The Pilot: A Tale of the Sea Part 32

CHAPTER XXI

----"When these prodigies Do so conjointly meet, let not men say.

These are their reasons,--They are natural, For, I believe they are portentous things Unto the climate that they point upon."

_Casca._

The reader will discover, by referring to the time consumed in the foregoing events, that the Ariel, with her prize, did not anchor in the bay already mentioned, until Griffith and his party had been for several hours in the custody of their enemies. The supposed capture of the rebel schooner was an incident that excited but little interest, and no surprise, among a people who were accustomed to consider their seamen as invincible; and Barnstable had not found it a difficult task to practise his deception on the few rustics whom curiosity induced to venture alongside the vessels during the short continuance of daylight. When, however, the fogs of evening began to rise along the narrow basin, and the curvatures of its margin were lost in the single outline of its dark and gloomy border, the young seaman thought it time to apply himself in earnest to his duty. The Alacrity, containing all his own crew, together with the Ariel's wounded, was gotten silently under way; and driving easily before the heavy air that swept from the land, she drifted from the harbor, until the open sea lay before her, when her sails were spread, and she continued to make the best of her way in quest of the frigate. Barnstable had watched this movement with breathless anxiety; for on an eminence that completely commanded the waters to some distance, a small but rude battery had been erected for the purpose of protecting the harbor against the depredations and insults of the smaller vessels of the enemy; and a guard of sufficient force to manage the two heavy guns it contained was maintained in the work at all times.

He was ignorant how far his stratagem had been successful, and it was only when he heard the fluttering of the Alacrity's canvas, as she opened it to the breeze, he felt that he was yet secure.

"'Twill reach the Englishmen's ears," said the boy Merry, who stood on the forecastle of the schooner, by the side of his commander, listening with breathless interest to the sounds; "they set a sentinel on the point, as the sun went down, and if he is a trifle better than a dead man, or a marine asleep, he will suspect something is wrong."

"Never!" returned Barnstable, with a long breath, that announced all his apprehensions were removed; "he will be more likely to believe it a mermaid fanning herself this cool evening, than to suspect the real fact. What say you, Master Coffin? will the soldier smell the truth?"

"They're a dumb race," said the c.o.c.kswain, casting his eyes over his shoulders, to ascertain that none of their own marine guard was near him; "now, there was our sergeant, who ought to know something, seeing that he has been afloat these four years, maintained, dead in the face and eyes of what every man, who has ever doubled Good Hope, knows to be true, that there was no such vessel to be fallen in with in them seas, as the Flying Dutchman! and then, again, when I told him that he was a 'know-nothing,' and asked him if the Dutchman was a more unlikely thing than that there should be places where the inhabitants split the year into two watches, and had day for six months, and night the rest of the time, the greenhorn laughed in my face, and I do believe he would have told me I lied, but for one thing."

"And what might that be?" asked Barnstable, gravely.

"Why, sir," returned Tom, stretching his bony fingers, as he surveyed his broad palm, by the little light that remained, "though I am a peaceable man, I can be roused."

"And you have seen the Flying Dutchman?"

"I never doubled the east cape; though I can find my way through Le Maire in the darkest night that ever fell from the heavens; but I have seen them that have seen her, and spoken her, too."

"Well, be it so; you must turn flying Yankee, yourself, to-night, Master Coffin. Man your boat at once, sir, and arm your crew."

The c.o.c.kswain paused a moment before he proceeded to obey this unexpected order, and, pointing towards the battery, he inquired, with infinite phlegm:

"For sh.o.r.e-work, sir? Shall we take the cutlashes and pistols? or shall we want the pikes?"

"There may be soldiers in our way, with their bayonets," said Barnstable, musing; "arm as usual, but throw a few long pikes into the boat; and harkye, Master Coffin, out with your tub and whale-line: for I see you have rigged yourself anew in that way."

The c.o.c.kswain, who was moving from the forecastle, turned short at this new mandate, and with an air of remonstrance, ventured to say:

"Trust an old whaler, Captain Barnstable, who has been used to these craft all his life. A whale-boat is made to pull with a tub and line in it, as naturally as a ship is made to sail with ballast, and----"

"Out with it, out with it," interrupted the other, with an impatient gesture, that his c.o.c.kswain knew signified a positive determination.

Heaving a sigh at what he deemed his commander's prejudice, Tom applied himself without further delay to the execution of the orders. Barnstable laid his hand familiarly on the shoulder of the boy, and led him to the stern of his little vessel, in profound silence. The canvas hood that covered the entrance to the cabin was thrown partly aside; and by the light of the lamp that was burning in the small apartment, it was easy to overlook, from the deck, what was pa.s.sing beneath them. Dillon sat supporting his head with his two hands, in a manner that shaded his face, but in an att.i.tude that denoted deep and abstracted musing.

