The Cruise of the Midge (Vol. 2 of 2)

by Michael Scott

CHAPTER XI.

THE BREAKING WAVE.

As the day lightened, the wind fell, and by sunrise, it was nearly calm in the small bay, although we could see the breeze roughening the blue waters out at sea.

Presently, Mr ***'s negroes came on board; but before determining what to do, or proceeding with our repairs, we endeavoured to get out of them some more information regarding the privateers, to give them no worse a name, and their crews; apparently, however, they knew nothing beyond what we were already acquainted with.

"Nice peoples dem—Captain Wallace! Oh, quite one gentleman—plenty money—plenty grog—Ah, wery nice peoples," was all that Quashie knew or seemed to care about—at least all that he would say.

While we were yet irresolute as to the prudence of stripping the mast, with such gentry almost within earshot, a small dory, or light canoe, shoved her black snout round the headland on which the cocoa-nuts grew, paddled by a solitary figure in the stern, with an animal of some kind or another stuck up, monkey-fashion, in the bow, which, as it came nearer, I perceived to be a most noble Spanish bloodhound. I looked earnestly at the stranger through the glass, and concluded at once that he could be no other than our friend of the preceding evening.

"I say, Lennox"—he had been standing at my elbow the minute before—"that's my man—there"—pointing with the telescope.

"Mr Lennox is below, sir," said Tooraloo, "but you are right; it is him, sure enough."

The man paddled briskly alongside, when the bloodhound caught a rope in his teeth, that was hanging over, and, setting his feet against the bowpost, held on until his master jumped on board, which he did with the most perfect sang-froid.

"Now for it," thought I; "he is come to tell us civilly that we are to have our throats cut for shooting one of his beauties last night."

Having deliberately secured his dory, by making fast the painter round one of the stancheons of the awning, he called to his dog—"Matamoro—here, boy, here," and saw him safe on board before he had the civility to make his bow. At length he turned to me, and I had now no difficulty whatever in making out my amigo Mr Wilson, in the identical Buenos Ayrean captain, although he had altered his appearance very materially from the time I had seen him in Jamaica. Awkward as our position appeared to be fast getting, I could scarcely keep my eyes off the beautiful animal that accompanied him; first, because I admired him exceedingly; and secondly, because he seemed deucedly inclined to bite me. He was as tall as a stag-hound, whose symmetry of head and figure he conjoined with the strength of the English bull-dog. His colour was a pale fawn, gradually darkening down the legs and along the neck, until the feet and muzzle were coal black. He gamboled about his master like a puppy; but the moment any of us spoke to him, he raised his back into an angry curve, with the black streak that ran down it bristling up like a wild-boar's, and set his long tail straight, as if it had been a crow-bar, or the Northumbrian lion's; and then his teeth—my wig! the laughing hyæna was a joke to him. But I must return from the dog to the man. He was dressed in very wide trowsers, of a sort of broad, yellow stripped silk and cotton Indian stuff; slippers of velvet-looking, yellowish-brown Spanish leather, and no stockings; he wore a broad belt of the same sort of leather round his waist, over the ample folds of an Indian shawl of a bright yellow colour, with crimson fringes, the ends of which hung down on one side like a sash; this was fastened by a magnificent gold buckle in front, worked into the shape of a thistle. Through this cincture was stuck, on the left side, a long, crooked, ivory-handled knife, in a shark-skin sheath, richly ornamented with gold; while a beautifully worked grass purse hung from the other, containing his cigars, flint, and steel. His shirt was of dark ruby-coloured cotton, worked with a great quantity of bright red embroidery at the sleeves and throat, where it was fastened with the largest ruby stone I had ever seen; also fashioned like the head of the aforesaid Scottish thistle, with emerald leaves, and set in a broad old-fashioned silver brooch—the only silver ornament he wore—such as the ladies of the Highland chieftains in days of yore used to fasten their plaids with on the left shoulder. It was evidently an heir-loom. Vain, apparently, of the beautiful but Herculean mould of his neck, he wore his shirt collar folded back, cut broad and massive, and lined with velvet of the same colour as the shirt, and no neckcloth.

He had shaven his whiskers since I had seen him, but wore a large jet-black mustache on his upper lip; and a twisted Panama chain round his neck, supporting an instrument made of some bright yellow hardwood, highly polished, resembling a boatswain's pipe in shape; the ventiges inlaid with gold.

His cap, of the same sort of leather as his belt, was richly embroidered with a band of golden thistles above the scoop, which was of tortoiseshell hooped in with gold, coming very low down over his eyes, while the top, like a hussar's, doubled over on the left side of his head, where it ended in a massive tassel of gold bullion.

He had buff gloves stuck in his belt; and his hands, strong and muscular, but fair as a woman's, were richly decorated with several valuable rings.

There had been one alteration in his appearance, however, that I surmised he would have dispensed with if he could; and that was a broad, deep, and scarcely cicatrized scar down his sun-burnt cheek.

"My Kingston friend—proof positive," thought I.

I had never seen so handsome a man before, bronzed almost black though he was by wind and fierce suns—such perfect symmetry, conjoined with such muscle and strength—such magnificent bodily proportions, with so fine a face and forehead; and such pearl-white teeth—but the fiend looked forth in the withering sparkle of his hazel eye.

"The thistle!" said I to myself, as the old Scottish brooch, and the general predominance of the national emblem in his equipment attracted my attention; "alas, can love of country, pervading as it is, still linger in the bosom of a man without a country; of one whose hand is against every man, and every man's hand against him; of the Tiger of the sea!" Yes, like the dying lamp in the sepulchre, flickering after its fellows have long been for ever quenched, whose faint and uncertain beams seem still to sanctify, if they cannot warm, the gloomy precincts, where all beside is cold, and dark, and dead;—it was the last ray of blessed light, gleaming through the mist of surrounding rottenness and desolation—the last pale halo of virtuous and holy feeling hovering to depart from off the obdurate and heaven-scathed heart of the God-forsaken PIRATE.

