Chapter VIII: Part XI (2)

It had got to a clear, dry, north-easterly gale, that shook our canvass every time she lifted, singing through the ropes, and bitter cold. Long and heavy as the roll of the sea was, the sky was as keen and clear as glass all round about and aloft, save the mist kicked up by the spray off a wave here and there. If a rag of white cloud appeared, it was blown away, and you saw the black wrinkled side of one wave at a time, a mile wide, you'd have said, freckled all over with spots of foam, and its ridge heaving against the eye of the blast. The waves had begun to break shorter. The schooner, buoyant as she was, and sharp as a dolphin, pitched and rolled at times like mad, and the men forward were standing by to let go the fore-halliards, throat and peak, to ease her a little: when Jones pointed out the bank of gray cloud ahead of us, scarce to be seen through the troughs of the water, except when she lifted well upon a swell of sea. The sun going down in a wild red glare to leeward of us, threw a terrible glitter across the huge slant of one single wave that rose stretching away far and wide from her very bow, then brought out the sulky wrinkled blue in it; the hissing green crests curled over to the very sunset, as it were, while we sunk slowly into the long dark lulling trough, and saw the broken shaft of a rainbow stand glimmering for a moment or two into a black hollow right ahead, when the gale drove it back upon us like an arrow, as the schooner urged through the breast of the next wave. I looked from Snelling to the new mate, who still held on by a belaying-pin and watched the clouds, giving me back a glance that showed he thought the matter more serious than ordinary. "The sooner we strip her to the storm-staysails," said I quickly, as we fell into the trough again, "the better, I think. If it blows harder, we must lie-to with her at once." My eye was anxiously fixed on Jones, for large as the schooner was, between two and three hundred tons, yet no craft in the world is so nice to bring to the wind in a gale, with a heavy sea running. Scudding before it might have done for the frigate, with her full bows, and spars high enough to keep her main-topsail full in spite of the troughs; but even that would have taken us out of our course after the Indiaman. Besides that, to tell the truth, I didn't sufficiently understand fore-and-aft rigged craft in all weathers yet, to be quite sure of what I did at a pinch like the present. "Yes, yes, sir," answered he; "but if you'll take an older man's advice, before that you'll wear her round on the other tack to it. We've the worst to come, or else I'm mistaken, sir."--"You're accustomed to schooners?" asked I firmly, and gazing him in the face. I saw his lips open in the sweep of the wind through our after-rigging, and he made a sign with his hand, while a gnawing sort of spasm, as it were, shot through the muscles of his jaw, and for a moment he gave me a devilishly fierce, keen glance, almost a glare, from under his strong straight eyebrows--then turned away. "Take the trumpet then, Mr Jones," said I, singing out into his ear; "I'll leave her to you, sir. Mr Snelling, let's see the hatches all fast!" And we scrambled along by the belaying-pins.

"Are you all ready fore and aft?" came Jones's voice like thunder in the next dip she made, and he leapt up bareheaded on the breech of one of the small carronades aft, holding on with one hand by the weather main-shrouds, and watching the run of the waves as they glimmered off our lee-beam into the dusk, for full five minutes. I had hold of a rope near him, and his eye was as steady as if he were picking out hills in a view. I had full confidence in the man; but I must say it was a nervous moment to me, when I saw him lift the trumpet to his mouth--and furiously as the wind shook the schooner, you heard his hoarse cry, "Put your helm up--slack off the mainsheet--brail up the mainsail--ease down the weather boom-guy--main-staysail sheet--" And the rest was lost in the wild shriek of the north-east gale. We were hard at it, however, staggering as we hauled and held on, even to the poor half-drowned, terrified Lascars, whom the midshipman had roused out of the caboose and long-boat, shoving the ropes into their leathery hands. But I knew little else till I saw the schooner had payed off before the wind, shearing with a hiss like red-hot iron right through the ridge, betwixt two tremendous combing waves. It swelled green over her larboard bulwark as she heeled over, and she gave a heavy dead lurch with it, as if she would let the next sea break aboard. "Now! now!" shouted Jones, at a pitch of voice like no earthly sound; "aft the mainsheet, for your lives!" He jumped to the wheel himself, at a single bound. We were in two floundering heaps, as we dragged at the mainboom aft, and the head-sheets on the forecastle, while she came trembling up in the long bight of the sea, and took the gale steadily before her other beam. It was blowing harder than ever; and the awful "scud" of the sea rolled her bodily away, as she met it with her weather-bow, washing white over the headrail, with spray from cathead to bowsprit; the gale heaving her down on the lee-beam, till she plunged to the brim on that side, at every forward pitch, so that all hands on deck had to keep crowded together aft. Still it was keen starlight overhead, the gale dry, though it was bitter cold, and the seas long and pretty regular. The schooner behaved wonderfully, being as tight as a bottle; and at the same time we were not only lying our course either for the Mozambique or Indian Ocean, but instead of running farther into the gale, as before, and getting more into the wild Cape latitudes, why, at present she tended to clear out of them. I accordingly agreed with Jones to hold on with everything as long as possible, in spite of the way she was sometimes flung off with the crest of a wave, as it were, making a clear dive with her nose under water through a white seething sea that seemed to swell round the whole horizon: the black bank of cloud off our weather-beam towered like icebergs against the cold green sky to south-east, the stars glittering and twinkling over it, with little hazy rings round them, after a fashion that one of us liked no more than the other.

