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BY THE AUTHOR OF “CRUISING IN THE LAST WAR,” THE “REEFER OF ’76,” ETC.
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THE PRIVATEER.
I remained but a short time in the Arrow after we sailed finally from the port of ——; for happening to fall in with and capture a rakish little schooner, Captain Smyth resolved to arm and send her forth to cruise against the enemy on her own account. A long Tom was accordingly mounted on a pivot amidships, a complement of men placed in her, and the command given to our second lieutenant, with myself for subordinate. Thus equipped, we parted company from our consort, who bore away for the north, while we were to cruise in the Windward Passage.
For several days we met with no adventure. The weather was intensely sultry. He who has never witnessed a noontide calm on a tropical sea can have no idea of the stifling heat of such a situation. The sea is like molten brass; no breath of air is stirring; the atmosphere is dry and parched in the mouth, and the heavens hang over all their canopy of lurid fire, in the very centre of which burns with intense fierceness the meridian sun. The decks, the cabin, and the tops are alike stifling. The awnings may indeed afford a partial shelter from the vertical rays of the sun, but no breeze can be wooed down the eager windsail; while, wherever a stray beam steals to the deck through an opening in the canvass, the turpentine oozes out and boils in the heat, and the planks become as intolerable to the tread as if a furnace was beneath them.
It was on one of the hottest days of the season, and about a fortnight after we parted from the Arrow, that we lay thus becalmed. The hour was high noon. I stood panting for breath by the weather railing, dressed in a thin jacket and without a cravat, feverishly looking out across the ocean to discern, if possible, a mist or cloud or other evidence of an approaching breeze. My watch was in vain. There was no ripple on the deep, but a long monotonous undulation heaved the surface of the water, which glittered far and near like a mirror in which the sun is reflected vertically, paining and almost blinding the gaze. The schooner lay motionless on the ocean, the shadow of her boom shivering in the wave, as the swell undulated along. Silence reigned on the decks. To a spectator at a distance, who could have beheld our motionless shadow in the water, we would have seemed an enchanted ship, hanging midway betwixt the sea and sky.
Noon passed, and the afternoon drew heavily along, yet still no breeze arose to gladden our listless spirits. Two bells struck and then three, but the same monotony continued. Wearied out at length I was about turning from the weather quarter to go below, when I fancied I saw a sail far down on the horizon. I paused and looked intently in the direction where the welcome sight had been visible. For a moment the glare of the sun and the water prevented me from distinguishing with any accuracy whether what I saw was really a sail or not, but at length my doubts were removed by the cry of the look-out on the fore-castle, and before half an hour it became evident that the vessel to windward was a square-rigged craft, but of what size or character it was impossible to determine.
“They must have had a puff of wind up yonder,” remarked the second lieutenant to me, “or else they could not have come within sight so rapidly.”
“But the breeze has left them ere this,” I said, “for they have not moved for the last quarter of an hour.”