Chapter 55 - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea by Mayne Reid
Snowball sees Land
The man-o’-war’s-man kept watch during the long hours of the night. True to his trust, he attended to the steering-oar: and as the breeze continued to blow steadily in the same direction, the raft, under the double propulsion of the wind and the “line current,” made considerable way to the westward.
A sort of filmy fog had arisen over the ocean, which hid the stars from sight. This might have rendered it impossible for the steersman to keep his course; but, under the belief that there was no change occurring in the direction of the wind, Ben guided himself by that, and very properly, as it afterwards proved.
Just before daybreak, he was relieved by Snowball; who entered upon his watch, at the same time taking his turn at the steering-oar.
Ben had not aroused the negro for this purpose; and he would have generously remained at his post until morning, had Snowball desired to prolong his slumbers.
The act of arousing himself was not altogether voluntary on the part of the negro; though neither was it the doing of his comrade. It was in consequence of a physical feeling—a cold shivering caused by the damp sea-fog—that Snowball had been disturbed from his sleep; and which, on his awaking, kept him for some minutes oscillating in a sort of ague, his ivories “dingling” against each other with a continuous rattle that resembled the clattering of some loose bolt in a piece of machinery out of repair.
It was some time before Snowball could recover his exact equilibrium; for, of all sorts of climate, that least endurable to the Coromantee negro is a cold one.
After repeated flopping his arms over his broad chest, and striking crosswise, until the tips of his fingers almost met upon the spinal column of his back, Snowball succeeded in resuscitating the circulation; and then, perceiving it was full time to take his turn at the helm, he proposed relieving the sailor.
This proposal was agreed to; Ben, before putting himself in a position for repose, giving Snowball the necessary directions as to the course in which the Catamaran was to be kept.
In five minutes after, the sailor was asleep; and the sea-cook was the only one of the Catamarans who was conscious that the craft that carried them was only a frail structure drifting in mid-ocean hundreds of miles from land.
Little William was, perhaps, dreaming of his English, and Lilly Lalee of her African, home; while the sailor, in all probability, was fancying himself safely “stowed” in the forecastle of a British frigate, with all sail rightly set, and a couple of hundred jolly Jacks like himself stretched out in their “bunks” or swinging in their hammocks around him.
During the first hour of his watch, Snowball did not embarrass his brain with any other idea than simply to follow the instructions of the sailor, and keep the Catamaran before the wind.
There had been something said about keeping a look-out, in the hope of espying a sail; but in the dense fog that surrounded them there would be no chance of seeing the biggest ship,—even should one be passing at an ordinary cable’s length from the Catamaran.
Snowball, therefore, did not trouble himself to scan the sea on either side of their course; but for all that he kept the look-out enjoined on him by the sailor,—that is, he kept it with his ears!
Though a ship might not be seen, the voices of her crew or other sounds occurring aboard might be heard; for in this way the presence of a vessel is often proclaimed in a very dark night or when the sea is obscured by a fog.
Oftener, however, at such times, two ships will approach and recede from one another, without either having been conscious of the proximity of the other,—meeting in mid-ocean and gliding silently past, like two giant spectres,—each bent on its own noiseless errand.
Daybreak arrived without the black pilot having heard any sound, beyond that of the breeze rustling against the sail of the Catamaran or the hollow “sough” of the water as it surged against the empty casks lashed along their sides.
As the day broke, however, and the upper edge of the sun’s disk became visible above the horizon,—the fog under the influence of his rays growing gradually but sensibly thinner,—a sight became disclosed to the eyes of Snowball that caused the blood to course with lightning quickness through his veins; while his heart, beating delightfully within his capacious chest, bounded far above the region of his diaphragm.
At the same instant he sprang to his feet, dropped the steering-oar, as if it had been a bar of red-hot iron; and, striding forward to the starboard bow of the Catamaran stood gazing outward upon the ocean!
What could have caused this sudden commotion in both the mind and body of the Coromantee? What spectacle could have thus startled him?
It was the sight of land!