About midnight, we had got everything off her to the two small storm-staysails, main and fore, the wind blowing great guns, and the half moon shining right over the long bank, as if the back of it were dead-white; while betwixt it and the washing glimmer of moonlight half-way, you'd have thought the black heave of the ridges vanished into a bulk of shadow ten times blacker, save for the heads of spray tossing dimly over in it here and there. All at once, in the very height of the gale, as the black floating clouds from the bank began to cross over the gray scud flying fast aloft, a blue flash of lightning shot zig-zag into the very comb of a wave ahead of us, then came the clap of thunder, loud enough to be heard above the wind, and in half a minute there was a sudden lull. You saw the fleecy rags of scud actually settling together under the dark vapour moving above them, and heard nothing but the vast washing welter of the billows rising and seething for miles round, as if the world were water, while the schooner rolled helplessly away, with her storm-staysails flapping, into the trough. The midshipman almost gasped as he looked to me--not from fear, but as much as to say, "What next?" Our strange mate stood against the fife-rail of the mainmast, apparently too intent on the sky and sea for speaking. For my own part, I let go of my belaying pin, and half tumbled to the wheel, almost knocking the sailor down in my haste to put the helm hard up--for I saw how the blast was to come, fairly before the beam, upon us. "Hard a-starboard with it!" shouted I; "haul down the main-staysail there--let her fall off as she rises!" The last words were never heard, for next moment there was another flash of lightning, this time a blaze all round into the troughs of the sea; I saw a body of mist coming down upon us from south-east, through which the gale struck her on the starboard beam, having suddenly shifted eight points or so. The heavy rolling swell from north-east was close aboard, and as soon as I knew what I was about, here she was leaning over to the full tremendous force of the storm, without power to surge ahead, though struggling to rise like a cart-horse down on his knees with a load uphill of him. 'Twas by instinct, as they say, I found myself scrambling along to her weather main-channels, where I managed to get out on the side, slippery as it was, and drenched with the blinding showers of spray. I had got my knife at work, cutting the lanyards of the shrouds to let the mainmast go, when I saw Snelling creep after me, like a fearless little fellow as he was, dirk in hand; although what was come of Jones I couldn't see, unless he had lost heart and skulked. All at once, to my great joy, the main-staysail blew inway to leeward out of the bolt-ropes, like a scrap of paper, the main-topmast crashed at the cap and went alongside, when the schooner righted to her keel, with a wild bolt forward through the whole width of an immense wave--one of the "third waves" it was, commonly the last and the hugest in a single roll of the sea of the Cape, before you sink into a long gliding valley, with a sort of a lull in it. The scene was so terrible at the moment, though we bore up for full half a minute to the fair steady stroke of the awful gale, nothing but a yeast of mist, scud, and darkness ahead, the spray torn off the ridge of the wave and flying with us, while the triple run of the heavy seas astern was in danger of sweeping her decks from over the poop--that I felt we must try lying-to with her at once. Indeed, Snelling and I hardly knew whether we were holding on or not, as we were half washed inboard and half crawled round the rigging; but Jones had already seized the exact point, when she sank in the hollow, to have the helm eased down to leeward. Meanwhile he had got the reefed foresail balanced and set, with the sheet hauled aft beforehand--a tackle hooked on to the clue, and bowsed amidships--everything else was off her; and with this sail she came slowly up close to the wind on the slant of the next wave, lying-to nearly head toward the force of the sea, as her helm was kept fast, two or three points to leeward. I never had seen a craft of the kind hove-to in a gale before, and a very nice matter it is, too. We drew breath, scarce able to credit our eyes, while the schooner rode apparently safe on a sea rolling mountain-high; rising and falling off from the breasts to the sides of the waves, so far as leeway went, and forging ahead a little at the same time through the fierce spray that showered out of the dark over her weather-bow.

