Afloat and Ashore - James Fenimore Cooper (book club books .TXT) 📗

being then in England to settle certain long and vexatious accounts, as well as to take Emily, his only child, from school. He was expected to return to the old, or some other post, in the course of a few months. A portion of this I gleaned from Emily herself, and it was all very fairly corroborated by the account of the consul's clerk. There was no doubt that the Mertons were persons of respectable position; without having any claims, however, to be placed very high. From the Major, moreover, I learned he had some American connexions, his father having married in Boston.

For my part, I had quite as much reason to rejoice at the chance which threw me in the way of the Mertons, as they had. If I was instrumental in saving their lives, as was undeniably the case, they taught me more of the world, in the ordinary social sense of the phrase, than I had learned in all my previous life. I make no pretensions to having seen London society; that lay far beyond the reach of Major Merton himself, who was born the son of a merchant, when merchants occupied a much lower position in the English social scale than they do to-day, and had to look to a patron for most of his own advancement. But, he was a gentleman; maintained the notions, sentiments, and habits of the caste; and was properly conscious of my having saved his life when it was in great jeopardy. As for Emily Merton, she got to converse with me with the freedom of a friend; and very pleasant it was to hear pretty thoughts expressed in pretty language, and from pretty lips. I could perceive that she thought me a little rustic and provincial; but I had not been all the way to Canton to be brow-beaten by a cockney girl, however clever and handsome. On the whole--and I say it without vanity, at this late day--I think the impression left behind me, among these good people, was favourable. Perhaps Clawbonny was not without its influence; but, when I paid my last visit, even Emily looked sorrowful, and her mother was pleased to say they should all miss me much. The Major made me promise to hunt him up, should I ever be in Jamaica, or Bombay; for one of which places he expected to sail himself, with his wife and daughter, in the course of a few months. I knew he had had one appointment, thought he might receive another, and hoped everything would turn out for the best.

The Crisis sailed on her day; and she went to sea from the Downs, a week later, with a smacking southerly wind. Our Philadelphians turned out a noble set of fellows; and we had the happiness of beating an English sloop-of-war, just as we got clear of the channel, in a fair trial of speed. To lessen our pride a little, a two-decker that was going to the Mediterranean, treated us exactly in the same manner, only three days later. What made this last affair more mortifying, was the fact that Marble had just satisfied himself, and all hands, that, a sloop-of-war being the fastest description of vessel, and we having got the better of one of them, it might be fairly inferred we could outsail the whole British navy. I endeavoured to console him, by reminding him that "the race was not always to the swift." He growled out some sort of an answer, denouncing all sayings, and desiring to know out of what book I had picked up that nonsense.

I have no intention of dwelling on every little incident that occurred on the long road we were now travelling. We touched at Madeira, and landed an English family that went there for the benefit of an invalid; got some fruit, fresh meat and vegetables, and sailed again. Our next stopping-place was Rio, whither we went for letters from home, the captain being taught to expect them. The ship's letters were received, and they were filled with eulogiums on our good conduct, having been written after the arrival of la Dame de Nantes; but great was my disappointment on finding there was not even a scrawl for myself.

Our stay at Rio was short, and we left port with a favourable slant of wind, running as far north as 50°, in a very short time. As we drew near to the southern extremity of the American continent, however, we met with heavy weather and foul winds. We were now in the month that corresponds to November in the northern hemisphere, and had to double The Horn at that unpropitious season of the year, going westward. There is no part of the world of which navigators have given accounts so conflicting, as of this celebrated passage. Each man appears to have described it as he found it, himself, while no two seem to have found it exactly alike. I do not remember to have ever heard of calms off Cape Horn; but light winds are by no means uncommon, though tempests are undoubtedly the predominant characteristic. Our captain had already been round four times, and he held the opinion that the season made no difference, and that it was better to keep near the land. We shaped our course accordingly for Staten Land, intending to pass through the Straits of Le Maire and hug the Horn, as close as possible, in doubling it. We made the Falkland Islands, or West Falkland rather, just as the sun rose, one morning, bearing a little on our weather-quarter, with the wind blowing heavily at the eastward. The weather was thick, and, what was still worse, there was so little day, and no moon, that it was getting to be ticklish work to be standing for a passage as narrow as that we aimed at. Marble and I talked the matter over, between ourselves, and wished the captain could be persuaded to haul up, and try to go to the eastward of the island, as was still possible, with the wind where it was. Still, neither of us dared propose it; I, on account of my youth, and the chief-mate, as he said, on account of "the old fellow's obstinacy." "He likes to be poking about in such places," Marble added, "and is never so happy as when he is running round the ocean in places where it is full of unknown islands, looking for sandal wood, and bêche-la-mar! I'll warrant you, he'll give us a famous time of it, if he ever get us up on the North-West Coast." Here the consultation terminated, we mates believing it wiser to let things take their course.

