Chapter Seven.
The Slaver’s Ruse.
The sun set that night in a broad bank of horizontal, mottled grey cloud, through which his beams darted in golden splendour at brief intervals for nearly half-an-hour after we had lost sight of the great luminary himself; and just about the time that the spars and canvas of the distant barque began to grow indistinct in the fast-gathering dusk of evening, there occurred a noticeable decrease in the strength of the wind, with every prospect of a tolerably fine night. Of course our glasses were never off the chase for more than five minutes at a time, but up to the moment when it became impossible to any longer distinguish the movements of those on board, no attempt to increase her spread of canvas had been observed. Whether by this apparent apathy her people hoped to lull us into a condition of equal carelessness, it is of course impossible for me to say; but, if so, they signally failed, for immediately that the barque’s outline faded into an indistinct blur in the growing darkness, we went to work and shook out a reef all round, never doubting but that they were at that moment doing precisely the same thing. And our supposition was most probably correct—Ryan, indeed, who had sent for his night-glass and brought it to bear upon her, declared that he could detect an increase in the area of her shadowy canvas—for even after we had made sail we could not perceive that we were in any wise decreasing the distance between the two vessels.
As the swift, tropical night shut down upon us every eye in the ship became strained to its utmost power in the effort to keep sight of the chase, for now that there could no longer be any doubt in the minds of her people that we were after them, we felt convinced that should an opportunity present itself for them to elude us in the darkness they would assuredly embrace it; and, being new to the coast and to the service, as most of us were, we had yet to learn by vexatious experience the fertility of resource which had been developed in the slave-trafficking fraternity by the unflagging pursuit to which they were subjected by the slave-squadron, and of which they never missed a chance to avail themselves. We had heard many an amusing story of the extraordinarily clever devices that these gentry had resorted to—very often successfully—in their endeavours to elude pursuit, and while we had laughed heartily at the recital of them, or commented admiringly upon their ingenuity, as the case might be, we had no fancy for further illustrating in our own persons their superiority in the art of mystification. And we were rendered all the more anxious by the fact that with nightfall the sky became overspread with a thin canopy of cloud that, while not sufficiently dense to wholly obscure the stars, so dimmed their lustre that it became difficult to distinguish, even through our night-glasses, the forms of the waves at a greater distance than half-a-mile; while as for the chase, we were at length reluctantly compelled to admit to each other that we had lost sight of her altogether, or at least that we could not be absolutely certain whether we could still see her or not; sometimes we were confident that we could, at other times we utterly failed to make her out.
It was while we were in this painful condition of uncertainty that Ryan—who like myself had remained on deck, diligently working away with his glass, and utterly deaf to the more than once repeated statement of the steward that the dinner was on the cabin table—turned quickly to me and said—
“Do you see that greenish-looking star just glimmering through the clouds right over our jib-boom end? Here, stand exactly where I am, and when she pitches you will see it showing about ten degrees above the horizon. There! do you see the star I mean?”
“Yes,” said I, catching sight of the pale green glimmer as he placed me in position. “Yes, I see it. What of it?”
“Just carry your eye from it down to the horizon at an angle of about forty-five degrees in an easterly direction, and tell me if you see anything particular.”
I did so, and after two or three attempts thought I caught a faint gleam like the light of a lamp shining through a red curtain.
“Yes,” I answered, “I fancy I can just make out a dim something.” And I described what I saw.
“Precisely!” exclaimed Ryan delightedly. “There! now I have it in my glass—no, it is gone again—this jump of a sea renders it almost impossible to use one’s telescope on the deck of such a lively little hooker as this—not that I’ve a word to say against her, God bless her, she’s a beauty, every inch of her, but I wish she’d remain steady for a second or two. There, I have it again! Yes, it’s a light in the barque’s after-cabin. They’ve drawn the curtains, never suspecting that the light would show through. Yes, there’s no mistake about it, I can see it quite plainly now; upon my word I believe we are overhauling her now that the breeze has dropped a bit. Mr Pierrepoint, d’ye see that light?”
“Where away, sir?”
