The Red Rover Part 22

"You see that the ship is gathering way too fast to admit of trifling.

You know of the letter I received this morning?"

"Bless me, Captain Wilder! Do you take me for a postmaster? How should I know what letters arrive at Newport, and what stop on the main?"

"As timid a villain as he is thorough!" muttered the young mariner. "But this much you may surely say, Am I to be followed immediately? or is it expected that I should detain the ship in the offing, under any pretence that I can devise?"

"Heaven keep you, young gentleman! These are strange questions, to come from one who is fresh off the sea, to a man that has done no more than look at it from the land, these five-and-twenty years. According to my memory, sir, you will keep the ship about south until you are clear of the islands; and then you must make your calculations according to the wind, in order not to get into the Gulf, where, you know, the stream will be setting you one way, while your orders say, 'Go another.'"

"Luff! mind your luff, sir!" cried the pilot, in a stern voice, to the man at the helm; "luff you can; on no account go to leeward of the slaver!"

Both Wilder and the publican started, as if they found something alarming in the name of the vessel just alluded to; and the former pointed to the skiff, as he said,--

"Unless you wish to go to sea with us, Mr Joram, it is time your boat held its master."

"Ay, ay, I see you are fairly under way, and I must leave you, however much I like your company," returned the landlord of the 'Foul Anchor,'

bustling over the side, and getting into his skiff in the best manner he could. "Well, boys, a good time to ye; a plenty of wind, and of the right sort; a safe pa.s.sage out, and a quick return. Cast off."

His order was obeyed; the light skiff, no longer impelled by the ship, immediately deviated from its course; and, after making a little circuit, it became stationary, while the ma.s.s of the vessel pa.s.sed on, with the steadiness of an elephant from whose back a b.u.t.terfly had just taken its flight. Wilder followed the boat with his eyes, for a moment; but his thoughts were recalled by the voice of the pilot, who again called, from the forward part of the ship,--

"Let the light sails lift a little, boy; let her lift keep every inch you can, or you'll not weather the slaver. Luff, I say, sir; luff."

"The slaver!" muttered our adventurer, hastening to a part of the ship whence he could command a view of that important, and to him doubly interesting ship; "ay, the slaver! it may be difficult, indeed to weather upon the slaver!"

He had unconsciously placed himself near Mrs Wyllys and Gertrude; the latter of whom was leaning on the rail of the quarter-deck, regarding the strange vessel at anchor, with a pleasure far from unnatural to her years and s.e.x.

"You may laugh at me, and call me fickle, and perhaps credulous, dear Mrs Wyllys," the unsuspecting girl cried, just as Wilder had taken the foregoing position, "but I wish we were well out of this 'Royal Caroline,'

and that our pa.s.sage was to be made in yonder beautiful ship!"

"It is indeed a beautiful ship!" returned Wyllys; "but I know not that it would be safer, or more comfortable, than the one we are in."

"With what symmetry and order the ropes are arranged! and how like a bird it floats upon the water!"

"Had you particularized the duck, the comparison would have been exactly nautical," said the governess, smiling mournfully; "you show capabilities my love, to be one day a seaman's wife."

Gertrude blushed a little; and, turning back her head to answer in the playful vein of her governess, her eye met the riveted look of Wilder, fastened on herself. The colour on her cheek deepened to a carnation, and she was mute; the large gipsy hat she wore serving to conceal both her face and the confusion which so deeply suffused it.

"You make no answer, child, as if you reflected seriously on the chances,"

continued Mrs Wyllys, whose thoughtful and abstracted mien, however, sufficiently proved she scarcely knew what she uttered.

"The sea is too unstable an element for my taste," Gertrude coldly answered. "Pray tell me, Mrs Wyllys, is the vessel we are approaching a King's ship? She has a warlike, not to say a threatening exterior."

"The pilot has twice called her a slaver."

"A slaver! How deceitful then is all her beauty and symmetry! I will never trust to appearances again, since so lovely an object can be devoted to so vile a purpose."

"Deceitful indeed!" exclaimed Wilder aloud, under an impulse that he found as irresistible as it was involuntary. "I will take upon myself to say, that a more treacherous vessel does not float the ocean than yonder finely proportioned and admirably equipped"----

"Slaver," added Mrs Wyllys, who had time to turn, and to look all her astonishment, before the young man appeared disposed to finish his own sentence.

"Slaver;" he said with emphasis, bowing at the same time, as if he would thank her for the word.