Unjust—unjust. There was another—a kindlier, a warmer, a steadier flame, that still burnt sun-bright in that polluted tabernacle—all worthy of a purer shrine—nor left it until, abreast of the spark of life itself, it was shattered from his riven heart by the dart of the Destroyer; and the dark and felon spirit, whirled to its tremendous account on the shriek of unutterable despair, crushed from him in his mortal agony, as the dancing waves closed, howling and hissing like water-fiends, over the murderer's grave. But let me not anticipate.

From his manner I could not say whether he knew me or not.

"So you have put in here in distress," said he to the master of the Moonbeam, glancing his eyes upwards, where the people were at work at the head of the mainmast.

"Yes, sir," said Tooraloo, but before he could get in another word, our friend was in the main-rigging himself, and near the masthead.

"Eigh, eigh," sung out Palmneedle and Chip, who were helping the carpenters and riggers aloft, "what dis—who dis?" for the dog was following his master like a monkey, yaffing and barking, and sprawling with his feet through the ratlines—so each of the negroes, seizing a rope, slid down on deck, and with such vehemence, that they capsized on their backs, cocking up their black trotters in the air, after a most ludicrous fashion.

"Oh, I see—I see," said Wallace or Wilson, descending, and swinging himself in on deck with the grace of an Apollo; "masthead badly sprung—and your chaps seem to be going clumsily enough about their work too"—(a truth undoubtedly)—"I will send you my carpenter's crew to lend a hand in securing it."

"Thank you, sir," said Toby, with much the sort of expression and tone of a contrite culprit thanking the hangman for adjusting the rope.

I was myself cruelly taken aback by such unlooked-for civility, I will confess.

"But won't you step down and see my owner, sir? he is in the cabin," quoth Tooraloo, in doubt what to say or do—metre again.

"Oh, certainly—no objections—but won't you go first, sir?" said he, with one hand on the companion, and politely indicating the ladder with the other; cloaking thereby his real object, which was clearly that he might not be taken at advantage.

Tooraloo and I went below on this, as one needs must go when the devil drives, and were immediately followed by the stranger.

Lennox was busy with some papers, and stooping down over his open desk, with his pen crossed in his mouth, when we entered—

"The captain of the Buenos Ayrean privateer, sir," said Tooraloo, stopping at the door and ushering him in past him—jamming himself as flat as a flounder against the door-post, as if to prevent even a fibre of his clothing from touching the other.

Lennox looked up—his eyebrows instantly contracted, his colour faded, and he became as pale as death. The pen dropped unheeded from his lips, while the large law paper that he held in his left hand, in which he had apparently been writing, trembled like an aspen leaf.—At length he ground out between his teeth—

"Hast thou found me—O mine enemy?"

"Found you," said the other, who had started, or rather staggered back, equally overcome with extreme surprise apparently, and nearly capsizing Tooraloo, whose breath he fairly knocked out of his body against the door-post with a grunt—"Found you, Saunders? why if I have, it has not been in consequence of looking for you, let me tell you that; for of all the unexpected meetings that ever befell me, so help me God—this is"—

"Blaspheme not, William Adderfang—take not His name into your mouth—you have found me, let that suffice—and am I wrong in calling you my enemy—me!—

"Yes, Saunders—you are wrong—for with little of your profession, and none of your romance and nonsense, my boy, I will prove you are wrong at a fitting opportunity—so there's my hand in the mean time, man—there's my hand."—Lennox sprang back, as if it had held a viper—"Heyday," said the other, drawing himself up fiercely—"why I thought you might have allowed bygones to be bygones at this time of day—and surely I may cry quits now, after your having scoured your knife against my ribs, at"——

Here he checked himself, and Lennox, making an effort to resume his composure, shook Adderfang's hand, but very much as one would shake a red-hot poker—and then with no very good grace asked him to sit down to breakfast, which the other instantly did with apparent cordiality; and a deuced good one he made too, chattering and doing the agreeable all the while, as if he had been an old and intimate acquaintance come on board to welcome us on our arrival. As for me Benjie—I freely confess that I could not have told whether I was eating biscuit or blancmange; nay, I verily believe you might have palmed castor oil on me for coffee, and I never would have noticed it.

"Adderfang—William Adderfang—the seducer of Jessy Miller!" said I to myself; "here's a coil—the villain who stabbed and robbed me at Havanna! the master Wilson of Montego bay—the man with the blunderbuss at Kingston.—Whew! This devil of a fellow to pounce upon us so unexpectedly, in an out of the way place like San Andreas too! and with a couple of whacking privateers, to give them still their genteel name, with a hundred and fifty neat young gentlemen at the fewest, I make no question, to back him. There's a climax of agreeables for you, if he should recognise me now! Come, this does account with a vengeance for the floating notions that crossed my mind at Mr Roseapple's—I was sure I had seen him before."

Still, notwithstanding these pleasant dreams, I gave in to circumstances, better than either of my two shipmates, I fancy; for Lennox could eat but little, and was evidently ill at ease—-as for the skipper he gobbled mechanically—he could not help that; but I noticed that he watched the stranger like a cat watching a terrier, starting at his every motion; and when he dropped his knife by accident on the floor and stooped to pick it up, he held his breath until he saw him at work at the biscuit and cold ham again; as if he had considered there was a tolerable chance of his giving him a progue with it en passant, just for the fun of the thing as it were.

Gradually, however, I got more at ease, and was noticing the extreme beauty of his short curling auburn hair, now that his cap was thrown aside, with a dash of premature grey here and there, like hoarfrost in early autumn; and the noble ivory forehead, paler by contrast with the bronzing of his face, and smooth as monumental alabaster while his fierce spirit was in calm, but crisping in a moment if his passions were roused, like the ripple on the calm sea before the first of the breeze; when he rose abruptly and led the way from the cabin.

When we came on deck—Adderfang, or Wilson, or Wallace, or whatever his name for the moment might be—whistled "loud as the scream of the curlew," and an armed boat immediately shoved out from under the mangroves that grew on the small point or headland near the cocoa-nut trees, and pulled towards us.

