“I, John Turner, Am master
and owner Of a high-deck’d schooner.
That’s bound to Carolina ”
etc. etc. etc. etc.
Coasting Song.
It is not necessary to say, with how
much interest Alderman Van Beverout, and his friend
the Patroon, had witnessed all the proceedings on hoard
the Coquette. Something very like an exclamation
of pleasure escaped the former, when it was known
that the ship had missed the brigantine, and that
there was now little probability of overtaking her
that night.
“Of what use is it to chase
your fire-flies, about the ocean, Patroon?”
muttered the Alderman, in the ear of Oloff Van Staats.
“I have no further knowledge of this ‘Skimmer
of the Seas,’ than is decent in the principal
of a commercial house, but reputation is
like a sky-rocket, that may be seen from afar!
Her Majesty has no ship that can overtake the free-trader,
and why fatigue the innocent vessel for no thing?”
“Captain Ludlow has other desires
than the mere capture of the brigantine;” returned
the laconic and sententious Patroon. “The
opinion that Alida de Barberie is in her, has great
influence with that gentleman.”
“This is strange apathy, Mr.
Van Staats, in one who is as good as engaged to my
niece, if he be not actually married, Alida Barberie
has great influence with that gentleman! And
pray, with whom, that knows her, has she not influence?”
“The sentiment in favor of the
young lady, in general, is favorable.”
“Sentiment and favors!
Am I to understand, Sir by this coolness, that our
bargain is broken? that the two fortunes
are not to be brought together, and that the lady
is not to be your wife?”
“Harkee, Mr. Van Beverout; one
who is saving of his income and sparing of his words,
can have no pressing necessity for the money of others;
and, on occasion, he may afford to speak plainly.
Your niece has shown so decided a preference for another,
that it has materially lessened the liveliness of
my regard.”
“It were a pity that so much
animation should fail of its object! It would
be a sort of stoppage in the affairs of Cupid!
Men should deal candidly, in all business transactions,
Mr. Van Staats; and you will permit me to ask, as
for a final settlement, if your mind is changed in
regard to the daughter of old Etienne de Barberie,
or not?”
“Not changed, but quite decided;”
returned the young Patroon. “I cannot say
that I wish the successor of my mother to have seen
so much of the world. We are a family that is
content with our situation, and new customs would
derange my household.”
“I am no wizard, Sir; but for
the benefit of a son of my old friend Stephanus Van
Staats, I will venture, for once, on a prophecy.
You will marry, Mr. Van Staats yes, marry and
you will wive, Sir, with prudence prevents
me from saying with whom you will wive; but you may
account yourself a lucky man, if it be not with one
who will cause you to forget house and home, lands
and friends, manors and rents, and in short all the
solid comforts of life. It would not surprise
me to hear that the prediction of the Poughkeepsie
fortune-teller should be fulfilled!”
“And what is your real opinion,
Alderman Van Beverout, of the different mysterious
events we have witnessed?” demanded the Patroon,
in a manner to prove that the interest he took in
the subject, completely smothered any displeasure
he might otherwise have felt at so harsh a prophecy.
“This sea-green lady is no common woman!”
“Sea-green and sky-blue!”
interrupted the impatient burgher. “The
hussy is but too common, Sir; and there is the calamity.
Had she been satisfied with transacting her concerns
in a snug and reasonable manner, and to have gone
upon the high seas again, we should have had none of
this foolery, to disturb accounts which ought to have
been considered settled. Mr. Van Staats, will
you allow me to ask a few direct questions, if you
can find leisure for their answer?”
The Patroon nodded his head, in the affirmative.
“What do you suppose, Sir, to have become of
my niece?”
“Eloped.”
“And with whom?”
Van Staats of Kinderhook stretched
an arm towards the open ocean, and again nodded.
The Alderman mused a moment; and then he chuckled,
as if some amusing idea had at once gotten the better
of his ill-humor.
“Come, come, Patroon,”
he said, in his wonted amicable tone, when addressing
the lord of a hundred thousand acres, “this business
is like a complicated account, a little difficult
till one gets acquainted with the books, and then
all becomes plain as your hand. There were referees
in the settlement of the estate of Kobus Van Klinck,
whom I will not name; but what between the handwriting
of the old grocer, and some inaccuracy in the figures,
they had but a blind time of it until they discovered
which way the balance ought to come; and then by working
backward and forward, which is the true spirit of
your just referee, they got all straight in the end.