Cape weather as bad I had seen before, but always in good-sized ships; and I owned to Snelling I would rather have handled any one of them, even with a lee-shore near, ten times over, than this schooner of ours in the present case. However, none of us were in any mood for speaking at the time, let alone the waste of breath it was. The best thing we had to do, after getting somewhat satisfied of her weathering it this way, was to have the grog served out to the men, swig off a stiff pannikin one's self, and make one's self as comfortable as possible with his pea-coat in the lee of something. The sight of the sea ridging up with a dim glimmer against the dark, kept your eye fixed to it: first you thought it would burst right aboard, crash down upon the decks; then she lifted with it, swelling broad under her, while the long steady sweep of the gale drove just over the bulwarks with a deep moan: for half a minute, perhaps, a shivering lull, when you heard the bulkheads and timbers creak and strain below from stem to stern, and the bilge-water yearning, as it were, to the water outside. Then, again, it was a howl and a shriek, a wide plunge of sea bore up her weather-bow, and the moment ere she came fairly to, one felt as if the schooner were going to pitch God knows where. Her whole bulwarks shook and shivered, the wind found out every chink in them, whistling round every different rope it split upon, while all the time, the loose wet dreary spars behind the long-boat kept slatting and clattering against each other in the lashings, like planks in a woodyard of a November night. This was the way we stuck till the morning watch showed it all in a drizzling, struggling sort of half light, blowing as hard as ever, the Cape seas rolling and heaving mountain-high, of a pale yesty hue, far and wide to the scud; the spray drifting from the crests, and washing over her bare forecastle, with now and then the white wings of a huge albatross to be seen aslant to windward, riding on the breast of a long wave down into the trough.

Well, the whole blessed day did this sort of thing continue, only varied by now and then a huger sea than ordinary lifting close aboard of us, and we being hove up to get a glimpse of the long glaring streak of horizon through the troughs of the waves: sometimes an unluckier splash than usual over the bow and through the forechains, that made us look sharp lest the canvass of the foresail should go, or the schooner broach end-on to the sea. Otherwise, all we had to do was to watch the binnacle, hold on with one hand to a rope, and with the other to our caps; or turn out and in with each other down the booby-hatch for a snatch of sleep, and a bit of biscuit and cold beef, with a glass of grog. Mr Webb, the harbour officer, was to be seen below in his berth all this time, lying as peaceable as a child--whether he was dead sick, or only confoundedly afraid, I didn't know; but I must say I felt for the poor fellow when I heard him ask Snelling, in a weak voice, if he would get somebody to stand off the bull's-eye in the deck over his berth, as it always made him think there was a new hurricane coming on. "D--n it, you low skulking hound!" said the reefer, who had wonderfully little pity in his make, "it can't be worse--what d'ye want light for, eh?" "Only to see the opposite wall," said Webb, meekly; "do, sir--oh now!" "Oh, you lubber ye!" said Snelling, "don't you know a bulkhead from a wall yet? If you'd come on deck to bear a hand like others, you wouldn't need light; and _I_ thought you might do for a mate aboard, too--pah, you scum!" "Mr Snelling," said I sharply, as he came through the cabin, "a worm will turn when it's trod upon, and so you may find yet, sir!" "Well, Mr Collins," said he, as confidentially as if I hadn't meant to give him a set down, "I don't like the fellow's eye. I'll look after him, sir!" Not to mention the young rogue's power of face, which was beyond brass, he had a way of seeing you in two places at once with that upward squint of his, as if his eyes were the points of a pair of compasses, that made the officers of the Hebe always send him to the masthead directly, for fear it should take the frown out of them. In fact, when Snelling's twinkling weather-eye lighted on one's neck, without the other, you almost felt it tickle you, and as usual I turned away with a "pshaw!"

On the second morning, the gale at last began to break, shifting southward; on which, as soon as the sea ran a little easier, I had the helm cautiously put up at a favourable moment, the reefed mainsail, fore-topmast-staysail, and square fore-topsail set as she got before the wind, and away the schooner went; rising on the wide deep-blue swells with a long roll in them, then shearing ahead through their breasts, wrinkled and seething pale-green, till she sank with the fall of the wave--the stump of her aftermast standing, and the fore one shortened by the to'gallant-mast. You may easily believe there was no one aboard more eager to get clear of this weather than myself; as in ordinary circumstances, with a craft like this, in two or three days more we might have been in a high enough latitude to begin looking out for the Indiaman. For my part, I can't deny that the wish for having Tom Westwood safe out of harm's way, and with me in the schooner, strong as it was, played second to the notion of seeing sweet Violet Hyde in any way again, if it was only the last time before she went out of reach altogether; for her getting amongst East India ways of doing, high-flying civilians and soldiers, shows, and sights, either in Calcutta or up-country, was equal to anything else, in my mind. Still, we had six or seven days longer of the heavy seas and hard gales, before north-easting enough could be made to take us beyond the Cape winter, just then coming on, and which the Seringapatam had very likely escaped by two or three days, so that she would have a considerable start of us.