"Come," thought I, "he seems determined not to trust too much to our forbearance either."—The boat approached—it was apparently a very fast one, pulled by four splendid fellows in neat white trowsers and blue shirts, and all with cloth caps handsomely embroidered.—They had their cutlasses buckled round their waists by black belts, and there were four marines in white jackets, two in the bow and two aft, sitting with their muskets upright between their knees.—The officer commanding the boat was a tall sallow young man, very Yankee in appearance, dressed in a blue uniform coat, and one epaulette, with uniform buttons of some kind or another, so that altogether I should have taken him for an officer in the United States navy, had I accidentally met him. He came alongside.

"Mr Kerrick"—said Adderfang, who evidently, but from what motive I could not tell, was most desirous that we should be off from our anchorage as fast as possible—"send Whitaker and four of his crew from the Mosca"—this I guessed was the schooner, although I afterwards found that she was no other than the far-famed piratical Baltimore clipper, the Snowflake, the terror of those seas—"and see—it is to get all put to rights aloft there—the head of the mainmast is badly sprung, you can tell him, and he will know better than any of us what to bring."

"Ay, ay, sir,"—said his subaltern, and without more ado the boat shoved off again, not for the point, however, but direct for the beach under Mr ***'s house, where the officer landed, and the crew, leaving a boat-keeper on the beach, began to skylark about; but evidently they had their instructions never to move so far away but that they should be able to reach their boat again, before we could, if we had tried it. From their lingo, those youths were all of them either Americans or Englishmen, probably a mixture of both.

Presently Tooraloo, at his request or command, for although the words were civil enough, the tone sounded deuced like the latter, put Adderfang ashore in the Moonbeam's boat; and under the idea that if there was any danger toward, I ran as much risk where I was as on the land, I asked to accompany him, so that I might reconnoitre a bit by the way. Accordingly, we were walking up to Mr ***'s house, when I thought I would diverge a little, in order to have a parley with some of the boat's crew, who I had noticed converged towards their own boat whenever they saw ours put off; but before I could ask a question, the officer before mentioned interposed, and with a great deal of mock civility offered his services, if I wanted any thing. I had no plea to avoid him, so I followed Adderfang and Tooraloo to the house.

I now found, when I could look about me in the daylight, that it was even a narrower tongue of land on which the house stood than what I had imagined, and that divided the bay where we were, from the narrow land-locked creek where the two privateers were at anchor.

Where I stood I looked right down upon them—they lay in a beautiful little basin, with high precipitous banks on the side next me, but with a smooth, hard, and white beach on the opposite side, at the head of the creek. The entrance was very narrow, not pistol-shot across.

Close to the shore, and immediately below me, lay a large schooner, but I could only see her mastheads and part of her bowsprit and fore-rigging, as she was moored with her stern towards the high bank, so as to present her broadside to the opening of the harbour, and her bows to that of her consort, the little Midge, that lay further off and close to the shore on the other side of the creek, at right angles with the schooner, so as to rake her if she had been carried, or enfilade any boats coming in to attack her. Both vessels had the Buenos Ayrean flag and pennant flying; blue, white, and blue, horizontally.

There were sentries along the beach; one being advanced near to where I stood, who, when I made demonstrations of descending, very civilly told me to heave about, and go back again. I remonstrated, and said, "In the island of a friendly power I saw no right that he, or any one else, had to set bounds to my rambles."

He said he knew nought about whose island it was, but he knew what his orders were; "so if I ventured, he had given me fair warning." With this, he threw his musket across his body, and slapped the side of it to see that the priming was all right.

"You are very obliging," said I; "but, pray, put yourself to no inconvenience whatever on my account, as I shall return." And like the thief in the hen-roost, I did go "back again."

By sunset that night our repairs were finished, and a message came from Captain Wallace, that he expected we would weigh and be off at daylight in the morning—a hint that we were right willing to take, I assure you.

The bearer further said, that he was ordered to leave a small blue and yellow flag, that we were to hoist, if we fell in with the Waterwraith, a schooner-tender that he had cruising about the island, which would prevent her from molesting us.

"Murder! Are there three of them?—ho, ho, hoo,"—trundled out our friend, Toby Tooraloo.

When we tried to get the carpenter's crew to take payment as they were leaving us, they said they were positively forbidden to do so, and their captain was not a man to be trifled with.

"Why, so it appears," thought I.

Lennox was mute and melancholy, but we could not better ourselves, so at length we retired to rest. I could not sleep, however, so I was soon on deck again, where I found both Lennox and Tooraloo before me.

And now it was that a most striking and inexplicable incident occurred. The voice of the wilderness, every traveller knows, is many-toned and various; and how often have not mysterious sounds broken on the ear of the solitary look-out man, in the middle watch, for which he never could account? On the midnight tossing of the melancholy main, who has not fancied a "voice articulate" in the hoarse murmur, and often wolf-like howl, of the approaching wave? But listen!

"Do you hear that, sir?" said Lennox to me, so soon as I came on deck. I listened, and heard a low moaning noise that came off the land, swelling and dying away on the fitful gusts of the terral, like the deepest tones of an Eolian harp. It sank and sank, and was just melting away, and becoming inaudible altogether, when it seemed to blend into a ponderous and solemn sound, that floated down to us on the fitful breeze, like the midnight tolling of a deep-toned cathedral bell, or the gradually increasing tremulous boom of a large gong.

"I do," said I; "and hark—is that a bell?—no, it cannot be, yet the sound is most like." Again we all listened eagerly. But the sound had ceased, and we were about commencing our pendulum walk on the confined deck, when once more it came off, and in the very strongest of the swell, the same ringing sound swung three times over us distinctly on the night air. "Who struck the bell there?" I sung out, a good deal startled—no answer—we all then passed forward; there was no one on deck—"very strange," said I—"what can it be?"

"My dregy,"[[1]] said poor Lennox, with a faint laugh.

[[1]] Anglice, dirge.

"Davy Jones—Davy Jones—the devil—the devil—the devil—hooro, hooro, hooro!" quoth Tooraloo.

Whatever it was we heard neither sound again, but they had scarcely ceased when a small glow-worm coloured spark, precisely like the luminous appearance of a piece of decayed fish, flitted about the foretopgallant yard and royal-masthead, now on the truck, now on either yardarm, like a bee on the wing, during the time one might count twenty, and then vanished.

