The Wing-and-Wing; Or, Le Feu-Follet

by James Fenimore Cooper

"Down with your helm--hard down at once--"

"Be-e-e-ther-r-r-dee-e-e-p nine--"

"Meet her!--up with your helm. Haul down your sheets forward--brail the spanker--let go all the bowlines aft. So--well, there, well. She flew round like a top; but, by Jove, we've caught her, gentlemen. Drag your bowlines again. What's the news from the chains?"

"No bottom, sir, with fifteen fathoms out--and as good a cast, too, sir, as we've had to-day."

"So--you're rap full--don't fall off--very well dyce" (Anglice, thus)--"keep her as you are. Well, by the Lord, Griffin, that was a shave; half-four was getting to be squally in a quarter of the world where a rock makes nothing of pouting its lips fifteen or twenty feet at a time at a mariner. We are past it all, however, and here is the land, trending away to the southward like a man in a consumption, fairly under our lee. A dozen Raoul Yvards wouldn't lead me into such a d--d scrape again!"

"The danger that is over is no longer a danger at all, sir," answered Griffin, laughing. "Don't you think, Captain Cuffe, we might ease her about half a point? that would be just her play; and the lugger keeps off a little, I rather suspect, to ease her mainmast. I'm certain I saw chips fly from it when we dosed her with those two-and-twenty pills."

"Perhaps you're right, Griffin. Ease her with the helm a little, Mr. Yelverton. If Master Yvard stands on his present course an hour longer, Biguglia would be too far to windward for him; and as for Bastia, that has been out of the question from the first. There is a river called Golo, into which he might run; and that, I rather think, is his aim. Four hours, however, will let us into his secret."

And four intensely interesting hours were those which succeeded. The wind was a cap-full; a good, fresh, westerly breeze, which seemed to have started out of the oven-like heat of a week of intensely hot weather that had preceded it, and to have collected the force of two or three zephyrs into one. It was not a gale at all, nor did it induce either party to think of reefing; no trifle would have done that, under the circumstances; but it caused the Proserpine to furl her fore and mizzentopgallant-sails, and put Raoul in better humor with the loss of his jigger. When fairly round the headland, and at a moment when he fancied the frigate would be compelled to tack, the latter had seized an opportunity to get in his foresail, to unbend it, and to bend and set a new one; an operation that took just four minutes by the watch. He would have tried the same experiment with the other lug, but the mast was scarce worth the risk, and he thought the holes might act as reefs, and thus diminish the strain. In these four hours, owing to the disadvantage under which le Feu-Follet labored, there was not a difference of half a knot in the distance run by the two vessels, though each passed over more than thirty miles of water. During this time they had been drawing rapidly nearer to the coast of Corsica, the mountains of which, ragged and crowned with nearly eternal snows, had been glittering in the afternoon's sun before them, though they lay many a long league inland. But the formation of the coast itself had now become plain, and Raoul, an hour before the sun disappeared, noted his landmarks, by which to make for the river he intended to enter. The eastern coast of Corsica is as deficient in bays and harbors as its western is affluent with them; and this Golo, for which the lugger was shaping her course, would never have been thought of as a place of shelter under ordinary circumstances. But Raoul had once anchored in its mouth, and he deemed it the very spot in which to elude his enemy. It had shoals off its embouchure; and these, he rightly enough fancied, would induce Captain Cuffe to be wary.

As the evening approached the wind began to decrease in force, and then the people of the lugger lost all their apprehensions. The spars had all stood, and Raoul no longer hesitated about trusting his wounded mainmast with a new yard and sail. Both were got up, and the repairs were immediately commenced. The superiority of the lugger in sailing was now so great as to put it out of all question that she was not to be overtaken in the chase; and Raoul at one time actually thought of turning up along the land and going into Bastia, where he might even provide himself with a new mainmast at need. But this idea, on reflection, he abandoned as too hazardous; and he continued on in the direction of the mouth of the Golo.

Throughout the day the Proserpine had shown no colors, except for the short period when her boats were engaged, and while she herself was firing at the lugger. The same was the fact with le Feu-Follet, though Raoul had run up the tri-color as he opened on the felucca, and he kept it flying as long as there was any appearance of hostilities. As the two vessels drew in near to the land several coasters were seen beating up against the westerly wind, or running down before it, all of which, however, seemed so much to distrust the appearance of the lugger as to avoid her as far as was possible. This was a matter of indifference to our hero, who knew that they were all probably countrymen; or, at least, smugglers, who would scarcely reward him for the trouble, had he time to bring them to and capture them. Corsica was then again in the hands of the French, the temporary and imperfect possession of the English having terminated three or four years earlier; and Raoul felt certain of a welcome anywhere in the island and of protection wherever it could be offered. Such was the state of things when, just as the lugger was preparing to enter among the shoals, the Proserpine unexpectedly tacked and seemed to bestow all her attention on the coasters, of which three or four were so near that two fell into her hands almost without an effort to escape.