CHAPTER XIV.
THE STRANGE ADVENTURE OF THE UNKNOWN SHOALS
AND THE DWARF PILOT.
That evening it chanced that I had the mid-watch, and so when the dead of the night came, I took charge of the deck, and Captain Jem, and all who were not upon duty went below. The weather was moderate, with a steady breeze broad upon our larboard beam, as we steered almost due south. I walked the deck for nearly three hours without having occasion to give an order to one of the watch. I was weary and exhausted, for the excitement of the chase had now gone off, and as for the seamen around me, they were stretched out dozing here and there upon the deck, and as we had a clear sea, and the wind held very steady, I was loth to rouse the poor fellows up. There was an old grey-headed sailor, whom we called Bristol Tom, at the helm, and I sometimes listened to him as he crooned over ancient sea ballads, which had been sung by the sailors of Sir Francis Drake, and sometimes conversed with him upon the clever style in which we had shaken off the Spaniard. So the night waned slowly away. Every ten minutes or so I would go forward and cast a long look over the dull sea, stretching away before us like a heaving sheet of lead, save where here and there it was broken by a dullish white streak, where a wave rose higher than common, curled, and broke. At length, it wanted but half an hour to the time of my relief, and I sat down upon the weather bulwark with my arm round the stay, and began, according to my frequent custom, to build very gorgeous castles in the air. I thought of the happy day when, having made prize-money sufficient in these far-off seas, I would return to Scotland and hear again the music which of all others was sweetest to the ear of my memory—the voices of my kindred, and the whimpling and gurgling of the Balwearie burn, as it trickled down the broomy knowes into the clear pools, where, with a running noose made of horsehair, attached to the end of a switch, I used to mark and catch the speckled pars. During my meditations, it struck me once or twice that the motion of the sea was changing; that the flow of the waves was not so uniform, and that they jerked the schooner sharply as though she were ploughing a cross sea. Thinking, however, that Bristol Tom might be nodding over the tiller, I called to him to look sharp and steer fine, to which he promptly replied, ‘Ay, ay, sir!’ and my spirit fled away again to the bonny shores of Fife. All at once, a low, dull roaring sound, very different from the sharp plunges of the schooner, and the seething, hissing noise of the seas, as they burst in beds of foam from beneath her bows, came floating on the night wind.
‘Bristol Tom!’ I cried, sharply, ‘did you hear nothing like the roar of surf?’
‘Lord love ye, sir,’ quoth the steersman, ‘there be no surf but where there be land near the top of the sea, and hereabouts five hundred fathom of line would reach no bottom.’
‘It must have been the wind eddying in the sail above me,’ I thought, but I kept my ears cocked pretty sharply.
Presently, I heard the sound again; there could be no mistake about it. There was the hollow boom of great seas breaking over banks of sand. I started up, and swung myself on the ledge of the bulwarks.
Not a quarter of a mile on our weather bow I could see a great bed of tumbling spray, which gleamed with a pale lustre in the dark.
‘Breakers on the weather bow!’ I shouted. ‘Up, men, up! Keep her away, Tom, keep her away. Call all hands!—stand by sheets and brails—see all clear with the anchor.’
In a moment the deck of the schooner was alive with startled men, I leaped forward, and flung myself on the bowspirit.