Commander Venn was as good as his word in framing his report of the capture, in consequence of which I rose higher than ever in the favour of the admiral, who showed his appreciation of our services by filling up our provisions and water with all possible speed and hurrying us off to sea again.
As I had hoped, there were two letters for me, one from my father and one from Inez; but as the former was written in the same unsatisfactory strain as those which had preceded it, and as the latter contained nothing of interest to anyone but myself, I shall not trouble the reader with even so much as an extract from either, but pass on to incidents which were destined to very materially affect the happiness of my whole future life, and that of others as well. Having filled up our provisions and water, as already stated, and having received on board again the hands who had helped to take the Cythère into port, we sailed once more on the second day following our arrival, and proceeded again over the ground we had already beaten so successfully. We were even more fortunate on this occasion than we had been before, though we found that it was no longer possible to take our enemies by surprise as we had done at first; they had learned wisdom from experience and had become aware of our tactics, notwithstanding which we took four privateers, one of which we cut out from under a battery, and made several recaptures, two of which proved to be very valuable. But as these incidents happened to be mere interludes, as it were, in my story, having no special significance, I shall leave them without further mention and pass on. The reader will therefore please understand that I had been in command of the Dolphin rather more than six months when the incident occurred to which I am about to refer.
The time was about half an hour, or thereabouts, after midnight, and our position was about sixty miles south-east of Beata Point, the southernmost point on the mainland of Saint Domingo. The day had been fine, with a very nice pleasant working breeze, but as the sun had declined toward the horizon the wind had shown signs of dropping, gradually dying away after sunset, until toward the end of the first watch it had fallen so completely calm that we had furled all our canvas to save wear and tear, and were, at the time mentioned, lying under bare poles, slowly drifting with the current to the westward. The night was pitch-dark, for there was no moon, and with the dying away of the wind a great bank of heavy thunderous-looking cloud had gradually worked up from the westward, imperceptibly expanding until it had at length obscured the entire firmament, promising a thunder-storm which would doubtless be all the heavier when it broke from the length of time which it took in the brewing. I had remained on deck until midnight; but observing, when the middle watch was called, that the barometer had dropped only the merest trifle, had gone below upon the deck being relieved, and, leaving orders with young Boyne to call me in the event of any change in the weather, had flung myself, half undressed, into my cot, hoping to get a nap before the storm broke, and feeling pretty confident that when it did nothing very serious could happen, the schooner being under bare poles.
But somehow I could not get to sleep, probably on account of the oppressive closeness of the atmosphere, for it was stiflingly hot, although the skylights and companion were wide open; and there I lay, tossing restlessly from side to side in a state of preternatural wakefulness, listening to the lap and gurgle of the water against the ship’s side, the creaking of the bulk-heads, the rattling of the hooks which held the cabin doors wide open, the yerking of the main-sheet blocks, the jerk-jerk of the rudder and of the lashed wheel above it, with the swish of the water under the counter and about the stern-post as the vessel rolled lazily upon the long sluggish swell which came creeping slowly up from the eastward. And if by chance a momentary feeling of drowsiness happened to steal over me, which, carefully fostered, might have eventually led to my falling asleep, it was sure to be put to flight by some ill-timed movement or speech by those on the deck above me, although I will do them the justice to say that, so far as speech was concerned, they spoke but seldom, and then in subdued tones. At length, however, I was going off, the varied sounds I have mentioned had lost their distinctness, had changed their character, and were beginning to merge themselves into the accompaniments of what, a few minutes later, would have been a dream, when I heard Pottle’s voice exclaim with startling suddenness:
“Hillo! what was that?”
To which young Boyne replied, in unmistakably sleepy tones:
“What was what, Mr Pottle?”
“Why,” replied Pottle, “I thought I saw—Ha! look, there it is again! Did you not see something like a flash away off there on our starboard beam?”
“No, sir,” said Boyne, evidently a little more wide-awake, “I cannot say I did. Probably it was lightning; we must have it before long.”
“Lightning!” exclaimed Pottle contemptuously; “d’ye think I don’t know lightning when I see it? No, it looked more like—by George, there it is again!”