By this time we were standing well up for the Mozambique Channel, which I had heard the Indiamen intended to take in company; a piece of information that made me the more anxious to overtake the Seringapatam, at latest, by the time they reached open water again, where, being the only ship from Bombay, she would no doubt part from her consorts. We had a cruiser that year, as I knew, in the Mozambique, where there were some rumours of pirates after the war, so that in case of her happening to speak the Seringapatam close, and having got any word of Westwood's affair, he ran a chance of being picked off. However, that wasn't by any means the thing that troubled me most: somehow or other, whenever the picture of Violet's face brought the Indiaman's decks clear into my mind, with all about her, I couldn't get rid of the notion that some ill-luck would come across that ship before she got into port. If any pirate craft were to dodge the whole bevy of Indiamen up the head of the channel, as was pretty sure to be the case, he would probably wait for some signs of separating, and be down upon a single one not long after she cleared the Leychelles islands, where a lonely enough stretch of the Indian Ocean spreads in. The more I entered upon the thought of it, the more unsufferable it got; especially one day in the mouth of the Mozambique, when it fell a dead calm with a heavy up-and-down swell, fit to roll the sticks out of her; the high blue land of Madagascar being in sight, sometimes to starboard, sometimes to port, then astern, and the clear horizon lying away north-west, dark with a breeze from round the coast. As the hot sun blazed out above us, and the blue water came plunge up over the rail, blazing and flashing, first one side dipped, then the other, I could fancy the passengers on the Indiaman's poop in a light breeze with a suspicious lateen-rigged sail creeping up on her quarter. I thought I saw Violet Hyde's eyes sparkle against the glare of light, and her lips parting to speak--till I actually stamped on the deck, my fists clenched, and I made three strides to the very taffrail of the schooner. All at once I met my second mate's eye coolly fixed on me, which brought me to my senses in a moment, the more so as there was something about this man Jones I couldn't make out, and I had made up my mind to keep a sharp eye on him; though the fact was, it annoyed me most to feel him seeing into _me_, as it were, without troubling himself. "We shall have the breeze before long, sir, round Cape Mary yonder," said he, stepping forward. "So I expect, myself, Mr Jones," said I, "though you evidently know the coast better than I do." With that I gave him a careless side-look, but to all appearance there was nothing particular in his, as he told me he had seen it two or three times before.

With the evening we were once more running sharp on a wind up channel; and when she did get her own way in a good breeze, the schooner's qualities came out. 'Twas a perfect luxury to look over the side and see the bubbles pass, her sharp bows sliding through it like a knife, she eating into the wind all the time in a way none but a fore-and-aft clipper could hope to do, with a glassy blue ripple sent back from her weather-bow as far as the forechains: then to wake of a morning and feel her bounding under you with a roll up to windward, while the water gushed through and through below the keel, and ran yearning and toppling away back along the outer timbers into her boiling wake, working with the moving rudder. And our man-o'-warsmen were quite delighted with the Young Hebe, as they still called her. Snelling was in his element while we were having the new spars sent up aloft--a set of longer sticks than before--till she had twice the air, as well as a knowing rake aft. Next thing was to get the long-brass nine-pounder amidships from under the boat, where the Frenchmen had kept it, besides which we found another in her hold; so that, added to six small carronades already on deck, we made a pretty show. Meanwhile, for my own part, I kept cracking on with every stitch of canvass that could be clapped upon the spars, including studding-sails. Jones himself didn't know better than I did by this time how to handle the craft, schooner though she was, in the way of making her use what weather we had to the best purpose. Variable as it proved, too, I was aware the Indiamen would have pretty much the same now as we had; so that, on going aloft with the glass, as I did every watch in the day, I soon began each time expecting one or other of them to heave in sight.

As for the five hands from Cape Town, they seemed to have fallen in cheerfully enough with our own; and as soon as the fine weather came, the gang of Lascars were set to duty like the rest. Snelling would have them even trained to work the guns; although, if it blew at all hard, not one could be got to go aloft except their old _serang_, and the _tindal_, his mate. What surprised me most was the harbour officer himself at last asking, as Mr Snelling told me, to be put in a watch; but as the midshipman said there was no doubt Webb had made a voyage or two before, somewhere or other, I agreed to it at once. "I'm not sure, sir," added the midshipman, with one of his doubtful double looks, "but the gentleman may have seen blue-water the first time at Government expense, and not in the service either--he don't look fore and aft enough, Mr Collins, harbour officer though he be; but never mind, sir, I'll see after him!"--"Pooh," said I, laughing; "if he does turn to, Mr Snelling, it shan't be in the watch _you_ have to do with! Hand him over to Mr Jones." By this time I had changed the mid into my own watch, and given Jones charge of the other--so to him the harbour officer went.