"And there goes his worship visibly; why the air must be fearfully surcharged with electricity to be sure," said I Benjie. We were all astonishment—but the plot was only thickening.

"How loud and hollow the sound of the surf is, Lennox," I continued. "And I have never seen such a strong phosphorescence of the sea as to-night. Look there, the breakers on the reef are like a ridge of pale fire. Why, here are a whole bushelful of portents, more numerous than those which preceded the death of Cæsar, as I am a gentleman."

The Dominie did not relish this sort of talking, I noticed. "It may be no laughing matter to some of us before all is done, sir."

"Poo, nonsense; but there may be bad weather brewing, Master Lennox."

"Yes, sir," responded the poor fellow, speaking very fast, as if desirous of cloaking his weakness,—"yes, sir, we shall have a breeze soon, I fear."

"No doubt—no doubt."

"There's a squall coming—there's a squall coming—ho, ho, he"—rumbled Toby.

"Where—where?"

"There—right out there."

"Poo, poo—that's the reef—the white breakers—eh, what?—why it moves, sure enough—it is sliding across the mouth of the bay—there, whew!"—as a blue light was burned in the offing, disclosing distinctly enough a small schooner standing in for the land, under easy sail, plunging heavily, and kicking up a curl of white foam on the black and rapidly increasing swell. Presently all was dark again, and a night-signal was made on board of her with lanterns.

"Waterwraith, as sure as can be!" said I; "but why does he bother with blue lights and signals? would it not be easier to send in a boat at once?"

"Too much sea on—too much sea on," quoth Tooraloo; "and no one would venture to thread the reefs and run in in a night like this; so he has no way of communicating but by signal."

After a little we noticed the small white wreath steal back again like a puff of vapour, and, crossing the bay, vanish beyond the bluff opposite the cocoanut trees.

"There—she has said her say, whatever that may have been, and has hove about again, sure enough."

We saw no more of her that night, and with the early dawn, we were once more under weigh, sliding gently out of the small haven.

I am sure I could not tell how the little beauty slipt along so speedily, for the collapsed sails were hanging wet and wrinkled from the spars, so light was the air; and as we began to draw out into the offing, and to feel the heave of the swell, the motion of the vessel made them speak and flutter, the water dashing down in showers, at every rumbling flap of the soaked and clouded canvass.

The night had been throughout very hot and sultry, the sky as dark as pitch, and now the day broke very loweringly. Thick masses of heavy clouds rolled in from the offing, whirling overhead like the smoke from a steamer's chimney-stack. It lightened in the south east, now and then, and as we drew out from the land, the distant grumble of the thunder blended hoarsely with the increasing noise of the surf, as the swell, at one time, surged howling up the cavernous indentations on the ironbound coast, ebbing, with a loud shoaling rush, like a rapid river over shallows; at another, pitched in sullen thuds against the rocks, and reverberated from their iron ribs with a deafening roar, that made air and sea tremble again. As we got out of the bay, the growling of the sea increased, and came more hollow, the noise being reflected from the land in sounding echoes.

Close to, the waves rolled on in long sluggish undulations; in colour and apparent consistency as if they had been molten lead; the very divers that we disturbed on their dull grey surface, ran along, leaving dotted trails, as if it had been semi-fluid, or as if some peculiarity in the atmosphere had rendered them unable to raise themselves into the murky air.

Shoals of sea-mews, and other waterfowl, were floating lightly, and twinkling with their white wings in the cold grey dawning, as we crept through amongst them and disturbed them, like clusters of feathers scattered on the glass-like heaving of the dark water, afraid apparently to leave the vicinity of the land; every now and then the different groups would take up in succession a loud screaming, like a running fire passing along the line, when all would be still again. Birds that hovered between an English martin and Mother Cary's chickens in appearance, kept dipping, and rising, and circling all round us; and the steady flying pelican skimmed close to the tops of the swell, on poised and motionless wing, as straight as a pointblank cannon shot; while a shoal of porpoises were dappling the surface to windward, with their wheel-like gambols.

"What the deuce makes the fish jump so this morning?" said I to Lennox, as several dolphins sprang into the air ahead of the Moonbeam—"What is that?"—a puff of white vapour, with a noise for all the world like a blast of steam, rose close to us.

"The blowing of a whale, sir;" and immediately thereafter the back of the monster, like a black reef, or the bottom of a capsized launch, was hove out of the water, and then disappeared slowly with a strong eddy; his subaqueous track being indicated on the surface by a long line of bubbles, and swirling ripples, like the wake of a ship cleaving the water rapidly, always growing stronger and more perceptible as he neared the surface to breathe again.

"Ah! that accounts for it; there again he rises."

"Yes," rejoined he; "but see how he shoves out into the offing, although the shoals he is after are running in shore. As sure as a gun, he is conscious of the danger of being embayed if the weather becomes what I fear it will be soon."

"Lots of indications that a close-reefed topsail breeze, at all events, is not a thousand miles off, Master Lennox," said I.

Out at sea, the swell tumbled most tumultuously; the outline of the billows seen with startling clearness by the flashes of lightning, on the verge of the horizon; while nearer at hand, the waves began to break in white foam, and roll towards us with hoarse and increasing growls; although the light air that was drifting us out came off the land, and consequently blew in the precisely contrary direction from whence the swell was proceeding. Threatening as the weather looked, right off the cocoa-nut trees at the point, we perceived a boat, rising and disappearing on the ridges, and in the hollows of the sea, like a black buoy.

"So—an ominous looking morning, Toby. Still, our friends of the blue, white, and blue bunting, are determined to see us fairly off it seems; for there is their boat watching us till the last, you see."

"So I perceive, sir," said the skipper; "but if it were not for their neighbourhood, Mr Brail, I would have recommended Mr Lennox to stay where he was until the weather cleared; but there is no help for it now."

The morning wore on. We were now sliding along shore about a mile from the beach, and our view down to the westward, as we approached the southernmost point of the island, began to open.

