James Fenimore Cooper The Red Rover [txt]

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The dilatory manner in which the seamen performed the duty was quickened,
however, as the rod ascended, and the well-known signs of a formidable
leak met their eyes. The experiment was repeated with greater activity,
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and with far more precision.
"If witchcraft can clear the hold of a ship that is already half full of
water," said Nighthead, casting another sullen glance towards the
attentive Wilder "the sooner it is done the better; for the whole cunning
of something more than a bungler in the same will be needed, in order to
make the pumps of the 'Royal Caroline' suck!"
"Does the ship leak?" demanded his superior with a quickness of utterance
which sufficiently proclaimed how important he deemed the intelligence.
"Yesterday, I would have boldly put my name to the articles of any craft
that floats the ocean; and had the Captain asked me if I understood her
nature and character, as certain as that my name is Francis Nighthead, I
should have told him, yes. But I find that the oldest seaman may still
learn something of the water; though it should be got in crossing a ferry
in a flat."
"What mean you, sir?" demanded Wilder, who, for the first time, began to
note the mutinous looks assumed by his mate, no less than the threatening
manner in which he was seconded by the crew. "Have the pumps rigged
without delay, and clear the ship of the water."
Nighthead slowly complied with the former part of this order; and, in a
few moments, every thing was arranged to commence the necessary, and, as
it would seem, urgent duty of pumping. But no man lifted his hand to the
laborious employment. The quick eye of Wilder, who had now taken the
alarm, was not slow in detecting this reluctance; and he repeated the
order more sternly, calling to two of the seamen, by name, to set the
example of obedience. The men hesitated, giving an opportunity to the mate
to confirm them, by his voice, in their mutinous intentions.
"What need of hands to work a pump in a vessel like this?" he said, with
a coarse laugh, but in which secret terror struggled strangely with open
malice. "After what we have all seen this night, none here will be amazed,
should the vessel begin to spout out the brine like a breathing whale."
"What am I to understand by this hesitation, and by this language?" said
Wilder, approaching Nighthead with a firm step, and an eye too proud to
quail before the plainest symptoms of insubordination. "Is it you, sir,
who should be foremost in exertion at a moment like this, who dare to set
an example of disobedience?"
The mate recoiled a pace, and his lips moved, still he uttered no audible
reply. Wilder once more bade him, in a calm and authoritative tone, lay
his own hands to the brake. Nighthead then found his voice, in time to
make a flat refusal; and, at the next moment, he was felled to the feet of
his indignant Commander, by a blow he had neither the address nor the
power to resist. This act of decision was succeeded by one single moment
of breathless, wavering silence among the crew; and then the common cry,
and the general rush of every man upon our defenceless and solitary
adventurer, were the signals that open hostility had commenced. A shriek
from the quarter-deck arrested their efforts; just as a dozen hands were
laid violently upon the person of Wilder, and, for the moment, occasioned
a truce. It was the fearful cry of Gertrude, which possessed even the
influence to still the savage intentions of a set of beings so rude and so
unnurtured as those whose passions had just been awakened into fierce
activity. Wilder was released; and all eyes turned, by a common impulse,
in the direction of the sound.
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During the more momentous hours of the past night, the very existence of
the passengers below had been forgotten by most of those whose duty kept
them to the deck. If they had been recalled at all to the recollection of
any, it was at those fleeting moments when the mind of the young mariner,
who directed the movements of the ship, found leisure to catch stolen
glimpses of softer scenes than the wild warring of the elements that was
so actively raging before his eyes. Nighthead had named them, as he would
have made allusion to a part of the cargo, but their fate had little
influence on his hardened nature. Mrs Wyllys and her charge had therefore
remained below during the whole period, perfectly unapprised of the
disasters of the intervening time. Buried in the recesses of their births,
they had heard the roaring of the winds, and the incessant washing of the
waters; but these usual accompaniments of a storm had served to conceal
the crashing of masts, and the hoarse cries of the mariners. For the
moments of terrible suspense while the Bristol trader lay on her side, the
better informed governess had, indeed, some fearful glimmerings of the
truth; but, conscious of her uselessness and unwilling to alarm her less
instructed companion she had sufficient self-command to be mute. The
subsequent silence, and comparative calm, induced her to believe that she
had been mistaken in her apprehensions; and, long ere morning dawned, both
she and Gertrude had sunk into sweet and refreshing slumbers. They had
risen and mounted to the deck together, and were still in the first burst
of their wonder at the desolation which met their gaze, when the
long-meditated attack on Wilder was made.
"What means this awful change?" demanded Mrs Wyllys, with a lip that
quivered, and a cheek which, notwithstanding the extraordinary power she
possessed over her feelings, was blanched to the colour of death.
The eye of Wilder was glowing, and his brow dark as those heavens from
which they had just so happily escaped, as he answered, menacing his
assailants with an arm,--
"It means mutiny, Madam; rascally, cowardly mutiny!"
"Could mutiny strip a vessel of her masts, and leave her a helpless log
upon the sea?"
"Hark ye, Madam!" roughly interrupted the mate 'to you I will speak
freely; for it is well known who you are, and that you came on board the
'Caroline' a paying passenger. This night have I seen the heavens and the
ocean behave as I have never seen them behave before. Ships have been
running afore the wind, light and buoyant as corks, with all their spars
stepped and steady, when other ships have been shaved of every mast as
close as the razor sweeps the chin. Cruisers have been fallen in with,
sailing without living hands to work them; and, all together, no man here
has ever before passed a middle watch like the one gone by."
"And what has this to do with the violence I have just witnessed? Is the
vessel fated to endure every evil!--Can _you_ explain this, Mr Wilder?"
"You cannot say, at least, you had no warning of danger," returned Wilder,
smiling bitterly.
"Ay, the devil is obliged to be honest on compulsion," resumed the mate.
"Each of his imps sails with his orders; and, thank Heaven! however he may [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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