Do so conjointly meet, let not men say,
These are their reasons,—They are natural;
For, I believe they are portentous things
Unto the climate that they point upon."
— CascaThe reader will discover, by referring to the time consumed in the foregoing events, that the Ariel, with her prize, did not anchor in the bay, already mentioned, until Griffith and his party, had been for several hours in the custody of their enemies. The supposed capture of the rebel schooner, was an incident that excited but little interest, and no surprise, among a people who were accustomed to consider their seamen as invincible; and Barnstable had not found it a difficult task to practise his deception on the few rustics whom curiosity induced to venture along-side the vessels during the short continuance of daylight. When, however, the fogs of evening began to rise along the narrow basin, and the curvatures of its margin were lost in the single outline of its dark and gloomy border, the young seaman thought it time to apply himself in earnest to his duty. The Alacrity, containing all his own crew, together with the Ariel's wounded, was gotten silently under way, and driving easily before the heavy air that swept from the land, she drifted from the harbour, until the open sea lay before her, when her sails were spread, and shetold him that he was a 'know-nothing,' and asked him if the Dutchman was a more unlikely thing, than that there should be places where the inhabitants split the year in two watches, and had day for six months, and night the rest of the time, the green-horn laughed in my face, and I do believe he would have told me I lied, but for one thing."
"And what might that be?" asked Barnstable, gravely.
"Why, sir," returned Tom, stretching his bony fingers, as he surveyed his broad palm, by the little light that remained, "though I am a peaceable man, I can be roused."
"And you have seen the Flying Dutchman?"
"I never doubled the east cape; though I can find my way through Le Maire in the darkest night that ever fell from the heavens; but I have seen them that have seen her, and spoken her too."
"Well, be it so; you must turn flying Yankee, yourself, to-night, Master Coffin. Man your boat at once, sir, and arm your crew."
The cockswain paused a moment, before he proceeded to obey this unexpected order, and, pointing towards the battery, he inquired, with infinite phlegm—
"For shore-work, sir? Shall we take the cut-lashes and pistols? or shall we want the pikes?"
"There may be soldiers in our way, with their bayonets," said Barnstable, musing; "arm as usual, but throw a few long pikes into the boat, and harkye, Master Coffin, out with your tub and whale-line; for I see you have rigged yourself anew in that way."
The cockswain, who was moving from the forecastle, turned short at this new mandate, and, with an air of remonstrance, ventured to say—and may suggest something advantageous." The gratified midshipman swelled with the conscious pleasure of possessing his commander's confidence, and followed to the taffrail, over which Barnstable leaned, while he delivered the remainder of his communication. "I have gathered from the 'long-shore-men who have come off, this evening, to stare at the vessel which the rebels have been able to build, that a party of seamen and marines have been captured in an old ruin near the Abbey of St. Ruth, this very day."
"'Tis Mr. Griffith!" exclaimed the boy.
"Ay! the wit of your cousin Katherine is not necessary to discover that. Now, I have proposed to this gentleman with the Savannah face, that he should go into the Abbey, and negotiate an exchange. I will give him for Griffith, and the crew of the Alacrity for Manual's command and the Tigers."
"The Tigers!" cried the lad, with emotion; "have they got my Tigers, too! would to God that Mr. Griffith had permitted me to land!"
"It was no boy's work they were about, and room was scarcer in their boat than live-lumber. But this Mr. Dillon has accepted my proposition, and has pledged himself that Griffith shall return within an hour after he is permitted to enter the Abbey: will he redeem his honour from the pledge?"
"He may," said Merry, musing a moment, "for I believe he thinks the presence of Mr. Griffith under the same roof with Miss Howard, a thing to be prevented, if possible; he may be true in this instance, though he has a hollow look."
"He has bad-looking light-houses, I will own," said Barnstable; "and yet he is a gentleman, and promises fair; 'tis unmanly to suspecthim in such a matter, and I will have faith! Now listen, sir. The absence of older heads must throw great responsibility on your young shoulders; watch that battery as closely as if you were at the mast-head of your frigate, on the look-out for an enemy; the instant you see lights moving in it, cut, and run into the offing; you will find me somewhere under the cliffs, and you will stand off and on, keeping the Abbey in sight, until you fall in with us."
Merry gave an attentive ear to these and divers other solemn injunctions that he received from his commander, who, having sent the officer next to himself in authority in charge of the prize, (the third in command being included in the list of the wounded,) was compelled to intrust his beloved schooner to the vigilance of a lad whose years gave no promise of the experience and skill that he actually possessed.
