"Well, ma'am," continued our narrator, addressing himself, as usual, to his matronly relative in the chair, and with the accustomed catch-word, which was like the knotting together of his interrupted yarn: "well—it was between a fortnight and three weeks after losing sight of St Helena, that, being at last fairly in the latitude of the Cape, the frigate and schooner tacked in company, and stood close-hauled on a wind to the eastward. By the middle watch that night, when the moon set, we could make out the long flat top of Table Mountain heaving in sight off the horizon over against her. Next day, in fact, we were both of us quietly at anchor outside of the shipping in Table Bay; Cape Town glittering along on the green flat amongst the trees to southward, with the hills on each side of it like some big African lion lying on guard close by; while Table Mountain hove up, square-shouldered, blue to the left, four thousand feet high, as bare and steep as a wall, with the rocks and trees creeping up from the foot, and the wreaths of light cloud resting halfway, like nothing else but the very breakwater of the world's end. The sea stretched broad off to north and west, and a whole fleet of craft lay betwixt us and the land—half of them Indiamen—amongst which, you may be sure, I kept a pretty sharp look-out with the glass, to see if the Seringapatam were there still.

I was soon saved further pains on this head, however, when shortly afterwards the frigate was beset by a whole squadron of bumboats, shoving against each other, and squabbling, in all sorts of Nigger tongues, who should be first: the chief of them being in evident command of a fat old Dutch Frouw, with an immense blue umbrella over her, two greasy-looking Hottentot rowers in blankets, and a round-faced Dutch boy, the picture of herself, steering the boat; as the old lady made a clear berth for herself, by laying about with her blue umbrella, till she was close under our quarter, sitting all the while with the broad round stern of her bright-coloured gown spread over a couple of beer-barrels, like a peacock's train. In two minutes more the little fellow was up the side, flourishing a bundle of papers under the first lieutenant's very nose, and asking the ship's custom, even whilst the sentries were ordering them all off. A midshipman took this youth by the cuff of the neck, and was handing him rather roughly along to the care of the purser's steward, when I stepped betwixt them; and a bumboat being the best directory on the point, of course, I soon found the old lady had had dealings with the Seringapatam, which her bluff-built little progeny described as a very good ship indeed, all having paid their bills, except one young officer, who had left a balance standing, for which he had given a letter to his brother in a ship that was to come after. As for the Indiaman herself, the Dutch boy said she had sailed about a week before our arrival, along with two others; and he was anxious to know if we were the vessel in question. I accordingly unfolded the open letter, which was addressed,—"Thomas Spoonbill Simm, Esquire, of His Britannic Majesty's ship Nincompoop, (or otherwise;") and it ran somehow thus:—"Hon. East India Company's ship Seringapatam, Table Bay, September 1, 1816.—My dear Brother, This is to certify, that I have eaten four dozen and a half of eggs, supplied by the worthy Vrouw Dulcken, the bearer of this, whom I can recommend as an old screw, and am due her for the same the sum of nine shillings and sixpence sterling, which you will kindly pay her, taking her receipt or mark, unless you are willing to forfeit our family watch, herewith deposited by me in the hands of said Mother Dulcken. I may add that, in justice to the worthy Vrouw, three of the above-mentioned eggs ought to be charged as fowls, which, by the way, I did not consume; and, with love to all at home, remain your affectionate brother, John Simm, H. E. I. C. S.—P. S. The watch I have discovered to be pinchbeck, and it does not go; so that a sad trick must have been originally played upon our venerated Uncle, from whom it descended. J. S." This precious epistle was, without doubt, a joke of the fat mid. Simm, who used to come such rigs over Ford the cadet, and that jumped overboard one night by mistake out of the Indiaman's quarter-boat, during the voyage. As for the existence of his brother Thomas, or the chance of his touching at that port, I set them down with the coming home of Vanderdecken; though the thought of this young scamp of a sea-lawyer breakfasting for a fortnight so comfortably, only a few feet distant from my charmer's state-room, sent me all abroad again, and right into the Indiaman's decks, by this time far out of sight of land. Piece of impudent roguery though it was, I was actually loath to part with the scrawl, which the reefer had fisted, no doubt, on the lid of his chest—probably with a pipe in his mouth at the time, it smelt so of tobacco—only seven days before. I could even see the grin on his fat face as he wrote it below in the steerage, with his chin up, and his eyes looking down past his pipe; while the little Dutch boy's round flat frontispiece glistened as he peered up at me, in the evident notion of my being the brother expected. In fact, ma'am, I was so soft as to intend paying the nine-and-sixpence myself, and keeping the letter, when I was startled to see the old lady herself had contrived to be hoisted on board amongst her cabbages; and having got wind of the thing, seemingly, she came waddling towards me to hand over Simm's watch to boot. In another half minute the letter was being read aloud in the midst of the whole gun-room officers, amongst roars of laughter; the honest old Dutchwoman holding aloft the precious article, and floundering through to find out the rightful owner, as every one claimed it and offered the nine-and-sixpence; while for my part I tried first to get down one hatchway, then another, and Lord Frederick himself came up on the starboard side of the quarterdeck in the height of the scene. Indeed, I believe it was a joke for months after in the Hebe, of a night, to say it was "the second lieutenant's watch;" the sole revenge I had being to leave Mother Dulcken and her boy to expect the "ship that was coming after."

A Government boat came aboard in the afternoon, and as soon as it left us, Lord Frederick took his gig, and steered for a frigate lying some distance off, which had the harbour flag hoisted at her main, being the only man-o'-war besides ourselves, and commanded by a senior captain. Till it got dark I could see the crews of the nearest merchantmen looking over their bulwarks at us and our prize, apparently comparing the schooner with the frigate, and speculating on her character, as she lay a few fathoms off the Hebe's quarter, both of us rising and falling in turn on the long heave of the Cape swell from seaward. 'Twas hard to say, in fact, so far as their hulls went, which was the most beautiful sample of its kind; though the schooner's French-fashioned sticks and off-hand sort of rigging, showed rather like jury-gear beside the tall regular sticks aloft of the Hebe's decks, with all her hamper perfect to a tee. The Hebe's men very naturally considered their own ship a model for everything that floated, a sort of a Solomon's temple, in short; and to hear the merciless way they ran down the Indiamen all round, would have raised the whole homeward-bound fleet against us; whereas the schooner was our own, at any rate, and she was spoken of much in the manner one mentions an unfortunate orphan, as good as already christened by the name of "the Young Hebe." This our learned chaplain said was quite improper, and he gave another name in place of it—the "Aniceta"—which meant, as he observed, the Hebe's youngest daughter; so the Aniceta she was called, happening to be a title that went, according to the boatswain, full as sweetly through the sheave-hole.

Next day the schooner had landed not only her passengers from St Helena, but the prisoners also, as we still understood the French and their Kroomen to be. Not long after that Lord Frederick came back from Cape Town, looking grave, and went straight down to his cabin, or "cabins," as his lordship preferred to have it said. The first lieutenant dined that day with the captain; but they could scarcely have finished when the "young gentlemen" who had been as usual from the reefer's mess, came up with a message from the captain, that his lordship would be glad if I would join the first lieutenant and himself in a glass of wine. I found them sitting at the side of the table nearest the open port, with the decanters between them, and the broad bright bay in full sight to the shore and the foot of Table Mountain, which rose up blocking the port with the top of it beyond view; the sounds of the merchantmen clicking at their heavy windlasses, and hoisting in water-casks, floated slowly in from every side, while the schooner had hauled on her cable more abreast of the frigate, leaving the sight clear over the eddy round her low counter.

