Our change, of course, so postured the stranger that in a manner of speaking she was crossing our stern, so that she’d pass on our weather quarter close to.
‘I believe it’s she—I believe it’s she!’ Tom muttered, speaking to himself.
Nothing was said for some time. The foam broke from under our counter in a trail of light like the glittering scar left by a meteor in the sky. We were washing through it at seven knots, and the great dim cloud of canvas astern at eleven or twelve. She had now shaped herself into a clear outline against the thin stars, and I could see the white water boiling at her forefoot.
‘Captain Butler,’ exclaimed the mate, in a voice of agitation, ‘that’s the Childe Harold!’
‘Yes! She’s the convict ship,’ said Tom, catching me by the hand. ‘Do you see that her main-royal lies furled? Whither away? Whither away?’ cried he, looking at the ship.
‘Fore and maintopmast stu’n’sails!’ exclaimed Mr. Bates. His voice quivered, now he recognised the ship he was first officer of but a little while gone.
She loomed up upon our quarter in a thunderous heap of pallid flying shadow, and the low red western moon and the lean stars and the throb of black waters, flashful with foam, ridging southwards, were the fittest setting the night could have contrived for her; and that deep spirit of desolation which in the dark hours of the ocean morning spreads out of the gloomy distance was present and abounding. She showed no light, but the foam which broke in masses from her bows and fled along her sides swift as smoke touched the fabric of the noble ship’s hull with its own radiance, and we viewed her as though by moonlight.
She was about a quarter of a mile distant when she swept past us. All that way off I heard the drum-like roll of the wind in the high white spaces of her canvas, and the sullen, continuous roar of the water she parted. And all the time she hung to windward, drawing ahead and opening out the squares of her sails till their hollows, blackening upon us, showed like a growing thunderstorm upon the sea-line, but with never a wink of light from cabin window or binnacle-stand. Tom and the mate commented upon her; my sweetheart in a rapid, fierce voice; Bates sulkily.
Tom said: ‘The devil’s in command there, and he has stocked her forecastle with a troop of devils.’
‘They’ll be no worse than their shipmates,’ said the mate.