“Neither. The wind has had too much northing, the last two days, for that.”
“It is a vessel that we have overtaken, and which has come out of the waters of Long Island Sound.”
“That, indeed, may we yet hope,” muttered Wilder in a smothered voice.
The governess, who had put the foregoing questions in order to extract from the Commander of the “Caroline” the information he so pertinaciously withheld, had now exhausted all her own knowledge on the subject, and was compelled to await his further pleasure in the matter, or resort to the less equivocal means of direct interrogation. But the busy state of Wilder’s thoughts left her no immediate opportunity to pursue the subject. He soon summoned the officer of the watch to his councils, and they consulted together, apart, for many minutes. The hardy, but far from quick witted, seaman who tilled the second station in the ship saw nothing so remarkable in the appearance of a strange sail, in the precise spot where the dim and nearly aerial image of the unknown vessel was still visible; nor did he hesitate to pronounce her some honest trader bent, like themselves, on her purpose of lawful commerce. It would seem that his Commander thought otherwise, as will appear by the short dialogue that passed between them.
“Is it not extraordinary that she should be just there?” demanded Wilder, after they had, each in turn, made a closer examination of the faint object, by the aid of an excellent night-glass.
“She would be better off, here,” returned the literal seaman, who only had an eye for the nautical situation of the stranger; “and we should be none the worse for being a dozen leagues more to the eastward, ourselves. If the wind holds here at east-by-south-half-south we shall have need of all that offing. I got jammed once between Hatteras and the Gulf”—
“But, do you not perceive that she is where no vessel could or ought to be, unless she has run exactly the same course with ourselves?” interrupted Wilder. “Nothing, from any harbour south of New York, could have such northing, as the wind has been; while nothing, from the Colony of York would stand on this tack, if bound east; or would be here, if going southward.”
The plain-going ideas of the honest mate were open to a reasoning which the reader may find a little obscure: for his mind contained a sort of chart of the ocean, to which he could at any time refer, with a proper discrimination between the various winds, and all the different points of the compass. When properly directed, he was not slow to see, as a mariner, the probable justice of his young Commander’s inferences; and then wonder, in its turn began to take possession of his more obtuse faculties.
“It is downright unnatural, truly, that the fellow should be there!” he replied, shaking his head, but meaning no more than that it was entirely out of the order of nautical propriety; “I see the philosophy of what you say, Captain Wilder; and little do I know how to explain it. It is a ship, to a mortal certainty!”
“Of that there is no doubt. But a ship most strangely placed!”