The main character aboard of us, to me at any rate, was this Jones himself. The fact was, at first I had my doubts of him altogether, partly owing to the queer way we got hold of him, partly on account of his getting the upper hand so much through chance, in the tremendous weather we had at the outset, till I wasn't sure but it might come into the fellow's head of itself, to be upon some drift or other that might cost me trouble, as things stood. However, I no sooner felt where I was, and got the craft under my own spoke, than I came to set him down for nothing but one of those strange hands you fall in with at sea sometimes, always sailing with a "purser's name," a regular wonder of a shipmate, and serving to quote every voyage after, by way of a clincher on all hard points, not to say an oracle one can't get beyond, and can't flow sky-high enough. To tell the truth, though, Jones was as thorough a seaman as ever I met with--never at a loss, never wanting on any hand; whether it was the little niceties we stood in need of for setting the schooner's rigging all right again, which none but a blue-water long-voyage sailor can touch, or, what comes to be still better in tropical latitudes, a cool head and a quick hold, with full experience for all sorts of weather, 'twas much the same to him. He was all over like iron, too, never seeming to stand in need of sleep, and seeing like a hawk. At any hour I came on deck in his watch, there was Jones, all awake and ready, till hearing him walk the planks over my head of a fine night made me at times keep my eyes open, listening to it and the wash of the water together. I fancied there was something restless in it, like the sea, with now and then an uneven sort of a start; and at last it would come to full stop, that gave me the notion of how he was standing quiet in the same spot; whether he was looking aloft, or thinking, or leaning over the side, or what he was going to do, troubled me wonderfully. The only want in his seamanship I noticed, he evidently wasn't used to handle a large ship; but craft of some kind I was pretty sure he had commanded in the course of his life. As for taking observations, he could do it better than I could then; while the knowledge he had on different heads, that came out by chance, made you think more of a Cambridge graduate than a common sailor, such as he had shipped for with us. The strangest part of all about him, though, was what I couldn't well name, not to this day: 'twas more grained in his manner, and the ring of his voice at particular moments, as well as his walk, though these were the smart seaman's no less; but one couldn't help thinking of a man that had known the world ashore some time or other, in a different enough station from now--ay, and in a way to bring out softer lines in his face than reefing topsails or seeing the main-tack ridden down would do. The nearest I could come to calling it, far apart as the two men stood, was to fancy he reminded me of Lord Frederick Bury himself; especially when he looked all of a sudden to the horizon in that wide, vacant kind of fashion, as if he expected it farther off than it was: only Jones's face was twice the age, like a man's that had had double the passions in it at the outset, and given them full swing since then; with a sleeping devil in his eye yet, besides, as I thought, which only wanted somewhat to rouse it. Only for that, I had a sort of leaning to Jones myself; but, as it was, I caught myself wishing, over and over, for something to make us fall regularly foul of each other, and get rid of this confounded doubtful state. One hitch of a word to take hold of, and, by Jove! I felt all the blood in my body would boil out in me to find how we stood, and show it; but nothing of the kind did Jones let pass--and as close as the sea itself he was in regard to his past life. As for the men from the frigate, at least, they seemingly looked on him with no great fondness, and a good deal of respect, in spite of themselves, for his seamanship; whereas, if he had been left in the forepeak in place of the cabin, I've no doubt in a short time it would have been no man but Jones. You light now and then upon a man afloat, indeed, that his shipmates hold off from, as healthy dogs do from a mad one; and you saw they had some sort of an inkling of the gloomy close nature Jones had in him, by the way they obeyed his orders. Webb's three Cape Dutchmen seemed to have a notion he was some being with mysterious powers, while the Lascars ran crouching at his very word--some of them being, as I found, Malays, and the rest Mussulmen from Chittagong; but Jones could send them about in their own language, Dutchmen and all--a part of the matter which did not tend to keep me less careful over him. Still I observed, since his coming aboard, that Jones never once touched liquor, which had plainly enough been his ruin ashore; whether on account of meaning to pull up once for all and mend, or only to have a wilder bout at next port, or else to keep himself steady for aught that might turn up, I couldn't settle in my own mind. Though deucedly doubtful of its being the first, the very idea of it made one feel for the man; and, in case of his doing well, I had no small hopes of something in the upshot to save a real sailor like him from going to the devil altogether, as he seemed doing.

Now, after our getting clear of the rough Cape weather, and the dead-lights being taken out of the stern-windows, I had given a look, for the first time, into the schooner's after-cabins, which were pretty much as the people she belonged to before had left them, except for the rough work the gale had played. There were two of them, one opening into the other; and I must say it was a melancholy sight to meet the bright sunlight streaming into them from off the water astern, with all the little matters either just as if the owners were still inside, or else tumbled about at sixes and sevens. One drawer, in particular, had come out of a table, scattering what was in it on the deck: there was a half open letter in a woman's hand, all French, and showing a lock of hair, with a broken diamond cross of the French Legion of Honour, besides a sort of paper-book full of writing, and two printed ones bound in morocco. I picked up the letter and the cross, put them in again, and shoved the drawer back to its place, though I brought the books away with me to have a glance over. What struck me most, though, was a plaster figure of the French emperor himself, standing fastened on a shelf, with one hand in the breast of his great coat, and looking calmly out of the white sightless eyes; while right opposite hung a sort of curtain which you'd have thought they were fixed upon. When I hauled it aside, I started--there, on a shelf to match the other, was a beautiful smiling child's head to the shoulders, of pure white marble, as if it leant off the bulkhead like a cherub out of the clouds. Spite of all, however, the touch of likeness it had to the head I got such a glimpse of at Longwood, even when the hot sunlight showed it in my spy-glass so pale and terrible, was sufficient to tell me what _this_ was,--Napoleon's own little son, in fact, who was made king of Rome, as I remembered hearing at the time. The thought of the schooner's strange French captain, and his desperate scheme, came back on me so strong, joined to what I saw he had an eye to in fitting out his cabins, that, for my own part, I hadn't the heart to use them myself, and at first sight ordered the dead-lights to be shipped again, and the door locked.