It was pointed out to the lad, and after some searching and prying—for it was so very dim that it was almost impossible to distinguish it with the naked eye—he caught sight of it.
“Very well, then,” remarked Ryan, with a return to his old, humorous manner that showed how great a relief to him was the appearance of the faint ruddy gleam, “keep your eye upon it, my bhoy, until I give ye a shpell. Mr Dugdale and Oi are now goin’ below to dinner, and if ye lose soight of that loight, bedad I’ll—I’ll keelhaul ye, ye shpalpeen. He’s edgin’ away off the wind, d’ye see, the blagguard! I wouldn’t be surprised if he was to up helm and shquare away before it in a minute or two, hopin’ to run us out of soight before the moon rises, so don’t let your oye go off that light for a single inshtant if ye value your shkin. Keep her away a bit”—to the man at the helm—“let her go off a point! So! steady as you go! There, Masther Freddy, the light is right forninst your jib-boom end now. Mind that ye kape it there. We’re certainly gaining on her.” And, patting the lad affectionately on the shoulder, the warm-hearted Irishman turned and beckoned me to follow him down into the cabin.
We had been below about half-an-hour, and were getting well forward with our dinner, when we heard the voices of Pierrepoint and the quarter-master in earnest conversation over the open skylight, and an occasional word or two that reached us seemed to indicate that they were in doubt about something. We both pricked up our ears a little; and presently we heard Pierrepoint ejaculate in a tone of impatience and with a stamp of his foot on the deck—
“I’ll be shot if I can understand it at all, Somers; I shall call the captain.”
“I really think I would, sir, if I was you. I don’t believe that’s the barque at all; it’s some circumwenting trick that they’ve been playing us, that’s my opinion!”
At this Ryan started to his feet and, hailing through the skylight, asked—
“What is the matter, Mr Pierrepoint; have you lost sight of the light?”
“No, sir,” answered poor Freddy, in a tone of distress; “the light is still straight ahead of us, and we seem to be nearing it fast, but I can’t make out anything like the loom of the sails or hull of the barque, and if she is there I think we ought to see her by this time. The red light shows quite plainly in the glass.”
“I will join you on deck and have a look at it,” exclaimed Ryan; and, rising from the table, he sprang up the companion-ladder three steps at a time, I following close at his heels.
Yes; there was the light, sure enough, right ahead of us; and a glance aloft as well as the feel of the breeze on our faces told us in an instant that the schooner had been further kept away, and was now running well off the wind, although the change had been so gradual that we had not noticed it while sitting in the cabin. Ryan took the glass from Pierrepoint and brought it to bear on the light.
“Yes,” he remarked, with the telescope still at his eye, “that is the light, beyond a doubt; but, as you say, Mr Pierrepoint, I can see no sign of the barque herself. Yet she must be there, for that light is obviously moving, and I observe that you have, very properly, kept away to follow it. Surely,” he continued, with an accent of impatience and perplexity, “we have not been following some other craft that has hove above the horizon since the darkness set in? And, even so, I can see nothing of the craft herself. Obviously, however, we are nearing the light—whatever it is—fast, for I can see it quite distinctly in the glass, I even fancy that I can see it rising and falling. Take the glass, Dugdale, and tell me what you can make of it.”
I took the glass, and, after a long and patient scrutiny of the mysterious light, pronounced my opinion.
“To me, sir,” said I, “it has the appearance of an ordinary ship’s lantern wrapped in a strip of red bunting and hung from a pole, or something of that sort. For, if you will look at it closely, you will notice that it sways with the wash of the sea, and now and then seems to swing for an instant behind a slender object like a light spar. But I could almost take my oath that there is no barque or any other kind of craft there.”
Once again Ryan took the telescope, and after a further prolonged scrutiny, he exclaimed—
“By the powers, but I believe you are right, and if so we have been done! It certainly has very much the appearance that you describe. But what in the world can it be? It is a moving object, beyond all doubt, for see how we have been obliged to run off the wind in chase of it! However, we are close to it now, for I can make out the swinging of the lantern—and a lantern it is—with the naked eye. It is some confounded contrivance for leading us astray, that is what it is! But since we are so close to it, we may as well ascertain its character, if only to be awake to the trick if it ever happens to be played upon us a second time. Hands by the braces here, and stand by to back the topsail. And get two or three lanterns ready to swing over the side, so that we may see just exactly what the thing is.”
