“True, sir; but, in my poor judgment, it is idle to think of outsailing a craft that the devil commands if he does not altogether handle it.”
“One will never know that, Mr Earing, till he tries.”
“We gave the Dutchman a chance of that sort; and, I must say, we not only had the most canvas spread, but much the best of the wind: And what good did it all do? there he lay, under his three topsails driver, and jib; and we, with studding sails alow and aloft, couldn’t alter his bearing a foot.”
“The Dutchman is never seen in a northern latitude.”
“Well, I cannot say he is,” returned Earing, in a sort of compelled resignation; “but he who has put that flyer off the Cape may have found the cruise so profitable, as to wish to send another ship into these seas.”
Wilder made no reply. He had either humoured the superstitious apprehension of his mate enough, or his mind was too intent on its principal object, to dwell longer on a foreign subject.
Notwithstanding the seas that met her advance, in such quick succession as greatly to retard her progress the Bristol trader had soon toiled her way through a league of the troubled element. At every plunge she took, the bow divided a mass of water, that appeared, at each instant, to become more vast and more violent in its rushing; and more than once the struggling hull was nearly buried forward, in some wave which it had equal difficulty in mounting or penetrating.
The mariners narrowly watched the smallest movements of their vessel. Not a man left her deck, for hours. The superstitious awe, which had taken such deep hold of the untutored faculties of the chief mate, had not been slow to extend its influence to the meanest of her crew. Even the accident which had befallen their former Commander, and the sudden and mysterious manner in which the young officer, who now trod the quarter-deck, so singularly firm and calm, under circumstances deemed so imposing, had their influence in heightening the wild impression The impunity with which the “Caroline” bore such a press of canvas, under the circumstances in which she was placed, added to their kindling admiration; and, ere Wilder had determined, in his own mind, on the powers of his ship, in comparison with those of the vessel that so strangely hung in the horizon, he was himself becoming the subject of unnatural and revolting suspicions to his own crew.
Chapter XV.
“I’ the name of truth,
Are ye fantastical, or that indeed
Which outwardly ye show?”