When I first caught sight of her, she was heading directly for us; but as we watched her, her head paid off, and she swept slowly down across our stern, near enough for us to have hove a biscuit on board her.
Some ten or a dozen heads peered curiously at us over her weather bulwarks as she drove slowly past us, and one man aft on the quarter-deck, the officer of the watch apparently, seized a trumpet to hail us; but whether he did so or not, or, if he did, what he said, we neither of us knew; for at that moment we both sank once more into the trough with a perfect mountain of water between us, until we lost sight of him altogether for a moment, even to his mast-heads.
I took the glass, which we always kept slung in beckets in the companion-way, open and adjusted ready for immediate use, and as she rose once more into view I applied it to my eye, and the first thing which caught my attention was her name, painted on her stern, which was now towards us.
“The Albatross by all that’s unlucky!” exclaimed I.
“Blest if we mightn’t have guessed as much if we’d been in a guessin’ humour,” ejaculated Bob. “Honest-going merchant ships ain’t so plaguy careful of their spars as that chap—leastways, not such small fry as he is. Pity but what they was, I often says; but where d’ye find a skipper who’ll be bothered to send down his top hamper every time it pipes up a bit of a breeze? No; ‘Let it stand if “’twill,” is the word, and if “’twon’t,” let it blow away,’ But the chap is a real good seaman, Harry, no man’ll deny that; look how snug he’s got everything; and all hauled taut and coiled down neat and reg’lar man-o’-war fashion I’ll be bound.”
We got, I think, a clearer idea of the tremendous strength of the gale by watching the brig than we did even by the motions of our own little craft. She was tossed about like the merest cockle-shell, and every time that she rose upon the crest of a sea, the wind took her rag of a staysail, distending it as though it would tear it clean out of the bolt-ropes, and heeling the vessel over until we could see the whole of her bottom nearly down to her keel; and then her sharp bows would cleave the wave-crest in a perfect cataract of foam and spray, and away she would settle down once more with a heavy weather-roll into the trough.
“Well,” exclaimed Bob, as we lost sight of her in the driving scud, “she’s a pretty sea-boat is yon brig; but I’m blest if the little Lily don’t beat her even at that game. What say you, Harry; ain’t she proving true the very words I spoke that night when we first began to talk about this here v’yage?”
“Indeed she is, Bob,” I answered; “I am as surprised as I am delighted at her behaviour; I could never have believed, without seeing it myself, that so small a craft would even live in such weather, much less be as comfortable as she is. But I don’t like that,” continued I, as the comb of a tremendous sea came curling in over our bows, fairly smothering the little craft in foam for a moment, though she came up immediately afterwards, “shaking her feathers” like a duck. “I’m afraid one of these gentlemen will be starting our skylight or companion for us; and that would be a very serious matter.”
“Never fear,” returned Bob confidently. “Our bit of a windlass and the mast breaks the force of it before it reaches the skylight. And that idee of yours in having it rounded at the fore end is a capital one; it turns the water off each side almost like the stem of a ship, besides bein’ stronger than a square-shaped consarn. At the same time, all this water coming in on deck don’t do no good if it don’t do no harm; but how’s it to be pervented?”
“I have an idea,” said I, “and it’s worth a trial. It can do no harm, and if it fails we are no worse off than we were before.”