Arrived on the reef—over which, by the way, there was plenty of water, four fathoms being the least the party had ever found upon it—the expectant sportsman dropped his grapnel, lowered the sail, and threw his lines overboard. The sport, however, was not by any means good that night, for it was fully half an hour before he got a bite; and the interval which followed his first capture was so long that the skipper’s interest waned and his thoughts wandered off—as indeed they very often did—to his ship; and he fell to wondering what had become of her, whether the mutineers had actually gone the extreme length of carrying into effect their piratical plans, whether Sibylla and Ned were still on board, and, if so, how matters fared with them. He was full of commiseration for the two young people, both having taken a strong hold upon his warm and kindly heart, and he scarcely knew which to pity most—whether Sibylla, cruelly and perhaps permanently cut off from all intercourse with her own sex and constantly in association with a band of lawless men; or Ned, likewise a prisoner, with all his life’s prospects blighted, and in addition to this the never-ceasing care, anxiety, and watchfulness which he must endure on Sibylla’s account. Most people would have been disposed to say at once and unhesitatingly that the girl’s lot was infinitely the worse of the two. But the skipper did not; he understood pretty well, or thought he did, the position of affairs on board the Flying Cloud; and he knew to an absolute certainty that so long as Ned had life and strength to protect her Sibylla was reasonably secure. But Ned, he repeated to himself, would always have her safety and well-being upon his mind in addition to his other cares and anxieties. It was a miserable plight for both of them, he mused, and he didn’t see how they were to get out of it—unless, indeed, they could manage to steal away in a boat and give the ship the slip some fine dark night. And what would become of them then? he asked himself. What chance of ultimate escape would they have? He knew Ned well enough to feel assured he would never attempt so extreme a step without first making the fullest possible provision for the safety of his companion and himself; but when all was done, what prospect would they have of being picked up in those lonely seas? He pictured them to himself drifting helplessly hither and thither, exposed to the scorching rays of the sun all day and the pelting rain at night; their provisions consumed, their water-breaker empty, and hope slowly giving way to despair as day and night succeeded each other, with no friendly sail to cheer their failing sight and drive away the horrible visions which haunt those who are perishing of hunger and thirst. He saw Ned’s stalwart form grow gaunt and lean, and Sibylla’s rounded outlines sharpen and waste away under the fierce fires of hunger; and his soul sickened within him as their moans of anguish smote upon his ear. And at last he heard Sibylla, in her agony and despair, entreat Ned to take away the life which had become a burden to her. And he saw and heard too how Ned, his speech thick and inarticulate with torturing thirst, first tried unavailingly to soothe and comfort and encourage the suffering girl; and how at last, in sheer pity for her and mad desperation at their helpless state, the lad drew forth his knife and stealthily tested the keenness of its edge and point. And as he watched, with feverish interest yet unspeakable anxiety and horror, he saw that the long-protracted suffering of himself and his companion had at last proved too much for the poor lad and that his brain was giving way; for look! the baleful light of madness gleams in his bloodshot eyes! Madness gives new strength to his nerveless limbs as he rises and bends over his companion. As he slowly uplifts his arm its shrunken muscles swell beneath the skin as though they would burst it, his talon-like fingers close with a grip of steel round the haft of the upraised knife, Sibylla closes her eyes in patient expectancy of the stroke, the blade quivers and flashes in the sunlight, and Captain Blyth, with a cry of horror, starts forward—to awake at the sound of his own voice and to find himself at the edge of the raft, in the very act of leaping into the jaws of a shark which is eyeing him hungrily from the water alongside! He luckily checks his spring in time. To seize the boat-hook and strike savagely at the waiting shark with its point follows as a matter of course; and then the skipper piously returns thanks to God not only for his escape, but also that the events he has just been witnessing are nothing more substantial than an ugly dream.
Blyth’s next act is to haul in the lines which have dropped from his nerveless hands during sleep, and which would unquestionably have been lost had he not taken the precaution to make them fast; and he finds to his chagrin that not only the bait but also the hooks have been carried off. He therefore neatly coils up his fishing-tackle preparatory to shaping a course for home; for the moon is on the very verge of the western horizon, and he knows therefore that it is past midnight. Moreover, though the breeze is rather fresher than it was and the horizon is clear, there is a murkiness in the atmosphere overhead which portends a change of weather; and as he looks knowingly about him he gives audible expression to his opinion that there will be but little work done in the ship-yard on the morrow.
