CHAPTER SEVEN.
Never did a vessel leave port under more propitious circumstances thandid the _Zodiac_, with a fair, steady breeze, a smooth sea, and at atime of the year when there was every prospect of the continuance offine weather.
As Bowse walked the deck with a spy-glass under his arm in man-of-warfashion, a smile of contentment lit up his honest countenance, andglistened in his eye; and as he felt the freshening breeze fanning hischeek, and lifting his vessel, as it were, he began to laugh at hismomentary suspicions about the character of the speronara and her crew.Every now and then he would stop in his walk, and would look over theside to judge how fast the vessel was going through the water, or hewould examine the compasses to assure himself that they were true, or hewould cast his eye aloft to see how his sails drew, or his clear, fullvoice would be heard issuing some necessary order for the government ofthe ship.
Even Colonel Gauntlett could not help expressing his satisfaction at thepropitious commencement of their voyage, as he stopped in his short andotherwise silent walk on the poop to address a few words to the master.
Ada sat silently in her chair, gazing on the fast-receding shore; and itis not surprising that her thoughts were fixed on him who was, she feltsure, even then watching, from its most extreme point, the bark whichbore her away. Her little Maltese maid, Marianna, stood by her sidewith tears in her bright eyes, and gazing her last for an indefinitetime on the land of her birth, and where all her affections werecentred, except those which had lately arisen for her young mistress.
The colonel's man, not knowing exactly where he ought to be, being toodignified, at first, to mix with the men forward, and astonished andconfused at manoeuvres which he could not comprehend, as is generallythe case with his class, always managed to get exactly where he was mostin the way.
"Port a little, you may, my son," said the master to the man at thehelm; "steady, so, keep her. East-and-by-north is the course,"pronouncing the north with a strong emphasis on the O, and without theR--as if it were spelt Nothe. "Just get a gentle pull on ourweather-braces, Mr Timmins," to the mate. "The wind's drawing a littlemore aft again. We're making her walk along, sir," to the colonel."She's not going less than six knots an hour, I'll warrant, which, withthis light wind, is not bad for a craft of her build--she's no clipper,I own, sir. Heave the log here. I dare say you'll like to be certain,miss," turning to Ada, as he thought the operation would amuse her.
The second mate and two hands came aft with the log-line and reel.Bowse took a half-minute glass from the binnacle, and watching till allthe sand had run into one end, held it up before him. The seamen,meantime, held the reel up before him, so as to allow it to turn easilyin his hands, and the mate, taking the little triangular bit of wood,called the log-ship, adjusted the peg, and drew off, with a peculiarjerk of his left hand, several coils of the stray-line, which he heldfor a moment over the quarter of the vessel, till he saw that his chiefwas ready with the glass, and he then hove it over into the water. Thefirst part of the line is called the stray-line, and its object is toallow the log-ship to settle properly in the water, as well as to takeit clear of the eddy. As soon as this part had run out, a cloth markran through the mate's fingers. "Turn," he exclaimed. "Turn," repeatedthe master, and turned the glass. The marks rapidly passed through themate's hand, as he jerked the line of the reel, always keeping it at astretch.
"Stop," sung out Bowse, as the sand had run out of the upper end of theglass.
"Done," said the mate, and stopped the line.
He had not to count the knots run off, for his experienced eye was ableto tell the number by the mark on the line. It must be understood thatthis line is divided into a certain number of equal parts, each of whichbears the same proportion to a mile, which thirty seconds do to an hour,and therefore, as the log-ship remains stationary in the water,according to the number of these proportions dragged through, while thesand is running, so is shown how many miles or knots the vessel is goingthrough the water.
"Six and a quarter," exclaimed the mate. "That's what I call good goingfor a ship with a full cargo, in a breeze like this."
"That's what we call heaving the log, Miss Garden," said the master, whohad been explaining the use of the log, though in not quite so succincta way as I have attempted to do. "You'll be able to turn the glassanother time, I'm sure."
The glass runs, in reality, only for twenty-eight seconds, as two areconsidered to be employed in turning it.
Ada, who enjoyed an advantage over the reader, by having the operationperformed before her eyes, answered that she clearly understood it, andwould always, in future, hold the glass.
