When the Coquette had hoisted in her boats, that portion of the crew which did not belong to the watch was dismissed to their hammocks, the lights were lowered, and tranquillity once more reigned in the ship. Ludlow sought his rest, and although there is reason to think that his slumbers were a little disturbed by dreams, he remained tolerably quiet in the hammock-cloths, the place in which it has already been said he saw fit to take his repose, until the morning watch had been called.
Although the utmost vigilance was observed among the officers and look-outs, during the rest of the night, there occurred nothing to arouse the crew from their usual recumbent attitudes between the guns. The wind continued light but steady, the sea smooth, and the heavens clouded, as during the first hours of darkness.
CHAPTER XX.
“The mouse ne’er shunned the cat, as they did budge
From rascals worse than they.”
Coriolanus.
Day dawned on the Atlantic, with its pearly light, succeeded by the usual flushing of the skies, and the stately rising of the sun from out the water. The instant the vigilant officer, who commanded the morning watch, caught the first glimpses of the returning brightness, Ludlow was awakened. A finger laid on his arm, was sufficient to arouse one who slept with the responsibility of his station ever present to his mind. A minute did not pass, before the young man was on the quarter-deck, closely examining the heavens and the horizon. His first question was to ask if nothing had been seen during the watch. The answer was in the negative.
“I like this opening in the north-west,” observed the captain, after his eye had thoroughly scanned the whole of the still dusky and limited view. “Wind will come out of it. Give us a cap-full, and we shall try the speed of this boasted Water-Witch!—Do I not see a sail, on our weather-beam?—or is it the crest of a wave?”
“The sea is getting irregular, and I have often been thus deceived, since the light appeared.”
“Get more sail on the ship. Here is wind, in-shore of us; we will be ready for it. See everything clear, to show all our canvas.”
The lieutenant received these orders with the customary deference and communicated them to his inferiors again, with the promptitude that distinguishes sea discipline. The Coquette, at the moment, was lying under her three top-sails, one of which was thrown against its mast, in a manner to hold the vessel as nearly stationary as her drift and the wash of the waves would allow. So soon, however, as the officer of the watch summoned the people to exertion, the massive yards were swung; several light sails, that served to balance the fabric as well as to urge it ahead, were hoisted or opened; and the ship immediately began to move through the water. While the men of the watch were thus employed, the flapping of the canvas announced the approach of a new breeze.