"I, John Turner,
Am master and owner
Of a high-deck'd schooner.
That's bound to Carolina--"
etc. etc. etc. etc.
Coasting Song.
It is not necessary to say, with how much interest Alderman Van Beverout,
and his friend the Patroon, had witnessed all the proceedings on hoard the
Coquette. Something very like an exclamation of pleasure escaped the
former, when it was known that the ship had missed the brigantine, and
that there was now little probability of overtaking her that night.
"Of what use is it to chase your fire-flies, about the ocean, Patroon?"
muttered the Alderman, in the ear of Oloff Van Staats. "I have no further
knowledge of this 'Skimmer of the Seas,' than is decent in the principal
of a commercial house,--but reputation is like a sky-rocket, that may be
seen from afar! Her Majesty has no ship that can overtake the free-trader,
and why fatigue the innocent vessel for no thing?"
"Captain Ludlow has other desires than the mere capture of the
brigantine;" returned the laconic and sententious Patroon. "The opinion
that Alida de Barbérie is in her, has great influence with that
gentleman."
"This is strange apathy, Mr. Van Staats, in one who is as good as engaged
to my niece, if he be not actually married, Alida Barbérie has great
influence with that gentleman! And pray, with whom, that knows her, has
she not influence?"
"The sentiment in favor of the young lady, in general, is favorable."
"Sentiment and favors! Am I to understand, Sir by this coolness, that our
bargain is broken?--that the two fortunes are not to be brought together,
and that the lady is not to be your wife?"
"Harkee, Mr. Van Beverout; one who is saving of his income and sparing of
his words, can have no pressing necessity for the money of others; and, on
occasion, he may afford to speak plainly. Your niece has shown so decided
a preference for another, that it has materially lessened the liveliness
of my regard."
"It were a pity that so much animation should fail of its object! It would
be a sort of stoppage in the affairs of Cupid! Men should deal candidly,
in all business transactions, Mr. Van Staats; and you will permit me to
ask, as for a final settlement, if your mind is changed in regard to the
daughter of old Etienne de Barbérie, or not?"
"Not changed, but quite decided;" returned the young Patroon. "I cannot
say that I wish the successor of my mother to have seen so much of the
world. We are a family that is content with our situation, and new customs
would derange my household."
"I am no wizard, Sir; but for the benefit of a son of my old friend
Stephanus Van Staats, I will venture, for once, on a prophecy. You will
marry, Mr. Van Staats--yes, marry--and you will wive, Sir, with--prudence
prevents me from saying with whom you will wive; but you may account
yourself a lucky man, if it be not with one who will cause you to forget
house and home, lands and friends, manors and rents, and in short all the
solid comforts of life. It would not surprise me to hear that the
prediction of the Poughkeepsie fortune-teller should be fulfilled!"
"And what is your real opinion, Alderman Van Beverout, of the different
mysterious events we have witnessed?" demanded the Patroon, in a manner to
prove that the interest he took in the subject, completely smothered any
displeasure he might otherwise have felt at so harsh a prophecy. "This
sea-green lady is no common woman!"
"Sea-green and sky-blue!" interrupted the impatient burgher. "The hussy is
but too common, Sir; and there is the calamity. Had she been satisfied
with transacting her concerns in a snug and reasonable manner, and to have
gone upon the high seas again, we should have had none of this foolery, to
disturb accounts which ought to have been considered settled. Mr. Van
Staats, will you allow me to ask a few direct questions, if you can find
leisure for their answer?"
The Patroon nodded his head, in the affirmative.
"What do you suppose, Sir, to have become of my niece?"
"Eloped."
"And with whom?"
Van Staats of Kinderhook stretched an arm towards the open ocean, and
again nodded. The Alderman mused a moment; and then he chuckled, as if
some amusing idea had at once gotten the better of his ill-humor.
"Come, come, Patroon," he said, in his wonted amicable tone, when
addressing the lord of a hundred thousand acres, "this business is like a
complicated account, a little difficult till one gets acquainted with the
books, and then all becomes plain as your hand. There were referees in the
settlement of the estate of Kobus Van Klinck, whom I will not name; but
what between the handwriting of the old grocer, and some inaccuracy in the
figures, they had but a blind time of it until they discovered which way
the balance ought to come; and then by working backward and forward, which
is the true spirit of your just referee, they got all straight in the end.
