“You are right there,” said I, “and for that reason it is especially desirable that the boats should keep together for mutual support and assistance, if need be. You have the heels of us in such light weather as the present, and might very easily slip away from and lose sight of us in the darkness; therefore I think that, for the present at all events, in order to avoid any such possibility, you had better take the end of our painter and make it fast to your stern ring-bolt. Then you can go ahead as fast as you please, without any risk of the boats losing sight of each other.”
This was done, and for the next two hours the boats slid along in company, the gig leading and towing the longboat, although of course the towing did not amount to much, since we in the longboat kept our sails set to help as much as possible.
It was by this time close upon three bells in the first watch, and notwithstanding the softening of the wind I came to the conclusion that we must have slipped past the brig, assuming our suspicion, that she had hauled her wind in chase of us, to be correct. I therefore ordered our helm to be shifted once more, and our course to be resumed in a north-westerly direction.
Half an hour later the wind had dropped to a flat calm, and Simpson suggested that, as a measure of precaution, in view of the possibility that the brig might still be to the westward of us, we should get out the oars and endeavour to slip past her. But I had for some time past been very anxiously watching the weather, and had at length arrived at the conclusion that, if not an actual tornado, there was at least a very heavy and dangerous squall brewing away down there in the eastern quarter, before which, when it burst, not only we, but also the brig, would be obliged to run; and, since she would run faster than the boats, it was no longer desirable, but very much the reverse, that we should lie to the westward of her. I therefore decided to keep all fast with the oars for the present, and employ such time as might be left to us upon the task of preparing the boats, as far as possible, for the ordeal to which it seemed probable that they were about to be subjected.
I was far less anxious about the safety of the longboat than I was about that of the gig, which, being a more lightly built and much smaller craft, and excellent in every way for service in fine weather and smooth water, yet was not adapted for work at sea except under favourable conditions; and in the event of it coming on to blow hard I feared that in the resulting heavy sea she would almost inevitably be swamped. I therefore turned my attention to her in the first instance, causing her to be brought alongside the longboat and her painter to be made fast to the ring-bolt in the stern of the latter, thus reversing the original arrangement; my intention being that, in the event of bad weather, the longboat should tow the gig. This done, I caused Simpson to unstep the gig’s single mast and lay it fore and aft in the boat, with the heel resting upon and firmly lashed to the small grating which covered the after end of the boat between the backboard of the stern-sheets and the stern-post, while the head was supported by a crutch formed of two stretchers lashed together and placed upright upon the bow thwart, the whole being firmly secured in place by the two shrouds attached to the mast-head. Thus arranged, the mast formed a sort of ridge pole which sloped slightly upward from the boat’s stern toward the bow. The lugsail was then unbent from the yard, stretched across the mast, fore and aft—thus forming a sort of tent over the open boat for about two-thirds of her length from the stern-post,—and the luff and after-leach of the sail were then strained tightly down to the planking of the boat outside, by short lengths of ratline led underneath the gig’s keel. The result was that, when the job was finished, the gig was almost completely covered in by the tautly stretched sail, which I hoped would not only afford a considerable amount of protection to her crew, but would also keep out the breaking seas that would otherwise be almost certain to swamp her.
So pleased was I with the job, when it was finished, that I determined to attempt something similar in the case of the longboat. This craft was rigged with two masts, carrying upon the foremast a large standing lug and a jib, and a small lug upon the jigger-mast. These latter, that is to say the jigger-mast and the small lug, we stretched over the stern-sheets of the longboat in the same way as we had dealt with the gig, leading the yoke lines forward on top of the sail, so that the steering arrangements might not be interfered with. And finally, we close-reefed the big lug and took in the jib, when we were as ready for the expected outfly as it was possible for people in such circumstances to be.
