Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 68, No. 417, July, 1850

Cape weather as bad I had seen before, but always in good-sized ships; and I owned to Snelling I would rather have handled any one of them, even with a lee-shore near, ten times over, than this schooner of ours in the present case. However, none of us were in any mood for speaking at the time, let alone the waste of breath it was. The best thing we had to do, after getting somewhat satisfied of her weathering it this way, was to have the grog served out to the men, swig off a stiff pannikin one's self, and make one's self as comfortable as possible with his pea-coat in the lee of something. The sight of the sea ridging up with a dim glimmer against the dark, kept your eye fixed to it: first you thought it would burst right aboard, crash down upon the decks; then she lifted with it, swelling broad under her, while the long steady sweep of the gale drove just over the bulwarks with a deep moan: for half a minute, perhaps, a shivering lull, when you heard the bulkheads and timbers creak and strain below from stem to stern, and the bilge-water yearning, as it were, to the water outside. Then, again, it was a howl and a shriek, a wide plunge of sea bore up her weather-bow, and the moment ere she came fairly to, one felt as if the schooner were going to pitch God knows where. Her whole bulwarks shook and shivered, the wind found out every chink in them, whistling round every different rope it split upon, while all the time, the loose wet dreary spars behind the long-boat kept slatting and clattering against each other in the lashings, like planks in a woodyard of a November night. This was the way we stuck till the morning watch showed it all in a drizzling, struggling sort of half light, blowing as hard as ever, the Cape seas rolling and heaving mountain-high, of a pale yesty hue, far and wide to the scud; the spray drifting from the crests, and washing over her bare forecastle, with now and then the white wings of a huge albatross to be seen aslant to windward, riding on the breast of a long wave down into the trough.

Well, the whole blessed day did this sort of thing continue, only varied by now and then a huger sea than ordinary lifting close aboard of us, and we being hove up to get a glimpse of the long glaring streak of horizon through the troughs of the waves: sometimes an unluckier splash than usual over the bow and through the forechains, that made us look sharp lest the canvass of the foresail should go, or the schooner broach end-on to the sea. Otherwise, all we had to do was to watch the binnacle, hold on with one hand to a rope, and with the other to our caps; or turn out and in with each other down the booby-hatch for a snatch of sleep, and a bit of biscuit and cold beef, with a glass of grog. Mr Webb, the harbour officer, was to be seen below in his berth all this time, lying as peaceable as a child – whether he was dead sick, or only confoundedly afraid, I didn't know; but I must say I felt for the poor fellow when I heard him ask Snelling, in a weak voice, if he would get somebody to stand off the bull's-eye in the deck over his berth, as it always made him think there was a new hurricane coming on. "D – n it, you low skulking hound!" said the reefer, who had wonderfully little pity in his make, "it can't be worse – what d'ye want light for, eh?" "Only to see the opposite wall," said Webb, meekly; "do, sir – oh now!" "Oh, you lubber ye!" said Snelling, "don't you know a bulkhead from a wall yet? If you'd come on deck to bear a hand like others, you wouldn't need light; and I thought you might do for a mate aboard, too – pah, you scum!" "Mr Snelling," said I sharply, as he came through the cabin, "a worm will turn when it's trod upon, and so you may find yet, sir!" "Well, Mr Collins," said he, as confidentially as if I hadn't meant to give him a set down, "I don't like the fellow's eye. I'll look after him, sir!" Not to mention the young rogue's power of face, which was beyond brass, he had a way of seeing you in two places at once with that upward squint of his, as if his eyes were the points of a pair of compasses, that made the officers of the Hebe always send him to the masthead directly, for fear it should take the frown out of them. In fact, when Snelling's twinkling weather-eye lighted on one's neck, without the other, you almost felt it tickle you, and as usual I turned away with a "pshaw!"

