The Water-Witch, James Fenimore Cooper [good ebook reader TXT] 📗

When the wind from the land struck the Coquette, the streak of light, which announced the appearance of the sun, had been visible several minutes. As the broad sheets of vapor, that had veiled the heavens during the prevalence of the south-easterly breeze, were rolled up into dense masses of clouds, like some immense curtain that is withdrawn from before its scene, the water, no less than the sky, became instantly visible, in every quarter. It is scarcely necessary to say, how eagerly the gaze of our young seaman ran over the horizon, in order to observe the objects which might come within its range. At first disappointment was plainly painted in his countenance, and then succeeded the animated eye and flushed cheek of success.

"I had thought her gone!" he said to his immediate subordinate in authority. "But here she is, to leeward, just within the edge of that driving mist, and as dead under our lee as a kind fortune could place her. Keep the ship away, Sir, and cover her with canvas, from her trucks down. Call the people from their hammocks, and show yon insolent what Her Majesty's sloop can do, at need!"

This command was the commencement of a general and hasty movement, in which every seaman in the ship exerted his powers to the utmost. All hands were no sooner called, than the depths of the vessel gave up their tenants, who, joining their force to that of the watch on deck, quickly covered the spars of the Coquette with a snow-white cloud. Not content to catch the breeze on such surfaces as the ordinary yards could distend, long booms were thrust out over the water, and sail was set beyond sail, until the bending masts would bear no more. The low hull, which supported this towering and complicated mass of ropes, spars, and sails, yielded to the powerful impulse, and the fabric, which, in addition to its crowd of human beings, sustained so heavy a load of artillery, with all its burthen of stores and ammunition, began to divide the waves, with the steady and imposing force of a vast momentum. The seas curled and broke against her sides, like water washing the rocks, the steady ship feeling, as yet, no impression from their feeble efforts. As the wind increased, however, and the vessel went further from the land, the surface of the ocean gradually grew more agitated, until the highlands, which lay over the villa of the Lust in Rust, finally sunk into the sea; when the top-gallant-royals of the ship were seen describing wide segments of circles against the heavens, and her dark sides occasionally rose, from a long and deep roll, glittering with the element that sustained her.

When Ludlow first descried the object which he believed to be the chase, it seemed a motionless speck on the margin of the sea. It had now grown into all the magnitude and symmetry of the well-known brigantine. Her slight and attenuated spars were plainly to be seen, rolling, easily but wide, with the constant movement of the hull, and with no sail spread, but that which was necessary to keep the vessel in command on the billows. But when the Coquette was just within the range of a cannon, the canvas began to unfold; and it was soon apparent that the "Skimmer of the Seas" was preparing for flight.

The first manœuvre of the Water-witch was an attempt to gain the wind of her pursuer. A short experiment appeared to satisfy those who governed the brigantine that the effort was vain, while the wind was so fresh and the water so rough. She wore, and crowded sail on the opposite tack, in order to try her speed with the cruiser; nor was it until the result sufficiently showed the danger of permitting the other to get any nigher, that she finally put her helm aweather, and ran off, like a sea-fowl resting on its wing, with the wind over her taffrail.

The two vessels now presented the spectacle of a stern chase. The brigantine also opened the folds of all her sails, and there arose a pyramid of canvas, over the nearly imperceptible hull, that resembled a fantastic cloud driving above the sea, with a velocity that seemed to rival the passage of the vapor that floated in the upper air. As equal skill directed the movements of the two vessels, and the same breeze pressed upon their sails, it was long before there was any perceptible difference in their progress. Hour passed after hour, and were it not for the sheets of white foam that were dashed from the bows of the Coquette, and the manner in which she even out stripped the caps of the combing waves, her commander might have fancied his vessel ever in the same spot. While the ocean presented, on every side, the same monotonous and rolling picture, there lay the chase, seemingly neither a foot nearer, nor a foot farther, than when the trial of speed began. A dark line would rise on the crest of a wave, and then, sinking again, leave, nothing visible, but the yielding and waving cloud of canvas, that danced along the sea.

"I had hoped for better things of the ship, Master Trysail!" said Ludlow, who had long been seated on a night-head, attentively watching the progress of the chase. "We are buried to the bob-stays; and yet, there yon fellow lies, nothing plainer than when he first showed his studding-sails!"

"And there he will lie, Captain Ludlow, while the light lasts. I have chased the rover in the narrow seas, till the cliffs of England melted away like the cap of a wave; and we had raised the sand-banks of Holland high as the sprit-sail-yard, and yet what good came of it? The rogue played with us, as your portsman trifles with the entangled trout; and when we thought we had him, he would shoot without the range of our guns, with as little exertion as a ship slides into the water, after the spur shoars are knocked from under her bows."