That something more than a mere thunderstorm was impending there could now be no possible doubt. The strange light of which I have spoken, and which had seemed to emanate from the clouds, had now vanished, giving place to a darkness so profound that it seemed to oppress us like some material substance; and the silence was as profound and oppressive as the darkness—so profound, indeed, was it that any accidental sound which happened to break in upon it, such as the occasional lap of the water against the boat’s planking, the scuffling movement of a man, or the intermittent flap of the sail as the longboat stirred upon a wandering ridge of slow-moving swell, smote upon the ear with an exaggerated distinctness that was positively startling to an almost painful degree. I accounted for this, at the time, by attributing it in part to the peculiar electrical condition of the atmosphere, and partly to the fact that we had all been wrought up to a condition of high nervous tension by the conviction that something—we did not quite know what—was impending, for which we were all anxiously on the watch, and that, in the Cimmerian darkness which enveloped us, we were obliged to depend for adequate warning, upon our hearing alone, which caused us to resent and be impatient of all extraneous sounds. That this was to some extent the case was evidenced by the fact that, our preparations finished, we had, as with one consent, subsided into silence, which was broken only in a low whisper if anyone felt it necessary to speak.
Suddenly, as we all sat waiting for the outburst of the threatened storm, a long-drawn, piercing cry pealed out across the water, apparently from a spot at no very great distance from us. It was, although not very loud, the most appalling, soul-harrowing sound that had ever smote upon my ears, and a violent shudder of horror thrilled me from head to foot, while I felt the hair bristling upon my scalp as I listened to it. Three times in rapid succession did that dreadful, heart-shaking cry come wailing to our ears, and then all was silence again for perhaps half a minute, when the men about me began to ask, in low, tense whispers, whence it came, and from what creature. To me, I must confess, the sounds seemed to be such as might burst from the lips of a fellow-creature in the very uttermost extremity of mortal terror. But that could scarcely be, for how could mortal man have approached us within a distance of some two hundred yards in that breathless calm, unless, indeed, in a boat—of which there had certainly been no sign in any direction half an hour before. And if one were disposed for a moment to admit such a possibility, whence could a boat come? The pirate brig had been the only craft in sight when darkness fell, and it was scarcely within the bounds of probability that anything then out of sight beneath the horizon could have drawn so near to us during the succeeding hours of darkness. Or again, admitting such a possibility, what dreadful happening could have wrung from human lips such blood-curdling sounds? We were all eagerly discussing the matter, some of the men agreeing with me that the sounds were human, while others stoutly maintained that they were supernatural, and boded some terrible disaster to the boats, when our discussion was abruptly broken in upon by the sound of rippling water near at hand, as though a craft of some kind were bearing down upon us at a speed sufficient to raise a brisk surge under her bows, and the next instant the voice of San Domingo pealed out in piercing tones, eloquent of the direst terror:
“Oh, look dere eberybody! Wha’ dat?” And with a howl like that of a wild beast he rose to his feet and made a frantic dash aft for the stern-sheets, fighting his way past the other men, and trampling over the unfortunate wounded in the bottom of the boat, quite beside himself with fright.
And indeed there was some excuse for the negro’s extraordinary behaviour; for, intense as was the darkness that enveloped us, the water was faintly phosphorescent, and we were thus enabled to discern indistinctly that, less than a hundred yards distant from us, a huge creature, which, to our excited imaginations, appeared to be between two and three hundred feet long, had risen to the surface and was now slowly swimming in a direction that would carry it across the bows of the longboat at a distance of some fifty feet. I frankly confess that for a moment I felt petrified with horror, for the creature was streaming with faintly luminous phosphorescence, and thus, despite the darkness, it was possible to see that it was certainly not a whale, or any other known denizen of the deep, for it had a head shaped somewhat like that of an alligator—but considerably larger than that of any alligator I had ever seen—attached to a very long and somewhat slender neck, which it carried stretched straight out before it at an angle of some thirty degrees with the surface of the water, and which it continually twisted this way and that, as though peering about in search of something. Suddenly it paused, lifted its head high, and looked straight toward the boats, and at the same moment a whiff of air came toward us heavily charged with a most disgusting and nauseating odour, about equally suggestive of musk and the charnel-house. Its eyes, distinctly luminous, and apparently about two feet apart, were directed straight toward the longboat, and the next instant it began to move toward us, again stretching out its neck.