"It still blew a stiff breeze, but the waves rose with a length and a breadth in them you find in no other sea; deep-blue sparkling hills of water, with green gleams about the crests, of which every single wave had a hundred or so; and a long seething, simmering, glassy hollow of a still valley between, where the flecks of foam slid away glittering out of the shadow. But, oh! it was glorious to feel the schooner rising quietly in the trough, with the mount of a wave, to the very ridge of it; then with a creak of all her timbers and bulkheads below, a slight shake to windward, and a jerk at her bows, lean over to leeward again, and go hissing through the breast of a huge sea, till you thought she'd go down into it; while there she was, however, lifting head up, with a swift flash of her cutwater, on the cross half-wave that joined every first and third one—'billow' and 'sea,' as you may say. The breeze having drawn more easterly toward morning, Jones had braced her more upon a wind, with reefed main and foresails, and fore-staysail set, which brought out the Aniceta's weatherly qualities to a marvel, as, notwithstanding almost a head-wind and a swelling sea, she went nearly as fast as the frigate would have done before the breeze, and not a sign of the land was to be seen from her cross-trees.

"It was not till the afternoon, when the midshipman and I had both been busy together seeing various things done about the rigging, as well as having preventer-braces and guys clapped on the booms and gaffs, that we had time to look about us; the schooner still driving along with the breeze strong abeam, and a floating plunge from one wide dark-blue sea to another, as if they handed her onward.

"Jones had got himself made decent below, as I told him, till what with different clothes, and a shave together, besides refreshment from sea weather, he was quite a different man to look at. Even Snelling owned to his sailor-like appearance, though rather surprised at my notion of making him a mate; while as for the men, they didn't know but he had come aboard as such, and to tell the truth, he was having the main-staysail got up and ready to bend at the time, like one accustomed to give orders. By this time I remembered the harbour officer, Webb, whom we'd carried off so unceremoniously, and found he was still in his 'bunk' below, half-sulky and half-sick, consoling himself with brandy and water till we should get into Table Bay again, as he said. 'Only put him into my watch, Mr Collins,' said Snelling gravely, 'and I'll work him up, sir.' The reefer himself, in fact, had all of a sudden turned out in a laughingly dignified style, to meet his new post—in full midshipman's rig, dirk and all, with his cocked hat which I sent him down immediately to change; but he had brushed up his mop of hair, and begun to cultivate the down on his upper lip; while being a deep-shouldered, square-built, short-armed little fellow, as muscular as a monkey, you'd have thought from the back of his coat he was a man cut shorter, and for his face, he had contrived to put such a sour effect into it—meant for great experience, no doubt—that it was only by his eyes one saw he was a boy of sixteen or so; and they were brimful of wild glee, as he jumped about wherever he was needed, doing the work of a couple of ordinary men, and actually delighted when a spray came over the weather bulwarks on top of him, seeing that, instead of the frigate, she was 'our schooner' that did it.

"'I think she walks, Mr Collins!' observed Snelling, holding up his head stiffly, and looking aloft as we went aft, after shaking ourselves from one of these same sprays. 'No denying that, Mr Snelling,' said I as gravely; 'I only wish your fond parents could see you just now, first mate of such a smart craft, Mr Snelling!' His father was a country baronet, who had sent him off to sea with an allowance—I daresay because his looks were no ornament, and there were plenty more coming, though Snelling always pretended his worthy progenitor was an old man. 'Fond, be blowed!' said he, starting; 'I just see him at this moment at the foot of that blessed old mahogany, proposing my health before the ladies go, and——' Here the schooner rose on a sharp, short wave, making a plunge through it that sent the helmsman swinging to the lee-side of the wheel, while a sea washed up over her forecastle, and away aft with the tubs, buckets, and spars, knocking everybody right and left. Snelling and I held on by the weather main-rigging with our feet in a bath, till she lifted bodily through it, careering to her lee-gun'ale.

"'By George, though!' broke out the reefer, smacking his lips as we drew breath, 'I wish he did see me—wouldn't it cheer his declining years, when I got to hand the governor carefully below! And such a rough night as we're going to have of it, too, sir!' 'You unfilial young dog,' said I; 'but so I'm afraid we shall—and no joke either!' Jones was standing near us, watching the looks of the weather, with evident uneasiness, and I asked him what he thought of it. 'In my opinion, sir,' said he, 'you'll have some pretty sudden shift of wind ere long, of a kind I have seen more than once off the Cape before—and that as furious as a south-easter ordinarily is hereabouts. Look away yonder, sir!'