The higher part of the land was quite clear; the outline, indeed, dangerously distinct and near-like, according to my conception; but the white clouds that floated over it when we first started, like a sea of wool, and which usually rise and exhale under the morning sun, had in the present case rolled off to the southward, and lay heaped up in well-defined masses, like the smoke of an engagement floating sluggishly in the thunder-calmed air, close to the surface of the water.

I was admiring this uncommon appearance, not without some awkward forebodings, when a flaw of wind off the land rent the veil in the middle, or rather opened an arch in it, at the end of whose gloomy vista rose the island as a dark background, and suddenly disclosed a small schooner lying to, so clear and model-like under the canopy of vapour, that I can compare it to nothing more aptly than a sea-scene in a theatre.

"Hillo!" said I, "what vessel is that down to leeward there? It must be our friend of last night, I take it. Hand me up the glass, if you please."

"Where's the small flag—where's the small flag?" sung out Toby.

"Here, sir," said Chip the negro, as he bent it on to the signal haulyards.

"Then hoist away," rejoined Tooraloo. "That is the Waterwraith down to leeward, sir, to a certainty."

"Sure enough," I replied; "I hope he will let us go without overhauling us. I am not at all amorous of the society of those gentry—quite enough of it in the bay yonder, Toby."

The moment she saw us, she made sail towards us, but hove about so soon as she saw the signal, which she answered with a similar flag, and then stood in for the land again.

In a minute, the mist once more boiled over her, and she disappeared.

It crept slowly on towards where we lay, for it was again nearly calm, although the threatening appearances in the sky and on the water continued to deepen, and was just reaching us, when we heard a cannon-shot from the thickest of it.

"Heyday—what does that indicate, Lennox?"

"Some signal to the other villains in the cove, sir"—and then, in a low tone as he turned away—"but to me it sounds like a knell."

Another gun—another—and another—"Some fun going on there at all events," said I.

The breeze now freshened, and the fog-bank blew off and vanished; when lo! our spectral friend the Waterwraith re-appeared, but on the other tack this time, about two miles to the westward of us, with a large schooner, that had hitherto been also concealed by the fog, sticking in his skirts, and blazing away at him. In ten minutes they both tacked again. They had now the regular sea-breeze strong from the eastward, and were close-hauled, under all the sail they could carry, on the starboard tack.

"Confound it," said Lennox, who was now beside me, "we seem to have dropped into a nest of them—it will be another privateer."

"Then why is she firing at the small one?" said I.

"Oh, some make-believe manoeuvre," said he.

But I had taken a long look, and was by no means of this opinion. The smallest vessel, the schooner we had first seen, would evidently go far to windward of us, but the larger was right in our track; so avoiding her, if we stood on as we were doing, was out of the question.

"However, better take our chance with this chap out here, than run back into the lion's mouth," said I.

So we kept on our course, having now got the breeze also, and steering large, so as to go a-head of the biggest of the two, unless he stood away to intercept us. We were beginning to get over our fears, and to think he was going to take no notice of us after all, and had brought him end on, when a flash spurted from his bows, and a swirl of white smoke rolled down to leeward.

"He has fired at us," said I, as the shot hopped along the water close to us.

"Then hoist away our colours," said Lennox; "let us know the worst of it at once."

The next shot pitched over the lee quarter, and knocked one of our hencoops to pieces, unexpectedly liberating the feathered prisoners. Toby's lingo—for he was now in an ecstasy of fear—became very amusing. "Now, men, rouse aft the foresheet, and do some of you catch that duck. Clap on the topsail haulyards—mind the capon—topgallant and royal haulyards also—bless me, the turkey is overboard—why, that royal is all aback—chickens—topgallantsail is not set at all—both geese—now a small pull of the boom sheet. You blood of a black—female dog"—to Chip, the negro carpenter—"peak purchase; belay all that—murder! if both the guinea birds are not over into the sea."

"Ha!" said I, "I thought so—there goes the blue ensign and pennant. He is a man-of-war, thank Heaven!"

"Heave to, captain," cried Lennox.

But just as we had shortened sail preparatory thereto, the schooner ranged alongside, and, without a word spoken, fired a broadside of round and grape slap into us, whereby Lennox himself and other two poor devils were wounded, and our rigging considerably cut up.

"That's the Spider, for a thousand," said I; "but what the deuce can he mean by firing at us?"

"I can't tell, but I don't think it is the Spider, sir," said Lennox; "so haul in the sheets, and keep by the wind again, captain—quick man, quick." And away we staggered once more, running in for San Andreas on a bow line as fast as we could split; but the large schooner stuck close at our heels, firing away like fury, while the little Waterwraith promptly availed himself of this interlude, by tacking, and standing off the land again.

"Why, Toby, you and your owner are both mad—what better of it will you make by running back?"

Lennox had gone below to have his arm bound up by this time.

"You would not have us tack, and get another broadside, sir? Besides, look at the weather, sir? even putting the schooner out of the question," said Tooraloo.

"Ah, as to the weather, there indeed you have some reason."

Toby saw his advantage. "Surely you would not have us keep the sea in such a threatening morning, even without such company, sir?"

The prudence of this was becoming every moment more evident, as the dark waves were now breaking all round us, and the water was roughening and whitening to windward; it was clear we should have a sneezer before long.

Thanks to our excellent sailing, we gradually dropped the schooner, until we were out of gunshot—we were presently up with the island, and ran in, and once more came-to in our old corner; but the man-of-war kept in the offing, apparently to reconnoitre. We found a privateer's boat at our old anchorage, most like the one that had seen us off in the morning. It was coming out with Adderfang himself in it—all his gay dress thrown aside—he had neither hat nor cap on, nor shoes, but wore a simple blue shirt, and canvass trowsers; the former open at the breast, disclosing his muscular and hairy chest, and with the sleeves rolled up to his armpits. He was covered with dust and perspiration, and had evidently been toiling fiercely at something or other with his own hands. He was armed to the teeth, as were his boat's crew.

"What brings you back, Mr Brail?" said he, his brows knit, his eyes flashing fire, his face pale as death, and his lips blue and trembling, evidently in a paroxysm of the most savage fury; "what brings you back? and what vessel is that astern of you? No concealment, sir; I am not in a mood to trifle."