I confess to having seen the mountains on our weather-quarter disappear, with melancholy forebodings. There was little hope of getting any observation that day; and to render matters worse, about noon, the wind began to haul more to the southward. As it hauled, it increased in violence, until, at midnight, it blew a gale; the commencement of such a tempest as I had never witnessed in any of my previous passages at sea. As a matter of course, sail was reduced as fast as it became necessary, until we had brought the ship down to a close-reefed main-top-sail, the fore-top-mast staysail, the fore-course, and the mizen-staysail. This was old fashioned Canvass; the more recent spencer being then unknown.

Our situation was now far from pleasant. The tides and currents, in that high latitude, run with great velocity; and, then, at a moment when it was of the greatest importance to know precisely where the ship was, we were left to the painful uncertainty of conjecture, and theories that might be very wide of the truth. The captain had nerve enough, notwithstanding, to keep on the larboard tack until daylight, in the hope of getting in sight of the mountains of Terra del Fuego. No one, now, expected we should be able to fetch through the Straits; but it would be a great relief to obtain a sight of the land, as it would enable us to get some tolerably accurate notions of our position. Daylight came at length, but it brought no certainty. The weather was so thick, between a drizzling rain, sea-mist and the spray, that it was seldom we could see a league around us, and frequently not half a mile. Fortunately, the general direction of the eastern coast of Terra del Fuego, is from north-west to south-east, always giving us room to ware off shore, provided we did not unexpectedly get embarrassed in some one of the many deep indentations of that wild and inhospitable shore.

Captain Williams showed great steadiness in the trying circumstances in which we were placed. The ship was just far enough south to render it probable she could weather Falkland Islands, on the other tack, could we rely upon the currents; but it would be ticklish work to undertake such a thing, in the long, intensely dark nights we had, and thus run the risk of finding ourselves on a lee shore. He determined, therefore, to hold on as long as possible, on the tack we were on, expecting to get through another night, without coming upon the land, every hour now giving us the hope that we were drawing near to the termination of the gale. I presume he felt more emboldened to pursue this course by the circumstance that the wind evidently inclined to haul little by little, more to the southward, which was not only increasing our chances of laying past the islands, but lessened the danger from Terra del Fuego.

Marble was exceedingly uneasy during that second night. He remained on deck with me the whole of the morning watch; not that he distrusted my discretion in the least, but because he distrusted the wind and the land. I never saw him in so much concern before, for it was his habit to consider himself a timber of the ship, that was to sink or swim with the craft.

"Miles," said he, "you and I know something of these 'bloody currents,' and we know they take a ship one way, while she looks as fiercely the other as a pig that is dragged aft by the tail. If we had run down the 50th degree of longitude, now, we might have had plenty of sea-room, and been laying past the Cape, with this very wind; but, no, the old fellow would have had no islands in that case, and he never could be happy without half-a-dozen islands to bother him."

"Had we run down the 50th degree of longitude," I answered, "we should have had twenty degrees to make to get round the Horn; whereas, could we only lay through the Straits of Le Maire, six or eight of those very same degrees would carry us clear of everything."

"Only lay through the Straits of Le Maire, on the 10th November, or what is the same thing in this quarter of the world, of May, and with less than nine hours of day-light! And such day-light, too! Why, our Newfoundland fogs, such stuff as I used to eat when a youngster and a fisherman, are high noon to it! Soundings are out of the question hereabouts; and, before one has hauled in the deep-sea, with all its line out, his cut-water may be on a rock. This ship is so weatherly and drags ahead so fast, that we shall see terra firma before any one has a notion of it. The old man fancies, because the coast of Fuego trends to the north-west, that the land will fall away from us, as fast as we draw towards it. I hope he may live long enough to persuade all hands that he is right!"