We had by this time approached the mysterious object so nearly that another three or four minutes sufficed to bring it within a couple of hundred feet of the schooner’s weather bow, when the topsail was laid to the mast, and our way checked sufficiently to permit of a careful examination of the thing, whatever it was. By the time that we had forged ahead far enough to bring it on our weather beam it was close aboard of us, and then the light of our lanterns disclosed the nature of the contrivance by which we had been so cleverly tricked. It was in fact nothing more than a raft composed of five nine-inch planks laid parallel to each other with a space of about a foot between each, and firmly secured together by a couple of stout cross-pieces nailed athwart the whole concern. The fore-ends of the planks had been sawn away to the shape of a sharp wedge to facilitate the movement of the raft through the water, and on the foremost cross-piece had been rigged an oar for a mast, upon which was set a hastily-contrived squaresail, made out of a piece of old tarpaulin. To the head of the mast was securely lashed an old lantern with a short length of candle, still burning, in it; the lantern being cunningly draped in red bunting to represent the appearance of a lamp shining through a curtain. And the whole contrivance was rendered self-steering by the attachment of a few fathoms of line to the after-end of the middle plank, at the other extremity of which a drogue, consisting of a short length of plank, was attached. This drogue had the effect of keeping the raft running dead before the wind, and it travelled at a very respectable pace, too—quite five knots an hour, we estimated its speed at—for the sail was quite a big one for so small an affair; and since we had been steering for it for just about an hour, it meant that we had been decoyed some five miles to leeward of our proper course.
The question now was: Where was the barque? It did not take us very long to make up our minds upon this point. It was pretty evident that since her skipper had been at so much pains to entice us away down to leeward, he would have held his wind all this time; and to windward therefore must we look for him. Whether, however, he had tacked and stood away to the westward immediately after launching his raft, or whether he had held on upon the port tack to the northward, we could not possibly tell, for a diligent and prolonged use of our night-glasses failed to reveal the slightest indication of his whereabouts. Ryan, however, was not long in arriving upon a conclusion in the matter. He argued that if he had tacked we ought also to tack forthwith, because, if we stood on as we were going until the moon rose, we might run out of sight of him; whereas, if he had not tacked, he would be at that moment somewhere about broad on our weather bow. If therefore he had tacked, we should be doing the right thing to tack also, since we should then be standing directly after him; while if he had not tacked, we should still be doing right to heave about, since even in that case we should probably see something of him from our mast-head when the moon rose, as she would in less than half-an-hour. We therefore at once put the helm down and hove round on the starboard tack, keeping the schooner as close to the wind as she would lie, while still allowing her to go along through the water.
A faint brightening in the sky by and by announced the welcome approach of the moon upon the scene; and shortly afterwards the beautiful planet herself, considerably shrunken from her full-orbed splendour, rose slowly into view above the horizon, her curtailed disc showing of a deep, ruddy orange-colour through the dense, humid vapours of the lower atmosphere. Two hands were at once sent up to the topgallant-yard to take a look round; but even after they had been there an hour—by which time the moon had risen high enough to give us plenty of light—they failed to discover any sign of the barque or anything else; and we were at length reluctantly compelled to admit that we had been very cleverly tricked, and that our cunning neighbour had fairly given us the slip.
“But I’ll not give him up, even now!” exclaimed Ryan, when this conviction had fairly forced itself upon us. “Come down below, Dugdale, and let us reason this thing out.”
We accordingly descended to our snug little cabin and seated ourselves at the table, Ryan producing a sheet of paper, a scale, and a pencil wherewith to graphically illustrate our line of reasoning.