"A lovely piece of workmanship, certainly!" observed Lord Frederick thoughtfully, as he leant back swinging his eyeglass round his finger, with the other hand in the breast of his waistcoat, and looking out at what was seen of the schooner. "And how one might have improved her spars, too!" said Mr Hall, wistfully. "I should have recommended longer lower-masts altogether, Lord Frederick, and a thorough overhaul, I may say, from the combings upwards!" "I would not have her hull touched for the world, Mr Hall!" said the captain; "'tis too—excessively provoking, at least! But pass the bottles to Mr Collins, if you please." I had taken a chair and quietly filled my glass, wondering what could be the matter, when his lordship turned to me and said, "Do you know, Mr Collins, this schooner of ours is likely to be laid up in Chancery, heaven knows how long. The Admiralty court ashore are doubtful of condemning her, apparently, and she must either be sent home or to Monte Video or somewhere, where the master of her claims to belong!" "Indeed, my lord," said I, setting down my glass, "that is curious." "Curious indeed, sir!" replied he, biting his lips, "though, after all, we really can scarce say what she is to be condemned for—only in the meantime I sail to-morrow for India." "She's French to the backbone, that I'll swear, Lord Frederick!" I said; "and what's more, she was"——"Ah," broke in the captain, "I know, I know; but the less we say of that, in present circumstances, the better! Once get her entangled with politics, and we may give her up altogether." Lord Frederick twisted his eyeglass round his forefinger faster than before, still watching the schooner; the first lieutenant held up his claret betwixt himself and the light, and I sipped mine. "I tell you what, gentlemen," exclaimed his lordship suddenly, "I must have that schooner at any cost!—What is to be done, Mr Hall?" "She'd be of great service in the China seas, my lord, certainly," said the first lieutenant, looking thoughtfully into his empty glass; "a perfect treasure for light service, especially if new sparred and—" I noticed Lord Frederick glancing sideways at me, as I thought, with a slight gleam in his eye; and accordingly I suggested that he might buy her from the Frenchman himself; a very poor idea, no doubt, as both the captain and first luff seemed to think, and we all three kept eyeing her doubtfully through the port, without a word.

At this time the schooner's counter had been slowly sheering toward the frigate's beam, owing to the ebb-tide, and her holding only by a single cable, till her stern began to show right opposite the cabin, I should say not twenty feet off. Lord Frederick put his glass to his eye, and was peering through it, when he remarked that they had brought up rather too near, leaving scarce room for the schooner to swing as she did, earlier than we, so that she would be in danger of getting foul of the frigate's cables. "The worst of it is, Lord Frederick," said I, "that in case of a gale from seaward here, she might have to slip and run upon very short warning, whereas the Hebe has plenty of ground-tackle to let her ride it out. Considering it was Table Bay, at this season, he ought to have kept her a clearer berth for herself, or else have gone well outside!"—"Ah!" said Lord Frederick quickly, meeting my eye for half a minute, till the gleam came into his again; and somehow or other mine must have caught it, though I must say the notion that struck me then all at once wasn't in my head before. "Do you know, that's well thought of, Collins!" said his lordship. "You've weathered the Cape before, by the bye?"—"A dozen times, Lord Frederick," said I; when a regularly jovial roar of laughter broke fair through the port into the cabin, from over the schooner's taffrail, as she sheered end-on to the frigate's quarter, and Lord Frederick leant forward with the glass screwed into his right eye to see along their decks, which were covered aft with an awning like the open gable of a tent at a fair. "Singular!" said he; "by the lord Harry, who or what can that be Mr Hammond has got there?" Dangling over the French schooner's taffrail were to be seen the soles of two immense boots, with calves and knees to match, and a pair of tightish striped trousers worked up more than half way, 'till you saw the tops of the stockings; just beyond the knees was the face leaning back in the shade of the awning and a straw hat together, out of which a huge green cabbage-leaf hung like a flap over one eye, while the other kept gazing in a half-closed sleepy sort of way at the sky, and the red end of a cigar winked and glowed in the midst of the puffs of smoke lower down. The first lieutenant started up shocked at the sight, the noble captain of the Hebe sat with his eyeglass fixed, between amusement and wonder; for my own part, when the voice of this same prodigy broke all of a sudden on us out of the awning, in a mixture of stuttering, hiccuping, Yankee drawling, and puffs at the cigar, 'twas all I could do to hold on, with the knowledge of where I was. "Wall now, general," said the American, as if he were talking to some one aloft or in the sky, "ye-you're qui-quite wrong—I ki-kick-calc'late I've fit a deal more be-be-battles than you have—I re-respect you, Ge-Ge-General Washington; but I ho-ho-hope you know who—hic—whom I am!" Here Mr Daniel Snout, who was in a state of beastly intoxication, swayed himself up bodily into the schooner's taffrail, and sat with his arms folded, his long legs swinging over the stern, and his head trying to keep steady, as he scowled solemnly aloft over the frigate's mizen-royal-masthead; while the third lieutenant, Mr Hammond, and the master's mate he had aboard with him, could be heard laughing at his back, as if they had gone mad—Hammond being a wild sprig of an Irishman, who would go any length for a piece of fun.

Just then the American's one eye lighted on the side of the frigate, till it settled lazily on the port of the captain's cabin: first he seemed to notice Lord Frederick Bury, and then myself, the first lieutenant having just recovered himself enough to rush toward the door to get on deck. Daniel himself surveyed me scornfully for a moment, then with a sort of doubtful frown, and a gravity that passes me to describe, unless by the look of an old cock a-drinking—evidently trying to recollect me. "Hallo, mister!" shouted he suddenly, "you haven't touched those notions of mine, I hope." With that he made a spring off where he sat, as if to come towards us—no doubt thinking of the Seringapatam, and the valuables he had left aboard, without seeing the water between; and a pretty deep dive Mr Snout would have made of it, into an ebb-tide that would have swept him under the frigate's bottom, if Mr Hammond and the midshipman hadn't both sprung forward in time to catch him by the neck of the coat. There, accordingly, was the Yankee hanging like a spread eagle over the schooner's taffrail, yelling and turning round at the same time like a fowl on a spit—the third lieutenant's and the mate's faces, two pictures of dismay, as they held on, at finding for the first time where the schooner had shied them round to, with their two pairs of eyes fair in front of the captain's eyeglass,—while Mr Hall was singing out like thunder from the deck above us, "The schooner ahoy—d'ye see where you've got to, sir; haul ahead on that cable, d'ye hear, you lubbers, and keep clear of the ship!"

"Mr Collins," said his lordship quietly to me, as soon as he could keep his countenance, and looking the sterner for the trouble he was put to in doing it, "you will get your things and go aboard the schooner directly—take her in charge, sir, and send Mr Hammond back here."—"Very well, my lord," said I, waiting in the doorway for something more, which, from something in Lord Frederick's look, I had reason to expect, knowing it of old. "I can only spare you a dozen of the men she has," added he; "but if you choose you can send ashore at once to pick up a few makeshifts, or anything you find!"—"Ay, ay, my lord," said I; "the best hand for that would be Mr Snelling, if I may take him, Lord Frederick?" "Oh, certainly," was the answer; "and harkye, Collins, you had better shift your berth a few cable-lengths farther off, or more, if you please."—"One thing, my lord," said I, stooping down to see through the port, "I don't much like the heavy ground-swell that begins to meet the ebb, Lord Frederick; and I fancy it won't be long ere Table Mountain spread its supper-cloth—in which case I'd consider it necessary to slip cable and run out at once, though I mightn't get in again so easily. Am I to find the frigate here again, Lord Frederick?"—"Deuce take it, man—no!" said his lordship. He turned his back to hide the evident twinkle of his eye. "Should we part company, of course you make for the Bay of Bengal! You can't be sure of the Hebe, short of the Sandheads—and if not there, then opposite Fort William, at Calcutta."—"Very good, my lord," said I, and had made my bow to go on deck, when Lord Frederick called me back. "By the bye," said he hastily, "about that Indiaman of yours, Collins—she is here, no doubt?" "No, Lord Frederick," answered I, "I believe she sailed a week ago." "Dear me, the deuce!" exclaimed he, "why I meant to have sent to-morrow to have your friend Westwood arrested and brought aboard!" I started at this, on which his lordship explained that if Westwood got to Bombay, whither the Seringapatam was bound, the authorities there would have news of the thing by this time, and could send him overland at once to England, which would be far worse for him than being carried to Calcutta, where his uncle the Councillor's interest might do something for him. "The best thing you can do, Collins," added Lord Frederick, "if you are obliged to run out to sea, is to look after that Indiaman! With such a neat thing of a sea-boat under you, you might do anything you please; so cruise to windward or leeward in chase, find her out, and take out Westwood bodily—lose him afterwards in the Hoogley, if you like—carry away those old spars of hers, and send up new ones—only don't lose the schooner, I beg; so good bye to you, my dear fellow, lest we should not meet on this side the Line again!"—"Good bye, my lord!" said I cheerfully, and hurried on deck, understanding all he wanted as well as if I'd been ordered to set her jib that moment and heave up anchor. In ten minutes I was over the frigate's side, and in ten more Hammond was back in her, with the men who were to leave; while I sent my baggage below, set the hands to work shifting the schooner's berth, and by sun-down we were lying beyond hail of the ship, opposite the custom-house, and a long line of a main street in Cape Town, where we could see the people, the carriages, and the Dutch bullock-carts passing up and down; while Table Mountain hove away up off the steep Devil's Hill and the Lion's Rump, to the long level line a-top, as blue and bare as an iron monument, and throwing a shadow to the right over the peaks near at hand.

