The Pilot (35 page)

"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 cutlashes 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:

"Trust an old whaler, Captain Barnstable, who has been used to these
craft all his life. A whale-boat is made to pull with a tub and line in
it, as naturally as a ship is made to sail with ballast, and—"

"Out with it, out with it," interrupted the other, with an impatient
gesture, that his cockswain knew signified a positive determination.
Heaving a sigh at what he deemed his commander's prejudice, Tom applied
himself without further delay to the execution of the orders. Barnstable
laid his hand familiarly on the shoulder of the boy, and led him to the
stern of his little vessel, in profound silence. The canvas hood that
covered the entrance to the cabin was thrown partly aside; and by the
light of the lamp that was burning in the small apartment, it was easy
to overlook, from the deck, what was passing beneath them. Dillon sat
supporting his head with his two hands, in a manner that shaded his
face, but in an attitude that denoted deep and abstracted musing.

"I would that I could see the face of my prisoner," said Barnstable, in
an undertone, that was audible only to his companion. "The eye of a man
is a sort of lighthouse, to tell one how to steer into the haven of his
confidence, boy."

"And sometimes a beacon, sir, to warn you there is no safe anchorage
near him," returned the ready boy.

"Rogue!" muttered Barnstable, "your cousin Kate spoke there."

"If my cousin Plowden were here, Mr. Barnstable, I know that her opinion
of yon gentleman would not be at all more favorable."

"And yet, I have determined to trust him! Listen, boy, and tell me if I
am wrong; you have a quick wit, like some others of your family, 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
'longshoremen 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 was 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 honor 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 lighthouses, I will own," said Barnstable; "and yet
he is a gentleman, and promises fair; 'tis unmanly to suspect him 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 lookout 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 entrust 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
honor, 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
countenance, that again startled the sailor; but it was so very
transient, 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;
"but 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 everything; 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 back his boat-cloak around him maintained a profound silence,
until they had passed the two small headlands that fanned the mouth of
the harbor. The men pulled, with muffled oars, their long, vigorous
strokes, and the boat glided with amazing rapidity past 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 should the Ariel break ground after the night
turns at eight bells, she'll need her mainsail to hold her up to her
course."

The lieutenant started at this sudden interruption, 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 northeaster setting in upon us afore the
morning watch is called."

Barnstable knew the experience of his old messmate too well not to feel
uneasiness at such an opinion, delivered in so confident a manner; but
after again surveying the horizon, the heavens, and the ocean, he said,
with a continued severity of manner:

"Your prophecy is idle, this time, Master Coffin; everything looks like
a dead calm. This swell is what is left from the last blow; the mist
overhead is nothing but the nightly fog, and you can see, with 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, and never knows whether it is a southeaster or a northwester
that he feeds upon. Look, broad-off to leeward, sir; see the streak of
clear sky shining under the mists; take an old seafaring man's word for
it, Captain Barnstable, that whenever the light shines out of the
heavens in that fashion, '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 nearly 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 landmarks 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 the 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."