“I suppose the schooner would not be apt to come in, on such a morning,” said Major Gordon, alluding to the vessel whose arrival he was expecting.
“No, she’d keep an offing, while she has it. Her skipper is a good sailor, and he’ll turn up, right and tight, though not till the gale’s over.”
“Unless he’s been captured,” said the Major. “He should have been here two days ago, and his delay makes me think, sometimes, that he has been taken by the British.”
“Give yourself no consarn on that p’int, Major,” retorted Mullen. “The schooner’s a clipper of a craft; none of your scows, made by the cord and cut off in lengths to suit customers; but a ra’al beauty, sharp as a nor’wester on a winter mornin’, and that can go into the wind’s eye like a duck. The skipper, too, knows every inlet on the coast, and all the shallows, so that if a cruiser was to follow him, he’d lead the fellow aground in no time, and then giving him a shot, to make fun of him like, set everything drawing on the opposite tack, and leave him to get off as he could.”
By this time they had reached their craft, which was a half-decked boat, with a single mast, of a description still frequent in those waters. There was some delay in getting her ready for a start, and still more in tracking her out of the small creek where she lay; but at last the adventurers succeeded in gaining open water just as the gloom of night was giving way to the dim, stormy day. The high wind compelled the crew to close-reef their mainsail, and even with this mere shred of canvass, the boat staggered along like a drunken man, laboring heavily in the rough, cross sea.
“Heaven grant we may be in time,” said Major Gordon. “But this long silence of the alarm guns, and this fierce wind, are ominous of disaster.”
“It’s four chances to one that we’re goin’ on a fool’s errand,” answered Mullen. “First, the ship’s probably gone down before this; and second, if she hasn’t, her people are most likely drowned; for, if neither of these had happened, we would have heard her guns off and on through the night. Third, if she’s struck, it’s probably on the outer bar, a mile from shore, where nobody can get at her. Fourth, if even she’s in the very breakers, she’ll probably go to pieces before we can do anything to help ‘em.”
“Surely,” said Major Gordon, “if she’s in the breakers, we can save her people in some way.”
“There’s small chance of that,” was the answer. “You don’t know this coast like I do, Major, or you’d hardly have insisted on coming out. No boat could live a moment in the surf that must now be beating on the shore. I’ve seen many a poor fellow hang in the shrouds, in my time, for a matter of twenty-four hours or so; and that, too, with a dozen or more looking at him all the while—yet he’s been forced to drop into the sea at last, because no one could get to him. It was only last January, that one of King George’s transports struck and bilged in a snow-storm, on the beach right ahead of us; and not a soul was saved. The coast was strewed, for miles, with dead bodies, some of officers in uniforms, and others of common soldiers; and there were women, too, among ‘em. I wasn’t on the beach myself, but from all accounts it was dreadful to see. Once, howsomever, I knew three men to cling to the cross-trees of a sloop, which had sunk in some twelve feet water, and there they held fast, like dying men will, for two days and a night. I could hear their cries all the while, for the wind blew strong on shore; but they got weaker and faint-like, ‘specially towards the first night; and on the second morning there was only one could be heard.”
He paused, moved by the mere recollection, and then proceeded.