Our friend from the United States being by this time in quite an oblivious condition, the first thing I did was to have him put quietly into the boat with which Mr Snelling was to go ashore for fresh hands, and I instructed the reefer to get clear of him anyhow he liked, if it was only above tide-mark. When they were gone I walked the schooner's little quarterdeck in the dusk by myself, till the half moon rose with a ghostly copper-like glare over the hollow in the Lion's Rump, streaking across the high face of Table Mountain, and bringing out all its rifts and wrinkles again. The land-breeze began to blow steadily with a long sighing sweep from the north-east, meeting the heavy swell that set into the broad bay; and the schooner, being a light crank little craft, got rather uneasy; whereas you could see the lights of the frigate heaving and settling leisurely, less than half a mile off. I had only six or seven good hands aboard altogether at the time, which, with those the midshipman had, were barely sufficient to work her in such seas; so with all I had to do, with the difficulty of getting men in the circumstances, a long voyage before us, and things that might turn up, as I hoped, to require a touch of the regular service, why the very pleasure of having a command made me a good deal anxious. Even of that I didn't feel sure; and I kept watching Table Mountain, eager for the least bit of haze to come across the top of it, as well as sorry I had sent Snelling ashore. "I'd give a hundred pounds at this moment," thought I, "to have had Bob Jacobs here!"

As the moon got higher, I could see the swell washing up between the different merchantmen in sight, into their shadows, and heavy enough some of them seemed to roll round their cables, betwixt a breeze and a swell running the contrary ways; first one let go a second anchor, and then another, to help their heads shoreward; but still there was no danger, as things went. It wasn't long before I made out two boats coming from toward the town, round the stern of one of the ships, the frigate lying betwixt her and us, so that they took her by the way, and a good deal of hailing seemed to pass between them. I could even see epaulets glisten over the Hebe's quarter, as if there was a stir made aboard; after which the boats were plainly pulling for the schooner. What all this might mean, I couldn't very well conceive, unless it were either Snelling come back already, or else some hands Lord Frederick himself had provided before this, as I saw both boats were full of people. "Forward there!" I sung out, "hail those boats!"—"Ay, ay, the schooner ahoy!" was the answer, in a sharp voice from the headmost of them, "from the shore—all right! Stand by to heave us a line, will ye?" Next came a hail from Snelling, in our own gig; so I at once gave orders to heave them a rope and have both boats brought under the gangway, naturally supposing the sharp little fellow had come some marvellous good speed in shipping hands. As soon as he jumped on deck, I accordingly inquired how many men he had brought, when to my great surprise he informed me there was only one, "a scuffy sort of a swab," as he expressed it, "who would do for cook!"—"The devil he will, you young rascal," I broke out. "Hush, sir, for heaven's sake," said he, making some extraordinary sign which I didn't understand; "it'll all be right in the end, Mr Collins. Now then, sir," to some one in the boat alongside, as he carefully handed him the accommodation-ropes, "here you are—hold on, sir—so-o!" This was a rather youngish fellow in a huge pilot coat and a glazed cap, with some kind of uniform inside, and a large breastpin in his shirt, who handed me a paper the moment he stood firm on deck, without speaking a word; though, by the light of the deck-lantern, I didn't much like the look of his foxy sort of face, with the whiskers on it coming forward from both cheeks to his mouth, nor the glance he gave round the schooner with his pair of quick sharp little eyes. "Much more like a custom-house officer than a cook!" thought I, "unless we mean to have a French one;" but what was my astonishment, on opening the paper, to find him called "Gilbert Webb, harbour-master's assistant, hereby authorised by the Admiralty Court, sitting in Cape Town, to take charge of the doubtful vessel described in her papers as the 'Ludovico,' belonging to Monte Video—from the officer commanding the prize crew of his Britannic Majesty's ship Hebe." My first thought was to have Mr Gilbert Webb pitched over into his boat again, when Lord Frederick's own signature met my eye at the bottom of the paper, addressed below to "Lieutenant Collins, of his Majesty's schooner Aniceta, at sea." A wonderfully mysterious squint from Snelling, behind the officer, was sufficient to clinch the matter in my own mind, showing that the reefer was as sharp as a needle: and I handed back the document to the harbour gentleman, with a "Very well, sir, that will do." "I suppose I'd better have my men up, Lieutenant Collins?" said he, with a quick pert kind of accent, which made me set him down at once for a Londoner, while at the same time he seemed impatient, as I thought, to get the management. "Why, sir," said I, "I suppose you had."

Hereupon up mounted four or five decent enough looking stevedores[7]—one or two of whom had rather the air of sailors, the rest being broad-beamed, short-legged Dutchmen, with trousers like pillow-slips—followed by a whole string of fourteen or fifteen Indian Lascars, their bundles in their hands, and an ugly old serdug at their head; while the lame, broken-down, debauched-like fellow of a man-o'-warsman, that Snelling had found sitting on a timberhead ashore, got aboard with our own boat's crew. Our gangway was chokeful, to my fresh dismay, for to get rid of such a tagrag-and-bobtail, in case of running to sea, was impossible; even if they weren't odds against us, here was it likely to get a thick night, the swell growing under the schooner till she began to yerk at her anchor, head to wind, like a young filly at a manger; so that dropping them back into their boat when needful, as I intended at first, was out of the question for the present. I found from the harbour officer that the number of hands would all be required with the morning tide, when his orders were to have the schooner towed in opposite the Battery Dock, especially as there was much chance of the wind blowing strong from seaward next day. The swell on the water, he said, was such that, after putting off, he thought of going back again till the tide began to turn; if he had not been encouraged to stick to it and keep on by the midshipman, whom he fell in with near the quay. This piece of news was the finish to the rage I felt brewing in me, vexed as I naturally was to give up the notion of a free cruise, in command of a craft like the schooner; and, as soon as Mr Webb was comfortable in the cabin, over a tumbler of stiff grog and some cold beef, I sent for Snelling to my own cupboard of a state-room.

"You cursed unlucky little imp you!" I burst out, the moment he made his appearance, "What's the meaning of this, sirrah? eh?"—"What is it, if you please, sir?" said Snelling, pretending to hold down his shock-head like a frightened schoolboy, and looking up all the time both at me and the lamp at once, while he swayed with the uneasy heave of the deck in such a way as made me grip him by the arm in a perfect fury, fancying he had got drunk ashore. "You young blackguard you!" said I, shaking him, "didn't I tell you to get hands—didn't you know I meant to—to—" "Oh yes, Mr Collins," gasped the reefer, "I did indeed—you meant to cut and run—I saw it by your eye, sir, and—don't shake me any more, sir, or you'll spoil my hair—and I don't deserve it—it's—all right!" And on my letting him go, the ugly little scamp sunk down on a chair with his eyes starting from his head, and a leer like a perfect demon incarnate; but so perfectly laughable it was, not to mention the air of complete confidence between us that he threw into it, that I sat down myself, ready to grin at my bad luck. "Well, Mister Snelling," said I, quietly, "you are a touch beyond me! Let's have the joke, at least—out with it, man, else another shake may be—" The reefer pointed with his thumb over his shoulder to the cabin, shoved his chin forward, and whispered, "Why, sir, I'm only doubtful whether you could make him third officer—but at any rate, he'll always be useful at a rope, Mr Collins—won't he, sir?" I gave Snelling one look, meant to be as grave as an Old Bailey chaplain's, but it wouldn't do—my conscience wouldn't stand it—in fact the very self-same notion seemed to me to have been creeping into my mind. "You—young—rascal!" was all I could manage to say, before making bolt to go on deck. "By the by, Mister Snelling," said I, turning and looking down from the hatchway, "you must want a glass of grog—tell the boy to let you have some—and go and keep the officer company, sir."

