THE GREEN HAND.
A "SHORT" YARN.—PART VI.
"Well, ma'am," continued the naval man, on again resuming his narrative, "as I told you, the sudden hail of 'Land!' brought us all on deck in a twinkling, in the midst of my ticklish conversation with the Judge." "Hallo! you aloft!" shouted the chief officer himself, "d'ye hear, sirrah! use your eyes before hailing the deck!" "Land, sir!" came falling down again out of the sunlight; "land it is, sir,—broad away on our larboard bow, sir."
By this time it was about half-past nine, or ten o'clock, of the morning. Heading nearly due south-east, as we now were, the Indiaman's bowsprit ran up into the full white blaze of light, in which her flying jib-boom seemed to quiver and writhe far away from her like an eel in water; while the spread of her sails against it loomed twice as large as ordinary, from the sort of hazy double-edged look they had, with a twinkling thread of sun drawing all round them like a frame, as if one saw through a wrong-screwed glass. You'd have thought by the glance under the fore-course, over the ship's head-gratings, she was travelling off quietly into some no-man's-land or other, where it would be so bright we should all have to wear green spectacles: the light breeze being almost direct from nor'west, and so fairly in her favour, with the help of her studding-sails she was making wonderful progress for such a mere breath—about four knots to the hour, as I reckoned. The air aloft appeared in the mean time to be steadying and sucking, though the water kept smooth, and her bows scarce made a noise in it: the wide soft swells of the sea just floated up of a pale blue, and lifted her on, till she went seething gently down into it again; only, if you put your head over the starboard side, and listened, you thought you heard a sort of dull poppling ripple coming along the bends from round her counter. As for the line of horizon on one bow or the other, 'twas hardly to be made out at all, with a streaky white haze overlying it, up in the sky as it were, on both sides, behind the dazzle of light. However, the passengers were fancying all kinds of fine tropical matters lay hidden thereaway; and in fact, what with the notion of land after a long voyage, and what with the faint specks of bright cloud that seemed to be melting far off in the glare—to anyone last from Gravesend, that had never seen anything stranger than Richmond Hill of a Sunday, the whole thing ahead of the ship would have rather an enchanted sort of a look. At length the third mate was seen to shove his spy-glass together in the top-gallant cross-trees, and came slowly down the rigging. "Well, Mr Rickett?" said the chief officer, meeting him as he landed on deck. "Well, sir," said Rickett, "it is land after all, Mr Finch!" The mate rapped out an oath, and took another turn: Macleod screwed his mouth as if he were going to whistle, then pulled his red whiskers instead, and looked queer at Rickett; while Rickett stood peering into his spy-glass as he would have done into his hat, had he still been a foremast-man. The mate's eye met his, then turned to the passengers leaning over the poop-railing; and they all three walked to the capstan, where they began to overhaul the charts, and laid their heads together out of earshot.
Now, whether this said land just made out on the north-east, trended away back to south-east, as the clearer look of the horizon to starboard made one think, it was hard to say—though in that way of it, there were seemingly two plans for widening her distance. Either Finch might think it better to keep hold of a fair wind, and just edge her off enough to drop the point on her weather quarter—when, of course, if things stood as they were, we should soon set a good stretch of water betwixt us and the coast; or else they might brace direct round on the other tack, and head right south-west'ard, out to sea again: though if we were still in it, the current would set us every bit as much in its own direction as ever. Accordingly I sidled nearer to the capstan, and watched anxiously for what the third mate had to propose, after humming and hawing a little, and scratching his head under his cap for half a minute. "At any rate, Mr Finch, sir," said he, "more especially the captain being off charge, I may say, why, I'd advise ye, sir, to ——." Here he dropped his voice; but Finch apparently agreed to what he said.
