The Red Rover by Fenimore Cooper - Chapter 15
"I' the name of truth,
Are ye fantastical, or that indeed
Which outwardly ye show?" - Macbeth.
The division of employment that is found in Europe, and which brings, in its train, a peculiar and corresponding limitation of ideas, has never yet existed in our country. If our artisans have, in consequence been less perfect in their several handicrafts, they have ever been remarkable for intelligence of a more general character. Superstition is however, a quality that seems indigenous to the ocean. Few common mariners are exempt from its influence, in a greater or less degree; though it is found to exist, among the seamen of different people, in forms that are tempered by their respective national habits and peculiar opinions. The sailor of the Baltic has his secret rites, and his manner of propitiating the gods of the wind; the Mediterranean mariner tears his hair, and kneels before the shrine of some impotent saint, when his own hand might better do the service he implores; while the more skilful Englishman sees the spirits of the dead in the storm, and hears the cries of a lost messmate in the gusts that sweep the waste he navigates. Even the better instructed and still more reasoning American has not been able to shake entirely off the secret influence of a sentiment that seems the concomitant of his condition.
There is a majesty, in the might of the great deep that has a tendency to keep open the avenues of that dependant credulity which more or less besets the mind of every man, however he may have fortified his intellect by thought. With the firmament above him, and wandering on an interminable waste of water, the less gifted seaman is tempted, at every step of his pilgrimage, to seek the relief of some propitious omen. The few which are supported by scientific causes give support to the many that have their origin only in his own excited and doubting temperament. The gambols of the dolphin, the earnest and busy passage of the porpoise, the ponderous sporting of the unwieldy whale, and the screams of the marine birds, have all, like the signs of the ancient soothsayers, their attendant consequences of good or evil. The confusion between things which are explicable, and things which are not, gradually brings the mind of the mariner to a state in which any exciting and unnatural sentiment is welcome, if it be or no other reason than that, like the vast element on which he passes his life, it bears the impression of what is thought a supernatural, because it is an incomprehensible, power.
The crew of the "Royal Caroline" had not even the advantage of being natives of a land where necessity and habit have united to bring every man's faculties into exercise, to a certain extent at least. They were all from that distant island that has been, and still continues to be, the hive of nations, which are probably fated to carry her name to a time when the sight of her fallen power shall be sought as a curiosity, like the remains of a city in a desert.
The whole events of that day of which we are now writing had a tendency to arouse the latent superstition of these men. It has already been said, that the calamity which had befallen their former Commander, and the manner in which a stranger had succeeded to his authority, had their influence in increasing their disposition to doubt. The sail to leeward appeared most inopportunely for the character of our adventurer, who had not yet enjoyed a fitting opportunity to secure the confidence of his inferiors, before such untoward circumstances occurred as threatened to deprive him of it for ever.
There has existed but one occasion for introducing to the reader the mate who filled the station in the ship next to that of Earing. He was called Nighthead; a name that was, in some measure, indicative of a certain misty obscurity that beset his superior member. The qualities of his mind may be appreciated by the few reflections he saw fit to make on the escape of the old mariner whom Wilder had intended to visit with a portion of his indignation. This individual, as he was but one degree removed from the common men in situation, so was he every way qualified to maintain that association with the crew which was, in some measure, necessary between them. His influence among them was commensurate to his opportunities of intercourse, and his sentiments were very generally received with a portion of that deference which is thought to be due to the opinions of an oracle.
After the ship had been worn, and during the time that Wilder, with a view to lose sight of his unwelcome neighbour, was endeavouring to urge her through the seas in the manner already described, this stubborn and mystified tar remained in the waist of the vessel, surrounded by a few of the older and more experienced seamen, holding converse on the remarkable appearance of the phantom to leeward, and of the extraordinary manner in which their unknown officer saw fit to attest the enduring qualities of their own vessel. We shall commence our relation of the dialogue at a point where Nighthead saw fit to discontinue his distant inuendos, in order to deal more directly with the subject he had under discussion.
"I have heard it said, by older sea-faring men than any in this ship," he continued, "that the devil has been known to send one of his mates aboard a lawful trader, to lead her astray among shoals and quicksands, in order that he might make a wreck, and get his share of the salvage, among the souls of the people. What man can say who gets into the cabin, when an unknown name stands first in the shipping list of a vessel?"