By this time it was raining hard, the half-moon coming out at moments and shining through it with a sudden sharp gleam, in some gust of the wind off the land—showing the swell in as far as the wet white custom-house and the bare quays, the ships with their hazy lights all hither and thither, while Table Mountain was to be seen now and then peering half over the mist, first one corner and then another, of a colour like dead ashes. One time I looked down toward the dusky little cabin, where the midshipman, quite in his element, was sitting with the harbour officer, the lamp jerking and making wild swings betwixt them, while Snelling evidently egged on his companion to drink; then I gave a glance seaward, where there was nothing but a glimmer of rain and spray along the dark hollows of the water. I couldn't make up my mind, all I could do—it was too barefaced a thing to slip from the roadstead with a breeze blowing off-shore; but the worst of it was that I didn't feel easy at the idea of parting with an anchor in the circumstances, not to say carrying off the Government people, unless forced to it. I accordingly went below to mix myself a stiffener, and found the officer a cool head, for, in spite of all Snelling could do, the reefer himself had got provoked, whereas the sharp Mr Webb was only a little brisker than before. "A rough sort of night," said I, nodding to him, as I knocked the water out of my cap. "Well, it seems," said he, free and easy. "S'pose I go on deck then, gentlemen—I've refreshed, I assure you, so you needn't trouble about this 'ere schooner no farther—glad to get quit of it and turn in, I desay, lieutenant?"—"No trouble in the world, Mr Webb," said I, going on with my mixture, "far from it; but sit down a minute, pray sir,—Mr Snelling here will take charge of the deck for us in the meantime;" and Snelling vanished at once, Mr Webb apparently flattered at my wishing his company. "Will that cable of yours hold, think ye, Lieutenant Collins?" asked he, filling up another glass. "Why," said I, almost laughing, "to tell you the truth, I begin to feel devilish doubtful of it." "What!" broke out the harbour officer, starting up, "then I must 'ave another put down immediately: why, what's the effect, sir—we'll be carried out to sea!" "You said it exactly, Mr Webb," I said "'twould have been much worse, I suppose, if we were driven ashore, though! Now look you, if I were to let go a second anchor at present, I couldn't light upon a better plan either to break her back, or lose both anchors in the end—from the difference of strain on the two cables, with this ground-swell. The fact is, my good fellow, you're evidently not fit to take charge at present." "D—n me, lieutenant!" said he, looking fierce and foolish at the same time, "here's strange lang'age to a Gov'ment officer, sir—I hask the meanin' off it at once, mister!" "But I depend a good deal on your knowledge of Table Bay weather," I continued, leaning back with my weather eye screwed to bear upon him. "D'ye think this wind likely to moderate soon, sir? come now."—"No," replied he sulkily: "I'm sure it won't—and to-morrow it's certain to blow back ten times worse." "Then, Mr Webb," said I, rising, "you oughtn't to have come aboard to-night; as the short and the long of it is, I shall get the schooner an offing the first possible moment!" The officer stared at me in a bewildered manner; and as for the schooner, she seemed to be bolting and pitching in a way worse than before, with now and then a plunge of the swell on her broadside as if she had been under weigh. Suddenly Snelling lifted the skylight frame and screamed down into the cabin, "Mr Collins, Mr Collins! she's been dragging her anchor for the last ten minutes, sir!"

I sprang on deck at two bounds—the schooner had somehow or other got her anchor out of hold at the time, the cable as taut as a fiddle-string. It was quite dark aloft, and not a vestige of Table Mountain to be seen, though the moonshine, low down to westward, brought out two or three tracks of light along the stretch of water, and you saw the lights in the ships slowly sweeping past. Where we happened to be, it blew two ways at once, as is often the case in Table Bay, round the bluffs of the mountain, and as soon as she brought up again with a surge at the windlass, the heave of a long swell took her right on the quarter, lifting her in to her anchor again with a slack of the hawser, at which every second man sung out to "hold on!" Over she went to port, a sea washing up the starboard side, and throwing a few dozen bucketfuls at once fair into the companion, where our friend the harbour officer was sticking at the time; so down plumped Mr Webb along with it, and the booby hatch was shoved close after him, while the poor devils of Lascars were huddled together as wet as swabs in the lee of the caboose forward. "A hand to the wheel!" shouted I, as soon as I recovered myself; when to my great surprise I saw Snelling's new hand, poor creature as I'd thought him, standing with a spoke in each fist, as cool and steady as possible, and his eye fixed on me in the true knowing way which I felt could be trusted to. "Jib there!" I sung out, "see all clear to run up a few hanks of the jib—stand by to cut the cable at the bitts!"—"Ay, ay, sir," answered Snelling, who was working away with the harbour men, his bare head soaked, and altogether more like an imp than a young gentleman of the navy—"All's clear, sir."

Five minutes I dare say we stood, every one in the same position, while I waited for a good moment in the run of the swell, looking into the binnacle: till she hung slack, as it were, in a wide seething trough of the sea, when I signed to the man behind me to put the helm gradually to starboard. I glanced at the fellow again, caught his sharp weatherly eye once more—then putting both hands to my mouth I sung out to bowse on the jib halliards. "Now—cut—the cable!" shouted I, springing forward in my anxiety. The schooner rose away from her anchor on the heavy roll of the sea; I saw two quick strokes of the axe on the instant, and she was spinning head off from the wind, heeling over betwixt the force of it and the ground-swell together, while the mass of black water was washing bodily away with us; the new helmsman showing down below me as he leant to the wheel, like somebody at the foot of a slide. If he hadn't helped her at the moment with a back turn of the spokes to port, t'would have been all up with us. As it was, the schooner fell off gallantly in his hands, with a sliding surge into the lee of the next swell, that buried her sharp bows in the green sea, till it foamed about our very shoulders as we hung on like grim death to the weather bulwark. She was just shaking herself free, and rising like a buoy over the broad tops of the waves, when Snelling, myself, and two or three of the men, staggered down to her mainmast to swig up the throat halliards, letting her feel a little of the boom mainsail; and we had scarce belayed, as the last glimpse of the frigate's lights was caught astern of us, heaving and setting, as she rode with her two bower anchors down; we had driven past close enough to have heard the creak of her hamper aloft. After that, I had the fore-stay-sail set on her, then the reefed mainsail, and the lively schooner yielded to the long rolling seas so well, as very soon to make her own weather of it—especially since, clear of the high land about Table Bay, it was blowing only a strong breeze, and the more I began to feel master of her, the more inclined I was to let her show her good qualities. Such a craft I never had had the full management of before in my life; and you may easily fancy how I felt at dividing the hands into the two watches, giving little Snelling command of one, as first mate, and picking out our men in turn. I looked round amongst mine, rather at a loss for one to make second mate for the cruise, though there were three prime enough man-o'-warsmen, and I had chosen one of the Government officer's gang for his activity. As for the Lascars, we slumped in half of the number to each of us, for make-weights—when Snelling's fresh hand, who had fallen to my share, caught my eye again as he stood at the wheel. Every half spoke he gave the schooner told; she was topping the heavy seas as they rose, and taking them just where they melted one to the other, with a long floating cleave, that carried her counter fairly free of the after-run, though nearly right before the wind: the main-boom had been guyed over to the lee-quarter, till a third of the sail hung clear of her hull, and the breeze swept into the hollow of it, thick with spray. The light from the little binnacle shone up distinctly on the man's face, and with all the desperate, used-up, marbled sort of look of it, like one getting the better of a long spree ashore, I thought there was something uncommonly promising about him, not to say greatly above the run of foremast men. The wet, the wind, and the work he was at, took off the seediness of his clothes; even the old rag of a handkerchief round his hairy neck had got a gloss to it, and he stood handling the wheel with a strange mixture of recklessness and care, as he glanced from the compass to the gaff of the mainsail against the scud, and down again. The very contrast between the man's manner and his outward rig was sufficient to strike one, though plenty of seamen are to be found in the like state ashore: but what fixed me to him above all, was the expression in those two keen, searching, living eyes of his, when they once or twice met mine on their way from aloft to the compass-boxes. 'Twas as if they'd woke up since he came aboard out of a sleepy, maudlin condition, with the "blue-devils" or scarce fully out of 'em; like a sick man's in the lull of a fever, suddenly seen watching you out of the dusk of the bed, when one happens to glance up from the nurse's seat.