After this interruption, a profound silence occurred Mrs Wyllys studied the disturbed features of the young man, for a moment, with a countenance that denoted a singular, though a complicated, interest; and then she gravely bent her eyes on the water, deeply occupied with intense, if not painful reflection The light symmetrical form of Gertrude continued leaning on the rail, it is true, but Wilder was unable to catch another glimpse of her averted and shadowed lineaments. In the mean while, events, that were of a character to withdraw his attention entirely from even so pleasing a study, were hastening to their accomplishment.

The ship had, by this time, pa.s.sed between the little island and the point whence Homespun had embarked, and might now be said to have fairly left the inner harbour. The slaver lay directly in her track, and every man in the vessel was gazing with deep interest, in order to see whether they might yet hope to pa.s.s on her weather-beam. The measure was desirable; because a seaman has a pride in keeping on the honourable side of every thing he encounters but chiefly because, from the position of the stranger, it would be the means of preventing the necessity of tacking before the "Caroline" should reach a point more advantageous for such a manoeuvre. The reader will, however, readily understand that the interest of hear new Commander took its rise in far different feelings from those of professional pride, or momentary convenience.

Wilder felt, in every nerve, the probability that a crisis was at hand. It will be remembered that he was profoundly ignorant of the immediate intentions of the Rover. As the fort was not in a state for present service, it would not be difficult for the latter to seize upon his prey in open view of the townsmen and bear it off, in contempt of their feeble means of defence. The position of the two ships was favourable to such an enterprise. Unprepared, find unsuspecting, the "Caroline," at no time a natch for her powerful adversary, must fall an easy victim; nor would there be much reason to apprehend that a single shot from the battery could reach them, before the captor, and his prize, would be at such a distance as to render the blow next to impotent if not utterly innocuous.

The wild and audacious character of such an enterprise was in full accordance with the reputation of the desperate freebooter on whose caprice, alone, the act now seemed solely to depend.

Under these impressions, and with the prospect of such a speedy termination to his new-born authority it is not to be considered wonderful that our adventurer awaited the result with an interest far exceeding that of any of those by whom he was surrounded He walked into the waist of the ship, and endeavoured to read the plan of his secret confederates by some of those indications that are familiar to a seaman. Not the smallest sign of any intention to depart, or in any manner to change her position, was, however, discoverable in the pretended slaver. She lay in the same deep, beautiful, but treacherous quiet, as that in which she had reposed throughout the whole of the eventful morning. But a solitary individual could be seen amid the mazes of her rigging, or along the wide reach of all her spars. It was a seaman seated on the extremity of a lower yard, where he appeared to busy himself with one of those repairs that are so constantly required in the gear of a large ship. As the man was placed on the weather side of his own vessel, Wilder instantly conceived the idea that he was thus stationed to cast a grapnel into the rigging of the "Caroline," should such a measure become necessary, in order to bring the two ships foul of each other. With a view to prevent so rude an encounter, he instantly determined to defeat the plan. Calling to the pilot, he told him the attempt to pa.s.s to windward was of very doubtful success, and reminded him that the safer way would be to go to leeward.

"No fear, no fear, Captain," returned the stubborn conductor of the ship, who, as his authority was so brief, was only the more jealous of its unrestrained exercise, and who, like an usurper of the throne, felt a jealousy of the more legitimate power which he had temporarily dispossessed; "no fear of me, Captain. I have trolled over this ground oftener than you have crossed the ocean, and I know the name of every rock on the bottom, as well as the town-crier knows the streets of Newport. Let her luff, boy; luff her into the very eye of the wind; luff, you can"----

"You have the ship shivering as it is, sir," said Wilder, sternly: "Should you get us foul of the slaver who is to pay the cost?"

"I am a general underwriter," returned the opinionated pilot; "my wife shall mend every hole I make in your sails, with a needle no bigger than a hair, and with such a palm as a fairy's thimble!"

"This is fine talking, sir, but you are already losing the ship's way; and, before you have ended your boasts, she will be as fast in irons as a condemned thief. Keep the sails full, boy; keep them a rap full, sir."

"Ay, ay, keep her a good full," echoed the pilot, who, as the difficulty of pa.s.sing to windward became at each instant more obvious, evidently began to waver in his resolution. "Keep her full-and-by,--I have always told you full-and-by,--I don't know, Captain, seeing that the wind has hauled a little, but we shall have to pa.s.s to leeward yet; but you will acknowledge, that, in such case, we shall be obliged to go about."

Now, in point of fact, the wind, though a little lighter than it had been, was, if anything, a trifle more favourable; nor had Wilder ever, in any manner, denied that the ship would not have to tack, some twenty minutes sooner, by going to leeward of the other vessel, than if she had succeeded in her delicate experiment of pa.s.sing on the more honourable side; but, as the vulgarest minds are always the most reluctant to confess their blunders, the discomfited pilot was disposed to qualify the concession he found himself compelled to make, by some salvo of the sort, that he might not lessen his reputation for foresight, among his auditors.