'Twas a good many days after this, of course, and we had made a pretty fast run up the Mozambique, in spite of the sharp navigation required, sighting nothing larger than the native and Arab craft to be seen thereabouts; we were beginning to clear out from amongst the clusters of islands and shoals at the channel head, when two large sail were made in open water to nor'-eastward. Next morning by daybreak we were to windward of the weathermost,--a fine large Indiaman she was, crowding a perfect tower of canvass. Shortly after, however, the schooner was within hail, slipping easily down upon her quarter, which seemed to give them a little uneasiness, plenty of troops as she seemed to have on board, and looming like a frigate. After some showing of keeping on, and apparently putting faith in the man-o'-war pennant I hoisted, she hove into the wind, when we found she was the Company's ship Warringford, and the other the something Castle, I forget which, both for Calcutta. The next thing, as soon as they found we were tender to his Majesty's frigate Hebe, was to ask after the Seringapatam; on which I was told she was three or four days sail ahead with the Mandarin, bound to China, neither of them having put in at Johanna Island to refresh. I was just ready to put our helm up again and bid good-bye, when the tiffin gong could be heard sounding on the Indiaman's quarterdeck, and the old white-haired captain politely asked me if I wouldn't come aboard with one or two of my officers to lunch. Mr Snelling gave me a wistful glance--there were a dozen pretty faces admiring our schooner out of the long white awnings: but even if the notion of bringing up Snelling himself as my first officer hadn't been too much for me, not to speak of either Jones or Webb, why the very thoughts that everything I saw recalled to me, made me the more eager to get in sight of the Seringapatam. "Thank you, sir," answered I. "No--I must be off after the Bombay ship."--"Ah," hailed the old captain, "some of your Admiral's post-bags, I suppose. Well, keep as much northing as you can, sir, and I daresay you'll find her parted company. She's got a jury fore topmast up, for one she lost a week ago; so you can't mistake her for the Mandarin, with a good glass."--"Have you noticed any suspicious craft lately, sir?" asked I. "Why, to tell you the truth, lieutenant," sang out he, looking down off the high bulwarks at our long nine-pounders and the knot of Lascars, "none more so than we thought _you_, at first, sir!" The cadets on the poop roared with laughter, and an old lady with two daughters seemed to eye Snelling doubtfully through an opera-glass, as the reefer ogled both of them at once. "By the bye," sang out the captain of the Indiaman to me again, "I fancy the passengers in that ship must have got somehow uncomfortable--one of our Bengal grandees aboard of her wanted a berth to Calcutta with us, 'tother day in the Mozambique; but we're too full already!"--"Indeed, sir?" said I; but the schooner's mainboom was jibbing over, and with two or three more hails, wishing them a good voyage, and so on, away we slipped past their weather-bow. The Warringford got under weigh at her leisure, and in an hour or two her topsails were down to leeward of us. On I cracked with square and studding-sails to the quartering breeze, till the schooner's light hull jumped to it, and aloft she was all hung out of a side, like a dairyman's daughter carrying milk; with the pace she went at I could almost say to an hour when we should overhaul the chase.

Still, after two or three days of the trade-wind, well out in the Indian Ocean, and not a spot to be seen, we had got so far up the Line as to make me sure we had overrun her. Accordingly the schooner was hauled sharp on a wind to cruise slowly down across what must be the Indiaman's track, judging as we could to a nicety, with a knowledge of the weather we had had. For my part I was so certain of sighting her soon, that I ordered the after-cabins to be set to rights, seeing a notion had taken hold of me of actually offering them to Sir Charles Hyde for the voyage to Calcutta--Fancy the thought! 'Twas too good to be likely; but Violet herself actually being in that little after-cabin and sleeping in it--the lively schooner heading away alone for India, and they and Westwood the sole passengers aboard--why, the idea of it was fit to drive me crazy with impatience.

Well, one fine night, after being on deck all day, and the whole night before, almost, I had turned in to my cot to sleep. From where I lay I could see the moonshine off the water through the stern-light in that after-cabin, by the half-open door. I felt the schooner going easily through the water, with a rise and fall from the heave of the long Line-swell; so close my eyes I couldn't, especially as the midshipman could be heard snoring on the other side like the very deuce. Accordingly I turned out into the after-cabin, and got hold of one of the Frenchman's volumes to read, when, lo and behold, I found it was neither more nor less than Greek, all I knew being the sight of it. Next I commenced overhauling the bundle of handwriting, which I took at first for a French log of the schooner's voyage, and sat down on the locker to have a spell at it. So much as I could make out, in spite of the queer outlandish turn the letters had, and the quirks of the unnatural sort of language, it was curious enough--a regular story, in fact, about his own life, the war, and Buonaparte himself. At another time I'd have given a good deal to go through with it at odd hours--and a strange affair I found it was some time afterwards; but meanwhile I had only seen at the beginning that his name was _Le Compte Victor l'Allemand, Capitaine de la Marine Française_, and made out at the end how there was some scheme of his beyond what I knew before, to be carried out in India,--when it struck me there was no one on the quarterdeck above. I listened for a minute through the stern-window, and thought I heard some one speaking over the schooner's lee-quarter, as she surged along; so slipping on a jacket and cap, I went on deck at once.

