The Pilot: A Tale of the Sea by James Fenimore Cooper (best e books to read txt) 📗

tiers of guns that bristled along the sides of the enemy; “a three-decker! Jack Manly would show his stern to such a fellow! and even the bloody Scotchman would run!”

“Hard up with your helm, quartermaster!” cried Captain Munson; “there is indeed no time to hesitate, with such an enemy within a quarter of a mile! Turn the hands up, Mr. Griffith, and pack on the ship from her trucks to her lower studdingsail-booms. Be stirring, sir, be stirring! Hard up with your helm! Hard up, and be damn'd to you!”

The unusual earnestness of their aged commander acted on the startled crew like a voice from the deep, and they waited not for the usual signals of the boatswain and drummer to be given, before they broke away from their guns, and rushed tumultuously to aid in spreading the desired canvas. There was one minute of ominous confusion, that to an inexperienced eye would have foreboded the destruction of all order in the vessel, during which every hand, and each tongue, seemed in motion; but it ended in opening the immense folds of light duck which were displayed along the whole line of the masts, far beyond the ordinary sails, overshadowing the waters for a great distance, on either side of the vessel. During the moment of inaction that succeeded this sudden exertion, the breeze, which had brought up the three-decker, fell fresher on the sails of the frigate, and she started away from her dangerous enemy with a very perceptible advantage in point of sailing.

“The fog rises!” cried Griffith; “give us but the wind for an hour, and we shall run her out of gunshot!”

“These nineties are very fast off the wind,” returned the captain, in a low tone, that was intended only for the ears of his first lieutenant and the Pilot; “and we shall have a struggle for it.”

The quick eye of the stranger was glancing over the movements of his enemy, while he answered:

“He finds we have the heels of him already! he is making ready, and we shall be fortunate to escape a broadside! Let her yaw a little, Mr. Griffith; touch her lightly with the helm; if we are raked, sir, we are lost!”

The captain sprang on the taffrail of his ship with the activity of a younger man, and in an instant he perceived the truth of the other's conjecture.

Both vessels now ran for a few minutes, keenly watching each other's motions like two skilful combatants; the English ship making slight deviations from the line of her course, and then, as her movements were anticipated by the other, turning as cautiously in the opposite direction, until a sudden and wide sweep of her huge bows told the Americans plainly on which tack to expect her. Captain Munson made a silent but impressive gesture with his arm, as if the crisis were too important for speech, which indicated to the watchful Griffith the way he wished the frigate sheered, to avoid the weight of the impending danger. Both vessels whirled swiftly up to the wind, with their heads towards the land; and as the huge black side of the three-decker, checkered with its triple batteries, frowned full upon her foe, it belched forth a flood of fire and smoke, accompanied by a bellowing roar that mocked the surly moanings of the sleeping ocean. The nerves of the bravest man in the frigate contracted their fibres, as the hurricane of iron hurtled by them, and each eye appeared to gaze in stupid wonder, as if tracing the flight of the swift engines of destruction. But the voice of Captain Munson was heard in the din, shouting while he waved his hat earnestly in the required direction:

“Meet her! meet her with the helm, boy! meet her, Mr. Griffith, meet her!”

Griffith had so far anticipated this movement as to have already ordered the head of the frigate to be turned in its former course, when, struck by the unearthly cry of the last tones uttered by his commander, he bent his head, and beheld the venerable seaman driven through the air, his hat still waving, his gray hair floating in the wind, and his eye set in the wild look of death.

“Great God!” exclaimed the young man, rushing to the side of the ship, where he was just in time to see the lifeless body disappear in the waters that were dyed in its blood; “he has been struck by a shot! Lower away the boat, lower away the jolly-boat, the barge, the tiger, the——”

“'Tis useless,” interrupted the calm, deep voice of the Pilot; “he has met a warrior's end, and he sleeps in a sailor's grave! The ship is getting before the wind again, and the enemy is keeping his vessel away.”

The youthful lieutenant was recalled by these words to his duty, and reluctantly turned his eyes away from the bloody spot on the waters, which the busy frigate had already passed, to resume the command of the vessel with a forced composure.

“He has cut some of our running-gear,” said the master, whose eye had never ceased to dwell on the spars and rigging of the ship; “and there's a splinter out of the maintopmast that is big enough for a fid! He has let daylight through some of our canvas too; but, taking it by-and-large, the squall has gone over and little harm done. Didn't I hear something said of Captain Munson getting jammed by a shot?”

“He is killed!” said Griffith, speaking in a voice that was yet husky with horror—“he is dead, sir, and carried overboard; there is more need that we forget not ourselves, in this crisis.”

“Dead!” said Boltrope, suspending the operation of his active jaws for a moment, in surprise; “and buried in a wet jacket! Well, it is lucky 'tis no worse; for damme if I did not think every stick in the ship would have been cut out of her!”

With this consolatory remark on his lips, the master walked slowly forward, continuing his orders to repair the damages with a singleness of purpose that rendered him, however uncouth as a friend, an invaluable man in his station.

Griffith had not yet brought his mind to the calmness that was so essential to discharge the duties which had thus suddenly and awfully devolved on him, when his elbow was lightly touched by the Pilot, who had drawn closer to his side.

“The enemy appear satisfied with the experiment,” said the stranger; “and as we work the quicker of the two, he loses too much ground to repeat it, if he be a true seaman.”

“And yet as he finds we leave him so fast,” returned Griffith, “he must see that all his hopes rest in cutting us up aloft. I dread that he will come by the wind again, and lay us under his broadside; we should need a quarter of an hour to run without his range, if he were anchored!”

“He plays a surer game—see you not that the vessel we made in the eastern board shows the hull of a frigate? 'Tis past a doubt that they are of one squadron, and that the expresses have sent them in our wake. The English admiral has spread a broad clew, Mr. Griffith; and, as he gathers in his ships, he sees that his game has been successful.”

The faculties of Griffith had been too much occupied with the hurry of the chase to look at the ocean; but, startled at the information of the Pilot,