"It had got to a clear, dry north-easterly gale that shook our canvas every time she lifted, singing through the ropes, and bitter cold. Long and heavy as the roll of the sea was, the sky was as keen and clear as glass all round about and aloft, save the mist kicked up by the spray off a wave here and there. If a rag of white cloud appeared, it was blown away, and you saw the black wrinkled side of one wave at a time, a mile wide, you'd have said, freckled all over with spots of foam, and its ridge heaving against the eye of the blast. The waves had begun to break shorter. The schooner, buoyant as she was, and sharp as a dolphin, pitched and rolled at times like mad, and the men forward were standing by to let go the fore-halliards, throat and peak, to ease her a little; when Jones pointed out the bank of gray cloud ahead of us, scarce to be seen through the troughs of the water, except when she lifted well upon a swell of sea. The sun going down in a wild red glare to leeward of us, threw a terrible glitter across the huge slant of one single wave, that rose stretching away far and wide from her very bow, then brought out the sulky wrinkled blue in it; the hissing green crests curled over to the very sunset, as it were, while we sank slowly into the long dark lulling trough, and saw the broken shaft of a rainbow stand glimmering for a moment or two into a black hollow right ahead, when the gale drove it back upon us like an arrow, as the schooner surged through the breast of the next wave. I looked from Snelling to the new mate, who still held on by a belaying-pin and watched the clouds, giving me back a glance that showed he thought the matter more serious than ordinary. 'The sooner we strip her to the storm-staysails,' said I quickly, as we fell into the trough again, 'the better, I think. If it blows harder, we must lie-to with her at once.' My eye was anxiously fixed on Jones, for large as the schooner was, between two and three hundred tons, yet no craft in the world is so nice to bring to the wind in a gale with a heavy sea running. Scudding before it might have done for the frigate, with her full bows, and spars high enough to keep her main-topsail full in spite of the troughs; but even that would have taken us out of our course after the Indiaman. Besides that, to tell the truth, I didn't sufficiently understand fore-and-aft rigged craft in all weathers yet, to be quite sure of what I did at a pinch like the present. 'Yes, yes, sir,' answered he; 'but if you'll take an older man's advice, before that you'll wear her round on the other tack to it. We've the worst to come, or else I'm mistaken, sir.' 'You're accustomed to schooners?' asked I firmly, and gazing him in the face.

I saw his lips open in the sweep of the wind through our after-rigging, and he made a sign with his hand, while a gnawing sort of spasm, as it were, shot through the muscles of his jaw, and for a moment he gave me a fierce, keen glance, almost a glare, from under his strong straight eyebrows—then turned away. 'Take the trumpet then, Mr Jones,' said I, singing out into his ear; 'I'll leave her to you, sir. Mr Snelling, let's see the hatches all fast!' And we scrambled along by the belaying-pins.

"'Are you all ready fore and aft?' came Jones's voice like thunder in the next dip she made, and he leapt up bareheaded on the breech of one of the small carronades aft, holding on with one hand by the weather mainshrouds, and watching the run of the waves as they glimmered off our lee-beam into the dusk, for full five minutes. I had hold of a rope near him, and his eye was as steady as if he were picking out hills in a view. I had full confidence in the man; but I must say it was a nervous moment to me, when I saw him lift the trumpet to his mouth—and furiously as the wind shook the schooner, you heard his hoarse cry, 'Put your helm up—slack off the mainsheet—brail up the mainsail—ease down the weather boom-guy—main-staysail sheet.' And the rest was lost in the wild shriek of the north-east gale. We were hard at it, however, staggering as we hauled and held on, even to the poor half-drowned, terrified Lascars, whom the midshipman had roused out of the caboose and long-boat, shoving the ropes into their leathery hands. But I knew little else till I saw the schooner had payed off before the wind, shearing with a hiss like red-hot iron right through the ridge, betwixt two tremendous combing waves. It swelled green over her larboard bulwark as she heeled over, and she gave a heavy dead lurch with it, as if she would let the next sea break aboard.