"What's your name, my man?" asked I, stepping aft to the binnacle. "My name is Jones, sir," said he readily. "And your first name?" I said. "Jack," was the answer, in an off-hand way, with a hitch of one shoulder, and a weather-spoke to the wheel; spoken in an accent you'd have expected more in a West End drawing-room than from a common sailor. "Ah," said I, sharply, "Jack Jones? I wonder how many Jack Joneses there are afloat! An able seaman, I think, Jones?"—"Why sir," replied the man, "I never rate myself, sir—'tis all one to me, able, ordinary, landsman, or boy—I carry no papers, and leave my betters to rate me." "Where were you last, my man?" I asked; whereupon I met such a cool, steady, deep look out of the fellow's strange light-coloured eyes, bloodshot as they were with drinking, that I felt almost our very two souls jostle in it: as much as to say, To all eternity fathom me if ye can! "Well, I forget where, sir," said he, lowering his look to the compass-box again: "always the way with me, after a trip, a cruise, a voyage, or whatever it may be. I've got—ha!" and he yielded his body coolly to a jerk of the schooner's wheel. "A sweet craft this, sir, but a little ticklish!" "You've got what?" said I, not unwilling to wear out the time. "I've got—no memory!" Still there was somewhat so gloomy and mournful in the next glance aloft, I don't know how it was, but I felt inclined to offer him a mate's place on trial, and so I hinted, if he knew half as well how to handle a craft as he did of steering her. To my own surprise, Jones's wonder didn't seem to be roused at the notion, except that he gave me another quick glance from head to foot, with a queer smile that struck me as if I were being questioned, instead of him; then he looked down over his own outfit, judging by which you'd have said he'd been shipwrecked. "Well," said I, "I daresay you've been hard put to it, somehow, Jones,—so as soon as you leave the wheel, you can go below to the steward, and get a seagoing suit of my own, till we see Calcutta, when your mate's wages will set you all right again." The man touched his battered old straw hat; but I noticed his eyes gleam for a moment by the binnacle light, and a strange twitch run round his mouth at the mention of the mate's wages: the only way I could account for it at the time being his late hard-up condition; and nothing to my mind was more deucedly pitiable, than to see the thought of a few paltry additional rupees light up a head like that, with the glistening sort of expression of a miser, as I fancied. The man had a head on him, in fact, when you eyed him, fit for a gentleman's shoulders, or more—his hair and his whiskers curly and dark, draggled though they were with the rain, not to say Cape Town mud—while the wearing away of the hair about the temples, and the red grog-streaks in the veins of his face, made him no doubt a dozen years older to appearance than he was. For my part I was quite convinced already, this same Jack Jones hadn't been sent out a cabin boy; there was not only a touch of high blood in him at bottom, but I'd have sworn he had been some time or other in the place of a gentleman, afloat or ashore, though plainly now "going to the devil."

Meanwhile the breaking look of the clouds away on our larboard bow showed it wasn't far off dawn; so, sending another hand to the wheel, and finding a snug spot under a stern-grating for a snooze on deck, I told Jones to begin with taking charge of the deck for me. "One thing, sir," said he, touching his hat again, as I lay down, "I've only shipped for the outward voyage, and leave at the first port."—"Why, what the deuce!" said I, lifting my head; "what do you mean to do there, eh?" "I—I want to go ashore," answered he, eagerly; "ay, if we're years on the cruise, so much the better, sir,—but so soon as she drops anchor off Calcutta, I'm my own master?"—"Have your own way, then," said I; "at any rate I'll try you in the meantime,—so Mister Jones, let's see how you mind the schooner till eight bells!" Whereupon I turned myself over to sleep, and it was as broad daylight as we had any likelihood of about the Cape, when I woke.

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, Lord! 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 bulk-heads below, a slight shake to windward, and a yerk 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 crosstrees.

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 mainstaysail 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 laughably 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, Mister 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-gunnel. "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'd 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 canvass 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 sunk 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 urged 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 devilishly 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 main-shrouds, 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 mainboom aft, and the head-sheets 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 headrail, 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 half-way, 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 zig-zag 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 of 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 off 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 cart-horse 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 of 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 inboard 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 one's self, and make one's self 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 yesty 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 forechains, that made us look sharp lest the canvass 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. "D—n it, 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 confidentially 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 masthead 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 Indiamen 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 from 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.

With the evening we were once more running sharp on a wind up channel; and when she did get her own way in a good breeze, the schooner's qualities came out. 'Twas a perfect luxury to look over the side and see the bubbles pass, her sharp bows sliding through it like a knife, she eating into the wind all the time in a way none but a fore-and-aft clipper could hope to do, with a glassy blue ripple sent back from her weather-bow as far as the forechains: then to wake of a morning and feel her bounding under you with a roll up to windward, while the water gushed through and through below the keel, and ran yearning and toppling away back along the outer timbers into her boiling wake, working with the moving rudder. And our man-o'-warsmen were quite delighted with the Young Hebe, as they still called her. Snelling was in his element while we were having the new spars sent up aloft—a set of longer sticks than before—till she had twice the air, as well as a knowing rake aft. Next thing was to get the long-brass nine-pounder amidships from under the boat, where the Frenchmen had kept it, besides which we found another in her hold; so that, added to six small carronades already on deck, we made a pretty show. Meanwhile, for my own part, I kept cracking on with every stitch of canvass that could be clapped upon the spars, including studding-sails. Jones himself didn't know better than I did by this time how to handle the craft, schooner though she was, in the way of making her use what weather we had to the best purpose. Variable as it proved, too, I was aware the Indiamen would have pretty much the same now as we had; so that, on going aloft with the glass, as I did every watch in the day, I soon began each time expecting one or other of them to heave in sight.

As for the five hands from Cape Town, they seemed to have fallen in cheerfully enough with our own; and as soon as the fine weather came, the gang of Lascars were set to duty like the rest. Snelling would have them even trained to work the guns; although, if it blew at all hard, not one could be got to go aloft except their old serang, and the tindal, his mate. What surprised me most was the harbour officer himself at last asking, as Mr Snelling told me, to be put in a watch; but as the midshipman said there was no doubt Webb had made a voyage or two before, somewhere or other, I agreed to it at once. "I'm not sure, sir," added the midshipman, with one of his doubtful double looks, "but the gentleman may have seen blue-water the first time at Government expense, and not in the service either—he don't look fore and aft enough, Mr Collins, harbour officer though he be; but never mind, sir, I'll see after him!"—"Pooh," said I, laughing; "if he does turn to, Mr Snelling, it shan't be in the watch you have to do with! Hand him over to Mr Jones." By this time I had changed the mid into my own watch, and given Jones charge of the other—so to him the harbour officer went.

