Homeward Bound - James Fenimore Cooper (free e books to read .txt) 📗

make a young woman the involuntary keeper of the secrets of two unreflecting young men; that is all, my good Nanny. We cannot well betray them, and we are consequently their confidants par force . The most amusing part of the thing is, that they are masters of each other's secrets, in part at least, and feel a delightful awkwardness in a hundred instances. For my own part I pity neither, but think each is fairly enough punished. They will be fortunate if their servants do not betray them before we reach New York."

"No fear of that, ma'am, for they are discreet, cautious men, and if disposed to blab, Mr. Dodge has given both good opportunities already, as I believe he has put to them as many questions as there are speeches in the catechism."

"Mr. Dodge is a vulgar man."

"So we all say, ma'am, in the servants' cabin, and everybody is so set against him there, that there is little chance of his learning much. I hope, Miss Eve, mamerzelle does not distrust either of the gentlemen?"

"Surely you cannot suspect Mademoiselle Viefville of indiscretion, Nanny; a better spirit, or a better tone than hers, does not exist."

"No, ma'am, 'tis not that: but I should like to have one more secret with you, all to myself. I honour and respect mamerzelle, who has done a thousand times more for you than a poor ignorant woman like me could have done, with all my zeal; but I do believe, Miss Eve, I love your shoe tie better than she loves your pure and beautiful spirit."

"Mademoiselle Viefville is an excellent woman, and I believe is sincerely attached to me."

"She would be a wretch else. I do not deny her attachment, but I only say it is nothing, it ought to be nothing, it can be nothing, it shall be nothing, compared to that of the one who first held you in her arms, and who has always held you in her heart. Mamerzelle can sleep such a night as this, which I'm sure she could not do were she as much concerned for you as I am."

Eve knew that jealousy of Mademoiselle Viefville was Nanny's greatest weakness, and drawing the old woman to her, she entwined her arms around her neck and complained of drowsiness. Accustomed to watching, and really unable to sleep, the nurse now passed a perfectly happy hour in holding her child, who literally dropped asleep on her bosom; after which Nanny slid into the berth beneath, in her clothes, and finally lost the sense of her apprehensions in perturbed slumbers.

A cry on dock awoke all in the cabins early on the succeeding morning. It was scarcely light, but a common excitement seized every passenger, and ten minutes had not elapsed when Eve and her governess appeared in the hurricane-house, the last of those who came from below. Few questions had been asked, but all hurried on deck with their apprehensions awakened by the gale, increased to the sense of some positive and impending danger.

Nothing, however, was immediately apparent to justify all this sudden clamour. The gale continued, if anything with increased power; the ocean was rolling over its cataracts of combing seas, with which the ship was still racing, driven under the strain of a reefed fore-course, the only canvas that was set. Even with this little sail the hull was glancing through the raging seas, or rather in their company, at a rate a little short of ten miles in the hour.

Captain Truck was in the mizzen-rigging, bare-headed, every lock of hair he had blowing out like a pennant. Occasionally he signed to the man at the wheel which way to put the helm; for instead of sleeping, as many had supposed, he had been conning the ship for hours in the same situation, As Eve appeared, he was directing the attention of several of the gentlemen to some object astern, but a very few moments put all on deck in possession of the facts.

About a cable's length, on one of the quarters of the Montauk, was a ship careering before the gale like themselves, though carrying more canvas, and consequently driving faster through the water. The sudden appearance of this vessel in the sombre light of the morning, when objects were seen distinctly but without the glare of day; the dark hull, relieved by a single narrow line of white paint, dotted with ports; the glossy hammock-cloths, and all those other coverings of dark glistening canvas which give to a cruiser an air of finish and comfort, like that of a travelling carriage; the symmetry of the spars, and the gracefulness of all the lines, whether of the hull or hamper, told all who knew anything of such subjects, that the stranger was a vessel of war. To this information Captain Truck added that it was their old pursuer the Foam.

"She is corvette-built," said the master of the Montauk, "and is obliged to carry more canvas than we, in order to keep out of the way of the seas; for, if one of these big fellows should overtake her, and throw its crest into her waist, she would become like a man who has taken too much Saturday-night, and with whom a second dose might settle the purser's books forever."

