The Red Rover Part 32

Wilder, however, paid no attention to the movements of his subordinate, but continued pacing the deck for hours; now casting his eyes at the heavens or now sending frequent and anxious glances around the limited horizon, while the "Royal Caroline" still continued drifting before the wind, a shorn and naked wreck.

Chapter XVII.

"Sit still, and hear the last of our sea sorrow."--_Shakspeare_

The weight of the tempest had been felt at that hapless moment when Earing and his unfortunate companions were precipitated from their giddy elevation into the sea. Though the wind continued to blow long after this fatal event, it was with a constantly diminishing power. As the gale decreased the sea began to rise, and the vessel to labour in proportion.

Then followed two hours of anxious watchfulness on the part of Wilder, during which the whole of his professional knowledge was needed in order to keep the despoiled hull of the Bristol trader from becoming a prey to the greedy waters. His consummate skill, however, proved equal to the task that was required at his hands; and, just as the symptoms of day were becoming visible along the east, both wind and waves were rapidly subsiding together. During the whole of this doubtful period our adventurer did not receive the smallest a.s.sistance from any of the crew, with the exception of two experienced seamen whom he had previously stationed at the wheel. But to this neglect he was indifferent; since little more was required than his own judgment, seconded, as it faithfully was, by the exertions of the manners more immediately under his eye.

The day dawned on a scene entirely different from that which had marked the tempestuous deformity of the night. The whole fury of the winds appear ed to have been expended in their precocious effort. From the moderate gale, to which they had fallen by the end of the middle watch, they further altered to a vacillating breeze; and, ere the sun had risen, the changeful air had subsided into a flat calm. The sea went down as suddenly as the power which had raised, it vanished; and, by the time the broad golden light of the sun was shed fairly and fully upon the unstable element, it lay unruffled and polished, though still gently heaving in swells so long and heavy as to resemble the placid respiration of a sleeping infant.

The hour was still early, and the serene appearance of the sky and the ocean gave every promise of a day which might be pa.s.sed in devising the expedients necessary to bring the ship again, in some measure, under the command of her people.

"Sound the pumps," said Wilder, observing that the crew were appearing from the different places in which they had bestowed their cares and their persons together, during the later hours of the night.

"Do you hear me, sir?" he added sternly, observing that no one moved to obey his order. "Let the pumps be sounded, and the ship cleared of every inch of water."

Nighthead, to whom Wilder had now addressed himself, regarded his Commander with an oblique ind sullen eye, and then exchanged singularly intelligent glances with his comrades, before he saw fit to make the smallest motion towards compliance. But there was that, in the authoritative mien of his superior, which finally induced him to comply.

The dilatory manner in which the seamen performed the duty was quickened, however, as the rod ascended, and the well-known signs of a formidable leak met their eyes. The experiment was repeated with greater activity, and with far more precision.

"If witchcraft can clear the hold of a ship that is already half full of water," said Nighthead, casting another sullen glance towards the attentive Wilder "the sooner it is done the better; for the whole cunning of something more than a bungler in the same will be needed, in order to make the pumps of the 'Royal Caroline' suck!"

"Does the ship leak?" demanded his superior with a quickness of utterance which sufficiently proclaimed how important he deemed the intelligence.

"Yesterday, I would have boldly put my name to the articles of any craft that floats the ocean; and had the Captain asked me if I understood her nature and character, as certain as that my name is Francis Nighthead, I should have told him, yes. But I find that the oldest seaman may still learn something of the water; though it should be got in crossing a ferry in a flat."

"What mean you, sir?" demanded Wilder, who, for the first time, began to note the mutinous looks a.s.sumed by his mate, no less than the threatening manner in which he was seconded by the crew. "Have the pumps rigged without delay, and clear the ship of the water."

Nighthead slowly complied with the former part of this order; and, in a few moments, every thing was arranged to commence the necessary, and, as it would seem, urgent duty of pumping. But no man lifted his hand to the laborious employment. The quick eye of Wilder, who had now taken the alarm, was not slow in detecting this reluctance; and he repeated the order more sternly, calling to two of the seamen, by name, to set the example of obedience. The men hesitated, giving an opportunity to the mate to confirm them, by his voice, in their mutinous intentions.

"What need of hands to work a pump in a vessel like this?" he said, with a coa.r.s.e laugh, but in which secret terror struggled strangely with open malice. "After what we have all seen this night, none here will be amazed, should the vessel begin to spout out the brine like a breathing whale."

"What am I to understand by this hesitation, and by this language?" said Wilder, approaching Nighthead with a firm step, and an eye too proud to quail before the plainest symptoms of insubordination. "Is it you, sir, who should be foremost in exertion at a moment like this, who dare to set an example of disobedience?"

