The Pilot: A Tale of the Sea by James Fenimore Cooper (reading diary txt) 📖

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