On the second morning, the gale at last began to break, shifting southward; on which, as soon as the sea ran a little easier, I had the helm cautiously put up at a favourable moment, the reefed mainsail, fore-topmast-staysail, and square fore-topsail set as she got before the wind, and away the schooner went; rising on the wide deep-blue swells with a long roll in them, then shearing ahead through their breasts, wrinkled and seething pale-green, till she sank with the fall of the wave – the stump of her aftermast standing, and the fore one shortened by the to'gallant-mast. You may easily believe there was no one aboard more eager to get clear of this weather than myself; as in ordinary circumstances, with a craft like this, in two or three days more we might have been in a high enough latitude to begin looking out for the Indiaman. For my part, I can't deny that the wish for having Tom Westwood safe out of harm's way, and with me in the schooner, strong as it was, played second to the notion of seeing sweet Violet Hyde in any way again, if it was only the last time before she went out of reach altogether; for her getting amongst East India ways of doing, high-flying civilians and soldiers, shows, and sights, either in Calcutta or up-country, was equal to anything else, in my mind. Still, we had six or seven days longer of the heavy seas and hard gales, before north-easting enough could be made to take us beyond the Cape winter, just then coming on, and which the Seringapatam had very likely escaped by two or three days, so that she would have a considerable start of us.

By this time we were standing well up for the Mozambique Channel, which I had heard the Indiamen intended to take in company; a piece of information that made me the more anxious to overtake the Seringapatam, at latest, by the time they reached open water again, where, being the only ship from Bombay, she would no doubt part from her consorts. We had a cruiser that year, as I knew, in the Mozambique, where there were some rumours of pirates after the war, so that in case of her happening to speak the Seringapatam close, and having got any word of Westwood's affair, he ran a chance of being picked off. However, that wasn't by any means the thing that troubled me most: somehow or other, whenever the picture of Violet's face brought the Indiaman's decks clear into my mind, with all about her, I couldn't get rid of the notion that some ill-luck would come across that ship before she got into port. If any pirate craft were to dodge the whole bevy of Indiamen up the head of the channel, as was pretty sure to be the case, he would probably wait for some signs of separating, and be down upon a single one not long after she cleared the Leychelles islands, where a lonely enough stretch of the Indian Ocean spreads in. The more I entered upon the thought of it, the more unsufferable it got; especially one day in the mouth of the Mozambique, when it fell a dead calm with a heavy up-and-down swell, fit to roll the sticks out of her; the high blue land of Madagascar being in sight, sometimes to starboard, sometimes to port, then astern, and the clear horizon lying away north-west, dark with a breeze from round the coast. As the hot sun blazed out above us, and the blue water came plunge up over the rail, blazing and flashing, first one side dipped, then the other, I could fancy the passengers on the Indiaman's poop in a light breeze with a suspicious lateen-rigged sail creeping up on her quarter. I thought I saw Violet Hyde's eyes sparkle against the glare of light, and her lips parting to speak – till I actually stamped on the deck, my fists clenched, and I made three strides to the very taffrail of the schooner. All at once I met my second mate's eye coolly fixed on me, which brought me to my senses in a moment, the more so as there was something about this man Jones I couldn't make out, and I had made up my mind to keep a sharp eye on him; though the fact was, it annoyed me most to feel him seeing into me, as it were, without troubling himself. "We shall have the breeze before long, sir, round Cape Mary yonder," said he, stepping forward. "So I expect, myself, Mr Jones," said I, "though you evidently know the coast better than I do." With that I gave him a careless side-look, but to all appearance there was nothing particular in his, as he told me he had seen it two or three times before.

With the evening we were once more running sharp on a wind up channel; and when she did get her own way in a good breeze, the schooner's qualities came out. 'Twas a perfect luxury to look over the side and see the bubbles pass, her sharp bows sliding through it like a knife, she eating into the wind all the time in a way none but a fore-and-aft clipper could hope to do, with a glassy blue ripple sent back from her weather-bow as far as the forechains: then to wake of a morning and feel her bounding under you with a roll up to windward, while the water gushed through and through below the keel, and ran yearning and toppling away back along the outer timbers into her boiling wake, working with the moving rudder. And our man-o'-warsmen were quite delighted with the Young Hebe, as they still called her. Snelling was in his element while we were having the new spars sent up aloft – a set of longer sticks than before – till she had twice the air, as well as a knowing rake aft. Next thing was to get the long-brass nine-pounder amidships from under the boat, where the Frenchmen had kept it, besides which we found another in her hold; so that, added to six small carronades already on deck, we made a pretty show. Meanwhile, for my own part, I kept cracking on with every stitch of canvass that could be clapped upon the spars, including studding-sails. Jones himself didn't know better than I did by this time how to handle the craft, schooner though she was, in the way of making her use what weather we had to the best purpose. Variable as it proved, too, I was aware the Indiamen would have pretty much the same now as we had; so that, on going aloft with the glass, as I did every watch in the day, I soon began each time expecting one or other of them to heave in sight.