"The stranger is shut in by a cloud!" exclaimed one of the mariners, who, while he listened to the philosophy of his officer, still kept an eye riveted on the mysterious object to leeward.
"Ay, ay; it would occasion no surprise to see that craft steering into the moon! Luck is like a fly-block and its yard: when one goes up, the other comes down. They say the red-coats ashore have had their turn of fortune, and it is time we honest seamen look out for our squalls. I have doubled the Horn, brothers, in a King's ship, and I have seen the bright cloud that never sets, and have held a living corposant in my own hand: But these are things which any man may look on, who will go upon a yard in a gale, or ship aboard a Southseaman: Still, I pronounce it uncommon for a vessel to see her shadow in the haze, as we have ours at this moment for there it comes again!--hereaway, between the after-shroud and the backstay--or for a trader to carry sail in a fashion that would make every knee in a bomb-ketch work like a tooth-brush fiddling across a passenger's mouth, after he had had a smart bout with the sea sickness."
"And yet the lad holds the ship in hand," said the oldest of all the seamen, who kept his gaze fastened on the proceedings of Wilder; "he is driving her through it in a mad manner, I will allow; but yet, so far, he has not parted a yarn."
"Yarns!" repeated the mate, in a tone of strong contempt; "what signify yarns, when the whole cable is to snap, and in such a fashion as to leave no hope for the anchor, except in a buoy rope? Hark ye, old Bill; the devil never finishes his jobs by halves: What is to happen will happen bodily; and no easing-off, as if you were lowering the Captain's lady into a boat, and he on deck to see fair play."
"Mr Nighthead knows how to keep a ship's reckoning in all weathers!" said another, whose manner sufficiently announced the dependance he himself placed on the capacity of the second mate.
"And no credit to me for the same. I have seen all services, and handled every rig, from a lugger to a double-decker! Few men can say more in their own favour than myself; for the little I know has been got by much hardship, and small schooling. But what matters information, or even seamanship against witchcraft, or the workings of one whom I don't choose to name, seeing that there is no use in offending any gentleman unnecessarily? I say, brothers that this ship is packed upon in a fashion that no prudent seaman ought to, or would, allow."
A general murmur announced that most, if not all, of his hearers accorded in his opinion.
"Let us examine calmly and reasonably, and in a manner becoming enlightened Englishmen, into the whole state of the case," the mate continued, casting an eye obliquely over his shoulder, perhaps to make sure that the individual, of whose displeasure he stood in such salutary awe, was not actually at his elbow. "We are all of us, to a man, native-born islanders, without a drop of foreign blood among us; not so much as a Scotchman or an Irishman in the ship. Let us therefore look into the philosophy of this affair, with that sort of judgment which becomes our breeding. In the first place, here is honest Nicholas Nichols slips from this here water-cask, and breaks me a leg! Now, brothers, I've known men to fall from tops and yards, and lighter damage done. But what matters it, to a certain person, how far he throws his man, since he has only to lift a finger to get us all hanged? Then, comes me aboard here a stranger, with a look of the colonies about him, and none of your plain-dealing, out-and-out, smooth English faces, such as a man can cover with the flat of his hand."--
"The lad is well enough to the eye," interrupted the old mariner.
"Ay, therein lies the whole deviltry of this matter! He is good-looking, I grant ye; but it is not such good-looking as an Englishman loves. There is a meaning about him that I don't like; for I never likes too much meaning in a man's countenance, seeing that it is not always easy to understand what he would be doing. Then, this stranger gets to be Master of the ship, or, what is the same thing, next to Master; while he who should be on deck giving his orders, in a time like this, is lying in his birth unable to tack himself, much less to put the vessel about; and yet no man can say how the thing came to pass."
"He drove a bargain with the consignee for the station, and right glad did the cunning merchant seem to get so tight a youth to take charge of the 'Caroline.'"
