“Why, she seems to be a vessel of about six hundred tons; and, judging from appearances only, a man might be tempted to say she was a couple of leagues, more or less, under our lee.”
“I put her at the same! Six miles to windward is not a little advantage, in a hard chase. By heavens, Earing, I’ll drive the ‘Caroline’ out of water but I’ll leave him!”
“That might be done, if the ship had wings like a curlew, or a sea-gull; but, as it is, I think we are more likely to drive her under.”
“She bears her canvas well, so far. You know not what the boat can do, when urged.”
“I have seen her sailed in all weathers, Captain Wilder, but”——
His mouth was suddenly closed. A vast black wave reared itself between the ship and the eastern horizon, and came rolling onward, seeming to threaten to ingulf all before it. Even Wilder watched the shock with breathless anxiety, conscious, for the moment that he had exceeded the bounds of sound discretion in urging his ship so powerfully against such a mass of water. The sea broke a few fathoms from the bows of the “Caroline,” and sent its surge in a flood of foam upon her decks. For half a minute the forward part of the vessel disappeared, as though, unable to mount the swell, it were striving to go through it, and then she heavily emerged, gemmed with a million of the scintillating insects of the ocean. The ship had stopped, trembling in every joint, throughout her massive and powerful frame, like some affrighted courser; and, when she resumed her course, it was with a moderation that appeared to warn those who governed her movements of their indiscretion.
Earing faced his Commander in silence, perfectly conscious that nothing he could utter contained an argument like this. The seamen no longer hesitated to mutter their disapprobation aloud, and many a prophetic opinion was ventured concerning the consequences of such reckless risks. To all this Wilder turned a deaf or an insensible ear. Firm in his own secret purpose, he would have braved a greater hazard to accomplish his object. But a distinct though smothered shriek, from the stern of the vessel, reminded him of the fears of others. Turning quickly on his heel, he approached the still trembling Gertrude and her governess, who had both been, throughout the whole of those long and tedious hours, inobtrusive but deeply interested, observers of his smallest movements.
“The vessel bore that shock so well, I have great reliance on her powers,” he said in a soothing voice, but with words that were intended to lull her into a blind security. “With a firm ship, a thorough seaman is never at a loss!”
“Mr Wilder,” returned the governess, “I have seen much of this terrible element on which you live. It is therefore vain to think of deceiving me I know that you are urging the ship beyond what is usual. Have you sufficient motive for this hardihood?”
“Madam,—I have!”