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

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СКАЧАТЬ hard as I have earned it with my toil, did I but know under what flag yonder stranger sails.”

      “Frenchman, Don, or Devil, yonder he comes!” cried Wilder. Then, turning towards the silent an attentive crew, he shouted, in a voice that was appalling by its vehemence and warning, “Let run the after halyards! round with the fore-yard! round with it, men, with a will!”

      These were cries that the startled crew perfectly understood. Every nerve and muscle were exerted to execute the orders, in time to be in readiness for the approaching tempest. No man spoke; but each expended the utmost of his power and skill in direct and manly efforts. Nor was there, in verity, a moment to lose, or a particle of human strength expended here, without a sufficient object.

      The lucid and fearful-looking mist, which, for the last quarter of an hour, had been gathering in the north-west, was now driving down upon them with the speed of a race-horse. The air had already lost the damp and peculiar feeling of an easterly breeze; and little eddies were beginning to flutter among the masts—precursors of the coming squall. Then, a rushing, roaring sound was heard moaning along the ocean, whose surface was first dimpled, next ruffled, and finally covered, with one sheet of clear, white, and spotless foam. At the next moment the power of the wind fell full upon the inert and labouring Bristol trader.

      As the gust approached, Wilder had seized the slight opportunity, afforded by the changeful puffs of air, to get the ship as much as possible before the wind; but the sluggish movement of the vessel met neither the wishes of his own impatience nor the exigencies of the moment. Her bows had slowly and heavily fallen off from the north, leaving her precisely in a situation to receive the first shock on her broadside. Happy it was, for all who had life at risk in that defenceless vessel, that she was not fated to receive the whole weight of the tempest at a blow. The sails fluttered and trembled on their massive yards, bellying and collapsing alternately for a minute, and then the rushing wind swept over them in a hurricane.

      The “Caroline” received the blast like a stout and buoyant ship, yielding readily to its impulse, until her side lay nearly incumbent on the element in which she floated; and then, as if the fearful fabric were conscious of its jeopardy, it seemed to lift its reclining masts again, struggling to work its way heavily through the water.

      “Keep the helm a-weather! Jam it a-weather, for your life!” shouted Wilder, amid the roar of the gust.

      The veteran seaman at the wheel obeyed the order with steadiness, but in vain he kept his eyes riveted on the margin of his head sail, in order to watch the manner the ship would obey its power. Twice more, in as many moments, the tall masts fell towards the horizon, waving as often gracefully upward and then they yielded to the mighty pressure of the wind, until the whole machine lay prostrate on the water.

      “Reflect!” said Wilder, seizing the bewildered Earing by the arm, as the latter rushed madly up the steep of the deck; “it is our duty to be calm: Bring hither an axe.”

      Quick as the thought which gave the order, the admonished mate complied, jumping into the mizzen-channels of the ship, to execute, with his own hands, the mandate that he well knew must follow.

      “Shall I cut?” he demanded, with uplifted arms, and in a voice that atoned for his momentary confusion, by its steadiness and force.

      “Hold! Does the ship mind her helm at all?”

      “Not an inch, sir.”

      “Then cut,” Wilder clearly and calmly added.

      A single blow sufficed for the discharge of the momentary act. Extended to the utmost powers of endurance, by the vast weight it upheld, the lanyard struck by Earing no sooner parted, than each of its fellows snapped in succession, leaving the mast dependant on itself alone for the support of all its ponderous and complicated hamper. The cracking of the wood came next; and then the rigging fell, like a tree that had been sapped at its foundation, the little distance that still existed between it and the sea.

      “Does she fall off?” instantly called Wilder to the observant seaman at the wheel.

      “She yielded a little, sir; but this new squall is bringing her up again.”

      “Shall I cut?” shouted Earing from the main rigging whither he had leaped, like a tiger who had bounded on his prey.

      “Cut!” was the answer.

      A loud and imposing crash soon succeeded this order, though not before several heavy blows had been struck into the massive mast itself. As before, the seas received the tumbling maze of spars, rigging and sails; the vessel surging, at the same instant from its recumbent position, and rolling far and heavily to windward.

      “She rights! she rights!” exclaimed twenty voices which had been hitherto mute, in a suspense that involved life and death.

      “Keep her dead away!” added the still calm but deeply authoritative voice of the young Commander “Stand by to furl the fore-topsail—let it hang a moment to drag the ship clear of the wreck—cut cut—cheerily, men—hatchets and knives—cut with all, and cut off all!”

      As the men now worked with the freshened vigour of revived hope, the ropes that still confined the fallen spars to the vessel were quickly severed; and the “Caroline,” by this time dead before the gale, appeared barely to touch the foam that covered the sea, like a bird that was swift upon the wing skimming the waters. The wind came over the waste in gusts that rumbled like distant thunder, and with a power that seemed to threaten to lift the ship and its contents from its proper element, to deliver it to one still more variable and treacherous. As a prudent and sagacious seaman had let fly the halyards of the solitary sail that remained, at the moment when the squall approached, the loosened but lowered topsail was now distended in a manner that threatened to drag after it the only mast which still stood. Wilder instantly saw the necessity of getting rid of this sail, and he also saw the utter impossibility of securing it. Calling Earing to his side, he pointed out the danger, and gave the necessary order.

      “Yon spar cannot stand such shocks much longer,” he concluded; “and, should it go over the bows, some fatal blow might be given to the ship at the rate she is moving. A man or two must be sent aloft to cut the sail from the yards.”

      “The stick is bending like a willow whip,” returned the mate, “and the lower mast itself is sprung. There would be great danger in trusting a life in that top, while such wild squalls as these are breathing around us.”

      “You may be right,” returned Wilder, with a sudden conviction of the truth of what the other had said: “Stay you then here; and, if any thing befal me, try to get the vessel into port as far north as the Capes of Virginia, at least;—on no account attempt Hatteras, in the present condition of”——

      “What would you do, Captain Wilder?” interrupted the mate laying his hand powerfully on the shoulder of his Commander, who, he observed, had already thrown his sea-cap on the deck, and was preparing to divest himself of some of his outer garments.

      “I go aloft, to ease the mast of that topsail, without which we lose the spar, and possibly the ship.”

      “Ay, ay, I see that plain enough; but, shall it be said, Another did the duty of Edward Earing? It is your business to carry the vessel into the Capes of Virginia, and mine to cut the topsail adrift. If harm comes to me, why, put it in the log, with a word or two about the manner in which I played my part: That is always the best and most proper epitaph for a sailor.”

      Wilder made no resistance, but resumed his watchful and reflecting attitude, СКАЧАТЬ