"I would that I could see the face of my prisoner," said Barnstable, in an undertone, that was audible only to his companion. "The eye of a man is a sort of lighthouse, to tell one how to steer into the haven of his confidence, boy."

"And sometimes a beacon, sir, to warn you there is no safe anchorage near him," returned the ready boy.

"Rogue!" muttered Barnstable, "your cousin Kate spoke there."

"If my cousin Plowden were here, Mr. Barnstable, I know that her opinion of yon gentleman would not be at all more favorable."

"And yet, I have determined to trust him! Listen, boy, and tell me if I am wrong; you have a quick wit, like some others of your family, and may suggest something advantageous." The gratified midshipman swelled with the conscious pleasure of possessing his commander's confidence, and followed to the taffrail, over which Barnstable leaned, while he delivered the remainder of his communication. "I have gathered from the 'longsh.o.r.emen who have come off this evening, to stare at the vessel which the rebels have been able to build, that a party of seamen and marines have been captured in an old ruin near the Abbey of St. Ruth, this very day."

"'Tis Mr. Griffith!" exclaimed the boy.

"Ay! the wit of your cousin Katherine was not necessary to discover that. Now, I have proposed to this gentleman with the Savannah face, that he should go into the abbey, and negotiate an exchange. I will give him for Griffith, and the crew of the Alacrity for Manual's command and the Tigers."

"The Tigers!" cried the lad, with emotion; "have they got my Tigers, too? Would to G.o.d that Mr. Griffith had permitted me to land!"

"It was no boy's work they were about, and room was scarcer in their boat than live lumber. But this Mr. Dillon has accepted my proposition, and has pledged himself that Griffith shall return within an hour after he is permitted to enter the Abbey; will he redeem his honor from the pledge?"

"He may," said Merry, musing a moment; "for I believe he thinks the presence of Mr. Griffith under the same roof with Miss Howard a thing to be prevented, if possible; he may be true in this instance, though he has a hollow look."

"He has bad-looking lighthouses, I will own," said Barnstable; "and yet he is a gentleman, and promises fair; 'tis unmanly to suspect him in such a matter, and I will have faith! Now listen, sir. The absence of older heads must throw great responsibility on your young shoulders; watch that battery as closely as if you were at the mast-head of your frigate, on the lookout for an enemy; the instant you see lights moving in it, cut, and run into the offing; you will find me somewhere under the cliffs, and you will stand off and on, keeping the abbey in sight, until you fall in with us."

Merry gave an attentive ear to these and divers other solemn injunctions that he received from his commander, who, having sent the officer next to himself in authority in charge of the prize (the third in command being included in the list of the wounded), was compelled to entrust his beloved schooner to the vigilance of a lad whose years gave no promise of the experience and skill that he actually possessed.

When his admonitory instructions were ended, Barnstable stepped again to the opening in the cabin-hood, and, for a single moment before he spoke, once more examined the countenance of his prisoner, with a keen eye.

Dillon had removed his hands from before his sallow features; and, as if conscious of the scrutiny his looks were to undergo, had concentrated the whole expression of his forbidding aspect in a settled gaze of hopeless submission to his fate. At least, so thought his captor, and the idea touched some of the finer feelings in the bosom of the generous young seaman. Discarding, instantly, every suspicion of his prisoner's honor, as alike unworthy of them both, Barnstable summoned him, in a cheerful voice, to the boat. There was a flashing of the features of Dillon, at this call, which gave an indefinable expression to his countenance, that again startled the sailor; but it was so very transient, and could so easily be mistaken for a smile of pleasure at his promised liberation, that the doubts it engendered pa.s.sed away almost as speedily as the equivocal expression itself. Barnstable was in the act of following his companion into the boat, when he felt himself detained by a slight hold of his arm.

"What would you have?" he asked of the midshipman, who had given him the signal.

"Do not trust too much to that Dillon, sir," returned the anxious boy, in a whisper; "if you had seen his face, as I did, when the binnacle light fell upon it, as he came up the cabin ladder, you would put no faith in him."

"I should have seen no beauty," said the generous lieutenant, laughing; "but there is long Tom, as hard-featured a youth of two score and ten as ever washed in brine, who has a heart as big, ay, bigger than that of a kraaken. A bright watch to you, boy, and remember a keen eye on the battery." As he was yet speaking, Barnstable crossed the gunwale of his little vessel, and it was not until he was seated by the side of his prisoner that he continued, aloud: "Cast the stops off your sails, Mr.

