Part 4 (1/2)
”Do you think it means to blow, Dan?” I asked, as I offered him my tobacco-pouch: and Mary said earnestly--
”Oh, Daniel, I do wish a gale would come on!”
”Ay, Miss, and so do many of us; but we can't be making wind no more'n we can make wittals--and excusing me, Miss, it ain't Daniel, not meaning no disrespect to the other gent, whose papers were all right, I don't doubt, but my mother warn't easy in larning, and maybe didn't know of him--it's Dan, Miss, free-and-easy like, but nat'ral.”
”Well, Dan, do you think it will blow? Can't you promise it will blow?”
”Lor, Miss, I'd promise ye anything; but what is nater is nater, and there's an end on it--not as I don't say there won't be a hatful o'
wind afore night--why should I? but as for promisin' of it, why I'd give ye a hurricane willing--or two.”
We went down to breakfast, the red of sea strength on our cheeks; and in the cosy saloon we made short work of the coffee and soles, the great heaps of toast, and the fresh fruit. I could not help some gloomy thoughts as I found myself on my own schooner again, asking how long she would be mine, and how I should suffer the loss of her when all my money was spent. These were cast off in the excitement of the chase, and came only in the moments of absolute calm, when all the men aboard fretted and fumed, and every other question was: ”Isn't it beginning to blow?”
The morning pa.s.sed in this way, a long morning, with the sea like a mirror, and the sun as a great circle of red fire in the haze. Hour after hour we walked from the fore-hatch to the tiller, from the tiller to the fore-hatch, varying the exercise with a full inspection of every craft that showed above the horizon. At eight bells we lay a few miles farther westward, the island still visible to the starboard, but less distinct. At four bells, when we went to lunch, the heat was terrible below, and the sun was terrible on deck; but yet there was not a breeze. At six bells some dark and dirty clouds rose up from the south, and twenty hands pointed to them. At ”one bell in the first dog” the clouds were thick, and the sun was hidden. Half-an-hour later there was a shrill whistling in the shrouds, and the rain began to patter on the deck, while the booms fretted, and we relieved her in part of her press of sail. When the squall struck us at last, the Channel was foaming with long lines of choppy seas; and the sky southward was dark as ink.
But there was only joy of it aboard; we stood gladly as the _Celsis_ heeled to it, and rising free as an unslipped hound, sent the spray flying in clouds, and dipped her decks to the foam which washed her.
During one hour, when we must have made eleven knots, the wind blew strong, and was fresh again after that; so that we set the foresail unreefed and let the great mainsail go not many minutes later. The swift motion was an ecstasy to all of us, an unbounded delight; and even the skipper softened as we stood well out to sea, and looked on a great continent of clouds underlit with the spreading glow of the sunset, their rain setting up the mighty arched bow whose colours stood out with a rich light over the wide expanse of the east. Nor did the breeze fall, but stiffened towards night, so that in the first bell, when we came up from dinner, the _Celsis_ was straining and foaming as she bent under her pressure of canvas, and it needed a sailor's foot to tread her decks. But of this no one thought, for we had hardly come above when we heard Dan hailing--
”Yacht on the port-bow.”
”What name?” came from twenty throats.
”_La France_,” said Dan, and the words had scarce left his lips when the skipper roared the order--
”Stand by to go about!”
For some minutes the words ”'bout s.h.i.+p” were not spoken. The schooner held her course, and rapidly drew up with the yacht we had set out to seek. From the first there was no doubt about her name, which she displayed in great letters of gold above her figure-head. Dan had read them as he sighted her; and we in turn felt a thrill of delight as we proved his keen vision, watching the big cutter, for such she was, heading, not for Plymouth, but for the nearer coast. But this was not the only strange thing about her course, for when she had made some few hundred yards towards the coast, she jibbed round of a sudden, with an appalling wrench at the horse; and there being, as it appeared, no hand either at the peak halyards or the throat halyards, the mainsail presently showed a great rent near the luff, while the foresail had torn free from the bolt-ropes of the stay, and was presenting a sorry spectacle as the yacht went about, and away towards France again.
Such a display of seamans.h.i.+p astounded our men.
”Close haul, you lubbers; close haul!” roared Dan, in the vain delusion that his voice would be heard a quarter of a mile away. ”Keep down yer 'elm and close haul--wash me in rum if he ain't comin' up again, and there she goes right into it. Shake up, you gibbering fools; luff her a bit and make fast. Did ye ever see anythin' like it this side of a Margit steamer?”
The skipper said nothing, but as the yacht luffed right up into the wind again, he groaned as a man who is hurt. Piping Jack looked sorrowful too, and said, almost with tears in his eyes--
”Axin' yer pardon, sir, but hev you got a pair of eyes in your head which can make out anything unusual aboard there?”
”They're a queer lot, if that's what you mean, and they haven't got enough seamans.h.i.+p amongst them to run a was.h.i.+ng tub. Is there anything else you make out?”
”A good deal, sir; and look you, there ain't a living soul on her deck, or may I never see sh.o.r.e again.”
”By all that's curious, you're right. There isn't a man showing!”
”'Bout s.h.i.+p,” roared the skipper, and every man ran to his post, while I touched Captain York on the shoulder and pointed to the seemingly deserted and errant yacht.
But the skipper's eyes were not those of a ground-gazer; he needed no aid from me; what others had seen, he had seen, and he nodded an affirmative to my unspoken question.
”What do you think it means?” I asked, as we came up into the wind, and the men were belaying after close hauling for the beat; ”are they hiding from us, or is she deserted?”
But the only answer I got was the one word ”Rum,” uttered with a jerky emphasis, and taken up by Dan, who said--