The mate recoiled a pace, and his lips moved, still he uttered no audible reply. Wilder once more bade him, in a calm and authoritative tone, lay his own hands to the brake. Nighthead then found his voice, in time to make a flat refusal; and, at the next moment, he was felled to the feet of his indignant Commander, by a blow he had neither the address nor the power to resist. This act of decision was succeeded by one single moment of breathless, wavering silence among the crew; and then the common cry, and the general rush of every man upon our defenceless and solitary adventurer, were the signals that open hostility had commenced. A shriek from the quarter-deck arrested their efforts; just as a dozen hands were laid violently upon the person of Wilder, and, for the moment, occasioned a truce. It was the fearful cry of Gertrude, which possessed even the influence to still the savage intentions of a set of beings so rude and so unnurtured as those whose pa.s.sions had just been awakened into fierce activity. Wilder was released; and all eyes turned, by a common impulse, in the direction of the sound.

During the more momentous hours of the past night, the very existence of the pa.s.sengers below had been forgotten by most of those whose duty kept them to the deck. If they had been recalled at all to the recollection of any, it was at those fleeting moments when the mind of the young mariner, who directed the movements of the ship, found leisure to catch stolen glimpses of softer scenes than the wild warring of the elements that was so actively raging before his eyes. Nighthead had named them, as he would have made allusion to a part of the cargo, but their fate had little influence on his hardened nature. Mrs Wyllys and her charge had therefore remained below during the whole period, perfectly unapprised of the disasters of the intervening time. Buried in the recesses of their births, they had heard the roaring of the winds, and the incessant washing of the waters; but these usual accompaniments of a storm had served to conceal the crashing of masts, and the hoa.r.s.e cries of the mariners. For the moments of terrible suspense while the Bristol trader lay on her side, the better informed governess had, indeed, some fearful glimmerings of the truth; but, conscious of her uselessness and unwilling to alarm her less instructed companion she had sufficient self-command to be mute. The subsequent silence, and comparative calm, induced her to believe that she had been mistaken in her apprehensions; and, long ere morning dawned, both she and Gertrude had sunk into sweet and refreshing slumbers. They had risen and mounted to the deck together, and were still in the first burst of their wonder at the desolation which met their gaze, when the long-meditated attack on Wilder was made.

"What means this awful change?" demanded Mrs Wyllys, with a lip that quivered, and a cheek which, notwithstanding the extraordinary power she possessed over her feelings, was blanched to the colour of death.

The eye of Wilder was glowing, and his brow dark as those heavens from which they had just so happily escaped, as he answered, menacing his a.s.sailants with an arm,--

"It means mutiny, Madam; rascally, cowardly mutiny!"

"Could mutiny strip a vessel of her masts, and leave her a helpless log upon the sea?"

"Hark ye, Madam!" roughly interrupted the mate 'to you I will speak freely; for it is well known who you are, and that you came on board the 'Caroline' a paying pa.s.senger. This night have I seen the heavens and the ocean behave as I have never seen them behave before. Ships have been running afore the wind, light and buoyant as corks, with all their spars stepped and steady, when other ships have been shaved of every mast as close as the razor sweeps the chin. Cruisers have been fallen in with, sailing without living hands to work them; and, all together, no man here has ever before pa.s.sed a middle watch like the one gone by."

"And what has this to do with the violence I have just witnessed? Is the vessel fated to endure every evil!--Can _you_ explain this, Mr Wilder?"

"You cannot say, at least, you had no warning of danger," returned Wilder, smiling bitterly.

"Ay, the devil is obliged to be honest on compulsion," resumed the mate.

"Each of his imps sails with his orders; and, thank Heaven! however he may be minded to overlook the same, he has neither courage nor power to do it.

Otherwise, a peaceful voyage would be such a rarity, in these unsettled times, that few men would be found hardy enough to venture on the water for a livelihood.--A warning! Ay, we will own you gave us open and frequent warning. It was a notice, that the consignee should not have overlooked, when Nicholas Nichols met with the hurt, as the anchor was leaving the bottom I never knew an accident happen at such a time and no evil come of it. Then, had we a warning with the old man in the boat; besides the never-failing ill luck of sending the pilot violently out of the ship. As if all this wasn't enough, instead of taking a hint, and lying peaceably at our anchors, we got the ship under way, and left a safe and friendly harbour of a Friday, of all the days in a week![2] So far from being surprised at what has happened, I only wonder at finding myself still a living man; the reason of which is simply this, that I have given my faith where faith only is due, and not to unknown mariners and strange Commanders. Had Edward Earing done the same, he might still have had a plank between him and the bottom; but, though half inclined to believe in the truth, he had, after all, too much leaning to superst.i.tion and credulity."