Merry, and see all clear to make a run of everything; recollect, you are short-handed, sir. G.o.d bless ye! and d'ye hear? if there is a man among you who shuts more than one eye at a time, I'll make him, when I get back, open both wider than if Tom Coffin's friend, the Flying Dutchman, was booming down upon him. G.o.d bless ye, Merry, my boy; give 'em the square-sail, if this breeze off-sh.o.r.e holds on till morning:--shove off."

As Barnstable gave the last order, he fell back on his seat, and, drawing back his boat-cloak around him maintained a profound silence, until they had pa.s.sed the two small headlands that fanned the mouth of the harbor. The men pulled, with m.u.f.fled oars, their long, vigorous strokes, and the boat glided with amazing rapidity past the objects that could be yet indistinctly seen along the dim sh.o.r.e. When, however, they had gained the open ocean, and the direction of their little bark was changed to one that led them in a line with the coast, and within the shadows of the cliffs, the c.o.c.kswain, deeming that the silence was no longer necessary to their safety, ventured to break it, as follows:

"A square-sail is a good sail to carry on a craft, dead afore it, and in a heavy sea; but if fifty years can teach a man to know the weather, it's my judgment that should the Ariel break ground after the night turns at eight bells, she'll need her mainsail to hold her up to her course."

The lieutenant started at this sudden interruption, and casting his cloak from his shoulders, he looked abroad on the waters, as if seeking those portentous omens which disturbed the imagination of his c.o.c.kswain.

"How now, Tom," he said, sharply, "have ye turned croaker in your old age? what see you, to cause such an old woman's ditty?"

"'Tis no song of an old woman," returned the c.o.c.kswain with solemn earnestness, "but the warning of an old man; and one who has spent his days where there were no hills to prevent the winds of heaven from blowing on him, unless they were hills of salt water and foam. I judge, sir, there'll be a heavy northeaster setting in upon us afore the morning watch is called."

Barnstable knew the experience of his old messmate too well not to feel uneasiness at such an opinion, delivered in so confident a manner; but after again surveying the horizon, the heavens, and the ocean, he said, with a continued severity of manner:

"Your prophecy is idle, this time, Master Coffin; everything looks like a dead calm. This swell is what is left from the last blow; the mist overhead is nothing but the nightly fog, and you can see, with own eyes, that it is driving seaward; even this land-breeze is nothing but the air of the ground mixing with that of the ocean; it is heavy with dew and fog, but it's as sluggish as a Dutch galliot."

"Ay, sir, it is damp, and there is little of it," rejoined Tom; "but as it comes only from the sh.o.r.e, so it never goes far on the water, It is hard to learn the true signs of the weather, Captain Barnstable, and none get to know them well, but such as study little else or feel but little else. There is only One who can see the winds of heaven, or who can tell when a hurricane is to begin, or where it will end. Still, a man isn't like a whale or a porpoise, that takes the, air in his nostrils, and never knows whether it is a southeaster or a northwester that he feeds upon. Look, broad-off to leeward, sir; see the streak of clear sky shining under the mists; take an old seafaring man's word for it, Captain Barnstable, that whenever the light shines out of the heavens in that fashion, 'tis never done for nothing; besides, the sun set in a dark bank of clouds, and the little moon we had was dry and windy."

Barnstable listened attentively, and with increasing concern, for he well knew that his c.o.c.kswain possessed a quick and almost unerring judgment of the weather, notwithstanding the confused medley of superst.i.tious omens and signs with which it was blended; but again throwing himself back in his boat, he muttered:

"Then let it blow; Griffith is worth a heavier risk, and if the battery can't be cheated, it can be carried."

Nothing further pa.s.sed on the state of the weather. Dillon had not ventured a single remark since he entered the boat, and the c.o.c.kswain had the discretion to understand that his officer was willing to be left to his own thoughts. For nearly an hour they pursued their way with diligence; the sinewy seamen, who wielded the oars, urging their light boat along the edge of the surf with unabated velocity, and apparently with untired exertions. Occasionally, Barnstable would cast an inquiring glance at the little inlets that they pa.s.sed, or would note, with a seaman's eye, the small portions of sandy beach that were scattered here and there along the rocky boundaries of the coast. One in particular, a deeper inlet than common, where a run of fresh water was heard gurgling as it met the tide, he pointed out to his c.o.c.kswain, by significant but silent gestures, as a place to be especially noted. Tom, who understood the signal as intended for his own eye alone, made his observations on the spot with equal taciturnity, but with all the minuteness that would distinguish one long accustomed to find his way, whether by land or water, by landmarks and the bearings of different objects. Soon after this silent communication between the lieutenant and his c.o.c.kswain, the boat was suddenly turned, and was in the act of dashing upon the spit of sand before it, when Barnstable checked the movement by his voice:

"Hold water!" he said; "'tis the sound of oars!"