The moaning and wailing sounds were now floating all round us, and presently, making itself rapidly audible above them, we became conscious of a deep, fierce, bellowing roar that seemed to be approaching us on our starboard beam, the schooner’s head being then about north-west.
“Here it comes!” exclaimed Ryan, in a hoarse tone of suppressed excitement. “Get hold of a belaying-pin each, you two, or you will stand a very good chance of being blown overboard. Starboard your helm; hard over with it, my man. Get under the lee of the starboard bulwarks, men. Carpenter, are your axes ready in case we should be obliged to cut anything away?”
“All ready, sir,” came the reply, scarcely audible above the roar of the tempest that was now close upon us; and as the man spoke a fierce gust of wind laden with salt mist swooped down upon us and careened the schooner almost to her covering-board as it filled the foresail with a jar and a report like that of a nine-pounder. This blast was only momentary, however, it was upon us and gone again in an instant, but it was quickly succeeded by others; and then, away in the gloom, right abeam of us, appeared a white, spectral glimmer swooping down upon the schooner with the speed of a race-horse, and spreading momentarily wider athwart the blackness as it came. It was a line of white foam churned up on the surface of the sea by the advancing hurricane, and all behind it the ocean was white as milk. The air was now in violent motion all about us, fierce eddies swooping hither and thither, but generally in the same direction as that from which the gale was approaching. Another heavy salt-laden gust struck us, lasting just long enough to give the schooner way and render her obedient to her helm, and then the deep bass roar rose into a deafening, yelling medley of indescribable sounds as the gale struck us, and the poor little schooner bowed beneath the blow until the water poured in over her lee gunwale and I thought that she was going to “turn the turtle” with us. The foresail stood the strain for just an instant, and then it split to ribbons, and was torn from the bolt-ropes as cleanly as though the work had been done with a knife. But the good sail had already done its work before the hurricane proper had struck us, in that it had imparted some life, even though ever so little, to the schooner; she was already paying slowly off when the first stroke of the hurricane beat her down, and she continued to do so until, as she got dead before it, she rose suddenly to an even keel and went scudding away to leeward like a frightened sea-bird. The awful volume of sound given out by the fierce, headlong swoop of the wind as it bore down upon us quite prepared me to see both masts blown clean out of the schooner; but all her gear fortunately happened to be sound and good, and the loss of the foresail was the full extent of the damage sustained by us.
Having satisfied myself upon that point, I ventured to raise my head a little above the bulwarks to see how the strange sail was faring. Pierrepoint had reported her as being visible in the north-eastern quarter, and if this were so she ought now to be somewhere astern of us, since we were running off about south-west; and, sure enough, there she was, about a point and a half on our starboard quarter, just visible in the midst of the ghostly glare of the phosphorescent foam. She was, like ourselves, running dead before the gale, and I thought I could make out that her topsails had withstood the tremendous strain of the outburst and were still doing their duty. If this were so, since we were scudding under bare poles, she would soon overtake and pass us quite as closely as would be at all consistent with the safety of the two craft, and we should be afforded an opportunity to learn something of her character, and to judge whether she was the barque that we had been so industriously seeking. I made my way over to Ryan, who was standing—as well as he could against the violence of the wind that threatened to sweep him off his feet—close to the helmsman, pointed toward the stranger, and, clinging to the companion, we stood and watched her for a minute or two, half suffocated with the difficulty of breathing in so furious a tempest. She was now about four miles from us, and it soon became apparent that she was overhauling us fast, although by no means so fast as I expected; and she was so nearly end-on to us that I suggested to Ryan the advisability of our showing a light, as it looked very much as though she had not yet seen us and might approach us so closely as to put both craft in imminent peril.
“All in good time,” shouted the captain in my ear, in response to this suggestion. “I do not believe that she has seen us yet; but that is not of much consequence, since both of us are steering as steadily as pleasure-boats on a river, and I will take care to make her acquainted with our whereabouts if there appears to be the slightest danger of her running over us. But I want her to pass as near us as possible, so that we may have a good view of her. For there seems to me to be a something familiar-looking about her, as though I had seen her before; and, between you and me, Harry, I believe her to be our old friend the barque again. And, if so, we must keep up with her at all costs until the weather moderates sufficiently to bring her to; so just step for’ard, will you, my lad, and get the fore-trysail on deck and bent ready for setting in case we need it. And let one hand bring aft a lantern, not lighted, mind ye; he can take it below, light it there, and leave it at the foot of the companion-ladder all ready to show a light if yonder stranger seems likely to sheer too close to us in passing.”
I went forward, as requested, and found that the watch below had already returned to their hammocks, the crisis having passed, and the schooner scudding as comfortably as could be before the gale. The trysail was got up from below, bent, halliards and sheets hooked on, and, in short, made all ready for setting, and I returned aft to Ryan’s side, having to claw my way to him along the rail in preference to creeping along the deck upon all fours, which seemed to be the only alternative method of making headway against the wind. The sea was by this time getting up, and the air was full of spume and scud-water, caught up from the surface of the sea and the crests of the waves and swept along in a blinding, drenching shower by the gale. My superior officer was still clinging to the companion, with his eyes intently fixed upon the strange sail astern, which, now that the dense masses of cloud overhead were torn into shreds of flying scud by the fury of the wind, was pretty distinctly visible, at a distance of about a mile and a half, by the dim, misty moonlight that filtered through.
“I’ve been trying to get a peep at her through my night-glass,” exclaimed Ryan, with a wave of his hand toward the dark blotch in the midst of the white foam, “but there is no holding it in such a breeze as this; you have to keep a tight grip on the thing or the wind will take it away from you altogether. But I’m pretty certain that it is the barque; and if so I’ll stick to her as long as this schooner will hang together.”
“Do you think that she has seen us yet?” I asked.
“Yes, I fancy so,” answered Ryan. “She appears to me to be edging away a trifle, so as to pass us to starboard, giving us as wide a berth as possible. But even although she may have seen us, I do not believe that we are recognised, as yet; indeed, how should we be? At this distance, and end-on as we are, with no canvas set and our topmasts struck, we must look like little more than a dot on the water.”
This was quite true, and I fully believed, with Ryan, that we had not been recognised, for although our companion had indeed manifested signs of an inclination to edge away from us, the tendency was only to a sufficient extent to insure her passing us in safety. Had she suspected us of being an enemy, it would not have been positively dangerous for her to have altered her course fully a point, although, blowing as it then did, it would have been exceedingly imprudent to have attempted more than that.