"Ready about ship there!" said the second mate aloud to the boatswain forward; and in ten minutes afterwards the Seringapatam was fairly round, as I had expected, heading at a right angle to her former course, with the breeze before her starboard beam, and the sun blazing on the other. I walked forward to the bows, and actually started to hear how loud and clear the ripple had got under them of a sudden; meeting her with a plash, as if she were making six or seven knots headway, while the canvass seemed to draw so much stiffer aloft, you'd have supposed the breeze had freshened as soon as the helm was put down. The mates looked over the side and aloft, rubbing their hands and smiling to each other, as much as to say how fast she was hauling off the bad neighbourhood she was in, though the heat was as great as ever, and you didn't feel a breath more air below, nor see the water ruffle. To my notion, in fact, it was just the set of the current against her that seemingly freshened her way, the ship being now direct in its teeth; so that, of course, it would keep bearing her up all the time away north-eastward, with her own leeway to help it; and the less could any one notice the difference betwixt the water going past her side, and her passing the water. This tack of hers, which Rickett, no doubt, thought such a safe plan, might be the very one to put her in a really dangerous way yet; for when they did discover this under-tow, how were they to take her out of it, after all? Probably by trying to stand fair across the stream of it to southward, which, without three times the wind we had, would at best take us out many miles nearer the land it set upon, or leave us perhaps becalmed in the midst of it.
The truth was, that although I hadn't seen what like the land was, and couldn't have said, by the chart, where we were, I began to have a faint notion of whereabouts we possibly soon might be, from what I remembered hearing an old quartermaster in the Iris say, a couple of years before, regarding a particular spot on the south-west coast, where the currents at some seasons, as he phrased it, made a regular race-course meeting. The old fellow gave me also, at the time, some bearings of the nearest coast, with the landmarks at the mouth of a river a little farther north—which, he said, he would know if you set him down there of a dark night, though he had been in his bed at Gosport the minute before, if there was just a right streak of sky to the eastward—namely, a big black rock like two steps, and a block at the foot of them, somewhat the shape of a chipped holy-stone, running down on one side out of a high headland, like an admiral's cocked hat, with six mop-headed trees upon the root of the rock, for all the world like hairs on a wart. Here I recollected how my worthy authority pointed modestly for example to a case of the kind on his own nose. The opposite shore of its mouth was flat, with a heavy white surf; but it shut in so far upon the other, he said, that, steering from the south'ard, one would never know there was a river there at all. The Bambar he called it; but if he meant the Bembarooghe, we could scarcely be near it, or that much toward being abreast of St Helena. For all I saw, indeed, we might have nothing to eastward of us save a hard coast, or else the sandy coast farther down, shoaling out of sight of land! At any rate I knew we must have got into the tail of the great sea-stream from round the Cape of Good Hope, which would, no doubt, split out at sea on Viana's Bank, and turn partly to north-eastward thereabouts; so that it wasn't a very bad guess to suppose we were getting up somewhere near Cape Frio, the likeliest place in the world to find old Bob Martin's "maze," which we used to joke about so in the Iris.
What was done, though, required to be done quickly, and I looked about for Tom Westwood, till I saw him on the poop amongst the rest, talking again to Miss Hyde, as they all crowded towards the lee-quarter to watch the land-haze seemingly dropping stern. My heart swelled as it were into my throat, however, at such an appearance of good understanding betwixt the two,—whereas there was she, an hour ago that very morning, would scarce favour me with a look or a word!—and, for the life of me, I couldn't have spoken to Westwood at the time, much less gone hand in hand; for that matter, he didn't seem to be suspecting aught wrong to trouble himself about. What to say or do, either, I couldn't think; since the more he cut me out, and the less friendly I felt to him, the less could I risk the chance of showing us both up for what we were,—which, of course, would bring him in for the worst of it; as if I, by Jove, were, going to serve him some low trick for the sake of shoving him out with the young lady. Meantime I kept fidgeting about, as if the deck were too hot for me, snatching a glance now and then, in spite of myself, at Violet Hyde's fairy-like figure; so different from the rest of them, as she stretched eagerly from below the awning over the ship's quarter-gallery, trying to make out where the land lay,—now putting her little hand over her eyes to see better, then covering them altogether from the dazzle, as she drew in her head again and shook her bright brown hair in the shadow, answering Westwood—confound him! The Indian servant each time carefully poking out the red and yellow punkah-fringe for a cover over her, while the passengers were one and all ready to cry at not seeing the land, and leaving it behind. The Judge himself was the only man that seemed to have a dim notion of something queer in the whole case; for every few minutes he walked quietly to the break of the poop, where I noticed him cast a doubtful look down upon the "chief officer;" and when the surgeon came up, he asked anxiously how Captain Williamson was, and if he couldn't be seen below. However, the surgeon told him the captain had just fallen for the first time into a good sleep, and there was no admittance, but he was likely to be much better soon.
