The first danger over, I again called for a lantern, which was quickly brought; and its first rays revealed the shocking fact that it was the body of the chief mate that lay at my feet. Stooping hastily, I turned him over on his back to search for the wound that had laid him low; but, to my great surprise, was unable to find one, or to discover the slightest trace of blood. The features were perfectly placid and composed, with just the ghost of a smile upon them, giving him the appearance of having fallen suddenly into a pleasant sleep. I laid my fingers quickly upon his wrist fearing I knew not what, and failed to detect any movement of the pulse. Sir Edgar, meanwhile, had joined me, and now thrust his hand inside the waistcoat, over the region of the heart. He held it there a moment or two, and then started up, horror-stricken. “Good God!” he ejaculated, “the man is dead!”
It was so. There could be no doubt about it. Roberts’s presentiment had actually been a true one; he had indeed been doomed to die that night. But it was no mortal bullet that slew him; God Himself had launched the bolt that had severed the thread of this staunch and faithful sailor’s broken life. It was that last terrible flash of lightning that had killed him; and the poor fellow had died so instantaneously that he could scarcely have been conscious of the momentous change; certainly it must have been impossible that he could have experienced the least sensation of pain.
I was inexpressibly shocked and grieved at this terribly sudden death of my chief mate; not so much on account of the death itself—for, after hearing the poor fellow’s sad story in the earlier part of the night, I could not for an instant doubt that death would be regarded by him as a thrice welcome friend—but it was the awful suddenness and unexpected character of it that appalled me. However, I had no time to dwell upon the matter just then, for, though perfectly safe at the moment, every fathom that the ship travelled carried her more nearly to a position of awful jeopardy. I therefore gave orders that the body should be taken below to Roberts’s own state-room, and begged Sir Edgar to go below and see whether he could by any means restore vitality to it; hurriedly explaining the situation to him, and pointing out the impossibility of my leaving the deck until the safety of the ship should be assured. The kind-hearted fellow at once consented, and followed the men below, leaving me alone in the darkness and the turmoil of the storm to reflect on the words he had spoken on the night that witnessed the destruction of the Northern Queen: “How completely are we in the hands of God, and how absolutely dependent upon His Mercy!”
Our present situation was a further exemplification of this great truth, if indeed such were needed; for there was no sign whatever of any abatement of the strength of the gale; indeed, contrary to all my previous experience, the wind appeared to be increasing in violence with every fathom that we sped to leeward. True, the sky was clear away to windward and overhead, which was a good sign; but then I had before now known it to blow heavily for many hours on end out of a perfectly clear sky; while away to leeward, somewhere down in the thick blackness toward which the barque’s bows were pointing, and in the direction toward which she was hurrying, lay the land—a rock-bound coast, for aught that I knew to the contrary, but, at all events, land—to touch which, under the circumstances, would certainly mean the loss of the ship, and, most probably, of all hands as well.
While I was meditating upon this, and debating within myself the possibility of bringing the ship to the wind without losing the masts, a cry arose forward—a shout of horror raised by many voices, as it seemed to me, but if any words were uttered I failed to catch them, so terrific was the uproar of the wind in the maze of rigging overhead. I sprang toward the break of the poop, crying out at the same time to know what was the matter, when, as I did so, I caught a glimpse of a darker shadow against the blackness of the sky ahead, lying right athwart our hawse; there was another cry from our forecastle; and as I turned my head to shout an order to the helmsman to put the wheel hard over I felt a shock—not a very severe one by any means, but as though we had touched the ground for a moment—a loud scream uprose out of the dark shadow beneath our bows, and a grating, grinding sensation thrilled along the whole ship from her bows to her stern-post, as though she were forcing her way over something solid. I sprang to the rail and looked over the side into the water; and there, sliding swiftly past the ship, and prone upon the glittering, phosphorescent, milk-white foam, lay distinctly limned the black outline of a mast with a long, tapering latteen yard and a strand or two of rigging attached to it; while here and there, dotted upon the hissing froth, I caught a momentary vision of certain round black objects that I knew were the heads of drowning men, intermingled with fragments of wreckage, tossing arms, and writhing bodies.
Even as I gazed, horror-stricken, at this picture of sudden, swift destruction, it drifted astern and was quickly lost to view; but I had seen enough to know exactly what had happened. We had unwittingly run down one of the proas that had essayed to attack us.