‘Lindsay! Will Thistle! Hurrah!’ he shouted.
‘Comrade—old comrade!’ I cried, making a speaking-trumpet of my hands. ‘Beach her—run her right through the surf. High and dry—high and dry!’
The sloop was already beyond hearing, but Nicky waved his hand. Up goes the helm, round fly the bows of the bark towards the open white beach of the bay, and shorewards she shoots, leaping from sea to sea!
Leaping indeed from sea to sea, but not faster than I sprung from rock to rock, and bank to bank, striving to be upon the beach before her. It was a grand race. I saw Nicky’s crew leap up, as the sloop, now upon an even keel, went scudding like a feather before a hurricane. More sail—more sail! They are shaking out two reefs in the canvas! They will drive her through the breakers in style! Away goes the widened sheet higher and higher up the mast! See how it swells, and tugs, and surges, as though it would pluck the craft out of the water by the very roots, and drag and soar with her through the air! I am running fast, but she heads me. See, Nicky is standing in the stern, and again he waves his hand! Is it in token of hope, or of farewell? A minute will end all. The sloop flies madly into the line of breakers! A sea comes white over and over her! No! she is not down; up she staggers on the crest of the following wave, pouring the water from her sides, and her crew still clinging steadfastly round the mast. On she goes—a dusky spot—a mere tossing morsel amid the wallowing surf, but the brave mast still holds on, the stout canvas still bears her onward, like a bird! There, down into the trough once more, and now aloft again on the very shoulder of a breaking sea, which has hove her up, as a strong man swings a child, and then bearing her recklessly on, dissolves beneath her keel, in a tumbling avalanche of creaming foam, in the centre of which the sloop is carried triumphantly up, upon the wreaths of sea-weed at the very top of high water-mark, and there, as the sea recedes, is left high and dry! No Deal boatmen ever beached a galley more admirably after a wild trip to the Goodwin Sands.
The next moment I had both Nicky Hamstring’s hands in mine! Such a meeting! It was as if he had fallen from the moon upon me! And what a world of inquiries to put to each other. How had I come there? How had he come there? For five minutes it was nothing but such rapid question and answer! Then quoth I, ‘And Stout Jem, and the “Will-o’-the-Wisp?”’
‘They cannot be five miles to windward,’ replied Nicky, ‘and running the same course as we when we saw breakers ahead, and beat round into the bay. The sloop is a Spanish craft we wanted to carry to Jamaica, and we were in company with the schooner all day, until she split her foresail; after which we got the start, and lost sight of her.’
By this time it was getting dark, the gale still blowing furiously.
‘We none of us had the slightest idea of land within a hundred miles,’ said Nicky. ‘I would to God that we had the means of giving Stout Jem notice of what he is running on, while he has still a mile or two of offing.’
I immediately remembered my beacon of piled brushwood, and thanked heaven that I had collected it. But as we were all scampering up the hill towards it, we met the two old Indians coming down to the beach. From a snug place of espial they had seen the meeting between Nicky Hamstring and myself, and rightly conjecturing that they had nothing to fear from one who seemed so much my friend, they had come forth to offer a refuge to the wrecked mariners. Accordingly, leaving them to conduct two of the sailors whom I did not know, to the cave, the third being no other than my old shipmate, Lanscriffe, who shook hands with me heartily, he and Nicky and I were speedily standing beside my beacon. It was now quite dark, and seawards we could descry nought beyond the dull white belt of breakers. A light was speedily struck, and in a minute after it was applied; the brushwood being as dry as tinder, a bright blaze, torn and driven by the wind, rose flickering up into the dark night, casting long rays of light over the waving grass and bushes, and the white and tumbling sea. I had made the pile of brushwood so large, that the beacon was nothing but a great bonfire, and presently the two seamen we had left rejoined us with the Indians, carrying between them a small tar barrel which they had made shift to get at out of the stranded bark, the tide having now ebbed considerably back from it. This was a grand addition to our beacon, and, fed by the fat pitchy unguent, the blaze must have been seen leagues away. That it was seen by those for whom we lit it we soon had a satisfactory token, in the quickly following flashes of several guns, fired by a vessel near a league off at sea. Upon this we descended to the beach again. The Will-o’-the-Wisp, for Nicky Hamstring did not doubt but it was she, presently ran up lanterns to her main and topmast heads, and, in a few moments more, she burned a flaring blue light, which showed the beautiful schooner weltering through the seas close hauled under closely reefed fore and mainsails, but, as we all hoped and believed, holding her own very steadily.
As we sat watching her upon the beach, Nicky Hamstring recounted to me the particulars of the attack upon Carthagena harbour after I had been made prisoner, and the subsequent capture of the galleon. My share of the booty was, it seems, lodged in the hands of Mr. Pratt, at Jamaica, and would be at once made over to me. To narrate all the particulars of the cruise of the Will-o’-the-Wisp after I quitted her, would be no part of my story, and I dismiss it by simply stating, that so many and so great were the prizes which she took, that not a man who sailed under Stout Jem but was, according to his degree, enriched, and returned to Jamaica with money, and plenty of it, in both pockets.