It was Jack Baldwin’s voice, and never did Tom hear it ring as it did at that moment. It not only was heard through the ship, but it pealed through it like a clap of thunder. Those below came tumbling up helter-skelter, and the captain came running out of his cabin, for there was a ring in Jack’s voice that told every man aboard of the ship that great danger was down upon them. It seemed to break the stillness around just as a stone dropped into a well might break the stillness below. In an instant the braces were flung from the belaying-pins, and the ship came up toward the wind without a second to lose. Before those aboard of the frigate had gathered their wits she had passed alongside, and so close that a child could easily have pitched a biscuit aboard of the Nancy Hazlewood from the decks that loomed twenty feet above her.
The whole thing was over in a dozen seconds, but those dozen seconds are stamped on Tom Granger’s mind as clearly as though they were chiseled in marble. Even now, though he is over eighty years old, he can see that great frigate rising higher and higher as she surges forward, towering over the little ship, while a hundred faces pop up above the rail and stare down upon her decks. It was only a moment—a thread of time—on which hung the chance as to whether she would clear or not. There was a thunderous roar of the waters under the bow, flung back in an echo from the wooden walls of the frigate; there was a vision of open ports rushing by, and of scared faces crowded at them, in spite of discipline; then the frigate was astern and the danger gone past with her. But in that short moment of passing they saw enough to make them know that she was a British cruiser.
I say again that if Jack Baldwin had not had the deck at that time there would never have been any story to tell of Tom Granger, for if Jack had hesitated only so much as two seconds, as I am afraid that Tom would have done in his case, the Nancy Hazlewood would have been run down just as sure as that there is a sun in the heavens.
So the danger went by, and all was over in a quarter of the time that it takes to tell it. The head-yards were braced up, the head-sheets were gathered aft, the Nancy Hazlewood stood away on her course again, and the next moment plunged into the fog and was gone.
But, in the meantime, they had wakened up aboard of the frigate, and just as the Nancy Hazlewood ran into the bank they heard an order shouted aboard of the man-of-war, sounding faint because of the distance that the two vessels had now run:
“Weather head, and main; lee cro’ jack braces!”
That meant that the frigate was about to wear, follow down in their wake and do that which she had so nearly missed doing a minute before—finish up the Yankee.
Tom came aft, and, though he would have felt like knocking the man down that would have said so at the time, his hands were cold and trembling nervously. For the matter of that, Jack Baldwin’s face was whiter than it was used to be. “A close shave, sir,” said he to Captain Knight, who stood beside him; but there was a nervous tremor in his voice in spite of the boldness that he assumed. Indeed, the only perfectly cool man aboard was Captain Knight. He stood looking aft, as though he would pierce the fog and make out what the vessel astern of him was about.
Presently he turned to Jack. “Did you not understand from that order that he was about to ware ship, Mr. Baldwin?” said he.
“I think that I understood them to give such an order, sir,” said Jack.