"By this calculation, you see, miss, as it is just two hours since wepassed Fort Saint Elmo, we have run exactly twelve knots and a half offthe reel; though we didn't go through the water so fast at first, as weare now doing. However, by the look of the land, I calculate we are notmuch less than that off it. You see we call miles--knots, miss, onaccount of the knots which are marked on the line. When we can just seethe last of some conspicuous point, we shall take its bearing by compassand its distance, and then I shall commence pricking the ship's courseoff on the chart, and that is what we call taking our departure. Nowyou see there's many people on shore would fancy that when we left theport we took our departure; but the ties which bind a seaman to theshore, and to those we leave behind, are not so quickly parted as theymay think, you see, miss." And the honest master, chuckling at one ofthe first attempts at wit and gallantry of which he had ever beenguilty, thought the next instant he blushed at his own audacity.
"It's surprising, miss, what funny mistakes them who never leave theland make about seafaring concerns; but then, what can you expect ofthem? they know no better," he added, in a tone showing the deepcommiseration he felt for the ignorance of landsmen. "To say that theydon't know the stem from the stern, isn't to say anything. They knownothing about a ship, how she's built, how she sails, or what she'slike. The last voyage I made I had a passenger on board who was acleverish sort of gentleman, too, and for talking politics he'd go onfor an hour; yet he wanted to know why I couldn't bring the ship to ananchor right out in the Bay of Biscay; and one night, when it wasblowing a stiffish gale, with a heavy sea running, he roused me out ofmy sleep to ask me to send a better hand to the helm; one who knew howto keep the craft steady, or else to run into some harbour till themorning. He never could get it out of his head that he was not in theThames. Now, miss, I see that you are not one of those sort of people,and that you will soon know all about a ship, though you may not justyet be able to act the captain. To-morrow I'll show you how to shootthe sun, as we tell greenhorns we are doing, when we take an observationwith the quadrant. It's a very pretty instrument, and you will bepleased to know how to use it."
"I shall like very much to learn all you can teach me, Captain Bowse,"answered Ada, making a great effort to rouse herself from the feeling ofsadness which oppressed her. "I wonder how mariners managed totraverse, as they did, the most distant seas, before these instrumentswere invented."
"They used to trust more to the sun and stars, and to their leadreckoning, than they do now, I suppose, miss," answered the master."Even now, there's many a man in charge of a vessel who never takes morethan a meridional observation, if even that; and having found hislatitude, runs down the longitude by dead reckoning. Some even go aboutto many distant parts entirely by rule of guess, and it is extraordinaryhow often they hit their point. Now and then, to be sure, they findthemselves two or three hundred miles out of their course, and sometimesthey get the ship cast away. I have, too, met vessels out in theAtlantic which had entirely lost their reckoning, and had not theslightest notion where they were. Once, I remember, when I belonged tothe _Harkaway_ frigate, coming home from the Brazils, we sighted aSpanish man-of-war corvette. When we got up to her we hove to, and anofficer came on board who could speak a little English; and you wouldscarcely believe it, but the first thing he did was to ask us for thela
titude and longitude; and he confessed that the only instruments theyhad on board were out of repair, and, for what I know, the only man whoknew how to use them was ill. Our captain then sent an officer on boardthe corvette, and a pretty condition she was in for a man-of-war. Theyhad a governor of some place as a passenger, and his wife and family,and two or three other ladies and their families; and there they wereall lying about the decks in a state of despair, thinking they werenever to see land again. They had been a whole month tossing about inevery direction, and not knowing how to find the way home. The deckswere as dirty as if they had not been holystoned or swept all that time;not a sail was properly set, not a rope flemished down. If I hadn'tseen it with my own eyes, I could not have believed such a thingpossible. Our appearance raised their spirits a little, and they beganputting themselves to rights as soon as they had made sail on theircourse. They kept company with us till we got into the latitude ofCadiz, for their craft sailed very well, for all that they did not knowhow to handle her, and I believe that they managed to get into port insafety at last."
