He was comforted at this, and we resumed our watch in silence.
The night grew very dark, and at every gust our masts stooped further before the wind. The Miséricorde hissed her way through the water, and still our pilot turned not his helm an inch right or left.
Presently, Ludar came up to where we stood. I could see his eyes flash even in the dark.
“Go forward now,” said he to me. “Should we both be running as we were, and as I think we are our courses ought to meet not far hence. Send the maiden to me—I need her to take the helm while we three stand to the guns. Pray Heaven we win clear; if not, it will go hard with you, friend, in the prow. Let go your pistol at first sight of them, and, if you can, come abaft to join us before we strike.”
I could tell by the tone in which he spoke that he took in every inch of our peril, and trembled, not for himself, but for some one else.
The maiden was loth to quit her post; for she, too, knew the risk of it and claimed it as her right. But when I told her the Captain had so ordered, and required her at the helm, she obeyed without another word.
Then followed a quarter of an hour that seemed like a lifetime. As I stood craning my neck forward, gazing under my hands seaward, there crowded into my memory visions of all my past life. I seemed to see the home of my boyhood, and looked again into my mother’s face. And I stood once more before my case in the shop outside Temple Bar, and listened to Peter Stoupe humming his psalm-tune, and heard my types click into the stick. I marched once more at the head of my clubs to Finsbury Fields, and there I saw Captain Merriman—drat him!—with his vile lips at a maiden’s ear. And I passed, too, along the village street at Kingston where met me my mistress and her sweet daughter; and as I looked back, Jeannette turned too and—
What was that? Surely in the darkness I saw something! No. All was pitch black. The wind roared through the rigging, and the water seethed up at the plunging prow. But though I saw nothing, I felt the pursuer near; so near, I wondered not to hear the swish of her keel through the waves. On we went and nearer and nearer we seemed together. Oh for one sign of them, were it even a gun across our path! But sign there came none. The darkness seemed blacker than ever and—
All of a sudden I seemed to detect something—a spark, or a glow, or the luminous break of a wave. So swiftly it came and went, that it was gone before I could look. A trick of my vision, thought I. No! there it was again, this time nothing but a spark, close by, on a level, perhaps, with our mizzen. So near was it, I wondered whether it might not be the lighting of a match at our own guns. It went again: and as it did so, my finger, almost without my knowing it, tightened on the trigger of my pistol and it went off.
At the same moment, there was a blaze, a roar, a crash, and a shout. For an instant the Miséricorde reeled in her course and quivered from stern to stern. Then, another shout and a wild irregular roar astern. Then our good ship gathered herself together and leapt forward once more into the darkness, and the peril was passed.