“Well!” exclaimed Henderson, who was standing by me, close abaft the weather main rigging, watching—as I was—the rapid sliding past us of the various objects ashore, “I’ve heard people speak of a ship as sailin’ like a witch, but I’m only now comin’ to rightly understand just exactly what that expression means; it means goin’ along precisely as if you was shot out of a gun! Why, Mr Delamere, I don’t believe as there’s anything afloat that can touch us—not, at all events, in moderately smooth water. What we shall do in a heavy sea remains to be seen; and we shall soon find that out, I reckon, for it’s all foamin’ white away out there in the offing; but I’ve a notion that she’ll go over it all like a duck, provided that we don’t drive her too hard. Look at that, sir,”—as the schooner leapt from the crest of a sea into the hollow beyond, and the foam buzzed and boiled to the level of her lee head-rail and then went glancing away dizzily aft—“ain’t that just perfectly beautiful? Never shipped a drop, she didn’t! And there again! My eyes! but she is a beauty, and no mistake.”
“She is certainly behaving wonderfully well,” I admitted, my voice all a-quiver with pride. “How does she steer? Is she easy on her helm?” I demanded of the man at the wheel.
“Gripes just the leastest bit in the world, sir, but nothin’ worth speakin’ about. I could steer her wi’ one hand,” answered the man; and to prove his words he placed one hand behind him and kept it there for a minute or two while he grasped a spoke of the wheel with the other.
We had by this time brought the Beacon shoal about one point abaft the weather-beam, and I was of opinion that we could weather it on the next tack; I therefore gave the word, “Ready about—Helm’s a-lee!” and directed the helmsman to ease down the helm. He let go the wheel for a moment, and the little hooker at once came to the wind with her head-sails slatting and threshing as she spilled the wind out of them; then he began to pull the wheel over toward him, and with one terrific dive into a sea that came rushing at her, and which she split into two showers of diamond spray that leapt half as high as her foremast before it came driving aft in a shower that nearly drenched us to the skin, round she swept like a gun upon its pivot, and was full again upon the other tack almost before we could blink our eyelids. The beauty of a fore-and-after is that she practically works herself, all that is needed being three or four hands on the forecastle to trim over the jib and fore sheets as she comes round. It was simply child’s play compared with the complicated manoeuvres that attend the working of a full-rigged ship, and Henderson laughed aloud in his delight at the simplicity of it.
“Why, Mr Delamere,” he declared, “it’s like sailin’ the Europa’s launch, only easier. The launch never stayed as smartly as that, not so long as I’ve knowed her!”
We weathered the Beacon shoal, with room to spare, as I expected we should; and then kept away, with slightly eased sheets, for the passage between Gun and Rackum Cays, after negotiating which we shaped a course for Cow Bay and Yallah Points, off the latter of which we arrived shortly after six bells in the forenoon watch had struck. Still hugging the coast as closely as possible, we arrived off Port Morant about four bells in the afternoon watch, about which time we found the sea-breeze to be merging gradually into the Trade-wind and heading us so badly that at length we were obliged to heave about and head off-shore. Here we soon got into such a boil of a sea that the little hooker threatened to smother herself, and it became necessary for us to haul down a second and a third reef, and to take the jib off her, after which she went along quite comfortably, shipping nothing worse than an occasional sprinkling of spray over her weather-bow. At eight bells of the second dog-watch we handsomely weathered Morant Point on our way out through the Windward Channel, it being my purpose to work out through the Caycos Passage, and then cruise to and fro athwart and to windward of the Windward Passages—that being the cruising-ground which I believed the pirates would be most likely to haunt.
Shortly before daybreak, on the third morning after leaving Port Royal, we found ourselves rapidly drawing into smooth water—so rapidly, indeed, that Pearce, the boatswain, whose watch it was, came down in some alarm and roused me out, fearing that Willoughby, the midshipman who was acting as master, had made a mistake in his reckoning, and that we were about to blunder on to some danger or another. I was able, however, to set the good man’s mind at rest by explaining that we were doubtless drawing in under the lee of the Caycos Bank, and that therefore the water might naturally be expected to smoothen. Nevertheless, feeling that I had had a good night’s rest, and understanding from Pearce that day would dawn in less than half-an-hour’s time, I turned out and, slipping into my trousers and jacket, went up on deck. And very glad I was that I had done so, for I was thus enabled to observe a very curious natural phenomenon, which one might knock about in those seas for years without seeing, for the simple reason that the circumstances must be favourable or the phenomenon is not visible.
The Caycos Bank is a shoal lying some sixty-eight miles off Monte Christi, on the north coast of Hayti. It measures about the same distance from its north-western to its south-eastern extremity, and is about sixty-two miles across from east to west at its widest point; it is consequently of considerable extent, and from the fact that the depth of water over it ranges from six feet to eighteen feet it is not without its dangers, and must be approached with due caution, especially during the hours of darkness. In daylight the danger is not nearly so great, because the north-eastern and north-western edges of the shoal are fringed by a number of cays among which the sea breaks heavily, while the whole surface of the shoal is white water. And it is this same white water which gives rise to the phenomenon above referred to, locally known as “Bank Blink.” It is simply the reflection of the phosphorescence of the water in the clouds above; and the darker and more overcast the night, the more distinctly is the reflection seen. The phenomenon is, of course, quite natural and easily to be accounted for, yet its occurrence can scarcely be regarded as less than providential; for there can be no doubt whatever that its appearance in the sky has often been the means of warning navigators that they were approaching this danger, and so causing them to haul off in time to avoid shipwreck.
Upon the night in question, when I first saw it, I found, upon going on deck, that the darkness was profound, the sky being so completely obscured by clouds that not so much as a single star was visible. But away to windward, ranging from about two points on the weather-bow round to square abeam, the clouds from almost overhead to within some fifteen degrees of the horizon were faintly yet quite perceptibly tinged greenish hue, the tinge being strongest about midway between our weather-bow and beam. Pearce had noticed it, it appeared, when I came to question him about it, and had thought that it might possibly portend a change of weather until he had looked at the barometer and found it inclined to rise; then he had become alarmed by the smoothing of the water, which seemed to him far more portentous than the light on the clouds.
I had not been on deck more than a quarter of an hour when the blackness under the lower edge of the bank blink away over our starboard cathead began to pale, first to a cold slaty-grey, and from that, by rapid gradations, to a rich purple, then to crimson, and from crimson to an orange tint so deep as to be almost scarlet, beneath which the horizon loomed out black as ink, the intervening space of water lightening, as it swept toward us, until at the distance of a couple of miles it became a livid bluish-white. This marked the western edge of the shoal, and sufficiently accounted for the smoothing of the deep-water in which we were sailing.