“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.
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 be minded to overlook the same, he has neither courage nor power to do it. Otherwise, a peaceful voyage would be such a rarity, in these unsettled times, that few men would be found hardy enough to venture on the water for a livelihood.—A warning! Ay, we will own you gave us open and frequent warning. It was a notice, that the consignee should not have overlooked, when Nicholas Nichols met with the hurt, as the anchor was leaving the bottom I never knew an accident happen at such a time and no evil come of it. Then, had we a warning with the old man in the boat; besides the never-failing ill luck of sending the pilot violently out of the ship. As if all this wasn’t enough, instead of taking a hint, and lying peaceably at our anchors, we got the ship under way, and left a safe and friendly harbour of a Friday, of all the days in a week!2 So far from being surprised at what has happened, I only wonder at finding myself still a living man; the reason of which is simply this, that I have given my faith where faith only is due, and not to unknown mariners and strange Commanders. Had Edward Earing done the same, he might still have had a plank between him and the bottom; but, though half inclined to believe in the truth, he had, after all, too much leaning to superstition and credulity.”
This laboured and characteristic profession of faith in the mate, though sufficiently intelligible to Wilder, was still a perfect enigma to his female listeners. But Nighthead had not formed his resolution by halves, neither had he gone thus far, with any intention to stop short of the completion of his whole design. In a very few summary words, he explained to Mrs Wyllys the desolate condition of the ship, and the utter improbability that she could continue to float many hours; since actual observation had told him that her lower hold was already half full of water.
“And what is then to be done?” demanded the governess, casting a glance of bitter distress towards the pallid and attentive Gertrude. “Is there no sail in sight, to take us from the wreck? or must we perish in our helplessness!”
“God-protect us from anymore strange sails!” exclaimed the surly Nighthead. “There we have the pinnace hanging at the stern, and here must be land at some forty leagues to the north-west. Water and food are plenty, and twelve, stout hands can soon pull a boat to the continent of America; that is, always provided, America is left where it was seen no later than at the sun-set of yesterday.”
“You then propose to abandon the vessel?”
“I do. The interest of the owners is dear to all good seamen, but life is sweeter than gold.”
“The will of heaven be done! But surely you meditate no violence against this gentleman, who, I am quite certain, has governed the vessel, in very critical circumstances, with a discretion far beyond his years!”
Nighthead muttered his intentions, whatever they might be, to himself; and then he walked apart, apparently to confer with the men, who already seemed but too well disposed to second any of his views, however mistaken or lawless. During the few moments of suspense that succeeded, Wilder stood silent and composed, a smile of something like scorn struggling about his lip, and maintaining the air rather of one who had power to decide on the fortunes of others, than of a man whose own fate was most probably at that very moment in discussion. When the dull minds of the seamen had arrived at their conclusion, the mate advanced to proclaim the result. Indeed, words were unnecessary, in order to make known a very material part of their decision; for a party of the men proceeded instantly to lower the stern-boat into the water, while others set about supplying it with the necessary means of subsistence.