This provided me with a persistent and bitter enemy.
About six o'clock the Captain went below, but rather hastily returned, casting an anxious look to seaward. "The glass is falling fast," he said, "I can't make it out. I have never known it to blow hard here at this time of year. Still it is banking up to the westward."
He hailed the whaleships, and saw that they had also noticed the glass falling. In a few minutes the two captains boarded us to have a consultation. The heavy, lowering cloud to seaward had deepened in gloom, and the three captains gazed anxiously at it.
"Gentlemen!" said Hayston, "we are in a bad place if it comes on to blow. The land-breeze has died away, and that it is going to blow from the sou'-west I am convinced. We cannot tow out in the face of such a swell, even if we had daylight to try it. To beat out by night would be madness."
The faces of the Yankee skippers lengthened visibly as they begged Hayston to make a suggestion.
"Well," he said at length, "your ships may ride out a blow, for you've room to swing in, and if you send down your light spars and be quick about it, and your cables don't part, you'll see daylight. But with me it is different. I cannot give the brig a fathom more cable; there are coral boulders all around us, and the first one she touches will knock a hole in her bottom. But now every man must look to himself. I have two hundred people on board, and my decks are lumbered up with them. Adios! gentlemen, go on board and get your spars down for God's sake."
Then the Captain turned all his attention to getting the brig ready for the storm that was even then close upon us. In the shortest time our royal and topgallant yards were down, the decks cleared of lumber, the native passengers sent below, and five fathoms of cable hove in. Hayston knew the brig would swing round with her head to the passage as soon as the gale struck her, and unless he hove in cable, must strike on one of the boulders he had spoken of.
As yet there was not a breath of air, for after the last whisper of the land-breeze had died away, the atmosphere became surcharged with electricity, and the rollers commenced to sound a ceaseless thunder, as they dashed themselves upon the reef, such as I had never heard before. A pall of darkness settled over us, and though the whaleships were so near that the voices of their crews sounded strange and ghostlike in our ears, we could see nothing except the dull glow of the lamps alight in the cabins—showing through the ports.
Then we heard the voice of Captain Grant of the St. George, "Stand by, Captain Hayston, it's coming along as solid as a wall."
A fierce gust whistled through the cordage, and then a great white cloud of rain, salt spume, and spray enveloped the brig, as with a shrill, humming drone, like a thousand bagpipes in full blast, the full force of the gale struck us. The brig heeled over, then swung quickly round to her anchor, while the crew, every man at his station, sought through the inky blackness that followed the rain squall to see how the whaleships fared.