Hour after hour Murray gallantly stood to the helm, the little schooner dashing through the foaming seas, for he judged it better to keep her on her course than to heave her to. Terrifically the thunder rolled. Crash succeeded crash almost without cessation, while the lightning darted from the sky and played with even more fearful vividness round the little vessel than on the former night. Still Murray undaunted stood at his post with perfect calmness. Though he scarcely expected to escape, it was not the calmness of despair or stoicism, but that which the most perfect trust in God’s mercy and all-just government of human affairs can alone give. “If He thinks fit to call me hence, His will be done,” he repeated to himself over and over again during that dreadful night. Several times Adair, anxious for his safety, lifted a little scuttle which had been contrived in the skylight, and inquired how he got on, and at times wondered at the fearless tone in which he replied. Still the danger of foundering was to be feared, for, what with the torrents of rain from the skies, and the opening leaks, the little vessel was rapidly filling with water. Dawn was at length breaking and the wind was decreasing, when, as Murray looked around, he thought he saw a vessel to windward bearing down upon them. Just at that instant a cry arose from below that the schooner was sinking, and Adair and the crew leaped on deck. The pump was instantly rigged, and they worked away at it with a will. Still the water appeared to be gaining on them. On came the stranger. She was a large and fine schooner. As the wind had decreased she was making sail; rapidly she neared them. There could be little doubt from her appearance that she was a slaver. To offer any resistance, should she wish to capture them, would be out of the question. Their hearts sank within them. Just then the glitter of some gold-lace on the cap of an officer standing on the schooner’s poop caught Adair’s eye. He seized his telescope, and directly afterwards a cheer came down to them, as the schooner, shooting up into the wind, prepared to heave-to. “Huzza! huzza!” exclaimed Adair. “It’s all right!—there can be no doubt of it!—There’s Jack Rogers himself.”
Chapter Twenty.
Slave-Hunting.
The big schooner and the Venus were soon hove-to, and while the two vessels were bowing and bobbing away at each other, a boat was lowered from the quarter of the former, which came dashing over the seas urged by four stout hands towards them. Jack Rogers sat in the stern-sheets. He sprang on board and grasped Alick’s and Terence’s hands. For nearly a minute he could not speak. He looked at one and then at the other.
“My dear fellows, you do look terribly pulled down,” he exclaimed at length. “Still I am glad to see you even as you are. The truth is that it has been thought you were lost, when week after week passed and you did not appear. Many of them gave you up altogether, and thought that you and the schooner had gone to the bottom, but I never entirely lost heart. I couldn’t have borne it if I had, and I was certain that you would turn up somewhere or other. What have you been about?” Their story was soon told. “That’s just like you,” cried Jack, again, wringing Murray’s and then Paddy’s hand. “You are right. A fellow should do anything rather than desert his colours. I am glad, indeed, that you’ve got safe through it. But, I say, the craft seems to be moving in a very uneasy way. What is the matter?”
“If we don’t keep the pumps going, she’ll be going down in a few minutes,” put in Needham, touching his hat.
Jack called his crew out of the boat, and all hands set to work at the pumps. It was high time, for the crazy little craft was settling fast down in the water. Four fresh hands pumping away while the rest baled once more got the leaks under, and in a couple of hours, Jack returning on board his schooner, sail was made for Sierra Leone. The schooner was a prize lately captured by the Ranger, and Captain Lascelles had put Jack in charge of her to carry her up to Sierra Leone, while the frigate continued her cruise to the southward. He was to find his way back to his ship by the first man-of-war calling at the port. Jack wished very much that he could remain on board the Venus, to keep up, as he said, his friends’ spirits, but as he had two or three hundred slaves on board his prize, he had to return to her to preserve order.
He promised, however, to stay by the Venus, come what might, and Alick and Paddy had no fear that he would desert them. He lent them a couple of hands to work at the pumps, but even with this assistance they had the greatest difficulty in keeping the schooner afloat.