Kobus was not very lucid in his statements, and he
was a little apt to be careless of ink. His leger
might be called a book of the black art; for it was
little else than fly-tracks and blots, though the last
were found of great assistance in rendering the statements
satisfactory. By calling three of the biggest
of them sugar-hogsheads, a very fair balance was struck
between him and a peddling Yankee who was breeding
trouble for the estate; and I challenge, even at this
distant day, when all near interests in the results
may be said to sleep, any responsible man to say that
they did not look as much like those articles as any
thing else. Something they must have been, and
as Kobus dealt largely in sugar, there was also a
strong moral probability that they were the said hogsheads.
Come, come, Patroon; we shall have the jade back again,
in proper time. Thy ardor gets the better of
reason; but this is the way with true love, which is
none the worse for a little delay Alida is not one
to balk thy merriment; these Norman wenches are not
heavy of foot at a dance, or apt to go to sleep when
the fiddles are stirring!”
With this consolation, Alderman Van
Beverout saw fit to close the dialogue, for the moment.
How far he succeeded in bringing back the mind of
the Patroon to its allegiance, the result must show;
though we shall take this occasion to observe again,
that the young proprietor found a satisfaction in
the excitement of the present scene, that, in the course
of a short and little diversified life, he had never
before experienced.
While others slept, Ludlow passed
most of the night on deck. He laid himself down
in the hammock-cloths, for an hour or two, towards
morning though the wind did not sigh through the rigging
louder than common, without arousing him from his
slumbers. At each low call of the officer of
the watch to the crew, his head was raised to glance
around the narrow horizon; and the ship never rolled
heavily without causing him to awake. He believed
that the brigantine was near, and, for the first watch,
he was not without expectation that the two vessels
might unexpectedly meet in the obscurity. When
this hope failed, the young seaman had recourse to
artifice, in his turn, in order to entrap one who appeared
so practised and so expert in the devices of the sea.
About midnight, when the watches were
changed, and the whole crew, with the exception of
the idlers, were on deck, orders were given to hoist
out the boats. This operation, one of exceeding
toil and difficulty in lightly-manned ships, was soon
performed on board the Queen’s cruiser, by the
aid of yard and stay-tackles, to which the force of
a hundred seamen was applied. When four of these
little attendants on the ship were in the water, they
were entered by their crews, prepared for serious service.
Officers, on whom Ludlow could rely, were put in command
of the three smallest, while he took charge of the
fourth in person. When all were ready, and each
inferior had received his especial instructions, they
quitted the side of the vessel, pulling off, in diverging
lines, into the gloom of the ocean. The boat
of Ludlow had not gone fifty fathoms, before he was
perfectly conscious of the inutility of a chase; for
the obscurity of the night was so great, as to render
the spars of his own ship nearly indistinct, even
at that short distance. After pulling by compass
some ten or fifteen minutes, in a direction that carried
him to windward of the Coquette, the young man commanded
the crew to cease rowing, and prepared himself to
await, patiently, for the result of his undertaking.
There was nothing to vary the monotony
of such a scene, for an hour, but the regular rolling
of a sea that was but little agitated, a few occasional
strokes of the oars, that were given in order to keep
the barge in its place, or the heavy breathing of
some smaller fish of the cetaceous kind, as it rose
to the surface to inhale the atmosphere. In no
quarter of the heavens was any thing visible; not even
a star was peeping out, to cheer the solitude and
silence of that solitary place. The men were
nodding on the thwarts and our young sailor was about
to relinquish his design as fruitless, when suddenly
a noise was heard, at no great distance from the spot
where they lay. It was one of those sounds which
would have been inexplicable to any but a seaman, but
which conveyed a meaning to the ears of Ludlow, as
plain as that which could be imparted by speech to
a landsman. A moaning creak was followed by the
low rumbling of a rope, as it rubbed on some hard
or distended substance; and then succeeded the heavy
flap of canvas, that, yielding first to a powerful
impulse, was suddenly checked.
“Hear ye that?” exclaimed
Ludlow, a little above a whisper. “’Tis
the brigantine, gybing his main-boom! Give way,
men see all ready to lay him aboard!”