[Footnote 2: The superst.i.tion, that Friday is an evil day, was not peculiar to Nighthead; it prevails, more or less, among seamen to this hour. An intelligent merchant of Connecticut had a desire to do his part in eradicating an impression that is sometimes inconvenient. He caused the keel of a vessel to be laid on a Friday; she was launched on a Friday; named the "Friday;" and sailed on her first voyage on a Friday.

Unfortunately for the success of this well-intentioned experiment, neither vessel nor crew were ever again heard of!]

This laboured and characteristic profession of faith in the mate, though sufficiently intelligible to Wilder, was still a perfect enigma to his female listeners. But Nighthead had not formed his resolution by halves, neither had he gone thus far, with any intention to stop short of the completion of his whole design. In a very few summary words, he explained to Mrs Wyllys the desolate condition of the ship, and the utter improbability that she could continue to float many hours; since actual observation had told him that her lower hold was already half full of water.

"And what is then to be done?" demanded the governess, casting a glance of bitter distress towards the pallid and attentive Gertrude. "Is there no sail in sight, to take us from the wreck? or must we perish in our helplessness!"

"G.o.d-protect us from anymore strange sails!" exclaimed the surly Nighthead. "There we have the pinnace hanging at the stern, and here must be land at some forty leagues to the north-west. Water and food are plenty, and twelve, stout hands can soon pull a boat to the continent of America; that is, always provided, America is left where it was seen no later than at the sun-set of yesterday."

"You then propose to abandon the vessel?"

"I do. The interest of the owners is dear to all good seamen, but life is sweeter than gold."

"The will of heaven be done! But surely you meditate no violence against this gentleman, who, I am quite certain, has governed the vessel, in very critical circ.u.mstances, with a discretion far beyond his years!"

Nighthead muttered his intentions, whatever they might be, to himself; and then he walked apart, apparently to confer with the men, who already seemed but too well disposed to second any of his views, however mistaken or lawless. During the few moments of suspense that succeeded, Wilder stood silent and composed, a smile of something like scorn struggling about his lip, and maintaining the air rather of one who had power to decide on the fortunes of others, than of a man whose own fate was most probably at that very moment in discussion. When the dull minds of the seamen had arrived at their conclusion, the mate advanced to proclaim the result. Indeed, words were unnecessary, in order to make known a very material part of their decision; for a party of the men proceeded instantly to lower the stern-boat into the water, while others set about supplying it with the necessary means of subsistence.

"There is room for all the Christians in the ship to stow themselves in this pinnace," resumed Nighthead; "and as for those that place their dependance on any particular persons, why, let them call for aid where they have been used to receive it."

"From all which I am to infer that it is your intention," said Wilder, calmly, "to abandon the wreck and your duty?"

The half-awed but still resentful mate returned a look in which fear and triumph struggled for the mastery, as he answered,--

"You, who know how to sail a ship without a crew, can never want a boat!

Besides, you shall never say to your friends, whoever they may be, that we leave you without the means of reaching the land, if you are indeed a land-bird at all. There is the launch."

"There is the launch! but well do you know, that, without masts, all your united strengths could not lift it from the deck; else would it not be left."

"They that took the masts out of the 'Caroline' can put them in again,"

rejoined a grinning seaman; "it will not be an hour after we leave you, before a sheer-hulk will come alongside, to step the spars again, and then you may go cruise in company."

Wilder appeared to be superior to any reply. He began to pace the deck, thoughtful, it is true, but still composed, and entirely self-possessed.

In the mean time, as a common desire to quit the wreck as soon as possible actuated all the men, their preparations advanced with incredible activity. The wondering and alarmed females had hardly time to think clearly on the extraordinary situation in which they found themselves, before they saw the form of the helpless Master borne past them to the boat; and, in another minute, they were summoned to take their places at his side.

Thus imperiously called upon to act, they began to feel the necessity of decision. Remonstrances, they feared, would be useless; for the fierce and malignant looks which were cast, from time to time, at Wilder, as the labour proceeded, proclaimed the danger of awakening such obstinate and ignorant minds into renewed acts of violence. The governess bethought her of an appeal to the wounded man, but the look of wild care which he had cast about him, on being lifted to the deck, and the expression of bodily and mental pain that gleamed across his rugged features, as he buried them in the blankets by which he was enveloped, but too plainly announced that little a.s.sistance was, in his present condition, to be expected from him.

"What remains for us to do?" she at length demanded of the seemingly insensible object of her concern.