It was middle watch at the time; but as soon as I came up I saw all was quiet--Webb near the gangway talking to the old Lascar serang, and breaking the English wonderfully betwixt them; while the Lascars of the watch were sitting like tailors in a ring on the forecastle planks, each waiting for his turn of one cocoa-nut hookah, that kept hubble-bubbling away gravely under the smoker's nose, as he took a long suck at it, while the red cinder in the bowl lighted up his leathery Hindoo face and mustache like a firefly in the root of a banian, till he handed it, without even a wipe, to his neighbour. These fellows had begun to get much livelier as we made the tropics; and this same serang of theirs had put out his horns once or twice to Snelling lately, though he drew them in again the moment he saw me--a sulky old knotty-faced, yellow-eyed devil I thought him at any rate, while his dish-cloth of a turban, his long blue gown and red trousers, reminded you at sea in a gale of a dancing dervish. The day we spoke the Indiaman, in fact, I noticed there was something in the wind for a minute or two with him and his gang, which put it in my head at first to offer them to the captain for a couple of good English hands; and as I passed him and Webb this time, the serang stopped his talk, and sidled off.

However, a beautiful night it was, as ever eye looked upon even in the blue Indian Ocean: the heavens cloudless, the full round moon shining high off our weather-beam again, the stars drawn up into her bright light, as it were, trembling through the films of it like dew-drops in gossamer of a summer morning: you saw the sea meet the sky on every hand, without a speck on the clear line of horizon, through the squares of our ratlins and betwixt the schooner's two long fore-and-aft booms. A pretty strongish breeze we had, too, blowing from east to west with a sweep through the emptiness aloft, and a wrinkling ripple over the long gentle swells, as deep in the hue as if fresh dye came from the bottom, and crisping into a small sparkle of foam wherever they caught it full. Something pleasant, one couldn't say what, was in the air; and every sheet being hauled taut to hold wind, the slant gush of it before her beam drove her slipping ahead toward the quarter it came from, with a dip down and a saucy lift of her jibs again, as if she were half balanced amidships, but little noise about it. I took a squint aloft and an overhaul all round, and nothing was to be seen. The size of the sky through the moonlight looked awful, as it were, and the strength of the breeze seemed to send a heavenly blue deep into the western quarter, till you saw a star in it. The night was so lovely, in fact, it somehow made one think of one's mother, and old times, when you used to say your prayers. Still I couldn't see the mate of the watch on the weather quarterdeck, which surprised the more in Jones's case, since he was always ready for me when I came up; and, to tell the truth, I shouldn't have been sorry to catch him napping for once, only to show he was like men in common. I walked aft by the weather side of the large mainsail, accordingly, till I saw him leaning with his head over the lee-bulwark, and heard him again, as I thought, apparently speaking to some one down the schooner's side; upon which I stepped across. Jones's back was to me as I looked over too; but owing to what he was busy with, I suppose, and the wash of the water, which was louder there than inboard, while you heard the plash from her bows every time she forged, he evidently didn't hear me. You may fancy my wonder to find he was reading loud out to himself from the other of the Frenchman's volumes, which I had no doubt left in the dining-cabin--the book open in both hands--he giving it forth in long staves, with a break between--and regular Greek it was, too: you'd have thought he timed them to the plash alongside; and I must say, as every string of long-tailed words flowed together like one, in Jones's deep voice, and the swell rose once or twice with its foam-bells near his very hands, I almost fancied I made a meaning of them--each like a wave, as it were, sweeping to a crest, and breaking. The gusto the man showed in it you can't conceive; and, what was more, I had no doubt he understood the sense of it, for all of a sudden, after twenty staves or so of the kind, he stopped.[8] "There!" said he, "there, old Homer--women, wine, and adventure--what could the devil ask more, blind old prater, with a sound in you like the sea? Ay, wash, wash, wash away, lying old blue-water, you cant wash _it_ out--and wine--no, not the strongest rum in Cape Town--can wash _you_ out!" With that Jones laid his head on his arms, with the book still in one hand, muttering to himself, and I listened in spite of me. "Still it rouses the old times in me!" said he. "Here comes this book across me, too. Ay, ay, and the Rector fancied, sitting teaching me Greek out of old wild Homer all week day--and--and his girl slipping out and in--'twould do to don the cassock of a Sunday and preach out of the pulpit against the world, the devil, and the flesh--then warn me against the sea--ha!" The laugh that came from him at that moment was more like a dog than a human being; but on he went muttering "Women, wine, and adventure, said ye, old Greek, and a goddess too; still he _was_ a good old man the Rector--no guile nor evil in him, with his books in the cases yonder, and the church-spire seen through the window over the garden, and his wife with--ah, the less of that. 'Twas in me, though, and all the blood--and in _her_ dark eyes, too, Mary, though she was! Damnation!" he broke out again, after a bit, as if he'd been arguing it with something under the side, "I didn't take her the first time I came home--nor the second--but--but--ay, I came _back_! Oh that parting-stile, in sight of the sea--and that packet-ship--but oh God! that night, that night with the schooner forging ahead through the blue--blue--" And he stopped with a groan that shook him as he leant over. "Hellish, hellish by God!" he said, suddenly standing upright and looking straight aloft, with his bare head and face to the wide empty sky, and the moonlight tipping the hair on his forehead, from over the high shadow on the lee-side of the mainsail, where it glistened along the gaff. "She was pure to the last!" I heard him say, though I had walked to the other side of the boom; "ay, though I rot to perdition for it!--Down, old fiend!" as he lifted his one hand with the book, and drove it alongside, seemingly watching it settle away astern.