As for the five hands from Cape Town, they seemed to have fallen in cheerfully enough with our own; and as soon as the fine weather came, the gang of Lascars were set to duty like the rest. Snelling would have them even trained to work the guns; although, if it blew at all hard, not one could be got to go aloft except their old serang, and the tindal, his mate. What surprised me most was the harbour officer himself at last asking, as Mr Snelling told me, to be put in a watch; but as the midshipman said there was no doubt Webb had made a voyage or two before, somewhere or other, I agreed to it at once. "I'm not sure, sir," added the midshipman, with one of his doubtful double looks, "but the gentleman may have seen blue-water the first time at Government expense, and not in the service either – he don't look fore and aft enough, Mr Collins, harbour officer though he be; but never mind, sir, I'll see after him!" – "Pooh," said I, laughing; "if he does turn to, Mr Snelling, it shan't be in the watch you have to do with! Hand him over to Mr Jones." By this time I had changed the mid into my own watch, and given Jones charge of the other – so to him the harbour officer went.

The main character aboard of us, to me at any rate, was this Jones himself. The fact was, at first I had my doubts of him altogether, partly owing to the queer way we got hold of him, partly on account of his getting the upper hand so much through chance, in the tremendous weather we had at the outset, till I wasn't sure but it might come into the fellow's head of itself, to be upon some drift or other that might cost me trouble, as things stood. However, I no sooner felt where I was, and got the craft under my own spoke, than I came to set him down for nothing but one of those strange hands you fall in with at sea sometimes, always sailing with a "purser's name," a regular wonder of a shipmate, and serving to quote every voyage after, by way of a clincher on all hard points, not to say an oracle one can't get beyond, and can't flow sky-high enough. To tell the truth, though, Jones was as thorough a seaman as ever I met with – never at a loss, never wanting on any hand; whether it was the little niceties we stood in need of for setting the schooner's rigging all right again, which none but a blue-water long-voyage sailor can touch, or, what comes to be still better in tropical latitudes, a cool head and a quick hold, with full experience for all sorts of weather, 'twas much the same to him. He was all over like iron, too, never seeming to stand in need of sleep, and seeing like a hawk. At any hour I came on deck in his watch, there was Jones, all awake and ready, till hearing him walk the planks over my head of a fine night made me at times keep my eyes open, listening to it and the wash of the water together. I fancied there was something restless in it, like the sea, with now and then an uneven sort of a start; and at last it would come to full stop, that gave me the notion of how he was standing quiet in the same spot; whether he was looking aloft, or thinking, or leaning over the side, or what he was going to do, troubled me wonderfully. The only want in his seamanship I noticed, he evidently wasn't used to handle a large ship; but craft of some kind I was pretty sure he had commanded in the course of his life. As for taking observations, he could do it better than I could then; while the knowledge he had on different heads, that came out by chance, made you think more of a Cambridge graduate than a common sailor, such as he had shipped for with us. The strangest part of all about him, though, was what I couldn't well name, not to this day: 'twas more grained in his manner, and the ring of his voice at particular moments, as well as his walk, though these were the smart seaman's no less; but one couldn't help thinking of a man that had known the world ashore some time or other, in a different enough station from now – ay, and in a way to bring out softer lines in his face than reefing topsails or seeing the main-tack ridden down would do. The nearest I could come to calling it, far apart as the two men stood, was to fancy he reminded me of Lord Frederick Bury himself; especially when he looked all of a sudden to the horizon in that wide, vacant kind of fashion, as if he expected it farther off than it was: only Jones's face was twice the age, like a man's that had had double the passions in it at the outset, and given them full swing since then; with a sleeping devil in his eye yet, besides, as I thought, which only wanted somewhat to rouse it. Only for that, I had a sort of leaning to Jones myself; but, as it was, I caught myself wishing, over and over, for something to make us fall regularly foul of each other, and get rid of this confounded doubtful state. One hitch of a word to take hold of, and, by Jove! I felt all the blood in my body would boil out in me to find how we stood, and show it; but nothing of the kind did Jones let pass – and as close as the sea itself he was in regard to his past life. As for the men from the frigate, at least, they seemingly looked on him with no great fondness, and a good deal of respect, in spite of themselves, for his seamanship; whereas, if he had been left in the forepeak in place of the cabin, I've no doubt in a short time it would have been no man but Jones. You light now and then upon a man afloat, indeed, that his shipmates hold off from, as healthy dogs do from a mad one; and you saw they had some sort of an inkling of the gloomy close nature Jones had in him, by the way they obeyed his orders. Webb's three Cape Dutchmen seemed to have a notion he was some being with mysterious powers, while the Lascars ran crouching at his very word – some of them being, as I found, Malays, and the rest Mussulmen from Chittagong; but Jones could send them about in their own language, Dutchmen and all – a part of the matter which did not tend to keep me less careful over him. Still I observed, since his coming aboard, that Jones never once touched liquor, which had plainly enough been his ruin ashore; whether on account of meaning to pull up once for all and mend, or only to have a wilder bout at next port, or else to keep himself steady for aught that might turn up, I couldn't settle in my own mind. Though deucedly doubtful of its being the first, the very idea of it made one feel for the man; and, in case of his doing well, I had no small hopes of something in the upshot to save a real sailor like him from going to the devil altogether, as he seemed doing.

