, breaking on board her in one vast volume of wildly flashing foam, threw her down upon her beam-ends, and, as it swept over her, her mast declined more and more towards the water, until it lay submerged.

Then, as we gazed in speechless horror at the dreadful catastrophe, a loud, piercing shriek rang out clear and shrill above the hoa.r.s.e diapason of the howling tempest. She rolled completely bottom upwards, and then disappeared.

"Broached to, and capsized!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed we both in the same breath.

"Jump below, Bob, and rouse up a coil of line, whilst I get the life- buoys ready," exclaimed I, after a single moment's pause to collect my scattered faculties.

In an instant I had all four of the buoys ready, and two of them bent on to the longest rope-ends I could lay my hands on, and, in another, that glorious Bob appeared with a coil of ratline on his shoulder and a lighted blue-light in his hand.

The stops were cut and the ends of the coil cleared in no time, and the two remaining buoys bent on, while Bob held the blue-light aloft at arm's length, for the double purpose of throwing the light as far as possible over the water, and also to indicate our whereabouts to any strong swimmer who might be struggling for his life among the mountain surges, and to guide him to our tiny ark of refuge.

For nearly an hour did we peer anxiously into the gloom, in the hope of seeing some poor soul within reach of such a.s.sistance as it was in our power to afford, but in vain; there is no doubt that the vessel sucked all hands down with her when she sank into her watery grave.

When at last we reluctantly desisted from our efforts, and were in the act of securing the lifebuoys once more, Bob cast his eyes aloft, and called my attention to the fact that the corposants had disappeared.

"Depend on't, Harry," quoth he, "them lanterns didn't come aboard of us for nothing. They mightn't have meant mischief for _us_ exactly--for you can't always read Old Davy's signs aright; but you see they _did_ mean mischief, and plenty of it too, for they no sooner appears aloft than a fine ship and her crew goes down close alongside of us; and as soon as that bit of work was over, away they go somewhere else to light up the scene of further devilry, I make no manner of doubt."

It was utterly in vain that I attempted to argue the honest fellow out of his belief that their appearance was a portent of disaster, for his mind was deeply imbued with all those superst.i.tious notions which appear to take such peculiarly firm hold on the ideas of sailors; and against superst.i.tions of lifelong duration, argument and reason are of but little avail.

As may readily be believed, our slumbers that night, after witnessing so distressing a scene, were anything but sound. Bob and I were up and down between the deck and the cabin at least half a dozen times before morning, and it was with a sense of unutterable relief that, as day broke, we found that the gale was breaking also.

By the time that breakfast was over there was a sensible diminution in the force of the wind, and by noon it cleared away sufficiently overhead to enable me to get an observation, not a particularly good one certainly--the sea was running far too high for that; but it enabled me to ascertain that we were at least sixty miles to the southward of Staten.

About four p.m. I got a very much better observation for my longitude, and I found by it that our drift had not been anything like so great as I had calculated it would be. This I thought might possibly arise from our being in a weather-setting current.

There was still rather too much of both wind and sea to make us disposed to get under way that night, but we managed to get the craft up to the buoy of our floating-anchor, which we weighed and let go again with five fathoms of buoy-rope.

This was to prevent as much as possible any further drift to leeward, and to take full advantage of the current, the existence of which we suspected.

Next morning, however, the weather had so far moderated that, tired of our long inaction, we resolved to make a start once more, so shaking the reefs out of the trysail, and rigging our bowsprit out far enough to set a small jib, we got our floating-anchor in, and stood away to the southward and westward, with the wind out from about west-nor'-west.

CHAPTER TEN.

CHASED BY PIRATES.

The weather now rapidly became finer, and the ocean, no longer lashed into fury by the breath of the tempest, subsided once more into long regular undulations. The wind hauled gradually more round from the northward too, and blew warm and balmy; a most welcome change after the raw and chilly weather we had lately experienced.

We once more cracked on sail upon the little _Water Lily_; and on the morning following that upon which we filled away upon our course, finding by observation that we were well clear of the Cape, and that we had plenty of room even should the wind once more back round from the westward, we hauled close-up, and stood away on a nor'-west-and-by- westerly course.

Nothing of importance occurred for more than a week. The weather continued settled, and the gla.s.s stood high; the wind was out at about north, and sufficiently moderate to permit of our carrying our jib- headed topsail; and day after day we flew forward upon our course, seldom making less than ten knots in the hour, and occasionally reaching as high as thirteen.

We were perfectly jubilant; for having rounded the Cape in safety we now considered our troubles over and our ultimate success as certain. We were fairly in the Pacific, the region of fine weather; and our little barkie had behaved so well in the gale that our confidence in her seaworthiness was thoroughly established; so that all fear of future danger from bad weather was completely taken off our minds.

One morning, the wind having fallen considerably lighter during the preceding night, as soon as breakfast was over I roused up our square- headed topsail, with the intention of setting it in the room of the small one.