The ship presented a noble picture as we left her there in the swift gathering dusk of the calm tropical night, her long shapely hull, taunt spars, and milk-white canvas reflected upon the glassy surface of the sleeping wave upon which she oscillated ponderously to the long heave of the almost imperceptible swell; and it was grievous to think that the man—quite a young man, too, with all his best years apparently before him—who had been deemed worthy the trust and charge of so fine a fabric, and of all the costly merchandise that she contained, should have been so miserably, contemptibly weak as to have allowed himself to be conquered by the vile demon of drink, and his life brought to so disastrous and shameful a close. Ah, me! the pity of it; the pity of it!
The breeze had reached the Esmeralda by the time that the gig arrived alongside, and the dainty little barque was lying to with her mainyard aback, waiting for us. She seemed very small in comparison with the City of Calcutta, coming so directly as I had done from the spacious decks and cabins of the latter; but it was a relief to get away from the big ship, and the tragedy of which she was the scene; and I was more than thankful that the breeze had come so opportunely to enable us to part company with her. The wind—which, after all, was the merest zephyr—was very light and partial, playing about the surface of the water around us in occasional cat’s-paws, and failing to reach the barque altogether so long as the fast-fading twilight permitted us to see her, while, a quarter of a mile to windward and right out to the horizon, the water was quite blue with ripples. We accordingly braced sharp up and luffed our way to the spot where the breeze was steady, and then bore away upon our course, rejoicing; the nimble little barque getting off her five knots per hour with ease, although the wind had scarcely weight enough in it to lift the heavy cloths of her courses. As the night closed down upon us, however, the breeze acquired a little more life, and we increased our pace until, at four bells in the first watch, we were reeling off our eight knots by the log. About midnight we passed through quite a large fleet of craft, homeward-bound; and when day dawned, some seven or eight vessels were in sight ahead of us, steering to the southward.
At eight o’clock that morning we crossed the Line, by my reckoning; and, the breeze holding bravely, we had an opportunity to test our sailing powers against the craft ahead of us; a most exhilarating race resulting, in which, to the intense satisfaction of all hands on board the Esmeralda, that tidy little barque eventually proved the victor.
Now, it must not be supposed that, because I have abstained from any mention of the cryptogram since the outset of the voyage, I had forgotten all about it; on the contrary, it occupied nearly all the attention I could spare from the ordinary business of the ship, and the claims of my passengers upon it. But, so far, without the slightest useful result. When we crossed the Line I was just as far from its interpretation as I had been when I first abstracted it from its place of concealment in the sword-belt of my respected ancestor. Many an hour had I spent in the privacy of my own cabin, with the precious document outspread upon the little folding-table secured to the bulkhead, framing tables of letters corresponding with the figures of the cryptogram, and trying every possible combination I could think of, but not a particle of sense could I make of it; indeed, I had failed to get any result that bore even the most remote resemblance to anything like a language. I even at last went to the length of telling Sir Edgar and Lady Desmond and Miss Merrivale of my difficulty; and, acting upon the laughing suggestion of the latter that the attempt to solve the puzzle would be a welcome recreation, made three copies of the first line of the document, and handed one to each of them, in order that they might have an opportunity of trying their wits upon it. This was on the day that we crossed the equator; and, during the whole of that day, when their attention was not diverted by the overtaking of one or another of the craft in company, and the frequent exchange of signals—and, indeed, for many days afterwards—they devoted themselves with great earnestness and gravity to the matter, but ineffectually; and at length they gave it up as a bad job, and declared the cypher to be untranslatable.
Chapter Seven.
The Strange Fate of the “Northern Queen.”
The welcome breeze that wafted us out of the neighbourhood of the ill-starred City of Calcutta held good, and, gradually freshening and working round more from the southward, eventually resolved itself into the south-east trade, under the beneficent influence of which, with our larboard tacks on board and our yards braced flat up against the starboard rigging, we merrily wended our way to the southward.
One morning, when we were about in the latitude of the islands of Martin Vaz and Trinidad, we discovered, at daybreak, a large ship broad on our weather-bow, the topsails of which were just clear of the horizon. The trades were at this time blowing fresh, and the barque was thrashing along under her main-topgallantsail, with the flying-jib stowed. No sooner, however, did Roberts come on deck and espy the stranger—which was steering the same way as ourselves—than he must needs give orders to loose and set the fore-topgallantsail and flying-jib; and while I was in the saloon at breakfast, I heard him give orders to set the two royals. Under this additional canvas, which caused the little hooker to bury her lee side to her covering-boards, and to plunge to her hawse-pipes into the long ridges of swell that came rolling up from the southward and eastward, while she sent an acre of milk-white foam roaring and hissing away from under her lee bow, we rapidly overhauled the strange sail until we had brought her square abeam. Then, having allowed us to reach this position, her people gallantly responded to our obvious challenge, and made sail until they showed precisely the same canvas to the breeze that we did. The stranger, ship-rigged, was at this time about eight miles away from us, broad on our weather-beam, her hull just showing above the horizon when she rose upon the crest of a sea; and, after taking a good look at her through our glasses, we came to the conclusion that she must be a vessel of about twelve hundred tons. That she was a remarkably smart craft under her canvas soon became evident, for though we were going eleven and a half knots by the log, we found it impossible to gain an inch upon her after she had got her additional canvas fairly set and trimmed; indeed, there were times when it seemed impossible to resist the conviction that she was, if anything, gaining the merest trifle upon us. If so, however, it was only when the breeze came down with a little extra strength; for so surely as it softened at all we immediately appeared to recover the trifle that we seemed to have previously lost.