The main character aboard of us, to me at any rate, was this Jones himself. The fact was, at first I had my doubts of him altogether, partly owing to the queer way we got hold of him, partly on account of his getting the upper hand so much through chance, in the tremendous weather we had at the outset, till I wasn't sure but it might come into the fellow's head of itself, to be upon some drift or other that might cost me trouble, as things stood. However, I no sooner felt where I was, and got the craft under my own spoke, than I came to set him down for nothing but one of those strange hands you fall in with at sea sometimes, always sailing with a "purser's name," a regular wonder of a shipmate, and serving to quote every voyage after, by way of a clincher on all hard points, not to say an oracle one can't get beyond, and can't flow sky-high enough. To tell the truth, though, Jones was as thorough a seaman as ever I met with—never at a loss, never wanting on any hand; whether it was the little niceties we stood in need of for setting the schooner's rigging all right again, which none but a blue-water long-voyage sailor can touch, or, what comes to be still better in tropical latitudes, a cool head and a quick hold, with full experience for all sorts of weather, 'twas much the same to him. He was all over like iron, too, never seeming to stand in need of sleep, and seeing like a hawk. At any hour I came on deck in his watch, there was Jones, all awake and ready, till hearing him walk the planks over my head of a fine night made me at times keep my eyes open, listening to it and the wash of the water together. I fancied there was something restless in it, like the sea, with now and then an uneven sort of a start; and at last it would come to full stop, that gave me the notion of how he was standing quiet in the same spot; whether he was looking aloft, or thinking, or leaning over the side, or what he was going to do, troubled me wonderfully. The only want in his seamanship I noticed, he evidently wasn't used to handle a large ship; but craft of some kind I was pretty sure he had commanded in the course of his life. As for taking observations, he could do it better than I could then; while the knowledge he had on different heads, that came out by chance, made you think more of a Cambridge graduate than a common sailor, such as he had shipped for with us. The strangest part of all about him, though, was what I couldn't well name, not to this day: 'twas more grained in his manner, and the ring of his voice at particular moments, as well as his walk, though these were the smart seaman's no less; but one couldn't help thinking of a man that had known the world ashore some time or other, in a different enough station from now—ay, and in a way to bring out softer lines in his face than reefing topsails or seeing the main-tack ridden down would do. The nearest I could come to calling it, far apart as the two men stood, was to fancy he reminded me of Lord Frederick Bury himself; especially when he looked all of a sudden to the horizon in that wide, vacant kind of fashion, as if he expected it farther off than it was: only Jones's face was twice the age, like a man's that had had double the passions in it at the outset, and given them full swing since then; with a sleeping devil in his eye yet, besides, as I thought, which only wanted somewhat to rouse it. Only for that, I had a sort of leaning to Jones myself; but, as it was, I caught myself wishing, over and over, for something to make us fall regularly foul of each other, and get rid of this confounded doubtful state. One hitch of a word to take hold of, and, by Jove! I felt all the blood in my body would boil out in me to find how we stood, and show it; but nothing of the kind did Jones let pass—and as close as the sea itself he was in regard to his past life. As for the men from the frigate, at least, they seemingly looked on him with no great fondness, and a good deal of respect, in spite of themselves, for his seamanship; whereas, if he had been left in the forepeak in place of the cabin, I've no doubt in a short time it would have been no man but Jones. You light now and then upon a man afloat, indeed, that his shipmates hold off from, as healthy dogs do from a mad one; and you saw they had some sort of an inkling of the gloomy close nature Jones had in him, by the way they obeyed his orders. Webb's three Cape Dutchmen seemed to have a notion he was some being with mysterious powers, while the Lascars ran crouching at his very word—some of them being, as I found, Malays, and the rest Mussulmen from Chittagong; but Jones could send them about in their own language, Dutchmen and all—a part of the matter which did not tend to keep me less careful over him. Still I observed, since his coming aboard, that Jones never once touched liquor, which had plainly enough been his ruin ashore; whether on account of meaning to pull up once for all and mend, or only to have a wilder bout at next port, or else to keep himself steady for aught that might turn up, I couldn't settle in my own mind. Though deucedly doubtful of its being the first, the very idea of it made one feel for the man; and, in case of his doing well, I had no small hopes of something in the upshot to save a real sailor like him from going to the devil altogether, as he seemed doing.

Now, after our getting clear of the rough Cape weather, and the dead-lights being taken out of the stern-windows, I had given a look, for the first time, into the schooner's after-cabins, which were pretty much as the people she belonged to before had left them, except for the rough work the gale had played. There were two of them, one opening into the other; and I must say it was a melancholy sight to meet the bright sunlight streaming into them from off the water astern, with all the little matters either just as if the owners were still inside, or else tumbled about at sixes and sevens. One drawer, in particular, had come out of a table, scattering what was in it on the deck: there was a half open letter in a woman's hand, all French, and showing a lock of hair, with a broken diamond cross of the French Legion of Honour, besides a sort of paper-book full of writing, and two printed ones bound in morocco. I picked up the letter and the cross, put them in again, and shoved the drawer back to its place, though I brought the books away with me to have a glance over. What struck me most, though, was a plaster figure of the French emperor himself, standing fastened on a shelf, with one hand in the breast of his great coat, and looking calmly out of the white sightless eyes; while right opposite hung a sort of curtain which you'd have thought they were fixed upon. When I hauled it aside, I started—there, on a shelf to match the other, was a beautiful smiling child's head to the shoulders, of pure white marble, as if it leant off the bulkhead like a cherub out of the clouds. Spite of all, however, the touch of likeness it had to the head I got such a glimpse of at Longwood, even when the hot sunlight showed it in my spy-glass so pale and terrible, was sufficient to tell me what this was,—Napoleon's own little son, in fact, who was made king of Rome, as I remembered hearing at the time. The thought of the schooner's strange French captain, and his desperate scheme, came back on me so strong, joined to what I saw he had an eye to in fitting out his cabins, that, for my own part, I hadn't the heart to use them myself, and at first sight ordered the dead-lights to be shipped again, and the door locked.

'Twas a good many days after this, of course, and we had made a pretty fast run up the Mozambique, in spite of the sharp navigation required, sighting nothing larger than the native and Arab craft to be seen thereabouts; we were beginning to clear out from amongst the clusters of islands and shoals at the channel head, when two large sail were made in open water to nor'-eastward. Next morning by daybreak we were to windward of the weathermost,—a fine large Indiaman she was, crowding a perfect tower of canvass. Shortly after, however, the schooner was within hail, slipping easily down upon her quarter, which seemed to give them a little uneasiness, plenty of troops as she seemed to have on board, and looming like a frigate. After some showing of keeping on, and apparently putting faith in the man-o'-war pennant I hoisted, she hove into the wind, when we found she was the Company's ship Warringford, and the other the something Castle, I forget which, both for Calcutta. The next thing, as soon as they found we were tender to his Majesty's frigate Hebe, was to ask after the Seringapatam; on which I was told she was three or four days sail ahead with the Mandarin, bound to China, neither of them having put in at Johanna Island to refresh. I was just ready to put our helm up again and bid good-bye, when the tiffin gong could be heard sounding on the Indiaman's quarterdeck, and the old white-haired captain politely asked me if I wouldn't come aboard with one or two of my officers to lunch. Mr Snelling gave me a wistful glance—there were a dozen pretty faces admiring our schooner out of the long white awnings: but even if the notion of bringing up Snelling himself as my first officer hadn't been too much for me, not to speak of either Jones or Webb, why the very thoughts that everything I saw recalled to me, made me the more eager to get in sight of the Seringapatam. "Thank you, sir," answered I. "No—I must be off after the Bombay ship."—"Ah," hailed the old captain, "some of your Admiral's post-bags, I suppose. Well, keep as much northing as you can, sir, and I daresay you'll find her parted company. She's got a jury fore topmast up, for one she lost a week ago; so you can't mistake her for the Mandarin, with a good glass."—"Have you noticed any suspicious craft lately, sir?" asked I. "Why, to tell you the truth, lieutenant," sang out he, looking down off the high bulwarks at our long nine-pounders and the knot of Lascars, "none more so than we thought you, at first, sir!" The cadets on the poop roared with laughter, and an old lady with two daughters seemed to eye Snelling doubtfully through an opera-glass, as the reefer ogled both of them at once. "By the bye," sang out the captain of the Indiaman to me again, "I fancy the passengers in that ship must have got somehow uncomfortable—one of our Bengal grandees aboard of her wanted a berth to Calcutta with us, 'tother day in the Mozambique; but we're too full already!"—"Indeed, sir?" said I; but the schooner's mainboom was jibbing over, and with two or three more hails, wishing them a good voyage, and so on, away we slipped past their weather-bow. The Warringford got under weigh at her leisure, and in an hour or two her topsails were down to leeward of us. On I cracked with square and studding-sails to the quartering breeze, till the schooner's light hull jumped to it, and aloft she was all hung out of a side, like a dairyman's daughter carrying milk; with the pace she went at I could almost say to an hour when we should overhaul the chase.

Still, after two or three days of the trade-wind, well out in the Indian Ocean, and not a spot to be seen, we had got so far up the Line as to make me sure we had overrun her. Accordingly the schooner was hauled sharp on a wind to cruise slowly down across what must be the Indiaman's track, judging as we could to a nicety, with a knowledge of the weather we had had. For my part I was so certain of sighting her soon, that I ordered the after-cabins to be set to rights, seeing a notion had taken hold of me of actually offering them to Sir Charles Hyde for the voyage to Calcutta—Fancy the thought! 'Twas too good to be likely; but Violet herself actually being in that little after-cabin and sleeping in it—the lively schooner heading away alone for India, and they and Westwood the sole passengers aboard—why, the idea of it was fit to drive me crazy with impatience.