The grapnel is lifted, and the skipper, attaching the handle to the winch, begins to mast-head the yard of the solitary sail which propels the raft. As he does so his eyes are directed towards the moon, now slowly sinking beneath the horizon. Ha! what is that? The labour at the winch is suspended, a hasty turn is taken with the halliard, and Captain Blyth strains forward, his eyes shaded by both hands the better to observe that black spot which is slowly gliding athwart the moon’s pale face. Little need is there, though, for him to look so intently to ascertain what that black spot really is; it is more for the purpose of assuring himself that his eyes are not playing him false, or that he is not once more the victim of a dream. No; this is not a dream. He is wide awake enough now, and his mind is busy with a thousand tumultuous thoughts, for, as he watches, clear and unmistakable glide the upper sails of a large ship across the face of the sinking planet. She is steering south, but whether easterly or westerly it is impossible to say as she stands out black and silhouette-like against her golden background; but one thing is plain—she is moving very slowly. The skipper darts to the compass—one of a pair saved from the wreck of the Mermaid—and striking a match, which he carefully shelters from the wind in the crown of his cap, he manages to take her bearing before she vanishes from his sight. He next completes the setting of his sail, hauls aft the sheet, and, jamming the raft close upon a wind, asks himself what is the best thing to do.
To return to the island will consume an hour of most precious time; and when there what could he do to attract the stranger’s attention? Nothing more than light a huge bonfire; and the only spot suitable for this is the western side of the mountain, to reach which will consume at least another hour. Then there would be wood to collect, occupying say another half-hour, making a total of at least two hours and a half before such a signal could be rendered visible. And perhaps, after all, those on board the ship might not see it, or, seeing it, might not understand its meaning—might suppose it to be nothing more than a fire built by the natives, and so pass on their way. No; that would not do—the risk of failure would be too great. What then? There remained nothing, in Captain Blyth’s opinion, but to pursue the stranger. She could not, he thought, be going more than five knots, judging by the strength of the breeze and the momentary glimpse he had obtained of her; whilst the raft, light as she was and with the wind well over her quarter, would go nearly or quite seven. The strange sail was about twelve miles off; therefore, if he could overhaul her at the rate of about two knots per hour, he ought to be near enough to attract her attention by sunrise. But he must bear up in chase at once, there was no time to waste in running ashore to make known his intentions; and as for help, he wanted none, he was quite capable of managing the raft single-handed. Moreover, he began to suspect that Henderson would prove to be right in that suggestion of his respecting a change of weather, which made it all the more important that the strange sail should be overhauled before the change should occur.
These reflections passed through the skipper’s brain in a single moment—not perhaps quite so definitely as here set forth, but to the same purpose—and in the next he jammed his helm hard up, eased off the sheet, and bore away upon a course which he conjectured would enable him to intercept the stranger.
For a few minutes after the disappearance of the moon Blyth was able, or fancied he was able, still to distinguish the canvas of the chase looming up vaguely like a dark shapeless shadow upon the horizon; but either the sky grew darker in that quarter or the weather thickened, for he was soon obliged to admit that he could see it no longer. But that circumstance gave him not the least concern; he had set his course by a star, and he knew that so long as he continued to steer for it, so long would the course of the raft converge toward that of the stranger. He was concerned, however, to notice later on that not only was the weather thickening overhead, necessitating a frequent changing of the star by which he was following his course, but also that the wind was becoming unsteady; sometimes falling away to such an extent as to cause the raft’s sail to flap heavily as she rolled over the ridges of the swell, and anon breezing up quite fresh again, but with a change of perhaps a couple of points in its direction, the change generally being of such a character as to bring the wind forward more on his starboard beam. Gradually the haze so thickened overhead that such stars as were not already obscured grew dim and soon disappeared altogether, leaving the solitary man dependent only upon the somewhat fickle wind for a guide by which to steer his course; for though he had a compass on board the raft, he had no binnacle, and no lamps by which to illuminate the compass card. It is true the island was still in sight, some four miles astern, but the night had grown so dark and the atmosphere so thick that the land merely loomed like a vast undefined blot of darkness against the black horizon, being so indistinct indeed that only the practised eye of a seamen could have detected its presence at all; it was therefore useless as an object to steer by, even to so keen-eyed an old sea-dog as Captain Blyth.
It had by this time began to dawn upon the skipper that his adventure was likely to prove of a far more serious character than he had at all contemplated; and he was earnestly debating within himself the question whether his wisest course would not, after all, be to abandon the chase and make the best of his way back to the island, when the breeze once more freshened up so strongly, and that too dead aft, that it made everything on board the raft surge again as she gathered way and skimmed off before it. And Blyth, calculating that even if the chase were sailing away from instead of toward him it would shorten his distance from her at least a couple of miles before she caught it, grimly held on his course, determined to risk everything rather than lose so good a chance; his chief fear now being that the sheet would part under the tremendous strain brought to bear upon it by the immense sail. The raft, as has been elsewhere stated, was of very peculiar construction, her shape and build being such as to peculiarly favour speed, especially when running dead before the wind; and, light as she now was, she skimmed away before the fierce squall at a rate which made Blyth’s heart bound with exultation as he looked first to one side and then the other and noted the furious speed with which the phosphorescent foam from under her bows was left behind. There was now no longer any thought of turning back, for, be it said, Captain Blyth—good honest soul—was a devout believer in Providence; and he had by this time arrived at a firm conviction, first, that it was by the special intervention of Providence that he had been led to undertake his fishing excursion that night, and next, that the freshening up of a dead fair wind just when it did was a second special intervention of Providence to prevent his giving up the chase. And so he held on everything, and the raft rushed away dead before the wind through the pitchy darkness, the mast creaking ominously in its step every now and then, and the tautly-strained gear aloft surging from time to time in an equally ominous manner; whilst the sea rose rapidly—showing that the solitary voyager was fast drawing out from under the sheltering lee of the island astern—and the foaming wavecrests, vividly phosphorescent, momentarily towered higher and more threateningly, and hissed louder and more angrily in the luminous wake of the flying craft.