"She is a man-of-war, captain," at this critical juncture sung out the tall, sallow man, who had been in command of the boat on the previous day, from the top of the cliffs, where he had perched himself like on ugly cormorant, with a glass in his hand.

"I thought so," said the pirate with great bitterness; "I thought so. Fool! to believe that any thing but treachery was to come from that whelp! Walpole—here, men, lend me a hand."

And before we could interfere, he was on board, with four desperadoes as powerful almost as himself. I had never witnessed such devilish ferocity before in any animal, human or inhuman, except in his worship's dog, who was jumping and foaming about the deck as if he had been possessed by a kindred devil, or had been suffering under hydrophobia; only waiting apparently for the holding up of his master's little finger to lunch on Toby Tooraloo, or breakfast on me Benjie.

"Here, Matamoro, here," roared our amigo, indicating the companion to this beautiful pet, who thereupon glanced down it like a ferret after a rat; and from the noise below it was clear he had attacked Lennox. Adderfang and two of his men instantly followed, and presently the poor dominie, bleeding from his recent wound, and torn by the dog in the shoulder, was dragged up the ladder, like a carcass in the shambles, bound hand and foot, and hove bodily into the boat. I was petrified with horror. The poor fellow, in the midst of all the misery of this his closing scene, gave me one parting look as he passed—one last concentrated look of the most intense wo. I never shall forget the expression: it seemed to say, a thousand times more forcibly than language could have expressed—"Do you believe what I told you at Havanna to have been a dream now, Mr Brail?"

The next moment he cried aloud and imploringly to the demon in human shape, into whose power he had indeed, against all probability, fallen, "Where are you going to take me, Mr Adderfang?" The only answer he gave him was a brutal kick on the mouth. "I have had no communication with the schooner in the offing. Don't you see I am wounded by her shot? I have had another blow. Mind what you do, or you shall repent this," cried the poor fellow again as they dragged him along.

"Let him go," I sung out, as they were about shoving off. "Men, stand by me. Release him, you murdering villain! Where would you take him to, you bucaniering scoundrel?"

"To hell—and mind you don't keep him company—to meet the fate of a spy! one that has brought an enemy on me, when I was willing to have forgotten and forgiven. Let go the painter, sir—let go, I say."

And he made a blow with his cutlass, that missed me, but severed the rope; and as if the action had lashed him into uncontrollable rage, he instantly drew a pistol, and fired it at my head. The bullet flew wide of its mark, however, but down dropped Toby Tooraloo; while Adderfang shouted,—

"Shove off, men—give way for your lives—pull."

And in a twinkling the boat disappeared behind the small cocoa-nut tree point.

"Good God, sir," said Toby, lying flat on his back, where I thought he had been shot, "what is to be done? They will murder Mr Lennox."

"Very like; but I thought you were killed yourself, Toby."

"No, sir—no, sir—only knocked down by the wind of the shot, sir—wind of the shot, sir—ho, ho, hoo!"

"Wind of a pistol bullet no bigger than a pea? For shame, Toby!—fright, man, fright."

But we had no time for reflection; for the schooner was now right off the mouth of the small bay, apparently clear for action. She was a man-of-war, beyond all question; and I was still convinced she was the Spider. Presently she hauled round the cocoa-nut-covered cape, and took up a position, so far as I could judge, opposite the mouth of the creek. Oh, what would I not have given to have been on board of her! But this was impossible.

The blue and yellow private signal, that Adderfang had sent us, and which had been kept flying until this moment, was now hauled down, close past my nose.

"Spider!—to be sure that is the Spider; and no wonder she should have peppered us so beautifully, Master Toby, with such a voucher for our honesty aloft; with this same accursed signal flying, that she had seen the Waterwraith hoist. There! the murder is out. What conclusion could De Walden have come to, but that we were birds of a feather?"

"Ay, ay—true enough—hooro! hooro! hooro!" rumbled Tobias, sweating like a pig with downright fear.

Tooraloo and I now hurried ashore in the boat, without well knowing what to do, and ran to the ridge, to see, if possible, what became of Lennox. The boat wherein he was, sheered for a moment alongside the schooner, the Mosca, apparently giving orders, and then pulled directly for the Midge, where the people got out, dragging poor Lennox along with them.

"Heaven have mercy on us!" I exclaimed, shuddering. "What can they be going to do with the poor fellow?"

I was not long in doubt; for the moment they got on the deck, the barbarians cast him headlong down the main hatchway, which was immediately battened down, and then hoisted in the boat.

The crew of the schooner below me, whose deck, as already described, was hid by the high bank, were now busy, I could hear, in clearing for action; and several of them were piling up large stones, and making fast hawsers from her mastheads to trees at the top of the cliff near where I stood, that, in the event of her being carried below, it should be impossible to tow her out,—while the stones would prove formidable missiles when launched from above. I also perceived a boat at the foam-fringed sandy spit opposite the cocoa-nut trees, that formed one side of the narrow entrance, whose crew were filling bags with sand, and forming a small battery, with embrasures, for two carronades, that had been already landed, and lay like two black seeds on the white beach.

The Spider had by this time tacked, and stood out to sea again, apparently astonished at the extent of the preparations to receive her. After a brief space, she hove about, and in the very middle and thickest of a squall, accompanied by heavy thunder and vivid lightning, dashed gallantly into the harbour; but just as she came abreast of the battery, she took the ground—she had tailed on the bank, and hung. Her masts in a moment flew forward, and bent as if they would have gone over the bows, the rigging and canvass shaking and flapping convulsively; but the sound spars instantly recovered their upright position, with a violent jerk that made every thing rattle again, like the recoil of two tough yew staves when the bowstrings snap.

"Now, Master Henry, you are in for it," thought I.

