W.h.g. Kingston - The Pirate of the Mediterranean

“Well, what does the carpenter report?” he asked, as the mate appeared, after the well had been sounded.

“We’ve gained a foot upon the leaks, sir; but it’s hard work to keep them under, and if I might advise – ”

“Please Heaven, we’ll carry on, then, on the ship!” exclaimed the master, interrupting him. “Let half a watch at a time work the pumps. Before long the weather may moderate.”

The day wore on, and the pursuer and the pursued held their course with little variation. The Zodiac tore her way through the water, and sea succeeding sea met her persevering bows, and either yielded her a passage or flew in deluges over her decks. Night came on, and the stranger was upward of two leagues astern. The mate had before miscalculated her distance; his anxiety to shorten sail had probably somewhat blinded him. If the scene on board the Zodiac appeared terrific during daylight, much more so was it when darkness added its own peculiar horrors. Still not a sheet nor a tack would the brave master start, and he resolved, if the gale did not further increase, to run through the night without shortening sail. He himself set an example of hardihood and resolution to his crew, for scarcely a moment did he quit his post during the day, or the dreary hours of the first watch. As the short twilight disappeared, the stranger grew less and less distinct, till her shadowy outline could alone be traced, and even that by degrees vanished from the view of all but the most keen-sighted, till at last she could nowhere be discerned. An anxious look out was kept for her; for though shrouded by the obscurity from their sight, every one on deck felt that she was where she had last been seen, if not nearer; and some even fancied they could see her looming, surrounded by a halo of unnatural light, through the darkness.

It was in the first hour of the morning-watch, and neither Bowse nor his mate, though they swept the sea to the westward with their night-glasses, could anywhere distinguish her.

“We have done better than we could have hoped for,” observed the master. “It will soon be day, and we then need not fear her.”

“It will be more than three good hours yet before we have anything like daylight,” returned the mate; “and that cursed craft may be alongside us before then.”

“Well, we are prepared for her,” returned the master.

“I hope so,” exclaimed the mate; “for, by Heaven, Captain Bowse, there she is, well on our weather quarter.”

The mate spoke truly. There evidently was a brig, though dimly visible, hovering, as it were, like a dark spirit, in the quarter he indicated.

The crew soon discovered her also, and if any of them had before felt inclined to seek rest below, they did so no longer.

Another hour passed away; but the stranger had not altered her position. There she hung, like a dark shadow, indistinctly visible, yet causing no doubt of something ominous of evil being there, as some bird of prey hovering about, ready to pounce down any moment, and destroy them.

The morning light brought the stranger clearly in view, at about the same distance; and at the same period of time the ship, righting suddenly from the downward pressure, to which she had been so long exposed, showed that there was a lull of the wind. It was but momentarily, for again she heeled over as before. Again, however, she righted, and this time, her lee scuppers remained for longer free of the water.

Bowse looked to windward: he was about to order a couple of reefs more to be shaken out of the topsails, when another violent blast almost laid her on her beam ends.

The hardy crew, wearied with the unremitting exertions of the night, looked at each other in despair, as the sea literally washed up the decks to leeward. A loud crash was heard, and the fore-topmast went over the side, carrying away the jibboom. It was the last expiring effort of the gale.

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