By this time there was no standing out from under the awnings, and the quarterdeck and poop had to be well swabbed to keep them at all cool, the steam of it rising inside with a pitchy hempen sort of smell you never feel save in the Tropics; the Seringapatam still feeling the breeze aloft, and lifting on the water with a ripple forward, although her big courses went lapping fore and aft every time she swung. The long white haze on the horizon began to melt as the sun heightened, clearing from under the wake of the light, till now you could fairly see the sky to eastward. Near noon, in fact, we had almost dropped the haze altogether on the ship's quarter; and at first I was glad to see how much way she had made in the two hours, when, on second thoughts, and by noticing some marks in the loom of it, I had no doubt but though she might be farther off, why it was only while she set more up to north-eastward,—so that we were actually, so to speak, leaving it by getting nearer! However, as the men were at dinner, and most of the passengers gone off the poop, down to "tiffin," I made up my mind to try what I could do in a quiet way towards making the mate think of it more seriously.
"Ah," said I, in a would-be brisk and confidential kind of way, "glad we're leaving that—a—you know, that land, Mr Finch." "Indeed, sir," said he indifferently. "Oh, you know," said I, "it's all very well for the passengers there to talk fine about land—land—but you and I, Mr Finch, don't need to be told that it's always dangerous at sea, you know." The mate lifted his head and eyed me for a moment or two, between the disgust a sailor feels at seeing a fellow pretend to aught like seamanship, and a particular sort of spite toward me which I'd noticed growing in him for the last few days,—though I daresay my breakfasting that morning in Sir Charles's cabin might have brought it to a height.
"Land dangerous, sir!" answered he carelessly, as he went on wiping his quadrant again; "who put that into your head?" "Oh, well," returned I, just as carelessly, "if it's to leeward of course,—or with a current taking you towards it,—only then. But I've no doubt, Mr Finch, if this wind were to—ah—you know, heave more abaft, that's to say, get stronger, the craft would at least stand still, till you got her—" "What on earth are you talking about, Mr Ford—Collins, I mean?" asked he sharply. "Really, sir, I've got something more to attend to at present, than such trash about a current, and the devil knows what else!" "How, why, Mr Finch!" said I, seemingly surprised in my turn, "are we not in a current just now, then?" "Current!" replied Finch, almost laughing outright, "what does the man mean?" "Why every one thinks so, in the cuddy," said I, as if rather taken aback, and venturing what you fair ladies call a 'fib,'—"ever since we picked up the bottle last night." This, by the bye, had got spread through some of the men to the passengers, though, of course, nobody knew what had been in it yet. "There, I declare now," continued I, pointing to our lee-bow, where I'd had my eyes fixed during the five minutes we spoke, "we can try it again; do you see that bird yonder on the water?" The mate turned his head impatiently, and "Look, watch him, sir," said I. This was a tired man-o'-war bird afloat about twenty fathoms off, with its sharp white wings stretched just clear of the water, and its black eye sparkling in the sunlight, as it came dipping on the long smooth hot-blue swell into the lee of the ship's lofty hull, till you saw its very shadow in the glitter below it. The Indiaman seemed to pass him as if he rode there at anchor; only the curious thing was, that the bird apparently neared her up from leeward, crossing her larboard quarter within a fathom or two, when all of a sudden he got becalmed, as it were, in the wake right astern, and by the time either of us could walk to the ship's taffrail, she was close over him; as if, whenever her hull was end-on, it took his surface-drift away from him, and, what was more, as if the ship kept hold of it—her eighteen feet or so to his little inch of a draught—for it couldn't be owing to the wind. However, the man-o'-war bird took offer of the next swell to get air in his wings, and rose off the heave of it with a sharp bit of a scream, away after some black boobies diving for fish, which no doubt he would catch, as they dropped them at sight of him.