This was the signal for the battery to open; but the grape from the Spider soon silenced it. However, the broadside of the schooner beneath me was raking her with terrible effect, I could see; while they were unable to get a single gun to bear. At length, by lightening her aft, her broadside was got round, so as to return the fire; and now the hellish uproar began in earnest. For several minutes the smoke, that rose boiling amongst the trees at the top of the cliff, concealed all below. I could neither see nor hear any thing but the glancing spouts of red flame, and thunder of the cannon; the bright sparkles and sharp rattle of the small arms blending with the yelling and shouting of the combatants: but the clearing away of the next squall made every thing once more comparatively clear. The battery, I perceived, was again manned, and galling the Spider most awfully; but just as I looked, a boat's crew from her stormed it, driving those who manned it along the sand-bank towards where the Midge lay; and then, having spiked the guns, returned on board. The freshening breeze now forced the Spider over the shoal, and she entered the creek. Giving the Midge a broadside in passing, in the hope of disabling her, so as to leave nothing to cope with but the Mosca; but the sting was not to be so easily taken out of the little vixen. Presently the Spider anchored by the stern, within pistol-shot of the schooner, right athwart his bows, and began to blaze away again.

The cheers from her increased, and the shouts of the pirates subsided; but the felucca, which had slipped on being fired at, and warped out between the Spider and the mouth of the cove, now dropped anchor again, with a spring on her cable; and from this vantage ground, began to dash broadside after broadside of round and grape right into her antagonist's stern, enfilading her most fearfully.

I could make nothing out of what was going on all this time on the Spider's deck; for although I now and then caught a glimpse of it, during the moments when the strength of the gale cleared away the smoke, and could dimly discern the turmoil of fighting men, and the usual confusion of a ship's deck during a hot engagement; yet the moment my optics began to individualize, as Jonathan says, the next discharge would whirl its feathery wreaths aloft, and hide every thing again half way up the masts, that stood out like two blasted pines piercing the mountain mists.

Hillo! my eyes deceive me, or DOWN goes the blue ensign on board of the Spider!!! So, fare thee well, Henry de Walden; well I wot, my noble boy, you have not lived to see it—Strike to pirates!—No! no! How could I be such a fool? It is but the peak haulyards that are shot away, and there goes a gallant fellow aloft to reeve or splice them again, amidst a storm of round, and grape, and musket balls. He cannot manage it, nor can the gaff be lowered, for something jams about the throat haulyards, which he struggles in vain to overhaul—then let it stick; for now he slides down the drooping spar, to knot the peak haulyards there. Look how he sways about, as the gaff is violently shaken by the flapping of the loosened sail; for both vangs and brails are gone. Mind you are not jerked overboard, my fine fellow—murder! he drops like lead into the pall of smoke beneath, shot dead by the enemy's marksmen. Another tries it—better luck this time, for he reaches the gaff-end, and there the peak rises slowly but steadily into the air once more, the ensign flashing out of the smoke that had concealed it, like the blue lightning from a thundercloud, and once more streaming gallantly in the wind. Whew! the unfortunate bunting clips into it again to leeward, vanishing like a dark-winged sea-bird dipping into a fogbank—the ensign haulyards are shot away—worse and more of it—down goes the maintopmast next, royal mast, pennant and all; snapped off by a cannon-ball as clean as a fishing-rod—no fun in all this, any how—Well done, my small man—a wee middy, in the very nick, emerges from the sulphureous cloud below, with a red ensign, to replace the blue one, fluttering and flaming around him, as if he were on fire. He clambers up the mainrigging, and seizes the meteor there—seizes! nay, he nails it to the mast. He descends again, and disappears, leaving the flag flaring in the storm from the masthead, as if the latter had been a blazing torch.

I began now seriously to fear that De Walden was getting too much of it between the Midge and the schooner, when I saw fire and thick smoke rise up near me, as if bursting from the afterpart of the latter vessel; and, at the moment, the increasing gale broke the Spider's spring, that a shift of wind had also compelled her to use, to keep her in her station,—so that, from being athwart his hawse, she now swung with her bows slantingly towards her opponent's broadside, and lay thus for some time, again terribly galled by a heavy raking fire, until the men in the Mosca were literally scorched from their guns by the spreading flames.

I could now see that the pirate crew were leaving her; so I slipped down near the edge of the cliff, to have a better view of what was going on beneath, but keeping as much out of the line of fire as possible.

The schooner's hull was by this time enveloped in smoke and waving red flames, and her fire silenced; while the Spider, taking advantage of the lull, was peppering the little Midge, who was returning the compliment manfully; her broadside, from the parting of the warp, being by this time opposed to hers.

The crew of the Mosca now abandoned her in two boats, one of which succeeded in reaching the Midge; while the other made for the shore on the opposite side of the creek.

Seeing me on the ridge, the rogues in the latter stopped, and faced about—"Heaven and earth, what is that?" I was cast down sprawling on my back.

"What dat is—what dat is, do massa say?" quoth honest Quacco's voice at this juncture; "Massa no was shee one whole platoon fire at him? If massa will keep walloping his arms about like one breezemill, and make grimace, and twist him body dis side and dat side, like one monkey—baboon you call—and do all sort of foolis ting for make dem notice him, massa most not be sorprise if dey soot at him." And true enough, in the intensity of my excitement, the strong working of my spirit had moved my outward man as violently as that of a Johnny Raw witnessing his first prize-fight. If my contortions were of any kindred to those the sable Serjeant illustrated his speech by, I must have made rather an amusing exhibition. "Look, if two of dem bullet no tell in de tree here, just where massa was stand up, when I was take de liberty of pull him down on him battam; beg pardon for name soch unpoliteful place before massa."

"Thanks, trusty armourer," cried I Benjie. But the gale, that now "aside the shroud of battle cast," blowing almost a hurricane, again veered round a little, and the Midge was under weigh, near the mouth of the creek, standing out to sea.

The weather was, indeed, getting rapidly worse—the screaming sea-birds flew in, like drifts of snow; scarcely distinguishable from the driving foamflakes. The scud came past in soaking wreaths, like flashes of white vapour from the safety-valve of a steam boiler. Suddenly the wind fell to a dead calm; not a breath fanned us; not a leaf stirred; the rain-drops glittered on the pale-green velvet of the ragged, and ever-twittering, but now motionless leaves of the plantain, like silver globules frozen there; the reports of the guns grew sharper in the lull, the cries shriller, and the general tumult and uproar of the conflict swelled fearfully; while the white smoke rose up, shrouding the vessels and entire cove from my sight.

