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

by James Fenimore Cooper

Every footfall in the lugger had now ceased. Ithuel was posted on a knight-head, where he sat watching his old enemy, the Proserpine; the proximity of that ship not allowing him to sleep. Two experienced seamen, who alone formed the regular anchor-watch, as it is termed, were stationed apart, in order to prevent conversation; one on the starboard cathead, and the other in the main rigging; both keeping vigilant ward over the tranquil sea and the different objects that floated on its placid bosom. In that retired spot these objects were necessarily few, embracing the frigate, the lugger, and three coasters, the latter of which had all been boarded before the night set in, by the Proserpine, and after short detentions dismissed. One of these coasters lay about half-way between the two hostile vessels, at anchor, having come-to, after making some fruitless efforts to get to the northward, by means of the expiring west wind. Although the light land-breeze would now have sufficed to carry her a knot or two through the water, she preferred maintaining her position and giving her people a good night's rest to getting under way. The situation of this felucca and the circumstance that she had been boarded by the frigate rendered her an object of some distrust with Raoul through the early part of the evening, and he had ordered a vigilant eye to be kept on her; but nothing had been discovered to confirm these suspicions. The movements of her people--the manner in which she brought-up--the quiet that prevailed on board her, and even the lubberly disposition of her spars and rigging, went to satisfy Raoul that she had no man-of-war's men on board her. Still, as she lay less than a mile outside of the lugger though now dead to leeward all that distance, she was to be watched; and one of the seamen, he in the rigging, rarely had his eyes off her a minute at a time. The second coaster was a little to the southward of the frigate, under her canvas, hauling in for the land; doubtless with a view to get as much as possible of the breeze from the mountains, and standing slowly to the south. She had been set by compass an hour before, and all that time had altered her bearings but half a point, though not a league off--a proof how light she had the wind. The third coaster, a small felucca, too, was to the northward; but ever since the land-breeze, if breeze it could be called, had come she had been busy turning slowly up to windward, and seemed disposed either to cross the shoals closer in than the spot where the lugger lay or to enter the Golo. Her shadowy outline was visible, though drawn against the land, moving slowly athwart the lugger's hawse, perhaps half a mile in-shore of her. As there was a current setting out of the river, and all the vessels rode with their heads to the island, Ithuel occasionally turned his head to watch her progress, which was so slow, however, as to produce very little change.

After looking around him several minutes in silence Raoul turned his face upward, and gazed at the stars.

"You probably do not know, Ghita," he said, "the use those stars may be, and are, to us mariners. By their aid, we are enabled to tell where we are, in the midst of the broadest oceans--to know the points of the compass, and to feel at home even when furthest removed from it. The seaman must go far south of the equator, at least, ere he can reach a spot where he does not see the same stars that he beheld from the door of his father's house."

"That is a new thought to me," answered Ghita, quickly, her tender nature at once struck with the feeling and poetry of such an idea; "that is a new thought to me, Raoul, and I wonder you never mentioned it before. It is a great thing to be able to carry home and familiar objects with you when so distant from those you love."

"Did you never hear that lovers have chosen an hour and a star, by gazing at which they might commune together, though separated by oceans and countries."

"That is a question you might put to yourself, Raoul; all I have ever heard of lovers and love having come from your own lips."

"Well, then, I tell it you, and hope that we shall not part again without selecting our star and our hour--if, indeed, we ever part more. Though I have forgotten to tell you this, Ghita, it is because you are never absent from my thoughts--no star is necessary to recall Monte Argentaro and the Towers."

If we should say Ghita was not pleased with this, it would be to raise her above an amiable and a natural weakness. Raoul's protestations never fell dead on her heart, and few things were sweeter to her ear than his words as they declared his devotedness and passion. The frankness with which he admitted his delinquencies, and most especially the want of that very religious sentiment which was of so much value in the eyes of his mistress, gave an additional weight to his language when he affirmed his love. Notwithstanding Ghita blushed as she now listened, she did not smile; she rather appeared sad. For near a minute she made no reply; and when she did answer, it was in a low voice, like one who felt and thought intensely.

"Those stars may well have a higher office," she said. "Look at them, Raoul;--count them we cannot, for they seem to start out of the depths of heaven, one after another, as the eye rests upon the space, until they mock our efforts at calculation. We see they are there in thousands, and may well believe they are in myriads. Now thou hast been taught, else couldst thou never be a navigator, that those stars are worlds like our own, or suns with worlds sailing around them; how is it possible to see and know this without believing in a God and feeling the insignificance of our being?"

"I do not deny that there is a power to govern all this, Ghita--but I maintain that it is a principle; not a being, in our shape and form; and that it is the reason of things, rather than a deity."