Well, one fine night, after being on deck all day, and the whole night before, almost, I had turned in to my cot to sleep. From where I lay I could see the moonshine off the water through the stern-light in that after-cabin, by the half-open door. I felt the schooner going easily through the water, with a rise and fall from the heave of the long Line-swell; so close my eyes I couldn't, especially as the midshipman could be heard snoring on the other side like the very deuce. Accordingly I turned out into the after-cabin, and got hold of one of the Frenchman's volumes to read, when, lo and behold, I found it was neither more nor less than Greek, all I knew being the sight of it. Next I commenced overhauling the bundle of handwriting, which I took at first for a French log of the schooner's voyage, and sat down on the locker to have a spell at it. So much as I could make out, in spite of the queer outlandish turn the letters had, and the quirks of the unnatural sort of language, it was curious enough—a regular story, in fact, about his own life, the war, and Buonaparte himself. At another time I'd have given a good deal to go through with it at odd hours—and a strange affair I found it was some time afterwards; but meanwhile I had only seen at the beginning that his name was Le Compte Victor l'Allemand, Capitaine de la Marine FranÇaise, and made out at the end how there was some scheme of his beyond what I knew before, to be carried out in India,—when it struck me there was no one on the quarterdeck above. I listened for a minute through the stern-window, and thought I heard some one speaking over the schooner's lee-quarter, as she surged along; so slipping on a jacket and cap, I went on deck at once.

It was middle watch at the time; but as soon as I came up I saw all was quiet—Webb near the gangway talking to the old Lascar serang, and breaking the English wonderfully betwixt them; while the Lascars of the watch were sitting like tailors in a ring on the forecastle planks, each waiting for his turn of one cocoa-nut hookah, that kept hubble-bubbling away gravely under the smoker's nose, as he took a long suck at it, while the red cinder in the bowl lighted up his leathery Hindoo face and mustache like a firefly in the root of a banian, till he handed it, without even a wipe, to his neighbour. These fellows had begun to get much livelier as we made the tropics; and this same serang of theirs had put out his horns once or twice to Snelling lately, though he drew them in again the moment he saw me—a sulky old knotty-faced, yellow-eyed devil I thought him at any rate, while his dish-cloth of a turban, his long blue gown and red trousers, reminded you at sea in a gale of a dancing dervish. The day we spoke the Indiaman, in fact, I noticed there was something in the wind for a minute or two with him and his gang, which put it in my head at first to offer them to the captain for a couple of good English hands; and as I passed him and Webb this time, the serang stopped his talk, and sidled off.

However, a beautiful night it was, as ever eye looked upon even in the blue Indian Ocean: the heavens cloudless, the full round moon shining high off our weather-beam again, the stars drawn up into her bright light, as it were, trembling through the films of it like dew-drops in gossamer of a summer morning: you saw the sea meet the sky on every hand, without a speck on the clear line of horizon, through the squares of our ratlins and betwixt the schooner's two long fore-and-aft booms. A pretty strongish breeze we had, too, blowing from east to west with a sweep through the emptiness aloft, and a wrinkling ripple over the long gentle swells, as deep in the hue as if fresh dye came from the bottom, and crisping into a small sparkle of foam wherever they caught it full. Something pleasant, one couldn't say what, was in the air; and every sheet being hauled taut to hold wind, the slant gush of it before her beam drove her slipping ahead toward the quarter it came from, with a dip down and a saucy lift of her jibs again, as if she were half balanced amidships, but little noise about it. I took a squint aloft and an overhaul all round, and nothing was to be seen. The size of the sky through the moonlight looked awful, as it were, and the strength of the breeze seemed to send a heavenly blue deep into the western quarter, till you saw a star in it. The night was so lovely, in fact, it somehow made one think of one's mother, and old times, when you used to say your prayers. Still I couldn't see the mate of the watch on the weather quarterdeck, which surprised the more in Jones's case, since he was always ready for me when I came up; and, to tell the truth, I shouldn't have been sorry to catch him napping for once, only to show he was like men in common. I walked aft by the weather side of the large mainsail, accordingly, till I saw him leaning with his head over the lee-bulwark, and heard him again, as I thought, apparently speaking to some one down the schooner's side; upon which I stepped across. Jones's back was to me as I looked over too; but owing to what he was busy with, I suppose, and the wash of the water, which was louder there than inboard, while you heard the plash from her bows every time she forged, he evidently didn't hear me. You may fancy my wonder to find he was reading loud out to himself from the other of the Frenchman's volumes, which I had no doubt left in the dining-cabin—the book open in both hands—he giving it forth in long staves, with a break between—and regular Greek it was, too: you'd have thought he timed them to the plash alongside; and I must say, as every string of long-tailed words flowed together like one, in Jones's deep voice, and the swell rose once or twice with its foam-bells near his very hands, I almost fancied I made a meaning of them—each like a wave, as it were, sweeping to a crest, and breaking. The gusto the man showed in it you can't conceive; and, what was more, I had no doubt he understood the sense of it, for all of a sudden, after twenty staves or so of the kind, he stopped.[8] "There!" said he, "there, old Homer—women, wine, and adventure—what could the devil ask more, blind old prater, with a sound in you like the sea? Ay, wash, wash, wash away, lying old blue-water, you cant wash it out—and wine—no, not the strongest rum in Cape Town—can wash you out!" With that Jones laid his head on his arms, with the book still in one hand, muttering to himself, and I listened in spite of me. "Still it rouses the old times in me!" said he. "Here comes this book across me, too. Ay, ay, and the Rector fancied, sitting teaching me Greek out of old wild Homer all week day—and—and his girl slipping out and in—'twould do to don the cassock of a Sunday and preach out of the pulpit against the world, the devil, and the flesh—then warn me against the sea—ha!" The laugh that came from him at that moment was more like a dog than a human being; but on he went muttering "Women, wine, and adventure, said ye, old Greek, and a goddess too; still he was a good old man the Rector—no guile nor evil in him, with his books in the cases yonder, and the church-spire seen through the window over the garden, and his wife with—ah, the less of that. 'Twas in me, though, and all the blood—and in her dark eyes, too, Mary, though she was! Damnation!" he broke out again, after a bit, as if he'd been arguing it with something under the side, "I didn't take her the first time I came home—nor the second—but—but—ay, I came back! Oh that parting-stile, in sight of the sea—and that packet-ship—but oh God! that night, that night with the schooner forging ahead through the blue—blue—" And he stopped with a groan that shook him as he leant over. "Hellish, hellish by God!" he said, suddenly standing upright and looking straight aloft, with his bare head and face to the wide empty sky, and the moonlight tipping the hair on his forehead, from over the high shadow on the lee-side of the mainsail, where it glistened along the gaff. "She was pure to the last!" I heard him say, though I had walked to the other side of the boom; "ay, though I rot to perdition for it!—Down, old fiend!" as he lifted his one hand with the book, and drove it alongside, seemingly watching it settle away astern.

Now I had heard nothing from Jones that I couldn't have fancied before, and there was even a humour to my mind in the notion of clapping it all on old Homer, if Homer it was, and heaving him overboard with such a confoundedly complimentary burial-service. But some of the words that dropped from him shot through one's veins like icicles: and now there was something fearful in the sight of him standing straight again, with a look right into the heavens, as if he'd have searched them up and up—in that lovely night too, spread far and wide—the very rays of the moonlight sparkled down the weather side of the sail I was on, trembling on the leech-ropes and brails as they swayed, and into the hollows they made in the belly of the taut canvass: the long shining spot of it wavered and settled on the same two planks of the quarterdeck, beyond the shadow of the bulwark from the moon's eye, fast as the schooner moved through the water, and it was like a hand laid upon her, with the air and wind stretching between. Of a sudden I saw Jones wheel slowly round where he stood, like a man turned about by main strength, with his eyes fixed aloft, and his one arm raising from the shoulder till his forefinger pointed to something, as I thought, about the fore-to'gallant sail. His face was like ashes, his eye glaring, and I sprang across to him under the main-boom. "See!" said he, never turning his head, and the words hissed betwixt his teeth, "look at that!"