"Ah! a merchant is, like the rest of us, made of nothing better than clay; and, what is worse, it is seldom that, in putting him together, he is dampened with salt water. Many is the trader that has douzed his spectacles, and shut his account-books, to step aside to over-reach his neighbour, and then come back to find that he has over-reached himself. Mr Bale, no doubt, thought he was doing the clever thing for the owners, when he shipped this Mr Wilder; but then, perhaps, he did not know that the vessel was sold to ------ It becomes a plain-going seaman to have a respect for all he sails under; so I will not, unnecessarily, name the person who, I believe, has got, whether he came by it in a fair purchase or not, no small right in this vessel."
"I have never seen a ship got out of irons more handsomely than he handled the 'Caroline' this very morning."
Nighthead now indulged in a low, but what to his listeners appeared to be an exceedingly meaning, laugh.
"When a ship has a certain sort of Captain, one is not to be surprised at any thing," he answered the instant his significant merriment had ceased. "For my own part, I shipped to go from Bristol to the Carolinas and Jamaica, touching at Newport out and home; and I will say, boldly, I have no wish to go any where else. As to backing the 'Caroline' from her awkward birth alongside the slaver, why it was well done; most too well for so young a manner. Had I done the thing myself, it could not have been much better. But what think you, brothers of the old man in the skiff? There was a chase, and an escape, such as few old sea-dogs have the fortune to behold! I have heard of a smuggler that was chased a hundred times by his Majesty's cutters, in the chops of the Channel, and which always had a fog handy to run into, but out of which no man could truly say he ever saw her come again! This skiff may have plied between the land and that Guernseyman, for any thing I know to the contrary; but it is not a boat I wish to pull a scull in."
"That was a remarkable flight!" exclaimed the elder seaman, whose faith in the character of our adventurer began to give way gradually, before such an accumulation of testimony.
"I call it so; though other men may possibly know better than I, who have only followed the water five-and-thirty years. Then, here is the sea getting up, in an unaccountable manner! and look at these rags of clouds, which darken the heavens! and yet there is light enough, coming from the ocean, for a good scholar to read by!"
"I've often seen the weather as it is now."
"Ay, who has not? It is seldom that any man, let him come from what part he will, makes his first voyage as Captain. Let who will be out to-night upon the water, I'll engage he has been there before. I have seen worse looking skies, and even worse looking water, than this; but I never knew any good come of either. The night I was wreck'd in the bay of"----
"In the waist there!" cried the calm, authoritative tones of Wilder.
Had a warning voice arisen from the turbulent and rushing ocean itself, it would not have sounded more alarming, in the startled ears of the conscious seamen, than this sudden hail. Their young Commander found it necessary to repeat it, before even Nighthead, the proper and official spokesman, could muster resolution to answer.
"Get the fore-top-gallant-sail on the ship, sir," continued Wilder, when the customary reply let him know that he had been heard.
The mate and his companions regarded each other, for a moment, in dull admiration; and many a melancholy shake of the head was exchanged, before one of the party threw himself into the weather-rigging, and proceeded aloft, with a doubting mind, in order to loosen the sail in question.
There was certainly enough, in the desperate manner with which Wilder pressed the canvas on the vessel, to excite distrust, either of his intentions or judgment, in the opinions of men less influenced by superstition than those it was now his lot to command. It had long been apparent to Earing, and his more ignorant, and consequently more obstinate, brother officer, that their young superior had the same desire to escape from the spectral-looking ship, which so strangely followed their movements, as they had themselves. They only differed in the mode; but this difference was so very material, that the two mates consulted together apart, and then Earing, something stimulated by the hardy opinions of his coadjutor, approached his Commander, with the determination of delivering the results of their united judgments, with that sort of directness which he thought the occasion now demanded. But there was that in the steady eye and imposing mien of Wilder, that caused him to touch on the dangerous subject with a discretion and circumlocution that were a little remarkable for the individual. He stood watching the effect of the sail recently spread for several minutes, before he even presumed to open his mouth. But a terrible encounter, between the vessel and a wave that lifted its angry crest apparently some dozen feet above the approaching bows, gave him courage to proceed, by admonishing him afresh of the danger of continuing silent.
"I do not see that we drop the stranger, though the ship is wallowing through the water so heavily," he commenced, determined to be as circumspect as possible in his advances.