The clouds above us, surcharged with fire and water, formed a leaden coloured arch over the entrance to the cove, that spanned the uproar of dark white-crested waves, boiling and rolling in smoky wreaths, and lancing out ragged shreds from their lower edges, that shot down and shortened like a fringe of streamers, from which the forked lightning crankled out every now and then clear and bright.

To the right hand, directly over the cocoa-nut trees, these fibres, or shreds of clouds, were in the most active motion, and began to twirl and whisk round into a spinning black tube, shaped like the trunk of an elephant; the widest end blending into the thickest of the arch above, while the lower swayed about, with an irregular but ponderous oscillation; lengthening and stretching towards the trees, one moment in a dense column, as if they had attracted it, and the next contracting with the speed of light, as if it had as suddenly been repelled by them, leaving only a transparent phantom-like track of dark shreds in the air, to show where it had shrunk from. There, it lengthens again, as if it once more felt an affinity for the sharp spiculæ of the leaves, that seem to erect themselves to meet it. It almost touched them—flash—the electric fluid sparked out and up, either from the cocoa-nut trees themselves, or through them as conductors from the sandy spit on which they grew. I saw it distinctly; but the next moment the pent gale, as if it had burst some invisible barrier that confined it, gushed down as suddenly as it had taken off, and stronger than before. I was blinded and almost suffocated by the heaviest shower ever dashed by wind in the face of mortal man—the debris, so to speak, of the vanished waterspout; I can compare it to nothing but being exposed to the jet of a fire-engine.

A column of dense black smoke, thickly starred with red sparks, now boiled up past the edge of the cliff under me—presently it became streaked with tongues of bright hissing flame, which ran up the rigging, diverging along every rope, as if it had been a galvanic wire, twisting, serpent-like, round the Mosca's masts and higher spars, and licking the wet furled sails like boa-constrictors fitting their prey to be devoured. See how the fire insinuates itself into the dry creases of the canvass, driving out the moisture from the massive folds in white steam; now the sails catch in earnest—they drop in glowing flakes of tinder from the yards—there the blue and white pennant and ensign are scorched away, and blow off in tiny flashes; while in the lulls of the gale we distinctly hear the roaring and crackling of the fire, as it rages in the hull of the doomed vessel below. "I say, Quacco, mind we don't get a hoist, my man—see we be not too near—there, don't you hear how the guns go off as the metal gets heated, for there is not a soul on board?"

"Oh dear! oh dear—see that poor little fellow, sir—ho! ho! ho!" rumbled Tobias Tooraloo, who all this time was lying flat on his stomach beside me, with his head a little raised, turtle-fashion. A poor boy belonging to the pirate schooner had been caught and cut off by the fire when aloft, and was now standing on the head of the mainmast with one arm round the topmast, and waving his cap in the most beseeching manner at us with the other hand—the rising smoke seemed to be stifling him, at least we could not hear his cries; at length the fire reached him, when after several abortive attempts to climb higher up, he became confused, and slung himself by a rope to the masthead, without seeming to know what he was about—he then gradually drooped, and drooped, the convulsive action of his head and limbs becoming more and more feeble; merciful Providence! the flames reach him—his hair is on fire, and his clothes; a last, strong, and sudden struggle for an instant, and then he hung motionless across the rope like a smirched and half-burned fleece.

It never rains but it pours. "Hark! an earthquake!" and, as if a volcano had burst forth beneath our feet, at this instant of time the pirate schooner under the cliff blew up with an explosion that shook earth, air, and water—shooting the pieces of burning wreck in every direction, that hissed like meteors through the storm, and fell thickly all around us.

The Midge, the Midge—she slides out of the smoke! See! she gains the offing.

But the Avenger of Blood is behind; for the Spider had now cleared the harbour's mouth, and was in hot pursuit. The felucca with her sails—a whole constellation of shot-holes in them—double reefed, tearing and plunging through it; her sharp stem flashing up the water into smoke, in a vain attempt to weather the sandy point.—"Won't do, my boy; you cannot, carry to it as you will, clear the land as you are standing; you must tack soon, unless you mean to jump the little beauty over it." As I spoke, she hove about and stood across the schooner, exchanging broadsides gallantly. "Well done, little one." The Spider tacked also, and stood after her—a gun!—another!—both replied to by the felucca; the musketry peppering away all the while from each vessel; the tiny white puffs instantly obliterated by the foam-drift—and now neither fired a shot.

The gale at this moment came down in thunder; all above as black as night, all below as white as wool. The Spider shortens sail just in time—the Midge not a pistol-shot ahead on the weatherbow. See, the squall strikes her—her tall lateen sail shines through the more than twilight darkness and the driving rain and spray, like a sea-bird's wing. Mercy! how she lies over! She sinks in the trough of the sea!—Now she rises again, and breasts it gallantly!—There! that's over her bodily; her sails are dark, and sea-washed three parts up. Look! how the clear green water, as she lurches, pours out of the afterleech of the sail like a cascade! Now! she is buried again; no! buoyant as cork—she dances over it like a wild-duck. See! how she tips up her round stern, and slides down the liquid hollow; once more she catches the breeze on the opposite rise of the sea; her sails tearing her along up the watery acclivity, as if they would drag the spars out of her. Now she rushes on the curl of the wave, with her bows and a third of her keel hove out into the air, as if she were going to shoot across, like a flying fish, into the swelling bosom of the next sea. Once more she is hove on her beam-ends, and hid by an intervening billow—Ha!—what a blinding flash, as the blue forked lightning glances from sky to sea, right over where I saw her last!—hark! the splitting crash and stunning reverberations of the shaking thunder, rolling through the empyrean loud as an archangel's voice, until earth and air tremble again. She rights!—she rights!—there! the narrow shred of white canvass gleams again through the mist in the very fiercest of the squall—yes, there!—no!—God of my fathers!

IT IS BUT A BREAKING WAVE!