Now, after our getting clear of the rough Cape weather, and the dead-lights being taken out of the stern-windows, I had given a look, for the first time, into the schooner's after-cabins, which were pretty much as the people she belonged to before had left them, except for the rough work the gale had played. There were two of them, one opening into the other; and I must say it was a melancholy sight to meet the bright sunlight streaming into them from off the water astern, with all the little matters either just as if the owners were still inside, or else tumbled about at sixes and sevens. One drawer, in particular, had come out of a table, scattering what was in it on the deck: there was a half open letter in a woman's hand, all French, and showing a lock of hair, with a broken diamond cross of the French Legion of Honour, besides a sort of paper-book full of writing, and two printed ones bound in morocco. I picked up the letter and the cross, put them in again, and shoved the drawer back to its place, though I brought the books away with me to have a glance over. What struck me most, though, was a plaster figure of the French emperor himself, standing fastened on a shelf, with one hand in the breast of his great coat, and looking calmly out of the white sightless eyes; while right opposite hung a sort of curtain which you'd have thought they were fixed upon. When I hauled it aside, I started – there, on a shelf to match the other, was a beautiful smiling child's head to the shoulders, of pure white marble, as if it leant off the bulkhead like a cherub out of the clouds. Spite of all, however, the touch of likeness it had to the head I got such a glimpse of at Longwood, even when the hot sunlight showed it in my spy-glass so pale and terrible, was sufficient to tell me what this was, – Napoleon's own little son, in fact, who was made king of Rome, as I remembered hearing at the time. The thought of the schooner's strange French captain, and his desperate scheme, came back on me so strong, joined to what I saw he had an eye to in fitting out his cabins, that, for my own part, I hadn't the heart to use them myself, and at first sight ordered the dead-lights to be shipped again, and the door locked.