The crew started from their slumbers;
the splash of oars was heard, and, in the succeeding
moment, the sails of a vessel, gliding through the
obscurity, nearly across their course, were visible.
“Now spring to your oars, men!”
continued Ludlow, with the eagerness of one engaged
in chase. “We have him to advantage, and
he is ours! a long pull and a strong pull steadily,
boys, and together!”
The practised crew did their duty.
It seemed but a moment, before they were close upon
the chase.
“Another stroke of the oars,
and she is ours!” cried Ludlow. “Grapple! to
your arms! away, boarders, away!”
These orders came on the ears of the
men with the effect of martial blasts. The crew
shouted, the clashing of arms was heard, and the tramp
of feet on the deck of the vessel announced the success
of the enterprise. A minute of extreme activity
and of noisy confusion followed. The cheers of
the boarders had been heard, at a distance; and rockets
shot into the air, from the other boats, whose crews
answered the shouts with manful lungs. The whole
ocean appeared in a momentary glow, and the roar of
a gun from the Coquette added to the fracas.
The ship set several lanterns, in order to indicate
her position; while blue-lights, and other marine
signals were constantly burning in the approaching
boats, as if those who guided them were anxious to
intimidate the assailed by a show of numbers.
In the midst of this scene of sudden
awakening from the most profound quiet, Ludlow began
to look about him, in order to secure the principal
objects of the capture. He had repeated his orders
about entering the cabins, and concerning the person
of the ‘Skimmer of the Seas,’ among the
other instructions given to the crews of the different
boats; and the instant they found themselves in quiet
possession of the prize, the young man dashed into
the private recesses of the vessel, with a heart that
throbbed even more violently than during the ardor
of boarding. To cast open the door of a cabin,
beneath the high quarter-deck, and to descend to the
level of its floor, were the acts of a moment.
But disappointment and mortification succeeded to
triumph. A second glance was not necessary to
show that the coarse work and foul smells he saw and
encountered, did not belong to the commodious and
even elegant accommodations of the brigantine.
“Here is no Water-Witch!”
he exclaimed aloud under the impulse of sudden surprise.
“God be praised!” returned
a voice, which was succeeded by a frightened face
from out a state-room. “We were told the
rover was in the offing, and thought the yells could
come from nothing human!”
The blood, which had been rushing
through the arteries and veins of Ludlow so tumultuously
now crept into his cheeks, and was felt tingling at
his fingers’-ends. He gave a hurried order
to his men to re-enter their boat, leaving every thing
as they found it. A short conference between the
commander of Her Majesty’s ship Coquette, and
the seaman of the state-room, succeeded; and then
the former hastened on deck, whence his passage into
the barge occupied but a moment. The boat pulled
away from the fancied prize, amid a silence that was
uninterrupted by any other sound than that of a song,
which, to all appearance, came from one who by this
time had placed himself at the vessel’s helm.
All that can be said of the music is, that it was
suited to the words, and all that could be heard of
the latter, was a portion of a verse, if verse it might
be called, which had exercised the talents of some
thoroughly nautical mind. As we depend, for the
accuracy of the quotation, altogether on the fidelity
of the journal of the midshipman already named, it
is possible that some injustice may be done the writer;
but, according to that document, he sang a strain
of the coasting song, which we have prefixed to this
chapter as its motto.
The papers of the coaster did not
give a more detailed description of her character
and pursuits, than that which is contained in this
verse. It is certain that the log-book of the
Coquette was far less explicit. The latter merely
said, that ’a coaster called the Stately Pine,
John Turner, master, bound from New-York to the Province
of North Carolina, was boarded at one o’clock,
in the morning, all well.’ But this description
was not of a nature to satisfy the sea men of the
cruiser. Those who had been actually engaged
in the expedition were much too excited to see things
in their true colors; and, coupled with the two previous
escapes of the Water-Witch, the event just related
had no small share in confirming their former opinions
concerning her character. The sailing-master was
not now alone, in believing that all pursuit of the
brigantine was perfectly useless.
But these were conclusions that the
people of the Coquette made at their leisure, rather
than those which suggested themselves on the instant.