“Now, here,” said he, drawing an arrow near one margin of the paper, “is the wind, coming out at west as nearly as may be; and here,” laying the scale upon the paper, measuring off a distance, and making two pencil dots, “are the positions of the barque and the schooner when the former was last seen. Now, I estimate that the barque was going about eight and a half knots, and we were reeling off nine by the log at that time; and this state of affairs continued at least until the light was seen, which was about half-an-hour after we lost sight of our friend. Consequently, when the light was first seen, the schooner was here”—making another dot—“and the barque there,” making a fourth.
“Now, what would the blagguard be most likely to do when he had safely launched his raft? He knew that it would go skimming away to leeward, taking us with it; and I therefore think it most probable that he would tack at once, going off in this direction,” laying down a line upon the paper. “Meanwhile, the raft went scudding away to leeward until we met it there,” making another dot. “Then we tacked, and, laying a point higher than he can, stood along this line,” ruling one carefully in as he spoke. “Now, we have been travelling along this line, say an hour and a quarter, which brings us here. But where is the barque? If she had tacked, and continued to stand on until now, she would be there, eleven or twelve miles away, and we should see her. Supposing, however, that she continued to stand on as she was going when we last saw her, she would now be there, twenty-eight miles away! Phew! I was a long way out of my reckoning when I thought that we should still have her in sight, even if we tacked. We’ve lost her, Harry, my bhoy, and that’s a fact. However, we know where she’s bound to, and that’s the island of Cuba, or I’m a Dutchman. Very well. Having given us the slip she will make the best of her way there without further delay; and it is my opinion that if she is still standing to the northward she will not continue to do so for very much longer, because, d’ye see, my bhoy, she’ll be afraid of falling in with some of our cruisers if she stands in too close to the coast. Therefore, as we can hug the wind closer than she can, we’ll just stand on as we are going for a day or two longer, or until the wind changes—in fact, we will shape a course for Cuba—and if we don’t fall in with her again within the next seventy-two hours I shall give her up. Meanwhile the wind is dropping fast, so we will get some more muslin upon the little hooker.”
As Ryan had said, the wind was dropping fast, so rapidly, indeed, that when eight bells was struck at midnight the schooner was under all the canvas that we could set, and even then was only creeping along at a speed of some two and a half knots per hour. Oh, how fervently we wished then that we could see even as much as the mere mastheads of the barque! for we felt certain that in such a light air the schooner would make short work of overtaking her. But nothing hove in sight; and when the next morning dawned we were still alone upon the face of the vast ocean.
With the rising of the sun the small draught of air that still remained to us fell dead; and we had it calm the whole day and well on into the succeeding night. Then the weather became unsettled and thundery, with light baffling airs interspersed with fierce squalls from all quarters of the compass, during which we made scarcely sixty miles in the twenty-four hours.
It was about midnight of the third day after we had lost sight of the barque, and the seventy-two hours that Ryan had allowed himself in which to find her again were fully spent, without affording us another glimpse of her. All hands, from Ryan himself down to the smallest boy in the ship, were dreadfully disgusted and crestfallen at our want of success; and we were only waiting for a breeze to spring up from somewhere to enable us to shape a course back to our cruising ground. The weather, however, was still very overcast and lowering, with signs not wanting that another heavy thunderstorm was brewing, which would probably bring us the desired breeze. There was not much swell running, but sufficient, nevertheless, to tumble the schooner about a good deal; and I had accordingly taken it upon myself to clew up, haul down, and furl every stitch of canvas, in order to save the sails from battering themselves to rags. The thunder had been gradually working up ever since sunset, and in fact even before that, and when eight bells struck at midnight, and my watch below came round, the weather had such a curious and portentous look, and the atmosphere was moreover so close and heavy, that I determined to stretch myself out “all standing” on the stern grating instead of going below, so that I might be all ready in case my presence should be required.
It was shortly after two bells when Pierrepoint came and roused me out with the remark—
“I am sorry to disturb you, Dugdale, but I think it is going to rain very shortly, and if you remain there you stand a very good chance of getting soaked to the skin. And what do you think of the weather? Is it merely a thunder-squall that has been brewing all this time, or what is it? Just look at those clouds overhead, their edges look quite red, as though there was a fire somewhere behind them. Do you think I should call the captain?”