"Ay, but the Druid had a little of the rust of antiquity about her. The Coquette has never got a chase under her lee, that she did not speak."

"I disparage no ship, Sir, for character is character, and none should speak lightly of their fellow-creatures, and, least of all, of any thing which follows the sea. I allow the Coquette to be a lively boat on a wind, and a real scudder going large; but one should know the wright that fashioned yonder brigantine, before he ventures to say that any vessel in Her Majesty's fleet can hold way with her, when she is driven hard."

"These opinions, Trysail, are fitter for the tales of a top, than for the mouth of one who walks the quarter-deck."

"I should have lived to little purpose, Captain Ludlow, not to know that what was philosophy in my young days, is not philosophy now. They say the world is round, which is my own opinion—first, because the glorious Sir Francis Drake, and divers other Englishmen, have gone in, as it were, at one end, and out at the other; no less than several seamen of other nations, to say nothing of one Magellan, who pretends to have been the first man to make the passage, which I take to be neither more nor less than a Portuguee lie, it being altogether unreasonable to suppose that a Portuguee should do what an Englishman had not yet thought of doing;—secondly, if the world were not round, or some such shape, why should we see the small sails of a ship before her courses, or why should her truck heave up into the horizon before the hull? They say, moreover, that the world turns round, which is no doubt true; and it is just as true that its opinions turn round with it, which brings me to the object of my remark—yon fellow shows more of his broadside, Sir, than common! He is edging in for the land, which must lie, hereaway, on our larboard beam, in order to get into smoother water. This tumbling about is not favorable to your light craft, let who will build them."

"I had hoped to drive him off the coast. Could we get him fairly into the Gulf Stream, he would be ours, for he is too low in the water to escape us in the short seas. We must force him into blue water, though our upper spars crack in the struggle! Go aft, Mr. Hopper, and tell the officer of the watch to bring the ship's head up, a point and a half, to the northward, and to give a slight pull on the braces."

"What a mainsail the rogue carries! It is as broad as the instructions of a roving commission, with a hoist like the promotion of an admiral's son! How every thing pulls aboard him! A thorough-bred sails that brigantine, let him come whence he may!"

"I think we near him! The rough water is helping us, and we are closing. Steer small, fellow; steer small! You see the color of his mouldings begins to show, when he lifts on the seas."

"The sun touches his side—and yet, Captain Ludlow, you may be right—for here is a man in his fore-top, plainly enough to be seen. A shot, or two, among his spars and sails, might now do service."

Ludlow affected not to hear; but the first-lieutenant having come on the forecastle, seconded this opinion, by remarking that their position would indeed enable them to use the chase-gun, without losing any distance. As Trysail sustained his former assertion by truths that were too obvious to be refuted, the commander of the cruiser reluctantly issued an order to clear away the forward gun, and to shift it into the bridle-port. The interested and attentive seamen were not long in performing this service; and a report was quickly made to the captain, that the piece was ready.

Ludlow then descended from his post on the night-head, and pointed the cannon himself.

"Knock away the quoin, entirely;" he said to the captain of the gun, when he had got the range; "now mind her when she lifts, forward; keep the ship steady, Sir—fire!"

Those gentleman 'who live at home at ease,' are often surprised to read of combats, in which so much powder, and hundreds and even thousands of shot, are expended, with so little loss of human life; while a struggle on the land, of less duration, and seemingly of less obstinacy, shall sweep away a multitude. The secret of the difference lies in the uncertainty of aim, on an element as restless as the sea. The largest ship is rarely quite motionless, when on the open ocean; and it is not necessary to tell the reader, that the smallest variation in the direction of a gun at its muzzle, becomes magnified to many yards at the distance of a few hundred feet. Marine gunnery has no little resemblance to the skill of the fowler; since a calculation for a change in the position of the object must commonly be made in both cases, with the additional embarrassment on the part of the seaman, of an allowance for a complicated movement in the piece itself.

How far the gun of the Coquette was subject to the influence of these causes, or how far the desire of her captain to protect those whom he believed to be on board the brigantine, had an effect on the direction taken by its shot, will probably never be known. It is certain, however, that when the stream of fire, followed by its curling cloud, had gushed out upon the water, fifty eyes sought in vain to trace the course of the iron messenger among the sails and rigging of the Water-Witch. The symmetry of her beautiful rig was undisturbed, and the unconscious fabric still glided over the waves, with its customary ease and velocity.