The boats, led by the flashes of light, had joined
each other, and were rowing fast towards the ship,
before the pulses of the actors beat with sufficient
calmness to allow of serious reflection; nor was it
until the adventurers were below, and in their hammocks,
that they found suitable occasion to relate what had
occurred to a wondering auditory. Robert Yarn,
the fore-top-man who had felt the locks of the sea-green
lady blowing in his face during the squall, took advantage
of the circumstance to dilate on his experiences;
and, after having advanced certain positions that
particularly favored his own theories, he produced
one of the crew of the barge, who stood ready to affirm,
in any court in Christendom, that he actually saw
the process of changing the beautiful and graceful
lines that distinguished the hull of the smuggler,
into the coarser and more clumsy model of the coaster.
“There are know-nothings,”
continued Robert, after he had fortified his position
by the testimony in question, “who would deny
that the water of the ocean is blue, because the stream
that turns the parish-mill happens to be muddy.
But your real mariner, who has lived much in foreign
parts, is a man who understands the philosophy of
life, and knows when to believe a truth and when to
scorn a lie. As for a vessel changing her character
when hard pushed in a chase, there are many instances;
though having one so near us, there is less necessity
to be roving over distant seas, in search of a case
to prove it. My own opinion concerning this here
brigantine, is much as follows; that is
to say, I do suppose there was once a real living
hermaphrodite of her build and rig, and that she might
be employed in some such trade as this craft is thought
to be in; and that, in some unlucky hour, she and
her people met with a mishap, that has condemned her
ever since to appear on this coast at stated times.
She has, however, a natural dislike to a royal cruiser;
and no doubt the thing is now sailed by those who
have little need of compass or observation! All
this being true, it is not wonderful that when the
boat’s-crew got on her decks, they found her
different from what they had expected. This much
is certain, that when I lay within a boat-hook’s
length of her sprit-sail-yard-arm, she was a half-rig,
with a woman figure-head, and as pretty a show of
gear aloft, as eye ever looked upon; while every thing
below was as snug as a tobacco-box with the lid down: and
here you all say that she is a high-decked schooner,
with nothing ship-shape about her! What more
is wanting to prove the truth of what has been stated? If
any man can gainsay it, let him speak.”
As no man did gainsay it, it is presumed
that the reasoning of the top-man gained many prosélytes.
It is scarcely necessary to add, how much of mystery
and fearful interest was thrown around the redoubtable
’Skimmer of the Seas,’ by the whole transaction.
There was a different feeling on the
quarter-deck. The two lieutenants put their heads
together, and looked grave; while one or two of the
midshipmen, who had been in the boats, were observed
to whisper with their messmates, and to indulge in
smothered laughter. As the captain, however,
maintained his ordinary dignified and authoritative
mien, the merriment went no further, and was soon
entirely repressed.
While on this subject, it may be proper
to add that, in course of time, the Stately Pine reached
the capes of North Carolina, in safety; and that,
having effected her passage over Edenton bar, without
striking, she ascended the river to the point of her
destination. Here the crew soon began to throw
out hints, relative to an encounter of their schooner
with a French cruiser. As the British empire,
even in its most remote corners, was at all times
alive to its nautical glory, the event soon became
the discourse in more distant parts of the colony;
and in less than six months, the London journals contained
a very glowing account of an engagement, in which
the names of the Stately Pine, and of John Turner,
made some respectable advances towards immortality.
If Captain Ludlow ever gave any further
account of the transaction than what was stated in
the log-book of his ship, the bienséance, observed
by the Lords of the Admiralty, prevented it from becoming
public.
Returning from this digression, which
has no other connexion with the immediate thread of
the narrative, than that which arises from a reflected
interest, we shall revert to the further proceedings
on board the cruiser.
When the Coquette had hoisted in her
boats, that portion of the crew which did not belong
to the watch was dismissed to their hammocks, the lights
were lowered, and tranquillity once more reigned in
the ship. Ludlow sought his rest, and although
there is reason to think that his slumbers were a
little disturbed by dreams, he remained tolerably quiet
in the hammock-cloths, the place in which it has already
been said he saw fit to take his repose, until the
morning watch had been called.
Although the utmost vigilance was
observed among the officers and look-outs, during
the rest of the night, there occurred nothing to arouse
the crew from their usual recumbent attitudes between
the guns. The wind continued light but steady,
the sea smooth, and the heavens clouded, as during
the first hours of darkness.