"I am surprised at what you tell me," observed Miss Garden, "I shouldhave thought the Spaniards could not have so totally forgotten theirancient naval renown as to allow such dreadful ignorance to exist."
"The men are active, intelligent fellows enough, and the officers in themerchant service are, from what I have seen, very good seamen; but sincethe war, their navy has been much neglected, and men were made officerswho did not know the stem from the stern of the ship, just because theyhappened to be some poor dependent of one of their nobles, or the son ofa valet out of place. Things are mending a little now with them, Ihear."
"I wonder any but such beggarly fellows as you speak of can be inducedto go into the navy at all," said the colonel, who had been listening tothe master's story, and was far from pleased at the interest Ada took inwhat he said. "For my part, I would as soon be a shoe-black; but youseem determined to give my niece a dose of the sea."
"Oh, yes, sir!" answered Bowse, perfectly indifferent to the colonel'sill-temper; "I hope we shall make the young lady a first-rate sailorbefore long."
"I hope you will do no such thing, Mr Bowse; she thinks a great dealtoo much about it already," returned the colonel, taking another turnaft.
"Indeed I do not, uncle," replied Ada, as he came back, in ahalf-playful tone, calculated to disarm his anger. "You mustacknowledge that the scene before us is very beautiful and enjoyable.Look at that blue and joyous sea, how the waves leap and curl as if insport, their crests just fringed with sparkling bubbles of snow-whitefoam, which, in the freshness of their new-born existence, seem inclinedto take wing into the air--then, what can be more bright and clear thanthe expanse of sky above us, or more pure than the breeze which wafts usalong. Look, too, at the blue, misty hills of our dear Malta, justrising from the water. What mere mole-hills those wild rocks now seem.And then that glorious mass of glowing fire which spreads far and wideround the sun as he sinks into that clear outline of sea; and distantthough it seems, sends its reflection across the waves even up to thevery ship itself. Ah! if one could but secure that orange tinge, onemight gaze at it unwearied all day long. See, also, the dark,fantastically-shaped spots on the ocean as the sails of the distantvessels appear between us and the sun, like evil spirits gliding aboutthe ocean to cause shipwrecks and disaster; while again, on the oppositequarter, the canvas appears of snowy whiteness, just catching the lastrays of the light-giving orb of day, and we would fain believe thembenign beings hovering over the ocean, to protect us poor mortals fromthe malign influences of their antagonists; while our proud ship glidesmajestically along in solitary grandeur, casting indignantly aside thewaves which it seems to rule, like some mighty monarch galloping overthe broad domains which own him as their lord. Come, uncle, can youdeny the correctness of my description? And I am sure Captain Bowsewill agree with me."
She laughed playfully at her attempts at a description of the scenesurrounding them, and which she had purposely made as long as she couldfind words to go on with, well-knowing the effect which her own sweetvoice exercised in calming the habitual irritation of her uncle.
"A pretty bit of jargon you have managed to string together," said thecolonel, looking more amiable than he had before done, "and that is whatI suppose you call a poetical description, missie. Well, as it does notconvey a bad idea of what we have before our eyes, it must pass forsomething of the sort, I suppose. What do you say, Mister Bowse?"
Now, although Bowse had not entirely comprehended all that Ada had said,he felt that he was called on to give an answer, and accordingly lookedround the horizon, as if to satisfy himself that her description wascorrect. He had taken a survey of the whole expanse of the sea to thewestward, and his eye had gradually swept round to the east, when,instead of turning round to answer, he kept it fixed on a distant spotjust seen over the weather or larboard bow. Shifting his position alittle, he placed his telescope to his eye, and took a steady gaze.
"That's her, I can't help thinking," he muttered. "But what she wantsout there, I can't say."
To the surprise of Ada, he walked forward, and called his mate to hisside.
"Here, Mr Timmins, just tell me what you think of that chap out there,over the weather cat-head," he said, giving his officer the glass.
The mate took the instrument, and looked as he was directed.
"She's a lateen-rigged craft standing on a wind athwart our course,sir," answered the mate instantly, as if there was no difficulty inascertaining thus much.
"That one may see with half an eye, Mr Timmins; but do you see nothingunusual about her?"