Kobus was not very lucid in his statements, and he was a little apt to be
careless of ink. His leger might be called a book of the black art; for it
was little else than fly-tracks and blots, though the last were found of
great assistance in rendering the statements satisfactory. By calling
three of the biggest of them sugar-hogsheads, a very fair balance was
struck between him and a peddling Yankee who was breeding trouble for the
estate; and I challenge, even at this distant day, when all near interests
in the results may be said to sleep, any responsible man to say that they
did not look as much like those articles as any thing else. Something they
must have been, and as Kobus dealt largely in sugar, there was also a
strong moral probability that they were the said hogsheads. Come, come,
Patroon; we shall have the jade back again, in proper time. Thy ardor gets
the better of reason; but this is the way with true love, which is none
the worse for a little delay Alida is not one to balk thy merriment; these
Norman wenches are not heavy of foot at a dance, or apt to go to sleep
when the fiddles are stirring!"
With this consolation, Alderman Van Beverout saw fit to close the
dialogue, for the moment. How far he succeeded in bringing back the mind
of the Patroon to its allegiance, the result must show; though we shall
take this occasion to observe again, that the young proprietor found a
satisfaction in the excitement of the present scene, that, in the course
of a short and little diversified life, he had never before experienced.
While others slept, Ludlow passed most of the night on deck. He laid
himself down in the hammock-cloths, for an hour or two, towards morning
though the wind did not sigh through the rigging louder than common,
without arousing him from his slumbers. At each low call of the officer of
the watch to the crew, his head was raised to glance around the narrow
horizon; and the ship never rolled heavily without causing him to awake.
He believed that the brigantine was near, and, for the first watch, he was
not without expectation that the two vessels might unexpectedly meet in
the obscurity. When this hope failed, the young seaman had recourse to
artifice, in his turn, in order to entrap one who appeared so practised
and so expert in the devices of the sea.
About midnight, when the watches were changed, and the whole crew, with
the exception of the idlers, were on deck, orders were given to hoist out
the boats. This operation, one of exceeding toil and difficulty in
lightly-manned ships, was soon performed on board the Queen's cruiser, by
the aid of yard and stay-tackles, to which the force of a hundred seamen
was applied. When four of these little attendants on the ship were in the
water, they were entered by their crews, prepared for serious service.
Officers, on whom Ludlow could rely, were put in command of the three
smallest, while he took charge of the fourth in person. When all were
ready, and each inferior had received his especial instructions, they
quitted the side of the vessel, pulling off, in diverging lines, into the
gloom of the ocean. The boat of Ludlow had not gone fifty fathoms, before
he was perfectly conscious of the inutility of a chase; for the obscurity
of the night was so great, as to render the spars of his own ship nearly
indistinct, even at that short distance. After pulling by compass some ten
or fifteen minutes, in a direction that carried him to windward of the
Coquette, the young man commanded the crew to cease rowing, and prepared
himself to await, patiently, for the result of his undertaking.
There was nothing to vary the monotony of such a scene, for an hour, but
the regular rolling of a sea that was but little agitated, a few
occasional strokes of the oars, that were given in order to keep the barge
in its place, or the heavy breathing of some smaller fish of the
cetaceous kind, as it rose to the surface to inhale the atmosphere. In no
quarter of the heavens was any thing visible; not even a star was peeping
out, to cheer the solitude and silence of that solitary place. The men
were nodding on the thwarts and our young sailor was about to relinquish
his design as fruitless, when suddenly a noise was heard, at no great
distance from the spot where they lay. It was one of those sounds which
would have been inexplicable to any but a seaman, but which conveyed a
meaning to the ears of Ludlow, as plain as that which could be imparted by
speech to a landsman. A moaning creak was followed by the low rumbling of
a rope, as it rubbed on some hard or distended substance; and then
succeeded the heavy flap of canvas, that, yielding first to a powerful
impulse, was suddenly checked.
"Hear ye that?" exclaimed Ludlow, a little above a whisper. "'Tis the
brigantine, gybing his main-boom! Give way, men--see all ready to lay him
aboard!"