Such in fact was the history of the sudden appearance of this ship. She had lain-to as long as possible, and on being driven to scud, carried a close-reefed maintop-sail, a show of canvas that urged her through the water about two knots to the hour faster than the rate of the-packet. Necessarily following the same coarse, she overtook the latter just as the day began to dawn. The cry had arisen on her sudden discovery, and the moment had now arrived when she was about to come up, quite abreast of her late chase. The passage of the Foam, under such circumstances, was a grand but thrilling thing. Her captain, too, was seen in the mizzen-rigging of his ship, rocked by the gigantic billows over which the fabric was careering. He held a speaking-trumpet in his hand, as if still bent on his duty, in the midst of that awful warring of the elements. Captain Truck called for a trumpet in his turn, and fearful of consequences he waved it to the other to keep more aloof, The injunction was either misunderstood, the man-of-war's man was too much bent on his object, or the ocean was too uncontrollable for such a purpose, the corvette driving up on a sea quite abeam of the packet, and in fearful proximity. The Englishman applied the trumpet, and words were heard amid the roaring of the winds. At that time the white field of old Albion, with the St. George's cross, rose over the bulwarks, and by the time it had reached the gaff-end, the bunting was whipping in ribbons.

"Show 'em the gridiron!" growled Captain Truck through his trumpet, with its mouth turned in board.

As everything was ready this order was instantly obeyed, and the stripes of America were soon seen fluttering nearly in separate pieces. The two ships now ran a short distance in parallel lines, rolling from each other so heavily that the bright copper of the corvette was seen nearly to her keel. The Englishman, who seemed a portion of his ship, again tried his trumpet; the detached words of "lie-by,"--"orders,"--"communicate," were caught by one or two, but the howling of the gale rendered all connexion in the meaning impossible. The Englishman ceased his efforts to make himself heard, for the two ships were now rolling-to, and it appeared as if their spars would interlock. There was an instant when Mr. Leach had his hand on the main-brace to let it go; but the Foam started away on a sea, like a horse that feels the spur, and disobeying her helm, shot forward, as if about to cross the Montauk's forefoot.

A breathless instant followed, for all on board the two ships thought they must now inevitably come foul of each other, and this the more so, because the Montauk took the impulse of the sea just as it was lost to the Foam, and seemed on the point of plunging directly into the stern of the latter. Even the seamen clenched the ropes around them convulsively, and the boldest held their breaths for a time. The "p-o-r-t, hard a port, and be d---d to you!" of Captain Truck; and the "S-t-a-r-b-o-a-r-d, starboard hard!" of the Englishman, were both distinctly audible to all in the two ships; for this was a moment in which seamen can speak louder than the tempest. The affrighted vessels seemed to recede together, and they shot asunder in diverging lines, the Foam leading. All further attempts at a communication were instantly useless; the corvette being half a mile ahead in a quarter of an hour, rolling her yardarms nearly to the water.

Captain Truck said little to his passengers concerning this adventure; but when he had lighted a cigar, and was discussing the matter with his chief-mate, he told the latter there was "just one minute when he would not have given a ship's biscuit for both vessels, nor much more for their cargoes. A man must have a small regard for human souls, when he puts them, and their bodies too, in so much jeopardy for a little tobacco."

Throughout the day it blew furiously, for the ship was running into the gale, a phenomenon that we shall explain, as most of our readers may not comprehend it. All gates of wind commence to leeward; or, in other words, the wind is first felt at some particular point, and later, as we recede from that point, proceeding in the direction from which the wind blows. It is always severest near the point where it commences, appearing to diminish in violence as it recedes. This, therefore, is an additional motive for mariners to lie-to, instead of scudding, since the latter not only carries them far from their true coarse, but it carries them also nearer to the scene of the greatest fury of the elements.


Chapter XIV.


Good boatswain, have care.

TEMPEST.


At sunset, the speck presented by the reefed top-sail of the corvette had sunk beneath the horizon, in the southern board, and that ship was seen no longer. Several islands had been passed, looking tranquil and smiling amid the fury of the tempest; but it was impossible to haul up for any one among them. The most that could be done was to keep the ship dead before it, to prevent her broaching-to, and to have a care that she kept clear of those rocks and of that bottom, for which Nanny Sidley had so much pined.

Familiarity with the scene began to lessen the apprehensions of the passengers, and as scudding is an easy process for those who are liable to sea-sickness, ere another night shut in, the principal concern was connected with the course the ship was compelled to steer. The wind had so far hauled to the westward as to render it certain that the coast of Africa would lie in their way, if obliged to scud many hours longer; for Captain Truck's observations actually placed him to the southward and eastward of the Canary Islands. This was a long distance out of his course, but the rate of sailing rendered the fact sufficiently clear.

This, too was the precise time when the Montauk felt the weight of the tempest, or rather, when she experienced the heaviest portion of that which it was her fate to feel. Lucky was it for the good ship that she had not been