'Twas a good many days after this, of course, and we had made a pretty fast run up the Mozambique, in spite of the sharp navigation required, sighting nothing larger than the native and Arab craft to be seen thereabouts; we were beginning to clear out from amongst the clusters of islands and shoals at the channel head, when two large sail were made in open water to nor'-eastward. Next morning by daybreak we were to windward of the weathermost, – a fine large Indiaman she was, crowding a perfect tower of canvass. Shortly after, however, the schooner was within hail, slipping easily down upon her quarter, which seemed to give them a little uneasiness, plenty of troops as she seemed to have on board, and looming like a frigate. After some showing of keeping on, and apparently putting faith in the man-o'-war pennant I hoisted, she hove into the wind, when we found she was the Company's ship Warringford, and the other the something Castle, I forget which, both for Calcutta. The next thing, as soon as they found we were tender to his Majesty's frigate Hebe, was to ask after the Seringapatam; on which I was told she was three or four days sail ahead with the Mandarin, bound to China, neither of them having put in at Johanna Island to refresh. I was just ready to put our helm up again and bid good-bye, when the tiffin gong could be heard sounding on the Indiaman's quarterdeck, and the old white-haired captain politely asked me if I wouldn't come aboard with one or two of my officers to lunch. Mr Snelling gave me a wistful glance – there were a dozen pretty faces admiring our schooner out of the long white awnings: but even if the notion of bringing up Snelling himself as my first officer hadn't been too much for me, not to speak of either Jones or Webb, why the very thoughts that everything I saw recalled to me, made me the more eager to get in sight of the Seringapatam. "Thank you, sir," answered I. "No – I must be off after the Bombay ship." – "Ah," hailed the old captain, "some of your Admiral's post-bags, I suppose. Well, keep as much northing as you can, sir, and I daresay you'll find her parted company. She's got a jury fore topmast up, for one she lost a week ago; so you can't mistake her for the Mandarin, with a good glass." – "Have you noticed any suspicious craft lately, sir?" asked I. "Why, to tell you the truth, lieutenant," sang out he, looking down off the high bulwarks at our long nine-pounders and the knot of Lascars, "none more so than we thought you, at first, sir!" The cadets on the poop roared with laughter, and an old lady with two daughters seemed to eye Snelling doubtfully through an opera-glass, as the reefer ogled both of them at once. "By the bye," sang out the captain of the Indiaman to me again, "I fancy the passengers in that ship must have got somehow uncomfortable – one of our Bengal grandees aboard of her wanted a berth to Calcutta with us, 'tother day in the Mozambique; but we're too full already!" – "Indeed, sir?" said I; but the schooner's mainboom was jibbing over, and with two or three more hails, wishing them a good voyage, and so on, away we slipped past their weather-bow. The Warringford got under weigh at her leisure, and in an hour or two her topsails were down to leeward of us. On I cracked with square and studding-sails to the quartering breeze, till the schooner's light hull jumped to it, and aloft she was all hung out of a side, like a dairyman's daughter carrying milk; with the pace she went at I could almost say to an hour when we should overhaul the chase.

Still, after two or three days of the trade-wind, well out in the Indian Ocean, and not a spot to be seen, we had got so far up the Line as to make me sure we had overrun her. Accordingly the schooner was hauled sharp on a wind to cruise slowly down across what must be the Indiaman's track, judging as we could to a nicety, with a knowledge of the weather we had had. For my part I was so certain of sighting her soon, that I ordered the after-cabins to be set to rights, seeing a notion had taken hold of me of actually offering them to Sir Charles Hyde for the voyage to Calcutta – Fancy the thought! 'Twas too good to be likely; but Violet herself actually being in that little after-cabin and sleeping in it – the lively schooner heading away alone for India, and they and Westwood the sole passengers aboard – why, the idea of it was fit to drive me crazy with impatience.

Well, one fine night, after being on deck all day, and the whole night before, almost, I had turned in to my cot to sleep. From where I lay I could see the moonshine off the water through the stern-light in that after-cabin, by the half-open door. I felt the schooner going easily through the water, with a rise and fall from the heave of the long Line-swell; so close my eyes I couldn't, especially as the midshipman could be heard snoring on the other side like the very deuce. Accordingly I turned out into the after-cabin, and got hold of one of the Frenchman's volumes to read, when, lo and behold, I found it was neither more nor less than Greek, all I knew being the sight of it. Next I commenced overhauling the bundle of handwriting, which I took at first for a French log of the schooner's voyage, and sat down on the locker to have a spell at it. So much as I could make out, in spite of the queer outlandish turn the letters had, and the quirks of the unnatural sort of language, it was curious enough – a regular story, in fact, about his own life, the war, and Buonaparte himself. At another time I'd have given a good deal to go through with it at odd hours – and a strange affair I found it was some time afterwards; but meanwhile I had only seen at the beginning that his name was Le Compte Victor l'Allemand, Capitaine de la Marine Française, and made out at the end how there was some scheme of his beyond what I knew before, to be carried out in India, – when it struck me there was no one on the quarterdeck above. I listened for a minute through the stern-window, and thought I heard some one speaking over the schooner's lee-quarter, as she surged along; so slipping on a jacket and cap, I went on deck at once.