Wilder bent another of his frequent glances on the misty object in the horizon, and then turned his frowning eye towards the point whence the wind proceeded, as if he would defy its heaviest blasts; he, however, made no answer.
"We have ever found the crew discontented at the pumps, sir," resumed the other, after a pause sufficient for the reply he in vain expected; "I need not tell an officer, who knows his duty so well, that seamen rarely love their pumps."
"Whatever I may find necessary to order, Mr Earing, this ship's company will find it necessary to execute."
There was a deep settled air of authority, in the manner with which this tardy answer was given, that did not fail of its impression. Earing recoiled a step, with a submissive manner, and affected to be lost in consulting the driving masses of the clouds; then, summoning his resolution, he attempted to renew the attack in a different quarter.
"Is it your deliberate opinion, Captain Wilder," he said, using the title to which the claim of our adventurer might well be questioned, with a view to propitiate him; "is it then your deliberate opinion that the 'Royal Caroline' can, by any human means, be made to drop yonder vessel?"
"I fear not," returned the young man, drawing a breath so long, that all his secret concern seemed struggling in his breast for utterance.
"And, sir, with proper submission to your better education and authority in this ship, I know not. I have often seen these matches tried in my time; and well do I know that nothing is gained by straining a vessel, with the hope of getting to windward of one of these flyers!"
"Take you the glass, Earing, and tell me under what canvas the stranger holds his way, and what may be his distance," said Wilder, thoughtfully, and without appearing to advert at all to what the other had just observed.
The honest and well-meaning mate deposed his hat on the quarter-deck, and, with an air of great respect, did as he was desired. Nor did he deem it necessary to give a precipitate answer to either of the interrogatories. When, however, his look had been long, grave, and deeply absorbed, he closed the glass with the palm of his broad hand, and replied, with the manner of one whose opinion was sufficiently matured.
"If yonder sail had been built and fitted like other mortal craft," he said, "I should not be backward in pronouncing her a full-rigged ship, under three single-reefed topsails, courses, spanker, and jib."
"Has she no more?"
"To that I would qualify, provided an opportunity were given me to make sure that she is, in all respects, as other vessels are."
"And yet, Earing, with all this press of canvas, by the compass we have not left her a foot."
"Lord, sir," returned the mate, shaking his head, like one who was well convinced of the folly of such efforts, "if you should split every cloth in the main-course, by carrying on the ship you will never alter the bearings of that craft an inch, till the sun rises! Then, indeed, such as have eyes, that are good enough, might perhaps see her sailing about among the clouds; though it has never been my fortune be it bad or be it good, to fall in with one of these cruisers after the day has fairly dawned."
"And the distance?" said Wilder; "you have not yet spoken of her distance."
"That is much as people choose to measure. She may be here, nigh enough to toss a biscuit into our tops; or she may be there, where she seems to be, hull down in the horizon."
"But, if where she seems to be?"
"Why, she seems to be a vessel of about six hundred tons; and, judging from appearances only, a man might be tempted to say she was a couple of leagues, more or less, under our lee."
"I put her at the same! Six miles to windward is not a little advantage, in a hard chase. By heavens, Earing, I'll drive the 'Caroline' out of water but I'll leave him!"
"That might be done, if the ship had wings like a curlew, or a sea-gull; but, as it is, I think we are more likely to drive her under."
"She bears her canvas well, so far. You know not what the boat can do, when urged."
"I have seen her sailed in all weathers, Captain Wilder, but"----
His mouth was suddenly closed. A vast black wave reared itself between the ship and the eastern horizon, and came rolling onward, seeming to threaten to ingulf all before it. Even Wilder watched the shock with breathless anxiety, conscious, for the moment that he had exceeded the bounds of sound discretion in urging his ship so powerfully against such a mass of water. The sea broke a few fathoms from the bows of the "Caroline," and sent its surge in a flood of foam upon her decks. For half a minute the forward part of the vessel disappeared, as though, unable to mount the swell, it were striving to go through it, and then she heavily emerged, gemmed with a million of the scintillating insects of the ocean. The ship had stopped, trembling in every joint, throughout her massive and powerful frame, like some affrighted courser; and, when she resumed her course, it was with a moderation that appeared to warn those who governed her movements of their indiscretion.