The crew started from their slumbers; the splash of oars was heard, and,
in the succeeding moment, the sails of a vessel, gliding through the
obscurity, nearly across their course, were visible.
"Now spring to your oars, men!" continued Ludlow, with the eagerness of
one engaged in chase. "We have him to advantage, and he is ours!--a long
pull and a strong pull--steadily, boys, and together!"
The practised crew did their duty. It seemed but a moment, before they
were close upon the chase.
"Another stroke of the oars, and she is ours!" cried
Ludlow.--"Grapple!--to your arms!--away, boarders, away!"
These orders came on the ears of the men with the effect of martial
blasts. The crew shouted, the clashing of arms was heard, and the tramp of
feet on the deck of the vessel announced the success of the enterprise.
A minute of extreme activity and of noisy confusion followed. The cheers
of the boarders had been heard, at a distance; and rockets shot into the
air, from the other boats, whose crews answered the shouts with manful
lungs. The whole ocean appeared in a momentary glow, and the roar of a gun
from the Coquette added to the fracas. The ship set several lanterns, in
order to indicate her position; while blue-lights, and other marine
signals were constantly burning in the approaching boats, as if those who
guided them were anxious to intimidate the assailed by a show of numbers.
In the midst of this scene of sudden awakening from the most profound
quiet, Ludlow began to look about him, in order to secure the principal
objects of the capture. He had repeated his orders about entering the
cabins, and concerning the person of the 'Skimmer of the Seas,' among the
other instructions given to the crews of the different boats; and the
instant they found themselves in quiet possession of the prize, the young
man dashed into the private recesses of the vessel, with a heart that
throbbed even more violently than during the ardor of boarding. To cast
open the door of a cabin, beneath the high quarter-deck, and to descend to
the level of its floor, were the acts of a moment. But disappointment and
mortification succeeded to triumph. A second glance was not necessary to
show that the coarse work and foul smells he saw and encountered, did not
belong to the commodious and even elegant accommodations of the
brigantine.
"Here is no Water-Witch!" he exclaimed aloud under the impulse of sudden
surprise.
"God be praised!" returned a voice, which was succeeded by a frightened
face from out a state-room. "We were told the rover was in the offing, and
thought the yells could come from nothing human!"
The blood, which had been rushing through the arteries and veins of
Ludlow so tumultuously now crept into his cheeks, and was felt tingling at
his fingers'-ends. He gave a hurried order to his men to re-enter their
boat, leaving every thing as they found it. A short conference between the
commander of Her Majesty's ship Coquette, and the seaman of the
state-room, succeeded; and then the former hastened on deck, whence his
passage into the barge occupied but a moment. The boat pulled away from
the fancied prize, amid a silence that was uninterrupted by any other
sound than that of a song, which, to all appearance, came from one who by
this time had placed himself at the vessel's helm. All that can be said of
the music is, that it was suited to the words, and all that could be heard
of the latter, was a portion of a verse, if verse it might be called,
which had exercised the talents of some thoroughly nautical mind. As we
depend, for the accuracy of the quotation, altogether on the fidelity of
the journal of the midshipman already named, it is possible that some
injustice may be done the writer; but, according to that document, he sang
a strain of the coasting song, which we have prefixed to this chapter as
its motto.
The papers of the coaster did not give a more detailed description of her
character and pursuits, than that which is contained in this verse. It is
certain that the log-book of the Coquette was far less explicit. The
latter merely said, that 'a coaster called the Stately Pine, John Turner,
master, bound from New-York to the Province of North Carolina, was boarded
at one o'clock, in the morning, all well.' But this description was not of
a nature to satisfy the sea men of the cruiser. Those who had been
actually engaged in the expedition were much too excited to see things in
their true colors; and, coupled with the two previous escapes of the
Water-Witch, the event just related had no small share in confirming
their former opinions concerning her character. The sailing-master was
not now alone, in believing that all pursuit of the brigantine was
perfectly useless.