"I can't say that I see any difference between her and the craft, whichone is always meeting with in these seas," answered the mate. "Hercanvas stands well, and looks very white as we see her beam almost on tous. She seems one of those vessels with a name I never could manage tospeak, which trade along the coast of Sicily and Italy, and come over toMalta."
"By the way she is standing, she will pass at no great distance toleeward of us, and if she was to haul up a little, she would just aboutreach us," observed the master in a tone of interrogation.
"Just about it, sir," replied the mate.
"Well, then, Mr Timmins, keep your eye on her, and when we get nearher, if there is still light enough left to make her out, tell me if youhave ever seen her before."
The mate, somewhat surprised at the directions his chief had given him,prepared, however, to obey them, and while he superintended the peopleon deck, he constantly kept his telescope fixed on the stranger. Aquarter of an hour or twenty minutes might have passed, when, aftertaking a longer scrutiny than before, he suddenly turned round, andwalked to where his commander was standing.
"I know her, sir," he exclaimed. "She is no other than the craft whichnearly ran foul of us yesterday, and which went out of harbour thismorning. She had two outlandish-looking chaps as passengers; and one ofthem came on board in the evening to talk about taking a passage toGreece. I remember him well, sir, though I did not say anything toyou."
"You are right, Mr Timmins, it's her, there's no doubt," said Bowse."We'll give her a wide berth, for there seems to be something suspiciousabout her," and he mentioned what Captain Fleetwood had said to him. "Idon't think the chap would dare to attack us; but, with females onboard, it's as well to be cautious. We'll haul up a little by degrees,not to make it remarkable, so as to pass to windward of him, and havethe guns loaded and run out, just as a matter of course, in theMediterranean, tell the people. I don't want to have any talking aboutit, you know; for it will all be moonshine, I suspect. Look you, too,have the small arms and cutlasses up on deck, just to overhaul them, asit were. The studden-sails must come in, at all events; it won't do tobe carrying on at night as if we had fifty hands in a watch instead offive. Now let the people knock off work."
"Ay, ay, sir," answered the mate, and, without the slightest appearanceof hurry, he set to work to obey his commander's orders.
>
The crew, who had been employed beyond the usual hour in getting theship to right, finished stowing away everything that was loose, and gotthe hatches on over the cargo. One after another the studden-sails,which had been extended beyond the yard-arms came flying down like hugewhite birds from their lofty perches, the moment the halyards and sheetswere let go, and, as they bulged out, they looked as if they were aboutto sail off before the wind ahead of the vessel. As all hands werewanted for the work, Bowse clapped on himself, petting a rope into evenMitchell's hands, and in a short time the _Zodiac_, stripped of herwings, was brought under more easy-working canvas. The lee-braces werethen flattened in a little, and the helm being put a few strokes tostarboard, she headed up towards the north. While the mate wasfollowing the other directions he had given, Bowse again brought hisglass to bear on the speronara, and, while so doing, his eye wasattracted to a sail which appeared in the horizon, and which he at onceknew to be a square-rigged vessel. From its height, too, above thewater, and its faint outline, he judged her to be a ship or a brig ofsome size. He had, indeed, remarked her some time before, and it nowoccurred to him that she had not altered her position since first seen.It would therefore appear that she was standing the same course as the_Zodiac_; but as they neared her rapidly, such could scarcely be thecase, and he, now seeing that her head was turned towards them, couldonly come to the conclusion that she was hove to. He calculated, also,that the speronara, supposing that she had, for some time, steered thesame course she was now on, must have passed close to her.
The idea came into the master's head more as a matter of speculationthan because any further suspicions occurred to him, for the probabilityof those he still entertained being correct, he thought so very slight,that he was almost vexed with himself for acting on them; and had it notbeen for his promise to Captain Fleetwood, he most likely would havedone so. That the speronara, now to leeward of him, was the self-samecraft he had seen in Malta harbour, he could, however, no longerentertain a doubt. He had noted her long, low hull, with overhangingstern and high bow, the great length of her tapering yards, and the wayher immense lateen sails stood; there was also a peculiar dark mark onthe cloth next to the outer leech of her foresail, near the head of theyard, which was unmistakable, and when he could clearly see that heridentity would be proved. As he now brought his glass again to bear onthe speronara, he saw that as the _Zodiac_ was brought on a wind, shewas immediately hauled close on it, so that, notwithstanding the changehe had made in his course, she might still pass, if she liked, even towindward of him, unless she also chose to hug the wind as he had done.On seeing this, the spirit of the British sailor was roused within him.