Earing faced his Commander in silence, perfectly conscious that nothing he could utter contained an argument like this. The seamen no longer hesitated to mutter their disapprobation aloud, and many a prophetic opinion was ventured concerning the consequences of such reckless risks. To all this Wilder turned a deaf or an insensible ear. Firm in his own secret purpose, he would have braved a greater hazard to accomplish his object. But a distinct though smothered shriek, from the stern of the vessel, reminded him of the fears of others. Turning quickly on his heel, he approached the still trembling Gertrude and her governess, who had both been, throughout the whole of those long and tedious hours, inobtrusive but deeply interested, observers of his smallest movements.
"The vessel bore that shock so well, I have great reliance on her powers," he said in a soothing voice, but with words that were intended to lull her into a blind security. "With a firm ship, a thorough seaman is never at a loss!"
"Mr Wilder," returned the governess, "I have seen much of this terrible element on which you live. It is therefore vain to think of deceiving me I know that you are urging the ship beyond what is usual. Have you sufficient motive for this hardihood?"
"Madam,--I have!"
"And is it, like so many of your motives, to continue locked for ever in your own breast? or may we, who are equal participators in its consequences, claim to share equally in the reason?"
"Since you know so much of the profession," returned the young man, slightly laughing, but in tones that were rendered perhaps more alarming by the sounds produced in the unnatural effort, "you need not be told, that, in order to get a ship to windward, it is necessary to spread her canvas."
"You can, at least, answer one of my questions more directly: Is this wind sufficiently favourable to pass the dangerous shoals of the Hatteras?"
"I doubt it."
"Then, why not go to the place whence we came?"
"Will you consent to return?" demanded the youth, with the swiftness of thought.
"I would go to my father," said Gertrude, with a rapidity so nearly resembling his own, that the ardent girl appeared to want breath to utter the little she said.
"And I am willing, Mr Wilder, to abandon the ship entirely," calmly resumed the governess. "I require no explanation of all your mysterious warnings; restore us to our friends in Newport, and no further questions shall ever be asked."
"It might be done!" muttered our adventurer; "it might be done!--A few busy hours would do it, with this wind.--Mr Earing!"--
The mate was instantly at his elbow. Wilder pointed to the dim object to leeward; and, handing him the glass, desired that he would take another view. Each looked, in his turn, long and closely.
"He shows no more sail!" said the Commander impatiently, when his own prolonged gaze was ended.
"Not a cloth, sir. But what matters it, to such a craft, how much canvas is spread, or how the wind blows?"
"Earing, I think there is too much southing in this breeze; and there is more brewing in yonder streak of dusky clouds on our beam. Let the ship fall off a couple of points, or more, and take the strain off the spars, by a pull upon the weather braces."
The simple-minded mate heard the order with an astonishment he did not care to conceal. There needed no explanation, to teach his experienced faculties that the effect would be to go over the same track they had just passed, and that it was, in substance abandoning the objects of the voyage. He presumed to defer his compliance, in order to remonstrate.
"I hope there is no offence for an elderly seaman, like myself, Captain Wilder, in venturing an opinion on the weather," he said. "When the pocket of the owner is interested, my judgment approves of going about, for I have no taste for land that the wind blows on, instead of off. But, by easing the ship with a reef or two, she would be jogging sea ward; and all we gain would be clear gain; because it is so much off the Hatteras. Besides, who can say that to-morrow, or the next day, we sha'n't have, a puff out of America, here at north-west?"
"A couple of points fall off, and a pull upon your weather braces," said Wilder, with startling quickness.
It would have exceeded the peaceful and submissive temperament of the honest Earing, to have delayed any longer. The orders were given to the inferiors; and, as a matter of course, they were obeyed--though ill-suppressed and portentous sounds of discontent at the undetermined, and seemingly unreasonable changes in their officer's mind might been heard issuing from the mouths of Nighthead, and other veterans of the crew.