When his admonitory instructions were ended, Barnstable stepped again to the opening in the cabin-hood, and for a single moment before he spoke, once more examined the countenance of his prisoner, with a keen eye. Dillon had removed his hands from before his sallow features, and, as if conscious of the scrutiny his looks were to undergo, had concentrated the whole expression of his forbidding aspect in a settled gaze of hopeless submission to his fate. At least, so thought his captor, and the idea touched some of the finer feelings in the bosom of the generous young seaman. Discarding, instantly, every suspicion of his prisoner's honour, as alike unworthy of them both, Barnstable summoned him, in a cheerful voice, to the boat. There was a flashing of the features of Dillon, at this call, which gave an indefinable expression to his conntenance, that again startled the sailor; but it was so verytransient, and could so easily be mistaken for a smile of pleasure at his promised liberation, that the doubts it engendered passed away almost as speedily as the equivocal expression itself. Barnstable was in the act of following his companion into the boat, when he felt himself detained by a slight hold of his arm.
"What would you have?" he asked of the midshipman, who had given him the signal.
"Do not trust too much to that Dillon, sir," returned the anxious boy, in a whisper; "if you had seen his face, as I did, when the binnacle light fell upon it, as he came up the cabin ladder, you would put no faith in him."
"I should have seen no beauty," said the generous lieutenant, laughing; "now, there is long-Tom, as hard-featured a youth of two score and ten as ever washed in brine, who has a heart as big, ay, bigger than that of a kraaken. A bright watch to you, boy, and remember, a keen eye on the battery." As he was yet speaking, Barnstable crossed the gunwale of his little vessel, and it was not until he was seated by the side of his prisoner, that he continued, aloud—"Cast the stops off your sails, Mr. Merry, and see all clear, to make a run of every thing; recollect, you are short-handed, sir. God bless ye! and d'ye hear? if there is a man among you who shuts more than one eye at a time, I'll make him, when I get back, open both wider than if Tom Coffin's friend, the Flying Dutchman, was booming down upon him. God bless ye, Merry, my boy; give 'em the square-sail, if this breeze off-shore holds on till morning; shove off."
As Barnstable gave the last order, he fell back on his seat, and, drawing his boat-cloak around him, maintained a profound silence, until they had passed the two small headlands that formed the mouth of the harbour. The men pulled, with muffled oars, their long, vigorous strokes, and the boat glided, with amazing rapidity, by the objects that could be yet indistinctly seen along the dim shore. When, however, they had gained the open ocean, and the direction of their little bark was changed to one that led them in a line with the coast, and within the shadows of the cliffs, the cockswain, deeming that the silence was no longer necessary to their safety, ventured to break it, as follows—
"A square-sail is a good sail to carry on a craft, dead afore it, and in a heavy sea; but if fifty years can teach a man to know the weather, it's my judgment that if the Ariel breaks ground after the night turns at eight bells, she'll need her main-sail to hold her up to her course."
The lieutenant started at this sudden interruption to his musing, and casting his cloak from his shoulders, he looked abroad on the waters, as if seeking those portentous omens which disturbed the imagination of his cockswain.
"How now, Tom," he said, sharply, "have ye turned croaker in your old age? what see you, to cause such an old woman's ditty!"
"'Tis no song of an old woman," returned the cockswain, with solemn earnestness, "but the warning of an old man; and one who has spent his days where there were no hills to prevent the winds of heaven from blowing on him, unless they were hills of salt water and foam. I judge, sir, there'll be a heavy north-easter setting in upon us afore the morning watch is called."
Barnstable knew the experience of his old messmate too well, to feel no uneasiness at such an opinion, delivered in so portentous a manner; but after again surveying the horizon, the heavens, and theocean, he said, with a continued severity of manner—
"Your prophecy is idle, this time, Master Coffin; every thing looks like a dead calm. This swell is what is left from the last blow; the mist over-head is nothing but the nightly fog, and you can see, with your own eyes, that it is driving seaward; even this land-breeze is nothing but the air of the ground mixing with that of the ocean; it is heavy with dew and fog, but it's as sluggish as a Dutch galliot."
"Ay, sir, it is damp, and there is little of it," rejoined Tom; "but as it comes only from the shore, so it never goes far on the water. It is hard to learn the true signs of the weather, Captain Barnstable, and none get to know them well, but such as study little else, or feel but little else. There is only One who can see the winds of heaven, or who can tell when a hurricane is to begin, or where it will end. Still, a man isn't like a whale or a porpoise, that takes the air in his nostrils, but never knows whether it is a south-easter or a north-wester that he feeds upon. Look, broad-off to leeward, sir; see the streak of clear sky shining under the mists; take an old sea-faring man's word for it, Captain Barnstable, that whenever the light shines out of the heavens in that way, 'tis never done for nothing; besides, the sun set in a dark bank of clouds, and the little moon we had was dry and windy."
