For nearly an hour did we peer anxiously into the gloom, in the hope of seeing some poor soul within reach of such assistance as it was in our power to afford, but in vain; there is no doubt that the vessel sucked all hands down with her when she sank into her watery grave.
When at last we reluctantly desisted from our efforts, and were in the act of securing the lifebuoys once more, Bob cast his eyes aloft, and called my attention to the fact that the corposants had disappeared.
“Depend on’t, Harry,” quoth he, “them lanterns didn’t come aboard of us for nothing. They mightn’t have meant mischief for us exactly—for you can’t always read Old Davy’s signs aright; but you see they did mean mischief, and plenty of it too, for they no sooner appears aloft than a fine ship and her crew goes down close alongside of us; and as soon as that bit of work was over, away they go somewhere else to light up the scene of further devilry, I make no manner of doubt.”
It was utterly in vain that I attempted to argue the honest fellow out of his belief that their appearance was a portent of disaster, for his mind was deeply imbued with all those superstitious notions which appear to take such peculiarly firm hold on the ideas of sailors; and against superstitions of lifelong duration, argument and reason are of but little avail.
As may readily be believed, our slumbers that night, after witnessing so distressing a scene, were anything but sound. Bob and I were up and down between the deck and the cabin at least half a dozen times before morning, and it was with a sense of unutterable relief that, as day broke, we found that the gale was breaking also.
By the time that breakfast was over there was a sensible diminution in the force of the wind, and by noon it cleared away sufficiently overhead to enable me to get an observation, not a particularly good one certainly—the sea was running far too high for that; but it enabled me to ascertain that we were at least sixty miles to the southward of Staten.
About four p.m. I got a very much better observation for my longitude, and I found by it that our drift had not been anything like so great as I had calculated it would be. This I thought might possibly arise from our being in a weather-setting current.
There was still rather too much of both wind and sea to make us disposed to get under way that night, but we managed to get the craft up to the buoy of our floating-anchor, which we weighed and let go again with five fathoms of buoy-rope.
This was to prevent as much as possible any further drift to leeward, and to take full advantage of the current, the existence of which we suspected.
Next morning, however, the weather had so far moderated that, tired of our long inaction, we resolved to make a start once more, so shaking the reefs out of the trysail, and rigging our bowsprit out far enough to set a small jib, we got our floating-anchor in, and stood away to the southward and westward, with the wind out from about west-nor’-west.