"Keep her away at once," cried Wilder, who was beginning to change the tones of remonstrance for those of command; "keep the ship away, sir, while you have room to do it, or, by the"----

His lips became motionless; for his eye happened to fall on the pale, speaking, and anxious countenance of Gertrude.

"I believe it must be done, seeing that the wind is hauling. Hard up, boy, and run her under the stern of the ship at anchor. Hold! keep your luff again; eat into the wind to the bone, boy; lift again; let the light sails lift. The slaver has run a warp directly across our track. If there's law in the Plantations, I'll have her Captain before the Courts for this!"

"What means the fellow?" demanded Wilder, jumping hastily on a gun, in order to get a better view.

His mate pointed to the lee-quarter of the other vessel, where, sure enough, a large rope was seen whipping the water, as though in the very process of being extended. The truth instantly flashed on the mind of our young mariner. The Rover lay secret-moored with a spring, with a view to bring; his guns more readily to bear upon the battery, should his defence become necessary, and he now profited, by the circ.u.mstance, in order to prevent the trader from pa.s.sing to leeward. The whole arrangement excited a good deal of surprise, and not a few execrations among the officers of the "Caroline;" though none but her Commander had the smallest twinkling of the real reason why the kedge had thus been laid, and why a warp was so awkwardly stretched across their path. Of the whole number, the pilot alone saw cause to rejoice in the circ.u.mstance. He had, in fact, got the ship in such a situation, as to render it nearly as difficult to proceed in one way as in the other; and he was now furnished with a sufficient justification, should any accident occur, in the course of the exceedingly critical manoeuvre, from whose execution there was now no retreat.

"This is an extraordinary liberty to take in the mouth of a harbour,"

muttered Wilder, when his eyes put him in possession of the fact just related. "You must shove her by to windward, pilot; there is no remedy."

"I wash my hands of the consequences, as I call all on board to witness,"

returned the other, with the air of a deeply offended man, though secretly glad of the appearance of being driven to the very measure he was a minute before so obstinately bent on executing, "Law must be called in here, if sticks are snapped, or rigging parted. Luff to a hair, boy; luff her short into the wind, and try a half-board."

The man at the helm obeyed the order. Releasing his hold of its spokes, the wheel made a quick evolution; and the ship, feeling a fresh impulse of the wind, turned her head heavily towards the quarter whence it came, the canvas fluttering with a noise like that produced by a flock of water-fowl just taking wing. But, met by the helm again, she soon fell off as before, powerless from having lost her way, and settling bodily down toward the fancied slaver, impelled by the air, which seemed, however, to have lost much of its force, at the critical instant it was most needed.

The situation of the "Caroline" was one which a seaman will readily understand. She had forged so far ahead as to lie directly on the weather-beam of the stranger, but too near to enable her to fall-off in the least, without imminent danger that the vessels would come foul. The wind was inconstant, sometimes blowing in puffs, while at moments there was a perfect lull. As the ship felt the former, her tall masts bent gracefully towards the slaver, as if to make the parting salute; but, relieved from the momentary pressure of the inconstant air, she as often rolled heavily to windward, without advancing a foot. The effect of each change, however, was to bring her still nigher to her dangerous neighbour, until it became evident, to the judgment of the youngest seaman in the vessel, that nothing but a sudden shift of wind could enable her to pa.s.s ahead, the more especially as the tide was on the change.

As the inferior officers of the "Caroline" were not delicate in their commentaries on the dulness which had brought them into so awkward and so mortifying a position, the pilot endeavoured to conceal his own vexation, by the number and vociferousness of his orders. From bl.u.s.tering, he soon pa.s.sed into confusion, until the men themselves stood idle, not knowing which of the uncertain and contradictory mandates they received ought to be first obeyed. In the mean time, Wilder had folded his arms with an appearance of entire composure, and taken his station near his female pa.s.sengers. Mrs Wyllys closely studied his eye, with the wish of ascertaining, by its expression, the nature and extent of their danger, if danger there might be, in the approaching collision of two ships in water that was perfectly smooth, and where one was stationary and the motion of the other scarcely perceptible. The stern, determined look she saw settling about the brow of the young man excited an uneasiness that she would not otherwise have felt, perhaps, under circ.u.mstances that, in themselves, bore no very vivid appearance of hazard.

"Have we aught to apprehend, sir?" demanded the governess, endeavouring to conceal from her charge the nature of her own disquietude.

"I told you, Madam, the 'Caroline' would prove an unlucky ship."