"Oh, hang it," he muttered. "I'm not going to be altering my course forfear of a rascally Italian piccaroon, if such that fellow should be. Ifhe chooses to come near us, he must take the consequences. We'll showhim that we've got some bulldogs on board who can bark pretty well ifthey like. But I forgot the young lady, and the little Smaitch girlwith her. It won't do to let them run any risk of being hurt, shouldthe villains begin by firing into us before they speak, as is thefashion of the cowards. I must manage to get them down below withoutfrightening them."
Having arrived at the conclusion of these cogitations, Bowse approachedto where the colonel and his niece were sitting; the young lady employedin gazing on the sea, while he was looking with somewhat an inquiringeye at the preparations carrying on under the mate's superintendence ondeck.
"Don't you think the young lady had better go below, out of the way ofthe damp, sir," began Bowse, puzzled what excuse to make.
"Damp! surely there's none to hurt me," said Ada, looking up somewhatsurprised. "It is so refreshing."
"No, miss, the cold--the night air may do you harm," rejoined Bowse.
"I have no fear of either," answered Ada. "It's quite warm, and I donot even require a cloak."
The master was sadly perplexed, and the colonel would not come to hisaid; at last he bethought him of a better reason, which must succeed.
"Yes, miss; but you see it's coming on night, and it's a rule that allladies should go below at night," he said, in a grave tone.
This made Ada fairly laugh outright.
"Oh! but I intend to break through the rule, I can assure you. Theevening, when the moon is playing on the water, is the most delightfultime of the twenty-four hours; and you will not persuade me to foregoits pleasures."
The colonel at length came to his rescue.
"What is it makes you so anxious for my niece to go below, Mr Bowse?"he asked. "If you have any particular reason, pray mention it, and I amsure she will be most ready to obey your wishes."
"Why, sir," said Bowse, drawing the colonel, who had risen, a littleforward, and whispering so as not, he thought, to be heard by Ada; "yousee, sir, I don't quite like the look of that craft we are nearing--somemurderous work has been done lately in these seas; and I was told, justbefore we sailed, to be cautious of her--that's all."
"It was for that reason you were loading your guns, and getting up yourarms?" exclaimed the colonel, in a less cautious voice than that inwhich the kind master had spoken. "Very right and proper. I'm glad tosee precautions taken. We'll fight the rascals with pleasure."
Ada overheard the words, and coming up, placed her arm on her uncle's.
"What is the matter?--Is there any danger?" she exclaimed, in a pleadingtone. "If there is--oh! let me share it with you. Do not send me downinto the cabin." She trembled, but it was more with excitement thanfear.
"Oh! nonsense, girl--suppose there was any danger, what object couldthere be in your staying on deck?" answered the colonel. "You couldn'tsave me from being hurt, missie, and I don't think you would manage tohurt any of the enemy, if there should prove to be one in the case,after all, which is in no way certain yet."
While the colonel was speaking, Bowse again looked at the speronara. Henow, to a certainty, ascertained that she had the dark mark in herforesail, and that she was full of men. This at once decided him inurging Miss Garden to go below, and on her still resisting, the colonelgave indubitable signs of anger.
"Come, come, missie, no more nonsense. Go below you must, withoutfurther delay, and take your little nigger with you."
Ada pleaded for a few minutes more to see what was likely to happen, butin vain, and was reluctantly compelled, in company with her maid, to gointo her cabin, there to await the result of the meeting between the twovessels. Ada did as every right-minded girl, under the circumstances,would do--she knelt in prayer--not through abject fear for her ownsafety, did she pray, for of herself she thought not; but she prayedthat her uncle, and the brave men with him on deck, might be shieldedfrom danger--a danger which it was very natural that from what she hadheard she should considerably exaggerate.