Of a sudden he turned towards the mate, who was doing his trick at the wheel.
“Two points on the port bow,” I heard him say; and he took the wheel himself.
Johnson nodded, wiped his eyes with the back of his wet hand, watched a chance as the vessel lunged up hill, and got to the main rigging, where he swarmed aloft. Up and up I watched him go, hanging on at every ugly plunge, gaining with every lull of the schooner’s movement, until, clambering into the cross-trees and clinging with one arm around the masts, I could see him take one comprehensive sweep of the south-westerly horizon. The next moment he had slid down the backstay and stood on deck, with a grin, a nod, and a gesture of the finger that said “yes”; the next again, and he was back sweating and squirming at the wheel, his tired face streaming and smiling, and his hair and the rags and corners of his clothes lashing round him in the wind.
Nares went below, fetched up his binocular, and fell into a silent perusal of the sea-line: I also, with my unaided eyesight. Little by little, in that white waste of water, I began to make out a quarter where the whiteness appeared more condensed: the sky above was whitish likewise, and misty like a squall; and little by little there thrilled upon my ears a note deeper and more terrible than the yelling of the gale—the long thundering roll of breakers. Nares wiped his night-glass on his sleeve and passed it to me, motioning, as he did so, with his hand. An endless wilderness of raging billows came and went and danced in the circle of the glass; now and then a pale corner of sky, or the strong line of the horizon rugged with the heads of waves; and then of a sudden—come and gone ere I could fix it, with a swallow’s swiftness—one glimpse of what we had come so far and paid so dear to see; the masts and rigging of a brig pencilled on heaven, with an ensign streaming at the main, and the ragged ribbons of a top-sail thrashing from the yard. Again and again, with toilful searching, I recalled that apparition. There was no sign of any land; the wreck stood between sea and sky, a thing the most isolated I had ever viewed; but as we drew nearer, I perceived her to be defended by a line of breakers which drew off on either hand, and marked, indeed, the nearest segment of the reef. Heavy spray hung over them like a smoke, some hundred feet into the air; and the sound of their consecutive explosions rolled like a cannonade.
In half an hour we were close in; for perhaps as long again we skirted that formidable barrier toward its farther side; and presently the sea began insensibly to moderate and the ship to go more sweetly. We had gained the lee of the island, as (for form’s sake) I may call that ring of foam and haze and thunder; and shaking out a reef, wore ship and headed for the passage.
[4] In sea-lingo (Pacific) Dutchman includes all Teutons and folk from the basin of the Baltic; Scattermouch, all Latins and Levantines.