I took the glass, and, after a long and patient scrutiny of the mysterious light, pronounced my opinion.
“To me, sir,” said I, “it has the appearance of an ordinary ship’s lantern wrapped in a strip of red bunting and hung from a pole, or something of that sort. For, if you will look at it closely, you will notice that it sways with the wash of the sea, and now and then seems to swing for an instant behind a slender object like a light spar. But I could almost take my oath that there is no barque or any other kind of craft there.”
Once again Ryan took the telescope, and after a further prolonged scrutiny, he exclaimed—
“By the powers, but I believe you are right, and if so we have been done! It certainly has very much the appearance that you describe. But what in the world can it be? It is a moving object, beyond all doubt, for see how we have been obliged to run off the wind in chase of it! However, we are close to it now, for I can make out the swinging of the lantern—and a lantern it is—with the naked eye. It is some confounded contrivance for leading us astray, that is what it is! But since we are so close to it, we may as well ascertain its character, if only to be awake to the trick if it ever happens to be played upon us a second time. Hands by the braces here, and stand by to back the topsail. And get two or three lanterns ready to swing over the side, so that we may see just exactly what the thing is.”
We had by this time approached the mysterious object so nearly that another three or four minutes sufficed to bring it within a couple of hundred feet of the schooner’s weather bow, when the topsail was laid to the mast, and our way checked sufficiently to permit of a careful examination of the thing, whatever it was. By the time that we had forged ahead far enough to bring it on our weather beam it was close aboard of us, and then the light of our lanterns disclosed the nature of the contrivance by which we had been so cleverly tricked. It was in fact nothing more than a raft composed of five nine-inch planks laid parallel to each other with a space of about a foot between each, and firmly secured together by a couple of stout cross-pieces nailed athwart the whole concern. The fore-ends of the planks had been sawn away to the shape of a sharp wedge to facilitate the movement of the raft through the water, and on the foremost cross-piece had been rigged an oar for a mast, upon which was set a hastily-contrived squaresail, made out of a piece of old tarpaulin. To the head of the mast was securely lashed an old lantern with a short length of candle, still burning, in it; the lantern being cunningly draped in red bunting to represent the appearance of a lamp shining through a curtain. And the whole contrivance was rendered self-steering by the attachment of a few fathoms of line to the after-end of the middle plank, at the other extremity of which a drogue, consisting of a short length of plank, was attached. This drogue had the effect of keeping the raft running dead before the wind, and it travelled at a very respectable pace, too—quite five knots an hour, we estimated its speed at—for the sail was quite a big one for so small an affair; and since we had been steering for it for just about an hour, it meant that we had been decoyed some five miles to leeward of our proper course.
The question now was: Where was the barque? It did not take us very long to make up our minds upon this point. It was pretty evident that since her skipper had been at so much pains to entice us away down to leeward, he would have held his wind all this time; and to windward therefore must we look for him. Whether, however, he had tacked and stood away to the westward immediately after launching his raft, or whether he had held on upon the port tack to the northward, we could not possibly tell, for a diligent and prolonged use of our night-glasses failed to reveal the slightest indication of his whereabouts. Ryan, however, was not long in arriving upon a conclusion in the matter. He argued that if he had tacked we ought also to tack forthwith, because, if we stood on as we were going until the moon rose, we might run out of sight of him; whereas, if he had not tacked, he would be at that moment somewhere about broad on our weather bow. If therefore he had tacked, we should be doing the right thing to tack also, since we should then be standing directly after him; while if he had not tacked, we should still be doing right to heave about, since even in that case we should probably see something of him from our mast-head when the moon rose, as she would in less than half-an-hour. We therefore at once put the helm down and hove round on the starboard tack, keeping the schooner as close to the wind as she would lie, while still allowing her to go along through the water.
A faint brightening in the sky by and by announced the welcome approach of the moon upon the scene; and shortly afterwards the beautiful planet herself, considerably shrunken from her full-orbed splendour, rose slowly into view above the horizon, her curtailed disc showing of a deep, ruddy orange-colour through the dense, humid vapours of the lower atmosphere. Two hands were at once sent up to the topgallant-yard to take a look round; but even after they had been there an hour—by which time the moon had risen high enough to give us plenty of light—they failed to discover any sign of the barque or anything else; and we were at length reluctantly compelled to admit that we had been very cleverly tricked, and that our cunning neighbour had fairly given us the slip.
“But I’ll not give him up, even now!” exclaimed Ryan, when this conviction had fairly forced itself upon us. “Come down below, Dugdale, and let us reason this thing out.”
We accordingly descended to our snug little cabin and seated ourselves at the table, Ryan producing a sheet of paper, a scale, and a pencil wherewith to graphically illustrate our line of reasoning.
“Now, here,” said he, drawing an arrow near one margin of the paper, “is the wind, coming out at west as nearly as may be; and here,” laying the scale upon the paper, measuring off a distance, and making two pencil dots, “are the positions of the barque and the schooner when the former was last seen. Now, I estimate that the barque was going about eight and a half knots, and we were reeling off nine by the log at that time; and this state of affairs continued at least until the light was seen, which was about half-an-hour after we lost sight of our friend. Consequently, when the light was first seen, the schooner was here”—making another dot—“and the barque there,” making a fourth.