But to all these symptoms of disaffection Wilder remained, as before, utterly indifferent. If he heard them at all, he either disdained to yield them any notice, or, guided by a temporizing policy, he chose to appear unconscious of their import. In the mean time, the vessel, like a bird whose wing had wearied with struggling against the tempest, and which inclines from the gale to dart along an easier course, glided swiftly away, quartering the crests of the waves, or sinking gracefully into their troughs, as she yielded to the force of a wind that was now made to be favourable. The sea rolled on, in a direction that was no longer adverse to her course; and, as she receded from the breeze, the quantity of sail she had spread was no longer found trying to her powers of endurance. Still she had, in the opinion of all her crew, quite enough canvas exposed to a night of such a portentous aspect. But not so, in the judgment of the stranger who was charged with the guidance of her destinies. In a voice that still admonished his inferiors of the danger of disobedience he commanded several broad sheets of studding-sails to be set, in quick succession. Urged by these new impulses, the ship went careering over the waves; leaving a train of foam, in her track, that rivalled, in its volume and brightness, the tumbling summit of the largest swell.
When sail after sail had been set, until even Wilder was obliged to confess to himself that the "Royal Caroline," staunch as she was, would bear no more, our adventurer began to pace the deck again, and to cast his eyes about him, in order to watch the fruits of his new experiment. The change in the course of the Bristol trader had made a corresponding change in the apparent direction of the stranger who yet floated in the horizon like a diminutive and misty shadow. Still the unerring compass told the watchful mariner, that she continued to maintain the same relative position as when first seen. No effort, on the part of Wilder, could apparently alter her bearing an inch. Another hour soon passed away, during which, as the log told him, the "Caroline" had rolled through more than three leagues of water, and still there lay the stranger in the west, as though it were merely a lessened shadow of herself, cast by the "Caroline" upon the distant and dusky clouds. An alteration in his course exposed a broader surface of his canvas to the eyes of the spectators, but in nothing else was there any visible change. If his sails had been materially increased, the distance and the obscurity prevented even the understanding Earing from detecting it. Perhaps the excited mind of the worthy mate was too much disposed to believe in the miraculous powers possessed by his unaccountable neighbour, to admit of the full exercise of his experienced faculties on the occasion; but even Wilder, who vexed his sight, in often-repeated examinations, was obliged to confess to himself, that the stranger seemed to glide, across the waste of waters, more like a body floating in the air, than a ship resorting to the ordinary expedients of mariners.
Mrs Wyllys and her charge had, by this time, retired to their cabin; the former secretly felicitating herself on the prospect of soon quitting a vessel that had commenced its voyage under such sinister circumstances as to have deranged the equilibrium of even her well-governed and highly-disciplined mind. Gertrude was left in ignorance of the change. To her uninstructed eye, all appeared the same on the wilderness of the ocean; Wilder having it in his power to alter the direction of his vessel as often as he pleased, without his fairer and more youthful passenger being any the wiser for the same.
Not so, however, with the intelligent Commander of the "Caroline" himself. To him there was neither obscurity nor doubt, in the midst of his midnight path. His eye had long been familiar with every star that rose from out the waving bed of the sea, to set in another dark and ragged outline of the element; nor was there a blast, that swept across the ocean, that his burning cheek could not tell from what quarter of the heavens it poured out its power. He knew, and understood, each inclination made by the bows of his ship; his mind kept even pace with her windings and turnings, in all her trackless wanderings; and he had little need to consult any of the accessories of his art, to tell him what course to steer, or in what manner to guide the movements of the nice machine he governed. Still was he unable to explain the extraordinary evolutions of the stranger. His smallest change seemed rather anticipated than followed; and his hopes of eluding a vigilance, that proved so watchful, was baffled by a facility of manoeuvring, and a superiority of sailing, that really began to assume, even to his intelligent eyes, the appearance of some unaccountable agency.
While our adventurer was engaged in the gloomy musings that such impressions were not ill adapted to excite, the heavens and the sea began to exhibit another aspect. The bright streak which had so long hung along the eastern horizon, as though the curtain of the firmament had been slightly opened to admit a passage for the winds, was now suddenly closed; and heavy masses of black clouds began to gather in that quarter, until vast volumes of the vapour were piled upon the water, blending the two elements in one. On the other hand, the dark canopy lifted in the west, and a long belt of lurid light was shed over the view. In this flood of bright and portentous mist the stranger still floated, though there were moments when his faint and fanciful outlines seemed to be melting into thin air.