It had blown hard in the night, but the wind had dropped with the dawning, and now the rising sun tinted the fringe of the storm wrack as it dwindled into the west, and glinted on the endless crests of the long green waves. To north and south and west lay a sky-line which was unbroken, save by the spout of foam when two of the great Atlantic seas dashed each other into spray. To the east was a rocky island, jutting out into craggy points, with a few scattered clumps of palm-trees, and a pennant of mist streaming out from the bare conical hill which capped it. A heavy surf beat upon the shore, and at a safe distance from it the British 32-gun frigate “Leda,” Captain A. P. Johnson, raised her black, glistening side upon the crest of a wave, or swooped down into an emerald valley, dipping away to the nor’ard under easy sail. On her snow-white quarter-deck stood a stiff, little, brown-faced man, who swept the horizon with his glass.
“Mr. Wharton,” he cried, with a voice like a rusty hinge.
A thin, knock-kneed officer shambled across the poop to him.
“Yes, sir.”
“I’ve opened the sealed orders, Mr. Wharton.”
A glimmer of curiosity shone upon the meagre features of the first lieutenant. The “Leda” had sailed with her consort the “Dido” from Antigua the week before, and the admiral’s orders had been contained in a sealed envelope.
“We were to open them on reaching the deserted island of Sombriero, lying in north latitude eighteen, thirty-six, west longitude sixty-three, twenty-eight. Sombriero bore four miles to the northeast from our port bow when the gale cleared, Mr. Wharton.”
The lieutenant bowed stiffly. He and the captain had been bosom friends from childhood. They had gone to school together, joined the navy together, fought again and again together, and married into each other’s families; but as long as their feet were on the poop the iron discipline of the service struck all that was human out of them, and left only the superior and the subordinate. Captain Johnson took a blue paper from his pocket, which crackled as he unfolded it.
“The 32-gun frigates, ‘Leda’ and ‘Dido’ (Captains A. P. Johnson and James Munro), are to cruise from the point at which these instructions are read to the mouth of the Caribbean Sea, in the hope of encountering the French frigate ‘La Gloire’ (48), which has recently harassed our merchant ships in that quarter. H. M. frigates are also directed to hunt down the piratical craft known sometimes as the ‘Slapping Sal’ and sometimes as the ‘Hairy Hudson,’ which has plundered the British ships as per margin, inflicting barbarities upon their crews. She is a small brig carrying ten light guns, with one twenty-four pound carronade forward. She was last seen upon the 23d ult., to the northeast of the island of Sombriero.”
(Signed)
James Montgomery,
Rear-Admiral.
H. M. S. “Colossus,” Antigua.