It was as he had said. The sky was banked up from horizon to zenith, all round, with enormous cloud-piles, black as ink in the body of them, but their fringes or edges, which had a curiously tattered appearance, were of a distinct fiery red hue. All this time there was not a breath of wind save what was created by the schooner as she rolled heavily on the gathering swell; not a sound save those which arose within her as the bulkheads and timbers creaked and groaned dismally, the cabin-doors rattled, the rudder kicked as the water swirled and gurgled about it and under her counter with the heave of her, and the jerk of the spars aloft, or the slatting of the braces as she swayed, pendulum-like, from side to side.
“What does the glass say?” inquired I, in response to Pierrepoint’s last question. I walked to the open skylight and peered down through it at the barometer, the tube of which was just sufficiently illuminated by the turned-down cabin lamp to permit of its condition being noted. It had fallen an inch since I last looked at it, during my watch on deck!
“Phew!” ejaculated I, “there must surely be something the matter with the thing; it can never have fallen that much in scarcely two hours!”
I hurried below and, turning up the lamp, subjected the instrument to a careful examination; but, as far as I could make out, there seemed to be nothing wrong with it; the fall had all the appearance of being perfectly genuine. But, whether or not, it was certain that the captain ought at once to be made acquainted with the state of affairs; I therefore went forthwith to his cabin and aroused him.
“Ay, ay,” he answered sleepily, to my call. “What is it, Mr Dugdale? Has the barque hove in sight?”
“No such luck, sir, I am sorry to say,” replied I. “But I think you ought to know that the weather has a very peculiar and threatening appearance; and the glass has dropped a full inch within the last two hours.”
“An inch?” ejaculated Ryan, starting up in his bunk. “An inch? Surely, Dugdale, you must be mistaken!”
“Indeed, sir, I am not,” said I. “I examined the barometer very carefully, and satisfied myself that I had made no mistake before calling you.”
“By Jove, then, it is high time that I was on deck!” exclaimed he, leaping out of his bunk. “Just put a match to my lamp, Harry, my lad, will ye; you will find a box there on the shelf. Is there any wind?”
“Not a breath, sir; but I shall not be surprised if we have a great deal more than we want before long,” I answered.
“Um!” said he. “Well, almost anything short of a hurricane would be better than these exasperating calms. The swell seems to have risen a bit since I turned in, hasn’t it?”
“Quite perceptibly,” said I, “and it seems to be coming more out from the northward than at first.”
“Well,” said he, thrusting his bare feet into his slippers, “let us go on deck and take a look round.”
And, he leading the way, we forthwith trundled up the companion-ladder and stepped out on deck.
It seemed to have grown blacker and more threatening than ever during the short time that I had been below, although that may have been due to the contrast between the light of the cabin and the darkness on deck; the ruddy tinge on the cloud edges, however, was even more pronounced than before, the colour having slightly changed and grown more like the hue of red-hot copper. Ryan was evidently much astonished—and, I thought, somewhat dismayed—by what he saw.
“By the powers!” he ejaculated, “you did right to call me, Dugdale. If we were in the Indian Ocean, now, I would say that a cyclone was brewing; and, now I come to think of it, there is no Act of Parliament against one brewing here. How is the glass now? has it dropped anything since you last looked at it?”
I went to the skylight and once more peered at the mercury.
“Yes, indeed, sir, it has,” answered I, “it has gone down nearly one-tenth!”
“Then, by the piper, we’re in for something out of the common, and the sooner we set about preparing for it, the better!” exclaimed Ryan. “Ah! I see you have already furled everything; well, that leaves us so much the less to be still done. Call all hands, however, for we may have it upon us at any moment, by the look of things up there,” pointing to the frowning, ruddy sky. “Rig in the jib-boom, and send down all but the lower-yard on deck, and both topmasts as well. Set some of the men to secure the canvas with double gaskets; and close-reef the boom-foresail and set it. Let the carpenter look to the hatches and see that they are securely battened down, and he had better examine the pumps also; our lives may depend upon them before all is over. Where is the boatswain? Oh, is that you, Bartlett? Give an eye to the boats’ gripes, will you, and see that they are all right. I have known a boat to be blown clean from the davits before now. Hurrah, men! look alive with those yards, and let us have them down here on deck as quickly as possible.”