"'Now! now!' shouted Jones, at a pitch of voice like no earthly sound; 'aft the mainsheet, for your lives!' He jumped to the wheel himself, at a single bound. We were in two floundering heaps, as we dragged at the main-boom aft, and the headsheets on the forecastle, while she came trembling up in the long bight of the sea, and took the gale steadily before her other beam. It was blowing harder than ever; and the awful 'scud' of the sea rolled her bodily away, as she met it with her weather-bow, washing white over the head-rail, with spray from cathead to bowsprit; the gale heaving her down on the lee-beam till she plunged to the brim on that side, at every forward pitch, so that all hands on deck had to keep crowded together aft. Still it was keen starlight overhead, the gale dry, though it was bitter cold, and the seas long and pretty regular. The schooner behaved wonderfully, being as tight as a bottle; and at the same time we were not only lying our course either for the Mozambique or Indian Ocean, but instead of running farther into the gale, as before, and getting more into the wild Cape latitudes, why at present she tended to clear out of them. I accordingly agreed with Jones to hold on with everything as long as possible, in spite of the way she was sometimes flung off with the crest of a wave, as it were, making a clear dive with her nose under water through a white seething sea that seemed to swell round the whole horizon; the black bank of cloud off our weather-beam towered like icebergs against the cold green sky to south-east, the stars glittering and twinkling over it, with little hazy rings round them, after a fashion that one of us liked no more than the other.

"About midnight, we had got everything off her to the two small storm-staysails, main and fore, the wind blowing great guns, and the half-moon shining right over the long bank, as if the back of it were dead white; while betwixt it and the washing glimmer of moonlight halfway you'd have thought the black heave of the ridges vanished into a bulk of shadow ten times blacker, save for the heads of spray tossing dimly over in it here and there. All at once, in the very height of the gale, as the black floating clouds from the bank began to cross over the gray scud flying fast aloft, a blue flash of lightning shot zigzag into the very comb of a wave ahead of us, then came the clap of thunder, loud enough to be heard above the wind, and in half-a-minute there was a sudden lull. You saw the fleecy rags of scud actually settling together under the dark vapour moving above them, and heard nothing but the vast washing welter of the billows rising and seething for miles round, as if the world were water, while the schooner rolled helplessly away, with her storm-staysails flapping, into the trough. The midshipman almost gasped as he looked to me—not from fear, but as much as to say, 'What next?' Our strange mate stood against the fife-rail of the mainmast, apparently too intent on the sky and sea for speaking. For my own part, I let go my belaying-pin, and half-tumbled to the wheel, almost knocking the sailor down in my haste to put the helm hard up—for I saw how the blast was to come, fairly before the beam, upon us. 'Hard a-starboard with it!' shouted I; 'haul down the main-staysail there—let her fall as she rises.'

"The last words were never heard, for next moment there was another flash of lightning, this time a blaze all round into the troughs of the sea; I saw a body of mist coming down upon us from south-east, through which the gale struck her on the starboard beam, having suddenly shifted eight points or so. The heavy rolling swell from north-east was close aboard, and as soon as I knew what I was about, here she was leaning over to the full tremendous force of the storm, without power to surge ahead, though struggling to rise like a carthorse down on his knees with a load uphill of him. 'Twas by instinct, as they say, I found myself scrambling along to her weather main-channels, where I managed to get out on the side, slippery as it was, and drenched with the blinding showers of spray. I had got my knife at work, cutting the lanyards of the shrouds to let the mainmast go, when I saw Snelling creep after me, like a fearless little fellow as he was, dirk in hand; although what was come of Jones I couldn't see, unless he had lost heart and skulked. All at once, to my great joy, the main-staysail blew inway to leeward out of the bolt-ropes, like a scrap of paper, the main-topmast crashed at the cap and went alongside, when the schooner righted to her keel, with a wild bolt forward through the whole width of an immense wave—one of the 'third waves' it was, commonly the last and the hugest in a single roll of the sea off the Cape, before you sink into a long gliding valley, with a sort of a lull in it. The scene was so terrible at the moment, though we bore up for full half-a-minute to the fair steady stroke of the awful gale, nothing but a yeast of mist, scud, and darkness ahead, the spray torn off the ridge of the wave and flying with us, while the triple run of the heavy seas astern was in danger of sweeping her decks from over the poop—that I felt we must try lying-to with her at once.

