The Red Rover & Other Sea Adventures – 3 Novels in One Volume. Джеймс Фенимор Купер

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СКАЧАТЬ you the glass, Earing, and tell me under what canvas the stranger holds his way, and what may be his distance,” said Wilder, thoughtfully, and without appearing to advert at all to what the other had just observed.

      The honest and well-meaning mate deposed his hat on the quarter-deck, and, with an air of great respect, did as he was desired. Nor did he deem it necessary to give a precipitate answer to either of the interrogatories. When, however, his look had been long, grave, and deeply absorbed, he closed the glass with the palm of his broad hand, and replied, with the manner of one whose opinion was sufficiently matured.

      “If yonder sail had been built and fitted like other mortal craft,” he said, “I should not be backward in pronouncing her a full-rigged ship, under three single-reefed topsails, courses, spanker, and jib.”

      “Has she no more?”

      “To that I would qualify, provided an opportunity were given me to make sure that she is, in all respects, as other vessels are.”

      “And yet, Earing, with all this press of canvas, by the compass we have not left her a foot.”

      “Lord, sir,” returned the mate, shaking his head, like one who was well convinced of the folly of such efforts, “if you should split every cloth in the main-course, by carrying on the ship you will never alter the bearings of that craft an inch, till the sun rises! Then, indeed, such as have eyes, that are good enough, might perhaps see her sailing about among the clouds; though it has never been my fortune be it bad or be it good, to fall in with one of these cruisers after the day has fairly dawned.”

      “And the distance?” said Wilder; “you have not yet spoken of her distance.”

      “That is much as people choose to measure. She may be here, nigh enough to toss a biscuit into our tops; or she may be there, where she seems to be, hull down in the horizon.”

      “But, if where she seems to be?”

      “Why, she seems to be a vessel of about six hundred tons; and, judging from appearances only, a man might be tempted to say she was a couple of leagues, more or less, under our lee.”

      “I put her at the same! Six miles to windward is not a little advantage, in a hard chase. By heavens, Earing, I’ll drive the ‘Caroline’ out of water but I’ll leave him!”

      “That might be done, if the ship had wings like a curlew, or a sea-gull; but, as it is, I think we are more likely to drive her under.”

      “She bears her canvas well, so far. You know not what the boat can do, when urged.”

      “I have seen her sailed in all weathers, Captain Wilder, but”——

      His mouth was suddenly closed. A vast black wave reared itself between the ship and the eastern horizon, and came rolling onward, seeming to threaten to ingulf all before it. Even Wilder watched the shock with breathless anxiety, conscious, for the moment that he had exceeded the bounds of sound discretion in urging his ship so powerfully against such a mass of water. The sea broke a few fathoms from the bows of the “Caroline,” and sent its surge in a flood of foam upon her decks. For half a minute the forward part of the vessel disappeared, as though, unable to mount the swell, it were striving to go through it, and then she heavily emerged, gemmed with a million of the scintillating insects of the ocean. The ship had stopped, trembling in every joint, throughout her massive and powerful frame, like some affrighted courser; and, when she resumed her course, it was with a moderation that appeared to warn those who governed her movements of their indiscretion.

      Earing faced his Commander in silence, perfectly conscious that nothing he could utter contained an argument like this. The seamen no longer hesitated to mutter their disapprobation aloud, and many a prophetic opinion was ventured concerning the consequences of such reckless risks. To all this Wilder turned a deaf or an insensible ear. Firm in his own secret purpose, he would have braved a greater hazard to accomplish his object. But a distinct though smothered shriek, from the stern of the vessel, reminded him of the fears of others. Turning quickly on his heel, he approached the still trembling Gertrude and her governess, who had both been, throughout the whole of those long and tedious hours, inobtrusive but deeply interested, observers of his smallest movements.

      “The vessel bore that shock so well, I have great reliance on her powers,” he said in a soothing voice, but with words that were intended to lull her into a blind security. “With a firm ship, a thorough seaman is never at a loss!”

      “Mr Wilder,” returned the governess, “I have seen much of this terrible element on which you live. It is therefore vain to think of deceiving me I know that you are urging the ship beyond what is usual. Have you sufficient motive for this hardihood?”

      “Madam,—I have!”

      “And is it, like so many of your motives, to continue locked for ever in your own breast? or may we, who are equal participators in its consequences, claim to share equally in the reason?”

      “Since you know so much of the profession,” returned the young man, slightly laughing, but in tones that were rendered perhaps more alarming by the sounds produced in the unnatural effort, “you need not be told, that, in order to get a ship to windward, it is necessary to spread her canvas.”

      “You can, at least, answer one of my questions more directly: Is this wind sufficiently favourable to pass the dangerous shoals of the Hatteras?”

      “I doubt it.”

      “Then, why not go to the place whence we came?”

      “Will you consent to return?” demanded the youth, with the swiftness of thought.

      “I would go to my father,” said Gertrude, with a rapidity so nearly resembling his own, that the ardent girl appeared to want breath to utter the little she said.

      “And I am willing, Mr Wilder, to abandon the ship entirely,” calmly resumed the governess. “I require no explanation of all your mysterious warnings; restore us to our friends in Newport, and no further questions shall ever be asked.”

      “It might be done!” muttered our adventurer; “it might be done!—A few busy hours would do it, with this wind.—Mr Earing!”—

      The mate was instantly at his elbow. Wilder pointed to the dim object to leeward; and, handing him the glass, desired that he would take another view. Each looked, in his turn, long and closely.

      “He shows no more sail!” said the Commander impatiently, when his own prolonged gaze was ended.

      “Not a cloth, sir. But what matters it, to such a craft, how much canvas is spread, or how the wind blows?”

      “Earing, I think there is too much southing in this breeze; and there is more brewing in yonder streak of dusky clouds on our beam. Let the ship fall off a couple of points, or more, and take the strain off the spars, by a pull upon the weather braces.”

      The simple-minded mate heard the order with an astonishment he did not care to conceal. There needed no explanation, to teach his experienced faculties that the effect would be to go over the same track they had just passed, and that it was, in substance abandoning the objects of the voyage. He presumed to defer his compliance, in order to remonstrate.

      “I hope there is no offence for an elderly seaman, like myself, Captain Wilder, in venturing an opinion on the weather,” he said. “When the pocket of the СКАЧАТЬ