But these were conclusions that the people of the Coquette made at their
leisure, rather than those which suggested themselves on the instant. The
boats, led by the flashes of light, had joined each other, and were rowing
fast towards the ship, before the pulses of the actors beat with
sufficient calmness to allow of serious reflection; nor was it until the
adventurers were below, and in their hammocks, that they found suitable
occasion to relate what had occurred to a wondering auditory. Robert Yarn,
the fore-top-man who had felt the locks of the sea-green lady blowing in
his face during the squall, took advantage of the circumstance to dilate
on his experiences; and, after having advanced certain positions that
particularly favored his own theories, he produced one of the crew of the
barge, who stood ready to affirm, in any court in Christendom, that he
actually saw the process of changing the beautiful and graceful lines that
distinguished the hull of the smuggler, into the coarser and more clumsy
model of the coaster.
"There are know-nothings," continued Robert, after he had fortified his
position by the testimony in question, "who would deny that the water of
the ocean is blue, because the stream that turns the parish-mill happens
to be muddy. But your real mariner, who has lived much in foreign parts,
is a man who understands the philosophy of life, and knows when to believe
a truth and when to scorn a lie. As for a vessel changing her character
when hard pushed in a chase, there are many instances; though having one
so near us, there is less necessity to be roving over distant seas, in
search of a case to prove it. My own opinion concerning this here
brigantine, is much as follows;--that is to say, I do suppose there was
once a real living hermaphrodite of her build and rig, and that she might
be employed in some such trade as this craft is thought to be in; and
that, in some unlucky hour, she and her people met with a mishap, that has
condemned her ever since to appear on this coast at stated times. She has,
however, a natural dislike to a royal cruiser; and no doubt the thing is
now sailed by those who have little need of compass or observation! All
this being true, it is not wonderful that when the boat's-crew got on her
decks, they found her different from what they had expected. This much is
certain, that when I lay within a boat-hook's length of her
sprit-sail-yard-arm, she was a half-rig, with a woman figure-head, and as
pretty a show of gear aloft, as eye ever looked upon; while every thing
below was as snug as a tobacco-box with the lid down:--and here you all
say that she is a high-decked schooner, with nothing ship-shape about her!
What more is wanting to prove the truth of what has been stated?--If any
man can gainsay it, let him speak."
As no man did gainsay it, it is presumed that the reasoning of the top-man
gained many proselytes. It is scarcely necessary to add, how much of
mystery and fearful interest was thrown around the redoubtable 'Skimmer of
the Seas,' by the whole transaction.
There was a different feeling on the quarter-deck. The two lieutenants put
their heads together, and looked grave; while one or two of the
midshipmen, who had been in the boats, were observed to whisper with their
messmates, and to indulge in smothered laughter. As the captain, however,
maintained his ordinary dignified and authoritative mien, the merriment
went no further, and was soon entirely repressed.
While on this subject, it may be proper to add that, in course of time,
the Stately Pine reached the capes of North Carolina, in safety; and that,
having effected her passage over Edenton bar, without striking, she
ascended the river to the point of her destination. Here the crew soon
began to throw out hints, relative to an encounter of their schooner with
a French cruiser. As the British empire, even in its most remote corners,
was at all times alive to its nautical glory, the event soon became the
discourse in more distant parts of the colony; and in less than six
months, the London journals contained a very glowing account of an
engagement, in which the names of the Stately Pine, and of John Turner,
made some respectable advances towards immortality.
If Captain Ludlow ever gave any further account of the transaction than
what was stated in the log-book of his ship, the bienséance, observed by
the Lords of the Admiralty, prevented it from becoming public.
Returning from this digression, which has no other connexion with the
immediate thread of the narrative, than that which arises from a reflected
interest, we shall revert to the further proceedings on board the cruiser.
When the Coquette had hoisted in her boats, that portion of the crew which
did not belong to the watch was dismissed to their hammocks, the lights
were lowered, and tranquillity once more reigned in the ship. Ludlow
sought his rest, and although there is reason to think that his slumbers
were a little disturbed by dreams, he remained tolerably quiet in the
hammock-cloths, the place in which it has already been said he saw fit to
take his repose, until the morning watch had been called.
Although the utmost vigilance was observed among the officers and
look-outs, during the rest of the night, there occurred nothing to arouse
the crew from their usual recumbent attitudes between the guns. The wind
continued light but steady, the sea smooth, and the heavens clouded, as
during the first hours of darkness.