"Indeed, Snelling and I hardly knew whether we were holding on or not, as we were half washed in-board and half crawled round the rigging; but Jones had already seized the exact point—when she sank in the hollow—to have the helm eased down to leeward. Meanwhile he had got the reefed foresail balanced and set, with the sheet hauled aft beforehand—a tackle hooked on to the clue, and bowsed amidships—everything else was off her; and with this sail she came slowly up close to the wind on the slant of the next wave, lying-to nearly head toward the force of the sea, as her helm was kept fast two or three points to leeward. I never had seen a craft, of the kind hove-to in a gale before, and a very nice matter it is, too. We drew breath, scarce able to credit our eyes, while the schooner rode apparently safe on a sea rolling mountain-high; rising and falling off from the breasts to the sides of the waves, so far as leeway went, and forging ahead a little at the same time through the fierce spray that showered out of the dark over her weather-bow.

"Cape weather as bad I had seen before, but always in good-sized ships; and I owned to Snelling I would rather have handled any one of them, even with a lee-shore near, ten times over, than this schooner of ours in the present case. However, none of us were in any mood for speaking at the time, let alone the waste of breath it was. The best thing we had to do, after getting somewhat satisfied of her weathering it this way, was to have the grog served out to the men, swig off a stiff pannikin oneself, and make oneself as comfortable as possible with his pea-coat in the lee of something.

"The sight of the sea ridging up with a dim glimmer against the dark, kept your eye fixed to it; first you thought it would burst right aboard, crash down upon the decks; then she lifted with it, swelling broad under her, while the long steady sweep of the gale drove just over the bulwarks with a deep moan; for half-a-minute, perhaps, a shivering lull, when you heard the bulkheads and timbers creak and strain below from stem to stern, and the bilge-water yearning, as it were, to the water outside. Then, again, it was a howl and a shriek, a wide plunge of sea bore up her weather-bow, and the moment ere she came fairly to, one felt as if the schooner were going to pitch God knows where. Her whole bulwarks shook and shivered, the wind found out every chink in them, whistling round every different rope it split upon, while all the time the loose, wet, dreary spars behind the long-boat kept slatting and clattering against each other in the lashings, like planks in a woodyard of a November night. This was the way we stuck till the morning watch showed it all in a drizzling, struggling sort of half-light, blowing as hard as ever, the Cape seas rolling and heaving mountain-high, of a pale yeasty hue, far and wide to the scud; the spray drifting from the crests, and washing over her bare forecastle, with now and then the white wings of a huge albatross to be seen aslant to windward, riding on the breast of a long wave down into the trough.

"Well, the whole blessed day did this sort of thing continue, only varied by now and then a huger sea than ordinary lifting close aboard of us, and we being hove up to get a glimpse of the long glaring streak of horizon through the troughs of the waves; sometimes an unluckier splash than usual over the bow and through the fore-chains, that made us look sharp lest the canvas of the foresail should go, or the schooner broach end-on to the sea. Otherwise, all we had to do was to watch the binnacle, hold on with one hand to a rope, and with the other to our caps; or turn out and in with each other down the booby-hatch for a snatch of sleep, and a bit of biscuit and cold beef, with a glass of grog. Mr Webb, the harbour officer, was to be seen below in his berth all this time, lying as peaceable as a child; whether he was dead sick or only confoundedly afraid I didn't know; but I must say I felt for the poor fellow when I heard him ask Snelling in a weak voice, if he would get somebody to stand off the bull's-eye in the deck over his berth, as it always made him think there was a new hurricane coming on. 'You low, skulking hound!' said the reefer, who had wonderfully little pity in his make, 'it can't be worse—what d'ye want light for, eh?' 'Only to see the opposite wall,' said Webb meekly; 'do, sir—oh now!' 'Oh, you lubber, ye!' said Snelling, 'don't you know a bulkhead from a wall yet? If you'd come on deck to bear a hand like others, you wouldn't need light; and I thought you might do for a mate aboard, too—pah, you scum!'