Barnstable listened attentively, and with increasing concern, for he well knew that his cockswain possessed a quick and almost unerring judgment of the weather, notwithstanding the confused medley of superstitious omens and signs with which it was blended; but, again throwing himself back in his boat, he muttered—
"Then let it blow; Griffith is worth a heavier risk, and if the battery can't be cheated, it can be carried."
Nothing further passed on the state of the weather. Dillon had not ventured a single remark since he entered the boat, and the cockswain had the discretion to understand that his officer was willing to be left to his own thoughts. For near an hour they pursued their way with diligence, the sinewy seamen, who wielded the oars, urging their light boat along the edge of the surf with unabated velocity, and, apparently, with untired exertions. Occasionally, Barnstable would cast an inquiring glance at the little inlets that they passed, or would note, with a seaman's eye, the small portions of sandy beach that were scattered here and there along the rocky boundaries of the coast. One, in particular, a deeper inlet than common, where a run of fresh water was heard gurgling as it met the tide, he pointed out to his cockswain, by significant, but silent gestures, as a place to be especially noted. Tom, who understood the signal as intended for his own eye alone, made his observations on the spot, with equal taciturnity, but with all the minuteness that would distinguish one long accustomed to find his way, whether by land or water, by land-marks, and the bearings of different objects. Soon after this silent communication between the lieutenant and his cockswain, the boat was suddenly turned, and was in the act of dashing upon the spit of sand before it, when Barnstable checked the movement by his voice—
"Hold water!" he said; "'tis the sound of oars!"
The seamen held their boat at rest, while a deep attention was given to the noise that had alarmed the ears of their commander.
"See, sir," said the cockswain, pointing towards the eastern horizon; "it is just rising into the streak of light to seaward of us—now it settles in the trough—ah! here you have it again!"
"By heavens!" cried Barnstable, "'tis a man-of-war's stroke it pulls; I saw its oar-blades as they fell! and, listen to the sound! neither your fisherman nor your smuggler pulls such a regular oar."
Tom had bowed his head nearly to the water, in the act of listening, and now, raising himself, he spoke with confidence—
"That is the Tiger; I know the stroke of her crew as well as I do of my own. Mr. Merry has made them learn the new-fashioned jerk, as they dip their blades, and they feather with such a roll in their rullocks! I could swear to the stroke."
"Hand me the night-glass," said his commander, impatiently; "I can catch them, as they are lifted into the streak. You are right, by every star in our flag, Tom!—but there is only one man in her stern-sheets. By my good eyes, I believe it is that accursed Pilot, sneaking from the land, and leaving Griffith and Manual to die in English prisons. To shore with you—beach her at once."
The order was no sooner given, than it was obeyed, and in less than two minutes, the impatient Barnstable, Dillon, and the cockswain, were standing together on the sands.
The impression he had received, that his friends were abandoned to their fate by the Pilot, urged the generous young seaman to hasten the departure of his prisoner, as he was fearful every moment might interpose some new obstacle to the success of his plans.
"Mr. Dillon," he said, the instant they were landed, "I exact no new promise—your honour is already plighted"—
"If oaths can make it stronger," interrupted Dillon, "I will take them."
"Oaths cannot—the honour of a gentleman is, at all times, enough. I shall send my cockswain with you to the Abbey, and you will either return with him, in person, within two hours, or give Mr. Griffith and Captain Manual to his guidance. Proceed, sir; you are conditionally free; there is an easy opening by which to ascend the cliffs."
Dillon, once more, thanked his generous captor, and then proceeded to force his way up the rough eminence.
"Follow, and obey his instructions," said Barnstable to his cockswain, aloud.
Tom, long accustomed to implicit obedience, handled his harpoon, and was quietly following in the footsteps of his new leader, when he felt the hand of the lieutenant on his shoulder.
"You saw where the brook emptied over the hillock of sand?" said Barnstable, in an under tone.
"You will find us there, riding without the surf—'twill not do to trust too much to an enemy."
The cockswain made a gesture of great significance with his weapon, that was intended to indicate the danger their prisoner would incur, should he prove false; and, applying the wooden end of the harpoon to the rocks, he ascended the ravine at a rate that soon brought him to the side of his companion.