The schooner was by this time as busy as a beehive in swarming-time, the men working with a will, since they knew, from the sharp, incisive tones in which Ryan issued his orders, as well as by the menacing aspect of the sky, that the occasion was pressing. Fortunately, in so small and lightly-rigged a craft as the Felicidad, the task of preparing her for the forthcoming battle with the elements was not a heavy one, and, being well manned for our size, we were soon ready.
None too soon, however. For hardly had the finishing touches been given to our preparations, and the guns and boats made thoroughly secure, than we were momentarily dazzled and blinded by a terrific flash of blue lightning that seemed to dart from the clouds immediately overhead, and to strike the water close to us, filling the dead and heavy air with a strong odour of brimstone, while simultaneously we were deafened and stunned by a most awful, ear-splitting crack of thunder that made the schooner quiver from stem to stern as though she had been struck by a heavy shot.
Ryan, Pierrepoint, and I were all standing close together near the companion at the moment when the lightning flashed out, illumining the whole scene for an instant with a light as brilliant as that of the noonday sun, and while I was still in process of recovering from the shock produced by the terrifying crash of the thunder, I heard my fellow-mid exclaim to the captain—
“There! did you see that, sir? There is a craft of some sort away out there,” pointing in a north-easterly direction. “I saw her as distinctly as possible. She is about six miles away, and is stripped to her close-reefed topsails—”
“Did you see that ship out there on our port-quarter, sir?” hailed one of the men from the forecastle, interrupting Master Freddy in his tale.
“No,” answered Ryan sharply. “I wasn’t looking that way. What did she look like?”
“She is a square-rigged craft of about three or four hundred tons, under close-reefed topsails, lying end-on to us, sir,” answered the man.
“Surely it can’t be our old friend the barque that has drifted within view of us again during the darkness?” exclaimed Ryan excitedly. “Keep a good look-out for her, lads, when the next flash comes,” he added in an eager tone of voice, that showed conclusively how secondary a matter the impending outburst of the elements had already become to him in view of this new discovery.
No second flash came, however, but instead of it, and almost as the last words left Ryan’s lips, the clouds above us burst, and there descended from them the heaviest downpour of rain that I had ever up to that time witnessed. Those who have never beheld a tropical thunder-shower can form no conception of what it is like. Imagine yourself to be standing immediately under a large tank of warm water, and then further imagine that the contents of this tank are suddenly capsized right on top of you; multiply the quantity of falling water a million times, and suppose the descent of the water to be continued for from three to six or seven minutes, and you will then have an imperfect conception of the sort of drenching that we received on the occasion of which I am now speaking. The decks were flooded in an instant, and before I could wriggle into my oil-skins I was soaked to the skin, and the warm water was washing above my ankles with the roll of the schooner. The scuppers were wholly inadequate to the occasion, and we were obliged to open the ports to get rid of the water and prevent it from getting below. The downpour lasted some four minutes or so, ceasing as abruptly and with as little warning as it had commenced; but in that time it had beaten down the swell so effectually that our motion was scarcely more perceptible than it would have been in a well-sheltered roadstead; and the effect of the sudden cessation of the noises that had been so recently sounding in our ears, and of the crash of the downpour, was very weird and curious, the dead silence now being broken only by an occasional faint creak or jar of bulkhead or boom, and the loud gush and gurgle of the water pouring from the scuppers.
The silence was of no long duration, however, for we had scarcely found time to become sensible of it when a faint moaning sound arose in the air, coming from no one knew where; and, presently, with a still louder moan, a sudden, furious, scuffle of wind swept past us, causing our reefed foresail to flap loudly, and was gone. The moanings grew louder and more weird, sounding now on the port-quarter, now on the starboard bow, then broad abeam, and anon high over our mastheads; it was clear that small, partial currents of air were in violent motion all round us, and that the crisis was at hand.