"'Mr Snelling,' said I sharply, as he came through the cabin, 'a worm will turn when it's trod upon, and so you may find yet, sir!' 'Well, Mr Collins,' said he, as confidently as if I hadn't meant to give him a set-down, 'I don't like the fellow's eye. I'll look after him, sir!'

"Not to mention the young rogue's power of face, which was beyond brass, he had a way of seeing you in two places at once with that upward squint of his, as if his eyes were the points of a pair of compasses, that made the officers of the Hebe always send him to the mast-head directly, for fear it should take the frown out of them. In fact, when Snelling's twinkling weather-eye lighted on one's neck, without the other, you almost felt it tickle you, and as usual I turned away with a 'Pshaw!'

"On the second morning, the gale at last began to break, shifting southward; on which, as soon as the sea ran a little easier, I had the helm cautiously put up at a favourable moment, the reefed mainsail, fore-topmast-staysail, and square fore-topsail set as she got before the wind, and away the schooner went; rising on the wide deep-blue swells with a long roll in them, then shearing ahead through their breasts, wrinkled and seething pale-green, till she sank with the fall of the wave—the stump of her aftermast standing, and the fore one shortened by the to'gallant-mast. You may easily believe there was no one aboard more eager to get clear of this weather than myself; as in ordinary circumstances, with a craft like this, in two or three days more we might have been in a high enough latitude to begin looking out for the Indiaman. For my part, I can't deny that the wish for having Tom Westwood safe out of harm's way, and with me in the schooner, strong as it was, played second to the notion of seeing sweet Violet Hyde in any way again, if it was only the last time before she went out of reach altogether; for her getting amongst East India ways of doing, high-flying civilians and soldiers, shows, and sights, either in Calcutta or up-country, was equal to anything else, in my mind. Still, we had six or seven days longer of the heavy seas and hard gales, before north-easting enough could be made to take us beyond the Cape winter, just then coming on, and which the Seringapatam had very likely escaped by two or three days, so that she would have a considerable start of us.

"By this time we were standing well up for the Mozambique Channel, which I had heard the Indiaman intended to take in company; a piece of information that made me the more anxious to overtake the Seringapatam, at latest, by the time they reached open water again, where, being the only ship for Bombay, she would no doubt part from her consorts. We had a cruiser that year, as I knew, in the Mozambique, where there were some rumours of pirates after the war, so that in case of her happening to speak the Seringapatam close, and having got any word of Westwood's affair, he ran a chance of being picked off. However, that wasn't by any means the thing that troubled me most; somehow or other, whenever the picture of Violet's face brought the Indiaman's decks clear into my mind, with all about her, I couldn't get rid of the notion that some ill-luck would come across that ship before she got into port. If any pirate craft were to dodge the whole bevy of Indiamen up the head of the channel, as was pretty sure to be the case, he would probably wait for some signs of separating, and be down upon a single one not long after she cleared the Leychelles Islands, where a lonely enough stretch of the Indian Ocean spreads in. The more I entered upon the thought of it, the more unsufferable it got; especially one day in the mouth of the Mozambique, when it fell a dead calm with a heavy up-and-down swell, fit to roll the sticks out of her; the high blue land of Madagascar being in sight, sometimes to starboard, sometimes to port, then astern, and the clear horizon lying away north-west, dark with a breeze from round the coast. As the hot sun blazed out above us, and the blue water came plunge up over the rail, blazing and flashing, first one side dipped, then the other, I could fancy the passengers on the Indiaman's poop in a light breeze with a suspicious lateen-rigged sail creeping up on her quarter. I thought I saw Violet Hyde's eyes sparkle against the glare of light, and her lips parting to speak—till I actually stamped on the deck, my fists clenched, and I made three strides to the very taffrail of the schooner. All at once I met my second mate's eye coolly fixed on me, which brought me to my senses in a moment, the more so as there was something about this man Jones I couldn't make out, and I had made up my mind to keep a sharp eye on him; though the fact was, it annoyed me most to feel him seeing into me, as it were, without troubling himself. 'We shall have the breeze before long, sir, round Cape Mary yonder,' said he, stepping forward. 'So I expect myself, Mr Jones,' said I, 'though you evidently know the coast better than I do.' With that I gave him a careless side-look, but to all appearance there was nothing particular in his, as he told me he had seen it two or three times before.