"For heaven's sake, what, Mr Jones?" said I. "Her—her," was his answer, "coming against the wind—dead fore-and-aft in the shade of the sails!" On the lee-sides of them the high boom-sails made a sort of a thin shadow against the moonshine off the other beam, which came glimpsing through between them out of a world of air to the south-east, with a double of it flickering alongside on the water as it heaved past to leeward; and whether it was fancy, or whether it was but the reflection aloft from below, I thought, as I followed Jones's finger, I saw something like the shape of a woman's dress floating close in with the bonnet of the foretopmast-staysail, from the dusk it made to the breast of the fore-topsail, and even across the gush of white light under the yard—long and straight, as it were, like a thing lifted dripping out of water, and going, as he said, right against the schooner's course. "Now in the foresail!" whispered Jones, his eye moving as on a pivot, and a thrill ran through me at the notion, for I made out one single moment what I thought a face against the sky at the gaff-end, white as death, shooting aft toward the mainsail,—though next instant I saw it was but a block silvered by the moon as the schooner lifted. "Now the mainsail!" said he huskily, "and now—now, by the heavens—rising—rising to the gaff-topsail—away! Oh Christ! Mary!"

He was leaning aft toward the width of the sky, with both hands clutched together before him, shuddering all over. For the first minute my own blood crept, I must say; but directly after I touched him on the shoulder. "This is strange, Mr Jones," said I, "what's the matter?" "Once in the Bermudas!" said he, still wildly, "once in the Pacific—and now! Does the sea give up its dead, though, think ye?"—"You've a strong fancy, Mr Jones, that's all," I said, sternly. "Fancy!" said he, though beginning to get the better of himself; "did ye ever fancy a face looking down—down at you in the utterest scorn—down sideways off the shoulder of the garment, as it sticks wet into every outline like life? All the time gliding on the other way, too, and the eyes like two stars a thousand miles away beyond, as kind as angels'—neither wind nor sea can stop it, till suddenly it rises to the very cope of heaven—still looking scornfully down at you!—No, sir, fancy it you couldn't!" The glance he gave me was somehow or other such as I couldn't altogether stomach from the fellow, and he was turning to the side when I said quietly, "No, nor Homer either, I daresay!" Jones started and made a step towards me. "You heard me a little ago!" rapped out he, eyeing me. "Yes," I said; "by Jove! who could help being curious to hear a sailor spout Greek as you were doing, Mr Jones?"

"The fact is, Mr Collins," answered he, changing his tone, "I was well brought up—the more shame to me for bringing myself to what you saw me. I had a sister drowned, too, on her passage to America one voyage, when I was mate of the ship myself. No wonder it keeps my nerves shaking sometimes, when I've had too long about shore."—"Well, well, Jones," said I, rather softening, "you've proved yourself a first-rate seaman, and I've got nothing to complain of—but I tell You fairly I had my doubts of you! So you'll remember you're under the Articles of War aboard here, sir," added I, "which as long as I have this schooner under hand, I'll be hanged if I don't carry out!" All at once the thought struck me a little inconveniently, of my carrying off Webb and his people, and I fancied Jones's quick eye wandered to the Lascars forward. "I know it, sir," said he, looking me steadily in the face; "and what's more, Mr Collins, at any rate I couldn't forget you picked me out, confounded low as I looked, to come aft here! 'Tis not every captain afloat that has such a good eye for a seaman, as I know!" "Oh well, no more about it," I said, walking forward on the weather side, and leaving him on the lee one as distinctly as Lord Frederick Bury could have done to myself in the frigate. Jones no doubt thought I didn't notice the slight wrinkle that gathered round his lee-eye when he gave me this touch of butter at the end; but I put it down for nothing more, gammon though it was.

It was near the end of the watch, the moon beginning to set, while it still wanted three hours of daybreak in those latitudes, when the look-out on the top-gallant-yard, who was stationed there in man-o'-war cruising fashion, reported a sail to windward. Just then the midshipman came on deck to his watch, wonderfully early for him indeed: and on my remarking it was probably the Indiaman at last, Jones himself went aloft with the night-glass to make her out. "Mr Snelling," said I, "see the hands on deck ready for going about." Next minute I saw him rousing up the rest of the Lascars, who slept watch and watch on the forecastle. Only five or six of the Hebe's men were up; and all of them, save the man at the wheel, ran aloft to rig out stunsail-booms to windward, as soon as the schooner was fairly on the starboard tack, standing to nor'-eastward. Suddenly I saw a scuffle between the midshipman, and the tindal,[9] a stout dark-faced young Bengalee, with a jaunty scull-cap and frock, whom Snelling had probably helped along with a touch of a rope's end; and in a moment two or three more of them were upon him; while the reefer drew his dirk, and sung out to me, scarce before I was with him, the Lascars rolling into the lee-scuppers at two kicks of my foot. Webb and three of the men from Cape Town were hoisting a stunsail at the time, the smart man-o'-war'smen aloft singing out to them to bear a hand. What with the noise of the sail flapping, and its being betwixt my own men and the deck, they could know nothing of the matter; and the Lascars let go the halliards in a body, making a rush at Snelling and myself with everything they could pick up in the shape of a spar.

This would have been nothing, as in two or three minutes more the men would have been down, and the cocoa-faced rascals dodged every way from the handspike I got hold of; but I just caught a glimpse on one side of the sly old serang shoving on the fire-scuttle to keep down the watch below; and on the other, of Webb looking round him, evidently to see how matters stood. Two Dutchmen seized the first sailor that came down the rigging, by the legs, and I saw the affair must be finished at once, it had so much the look of a regular plot on Webb's part, if Jones wasn't concerned in it too. I made one spring upon my Cape Town gentleman, and took him by the throat with one hand, while I hit the biggest Dutchman full behind the ear, felling him to the deck; on which the man-o'-war's man grappled his watchmate, and Webb was struggling with me sufficiently to keep both my hands full, when I had a pleasant inkling of a Malay Lascar slipping toward my back with a bare kreese in his fist. I just looked over my shoulder at his black eyes twinkling devilishly before he sprang, when some one came sliding fair down from the fore-top-mast-head by a backstay, and pitched in a twinkling on top of his head—a thing enough to break the neck of a monument. Directly after, I saw Jones himself hitting right and left with his night-glass, from the moonlight to the shadow of the foresail, while Snelling tumbled over a Lascar at every slap, standing up in boxer style. By the time the rest of the men came down all was settled—the Dutchmen sulking against the bulwarks, and Webb gasping after I let him go. "Boatswain," said I to one of the sailors, "clap that man in irons below. Mr Snelling, see the watch called, sir." "I 'ad the law with me," said Webb gloomily. "You plotted it then, Mr Webb?" I said. "Didn't you carry us off illegally?" said he. "I only meant to recover the vessel—upon my honour, nothing more, sir; and if you're 'ard with me, you'll have to answer for it, I assure you!" Here he looked round to Jones in a strange way, as I fancied for a moment; but Jones turned on his heel with a sneer. "Why, Mr Webb," answered I, "you lost that tack by offering yourself in a watch, which makes the thing neither more nor less than mutiny—so take him below, do ye hear, bo'sun!" And down he went.

"Now, Mr Jones," said I, as soon as all hands were on deck, "you'll be so good as have half of these Lascars seized to the rigging here, one after the other, and see a good dozen given to each of their backs; then these two Dutchmen, each three dozen—then pipe down the watch, sir." Jones glanced at me, then at the fellows, then at me again. I thought he hung aback for an instant; but do it I was determined he should, for a reason I had; and I gave him back the look steady as stone. "Ay, ay, sir," said he at last, touching his hat. I walked aft to the capstan, and stood there till every mother's son of them had got his share, the Lascars wriggling and howling on the deck after it, and the Dutchmen twisting their backs as they walked off. 'Twas the first time I did that part of duty in command; and I felt, in the circumstances, I was in for carrying it out with a taut hand.

By this time the moon was setting, and in the dusk we lost sight of the sail to windward; but as we were heading well up to weather upon her, and going at least ten knots, I turned in below for a little, leaving the midshipman. Accordingly, it wasn't very long before Snelling called me in broad daylight. "She's a large ship, Mr Collins," said he, "standing under all sail on a wind. I hope to goodness, sir, it's that confounded Indiaman at last!" I hurried on deck, took the glass aloft, and soon made out the jury-foretop-mast shorter than the main, as the old captain mentioned. Accordingly it was with somewhat of a flutter in me I came down again, watching the schooner's trim below and aloft, to see if I couldn't take an hour or so off the time betwixt that and once more setting eyes on the Judge's daughter.