“North by south it is, sir,” replied the steersman.
“Keep her seven points more to the west, you lubber! Always get an offing when there’s a wet sheet and a flowing sea. That’s right, Jem! Hold her hard abaft, and she’ll go slick before the wind, like a hot knife through a pound of butter. Halloo, Master Tom, are you holding on by the seat-railings already—you a’n’t sick, are you? Shall I tell the steward to fetch a basin?”
“No, no, Josh,” I replied, “’tis nothing—merely a temporary qualm. But tell me—do you really apprehend any danger? If so, would it not be prudent to call up the commodore, and hang out the dead-lights?”
“Why, Master Tom,” replied the bos’un, turning his quid, “them ere’s kevestions as I can’t answer. ’Cos, first—there’s no knowing what danger is till it comes; secondly, it’s as much as my place is worth to disturb old Fire-and-Faggots—axing your pardon for the liberty—afore he’s finished his grog with the mates below; and, thirdly, it’s no use hanging out the dead-lights, ’cos we’re entirely out of oil.”
“Gracious heavens!” cried I, “and suppose any other ship should be in the same latitude?”
“Then,” said the bos’un with all imaginable coolness, “I reckon it would be a case of bump. Oak varsus teak, as the law-wers say, and Davy Jones take the weakest.—But hitch my trousers! what’s that?”
As the non-commissioned officer spoke, a bright flash was seen to the seaward immediately ahead of our vessel. It was too bright, too intense to proceed from any meteoric phenomena, such as sometimes are witnessed in those tropical climate, and the sullen report which immediately followed, indicated too clearly that it proceeded from some vessel in the vicinity.
“A first-rater, by jingo!” said Mr. Junk, “and in distress. Hold my telescope, Master Tom, till I go below and turn out the watch,”——but that instant his course was arrested.
Scarce a second had elapsed after the sound of the discharge reverberated through our rigging, when, only a hawser’s distance from our bowsprit, a phosphoric light seemed to rise from the bosom of the shadowy deep. It hung upon the hull, the binnacle, the masts, the yards of a prodigious ship, pierced apparently for three tier of guns, which, with every sail set, bore down direct upon us. One moment more and collision was inevitable; but Junk, with prodigious presence of mind, sprang to the helm, snatched the wheel from the hands of the petrified steersman, and luffed with almost supernatural force. Like a well-trained courser who obeys the rein, our noble ship instantly yielded to the impulse, and bore up a-lee, whilst the stranger came hissing up, and shot past us so close that I could distinctly mark each lineament of the pale countenances of the crew as they stood clustered upon the rigging, and even read—so powerful was that strange, mysterious light—the words painted within her sides,—“Those who go abaft the binnacle pay Cabin fare!” On, on she drove—a lambent coruscation, cleaving the black billows of the Atlantic main, about to vanish amidst the deep darkness of the night.
“That was a near shave, anyhow,” said Mr. Junk, relinquishing the wheel, “but we must know something more of that saucy clipper,” and catching up a speaking trumpet, he hailed,—