The squall lasted a full hour, when the wind died away even more suddenly than it had arisen, and the raft was left tumbling about with little more than steerage-way upon her. The skipper had no means of ascertaining the time, it being too intensely dark to permit of his reading the face of his watch even when it was held close to his eyes, though he made two or three unsuccessful attempts to do so; but, anxious and impatient as he was for the dawn, he knew that it must be at least another hour, perhaps nearer two, before he could reasonably expect its appearance. Two hours more of sickening suspense! One hundred and twenty minutes! With the weather in such a threatening state what might not happen in the interval! If he could only have obtained an occasional glimpse of the compass, or if the night had been less opaquely dark he would not have cared so much. For in the one case he would have been enabled not only to keep a mental reckoning of his own course, but also that of the chase as well, and to follow her attentively no matter how capricious the breeze; whilst in the other case he might have stood some chance of catching a momentary glimpse of her. As his reflections took this turn he stooped and looked ahead under the foot of the sail; looked more intently; rubbed his eyes, and looked again. What was it he saw? A light—lights? Yes, surely; it must be so, or were those faint luminous specks merely illusory and a result of the over-straining of his visual organs due to the intensity of his gaze into the gloom? No; those feebly glimmering points of light were stationary; they maintained the same fixed distance from each other, and he could count them—one, two, three—half a dozen of them at least, if not more, he could not be certain, for they were so very faint. What could it mean? Was there a whole fleet of ships down there to leeward? That there was something was an absolute certainty; and as it seemed an impossibility that it could be anything else it was only reasonable to conclude that it must be a ship or ships. At all events there could be no question as to the course he ought to follow; it would be worse than folly to continue in pursuit of an invisible ship with those lights in comparatively plain view only a couple of points on his lee-bow. So the skipper bore away until the faint luminous spots opened out just clear of the heel of the long yard—which, it will be remembered, was bowsed down close to the deck—and there he resolutely kept them, the wind having by this time fallen so light that it was necessary for him to make frequent sweeps with the steering-oar in order to keep the raft’s head pointed in the required direction.
Suddenly, a greenish spectral radiance beamed down upon him from above; and, quickly casting a startled glance aloft, Blyth shudderingly beheld a ball of lambent greenish light quivering upon the upper extremity of the long tapering yard and swaying to and fro with the roll of the raft, much as the flame of a candle would have done under similar circumstances. Clinging lightly to the end of the yard, it alternately elongated and flattened as the spar swayed to and fro, now and then rolling a few inches down the yard as though about to travel down to the deck, but as often returning to the extremity of the yard again. Presently another and similar luminous ball gleamed into shape at the mast-head, swaying and wavering about the end of the spar like its companion. They were corposants, and whilst they conveyed to the skipper the only additional warning needed of the impending elemental strife, they also at once explained the mystery of the lights to leeward for which he was steering. They also were undoubtedly corposants glimmering from the spars of the strange sail of which he was in pursuit, and which, from her present proximity, must have been steering to the eastward, and consequently toward him, instead of to the westward and away from him, as he had feared.
Blyth believed she certainly could not be more than a mile distant, his conviction being that the feeble, sickly lights of the ghostly corposants could not penetrate further than that distance in so thick an atmosphere, and it now became of the utmost importance—nay, it might even be a matter of life or death for him—to reach the stranger before the hurricane should burst upon them. He looked over the side to ascertain the speed of the raft through the water, and his heart quailed as he observed that, save for an occasional tiny phosphorescent spark on the surface or a faintly luminous halo lower down in the black depths slowly drifting by, there was nothing to indicate that she had any motion whatever. Her speed was not more than half a knot per hour; and the stranger was probably a mile distant—two hours away at the raft’s then rate of progress! Something must be done, and quickly, too; for out of the darkness round about him there now floated weird, whispering sighs, faint, dismal moanings, and now and then a sudden momentary rush as of invisible wings, telling that the storm-fiend was marshalling his forces and about to make his swoop. What was to be done? There were only two oars on board the raft—the steering-oars—and they were so firmly secured that it would be next to impossible to cast them adrift and use them as means of propulsion, even if one man’s strength were sufficient to handle them both simultaneously. Moreover, if a little puff of wind should come, as is sometimes the case, before the great burst of the hurricane, they would, one or both, be wanted where they were. Perhaps hailing might be of use. At all events, he would try. And, placing his hollowed hands on each side of his mouth to form a speaking trumpet the skipper drew a deep inspiration or two, hailed with the utmost strength of his lungs; “Ship ahoy–oy!”