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

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СКАЧАТЬ seen fluttering wildly, as they descended from their high places; and, in a few minutes, the ship was reduced to the action of her more secure and heavier canvas. To effect this object, every man in the ship had exerted his powers to the utmost, under the guidance of the steady but rapid mandates of their Commander. Then followed a short and apprehensive breathing pause. Every eye was turned towards the quarter where the ominous signs had been discovered; and each individual endeavoured to read their import, with an intelligence correspondent to the degree of skill he might have acquired, during his particular period of service, on that treacherous element which was now his home.

      The dim tracery of the stranger’s form had been swallowed by the flood of misty light, which, by this time, rolled along the sea like drifting vapour, semi-pellucid, preternatural, and seemingly tangible. The ocean itself appeared admonished that a quick and violent change was nigh. The waves had ceased to break in their former foaming and brilliant crests, but black masses of the water were seen lifting their surly summits against the eastern horizon, no longer relieved by their scintillating brightness, or shedding their own peculiar and lucid atmosphere around them. The breeze which had been so fresh, and which had even blown, at times, with a force that nearly amounted to a little gale, was lulling and becoming uncertain, as though awed by the more violent power that was gathering along the borders of the sea, in the direction of the neighbouring continent. Each moment, the eastern puffs of air lost their strength, and became more and more feeble, until, in an incredibly short period, the heavy sails were heard flapping against the masts—a frightful and ominous calm succeeding. At this instant, a glancing, flashing gleam lighted the fearful obscurity of the ocean; and a roar, like that of a sudden burst of thunder, bellowed along the waters. The seamen turned their startled looks on each other, and stood stupid, as though a warning had been given, from the heavens themselves, of what was to follow. But their calm and more sagacious Commander put a different construction on the signal. His lip curled, in high professional pride, and his mouth moved rapidly while he muttered to himself, with a species of scorn,—

      “Does he think we sleep? Ay, he has got it himself and would open our eyes to what is coming! What does he imagine we have been about, since the middle watch was set?”

      Then, Wilder made a swift turn or two on the quarter-deck, never ceasing to bend his quick glances from one quarter of the heavens to another; from the black and lulling water on which his vessel was rolling, to the sails; and from his silent and profoundly expectant crew, to the dim lines of spars that were waving above his head, like so many pencils tracing their curvilinear and wanton images over the murky volumes of the superincumbent clouds.

      “Lay the after-yards square!” he said, in a voice which was heard by every man on deck, though his words were apparently spoken but little above his breath. Even the creaking of the blocks, as the spars came slowly and heavily round to the indicated position, contributed to the imposing character of the moment, and sounded, in the ears of all the instructed listeners, like notes of fearful preparation.

      “Haul up the courses!” resumed Wilder, after a thoughtful, brief interval, with the same eloquent calmness of manner. Then, taking another glance at the threatening horizon, he added, with emphasis, “Furl them—furl them both: Away aloft, and hand your courses,” he continued, in a shout; “roll them up, cheerily; in with them, boys, cheerily; in!”

      The conscious seamen took their impulses from the tones of their Commander. In a moment, twenty dark forms were seen leaping up the rigging, with the alacrity of so many quadrupeds; and, in another minute, the vast and powerful sheets of canvas were effectually rendered harmless, by securing them in tight rolls to their respective spars. The men descended as swiftly as they had mounted to the yards; and then succeeded another short and breathing pause. At this moment, a candle would have sent its flame perpendicularly towards the heavens. The ship, missing the steadying power of the wind, rolled heavily in the troughs of the seas, which, however began to be more diminutive, at each instant, as though the startled element was recalling, into the security of its own vast bosom, that portion of its particles which had, just before, been permitted to gambol so madly over its surface. The water washed sullenly along the side of the ship, or, as she labouring rose from one of her frequent falls into the hollows of the waves, it shot back into the ocean from her decks, in numberless little glittering cascades. Every hue of the heavens, every sound of the element, and each dusky and anxious countenance that was visible, helped to proclaim the intense interest of the moment. It was in this brief interval of expectation, and inactivity, that the mates again approached their Commander.

      “It is an awful night, Captain Wilder!” said Earing presuming on his rank to be the first of the two to speak.

      “I have known far less notice given of a shift of wind,” was the steady answer.

      “We have had time to gather in our kites, ‘tis true, sir; but there are signs and warnings, that come with this change, at which the oldest seaman has reason to take heed!”

      “Yes,” continued Nighthead, in a voice that sounded hoarse and powerful, even amid the fearful accessories of that scene; “yes, it is no trifling commission that can call people, that I shall not name, out upon the water in such a night as this. It was in just such weather that I saw the ‘Vesuvius’ ketch go to a place so deep, that her own mortar would not have bein able to have sent a bomb into the open air, had hands and fire been there fit to let it off!”

      “Ay; and it was in such a time that the Greenlandman was cast upon the Orkneys, in as flat a calm as ever lay on the sea.”

      “Gentlemen,” said Wilder, with a peculiar and perhaps an ironical emphasis on the word, “what is it you would have? There is not a breath of air stirring, and the ship is naked to her topsails!”

      It would have been difficult for either of the two malcontents to have given a very satisfactory answer to this question. Both were secretly goaded by mysterious and superstitious apprehensions, that were powerfully aided by the more real and intelligible aspect of the night; but neither had so far for gotten his manhood, and his professional pride, as to lay bare the full extent of his own weakness, at a moment when he was liable to be called upon for the exhibition of qualities of a far more positive and determined character. Still, the feeling that was uppermost betrayed itself in the reply of Earing, though in an indirect and covert manner.

      “Yes, the vessel is snug enough now,” he said, “though eye-sight has shown us all it is no easy matter to drive a freighted ship though the water as fast as one of your flying craft can go, aboard of which no man can say, who stands at the helm, by what compass she steers, or what is her draught!”

      “Ay,” resumed Nighthead, “I call the ‘Caroline’ fast for an honest trader, and few square-rigged boats are there, who do not wear the pennants of the King, that can eat her out of the wind, or bring her into their wake, with studding-sails abroad. But this is a time, and an hour, to make a seaman think. Look at yon hazy light, here, in with the land, that is coming so fast down upon us, and then tell me whether it comes from the coast of America, or whether it comes from out of the stranger who has been so long running under our lee, but who has got, or is fast getting, the wind of us at last, and yet none here can say how, or why. I have just this much, and no more, to say: Give me for consort a craft whose Captain I know, or give me none!”

      “Such is your taste, Mr Nighthead,” said Wilder, coldly; “mine may, by some accident, be very different.”

      “Yes, yes,” observed the more cautious and prudent Earing, “in time of war, and with letters of marque aboard, a man may honestly hope the sail he sees should have a stranger for her master; or otherwise he would never fall in with an enemy. But though an Englishman born myself, I should rather give the ship in that mist a clear sea, seeing that I neither know her nation nor her cruise. Ah, Captain Wilder, yonder is an awful sight for the morning watch! Often, and often, have I seen the sun rise ill the east, and no harm done; but СКАЧАТЬ