[8] Looking into Homer's _Iliad_ here for a passage to correspond
with the account given by the naval man, one is somewhat at a loss;
but at the end of the second book of the _Odyssey_ there occur lines
which might not improbably have been those recited. They are such
as might well, in the original, excite longings after sea-life, and
revive feelings of the kind most natural to the seafaring character,
apparently known to Captain Collins only as "Jones." Will the
readers of Maga accept, illustratively, of a rough translation?--

Then to Telemachus glided on board divinest Athenè,
Where on the poop she sat, and near her Telemachus rested.
Then were the moorings loosed by the mariners coming aboard her,
Joyous coming on board, and seated apart on the benches.
A fair westerly breeze by the blue-eyed goddess was wafted,
Cheerfully rippling along, and over the deep-coloured ocean.
Now to his shipmates shouted Telemachus, while to the oar-blades
Leapt the impatient surge, till each at his order obeying,
Stepped they the pine-mast then in the mast-hole ready amidships,
Firmly staying it both ways down; and next by the well-twisted
hide-thongs, Snowily spreading abroad, the sails drew fluttering
downward. And in the sail-breast blew the bellying wind with a
murmur, The purple wave hissed from the prow of the bark in its
motion; Into the riotous wave she plunged, pursuing her voyage.
But when their oars they drew back to the galley securely,-- The
swift, dark-sided bark, as she full on her journey exulted--
Then to her foaming beak they brought the o'er-bubbling goblet
Of red-hued wine, and poured out on her head a libation To the
immortal gods, that dwell in the sky and in ocean, But to the
blue-eyed daughter of Jupiter mostly, Athené. All night then
they sailed, till the morning rose on their voyage.

Now I had heard nothing from Jones that I couldn't have fancied before, and there was even a humour to my mind in the notion of clapping it all on old Homer, if Homer it was, and heaving him overboard with such a confoundedly complimentary burial-service. But some of the words that dropped from him shot through one's veins like icicles: and now there was something fearful in the sight of him standing straight again, with a look right into the heavens, as if he'd have searched them up and up--in that lovely night too, spread far and wide--the very rays of the moonlight sparkled down the weather side of the sail I was on, trembling on the leech-ropes and brails as they swayed, and into the hollows they made in the belly of the taut canvass: the long shining spot of it wavered and settled on the same two planks of the quarterdeck, beyond the shadow of the bulwark from the moon's eye, fast as the schooner moved through the water, and it was like a hand laid upon her, with the air and wind stretching between. Of a sudden I saw Jones wheel slowly round where he stood, like a man turned about by main strength, with his eyes fixed aloft, and his one arm raising from the shoulder till his forefinger pointed to something, as I thought, about the fore-to'gallant sail. His face was like ashes, his eye glaring, and I sprang across to him under the main-boom. "See!" said he, never turning his head, and the words hissed betwixt his teeth, "look at that!"

"For heaven's sake, _what_, Mr Jones?" said I. "_Her--her_," was his answer, "coming against the wind--dead fore-and-aft in the shade of the sails!" On the lee-sides of them the high boom-sails made a sort of a thin shadow against the moonshine off the other beam, which came glimpsing through between them out of a world of air to the south-east, with a double of it flickering alongside on the water as it heaved past to leeward; and whether it was fancy, or whether it was but the reflection aloft from below, I thought, as I followed Jones's finger, I saw something like the shape of a woman's dress floating close in with the bonnet of the foretopmast-staysail, from the dusk it made to the breast of the fore-topsail, and even across the gush of white light under the yard--long and straight, as it were, like a thing lifted dripping out of water, and going, as he said, right against the schooner's course. "Now in the foresail!" whispered Jones, his eye moving as on a pivot, and a thrill ran through me at the notion, for I made out one single moment what I thought a face against the sky at the gaff-end, white as death, shooting aft toward the mainsail,--though next instant I saw it was but a block silvered by the moon as the schooner lifted. "Now the mainsail!" said he huskily, "and now--now, by the heavens--rising--rising to the gaff-topsail--away! Oh Christ! _Mary!_"