At the first crash of the rain upon the deck Ryan and I both with one accord glanced hastily at the barometer that was hanging suspended in gimbals in the skylight; the mercury had dropped slightly, but not sufficient to arouse any uneasiness, and we therefore went quietly on with our dinner, although Ryan shouted across the table to me—
“When the rain comes before the wind,
Halliards, sheets, and braces mind.”
There was little danger, however, of our being caught unawares, for we had long ago clewed up and hauled down everything, except the boom-foresail and jib, to save the sails from thrashing themselves threadbare with the rolling of the ship; we consequently awaited the development of events with perfect equanimity. The downpour lasted perhaps three minutes, and then ceased with startling abruptness, leaving us in absolute silence save for the rush and splash of the water athwart the flooded decks with the now greatly diminished rolling of the schooner, the gurgle of the spouting scuppers, the kicking of the rudder upon its gudgeons, the groaning and complaining of the timbers, or the voices of the people on deck, and the soft patter of their bare feet upon the wet planks as they moved here and there. The shower had knocked the swell down very considerably, rendering the movements of the schooner much more easy than they had been, and we were able to finish our meal in peace and comfort without the continued necessity to steady the plate with one hand and the tumbler with the other, keeping a wary eye upon the viands meanwhile, in readiness to dodge any of them that might happen to fetch away in our direction, and snatching a mouthful or a sip in the brief intervals when the ship became comparatively steady.
When we again went on deck the sky presented a really magnificent spectacle, the vast masses of heavy, electrically-charged cloud being piled one above the other in a fashion that resembled, to me, nothing so much as a chaos of titanic rocks of every conceivable shape and colour, the forms and hues of the clouds being rendered distinctly visible by the incessant play of the sheet-lightning among their masses. Not only the whole sky, but the entire atmosphere seemed to be a-quiver with the silent electric discharges, and the effect was indescribably beautiful as the quick, tremulous flashes blazed out, now here, now there, strongly illumining one portion of the piled-up masses and the reflection in the glassy water with its transient radiance, while the rest of the scene was by contrast thrown into the deepest, blackest, most opaque shadow. Meanwhile the mutterings of the distant thunder had gradually grown louder and drawn nearer, while sudden, vivid flashes of forked or chain-lightning, golden, violet, or delicate rose-tinted, darted at ever-lessening intervals from the lowering masses of intensely black cloud heaped up along the western horizon.
We had been on deck perhaps half-an-hour, when a delicious coolness and freshness began by almost insensible degrees to pervade the hitherto intolerable closeness of the hot and enervating atmosphere, and, looking away to the westward, we saw, by the quick, flickering illumination of the lightning, a few transient cat’s-paws playing here and there upon the surface of the water. Gradually and erratically these evanescent movements in the inert air stole down to the schooner, lightly rippling the water round her for an instant, just stirring the canvas with a faint rustle for a moment, and then dying away again. They were succeeded by others, however, with rapidly increasing frequency, and presently a faint blurr upon the glassy surface of the water to the westward marked the approach of the true breeze.
“Sheet home your topsail, and hoist away!” shouted Ryan. “Up with your helm, my man”—to the man at the tiller—“and let her go off east-south-east. Sheet home your topgallant-sail, and man the halliards. Lay aft here, some of you, to the braces, and lay the yards square. Well there, belay! Main throat and peak-halliards hoist away. Ease off the mainsheet. Rouse up the squaresail, Mr Dugdale, and set it, if you please. Well there with the throat-halliards; well with the peak; belay! Away aloft, one hand, and loose the gaff-topsail! Give her everything but the studding-sails while you are about it, Mr Dugdale; it will save the canvas from mildew if it does little else.”
The breeze—a light air from about west—had by this time crept up to us, and under its vivifying influence the schooner had gathered way, and was soon creeping along at a speed of barely two and a half knots, which, however, rose to three and finally to five as the wind freshened, the sky meanwhile clearing as the heavy thunder-clouds drove away to leeward before the welcome breeze, until the sky was once more cloudless save for the mare’s-tails that thickly overspread the blue, through which the stars blinked dimly, and the moon, with a big halo round her, poured her chastened radiance.
“By the powers,” exclaimed Ryan, as we paced the deck together after the operation of making sail had been completed—“By the powers, but that dhrag of mine is a wondherful invention entirely! Do ye notice, Harry, me bhoy, how it’s modherated the little huzzy’s paces? Bedad, she’s goin’ along as sober as a Quaker girl to meetin’ instead of waltzin’ away like a ballet-dancer! But wait until one of those light-heeled picaroons comes along, and then won’t we surprise thim above a bit! If it’s not blowing too hard when ye come on deck in the middle watch ye may give her the stunsails; it’ll look more ship-shape, and as if we were in a hurry to make the coast and get our cargo aboard, if we happen to be overhauled by anybody in the same line of business, and the deuce of a fear have I now of outsailing any of them that may happen to be in the neighbourhood. Keep a sharp look-out, Mr Pierrepoint, and if anything heaves in sight, either ahead or astern, during your watch, give me a call. I’m going below to turn in now.”
I followed suit a minute or two later and, with my cabin-door wide open to freely admit the cool, welcome breeze that poured down through the open skylight, soon fell into a deep, refreshing sleep.