The Pirate Slaver | Page 2

on board her--while her speed,
especially in light winds and tolerably smooth water, was such as to fill
us all, fore and aft, with the most extravagant hopes of success against
the light-heeled slave clippers whose business it was ours to suppress.
She was a flush-decked vessel, with high, substantial bulwarks pierced
for nine guns of a side, and she mounted fourteen 18-pounder
carronades and four long nine-pounders, two forward and two aft,
which could be used as bow and stern-chasers respectively, if need

were, although we certainly did not anticipate the necessity to employ
any of our guns in the latter capacity. Our crew, all told, numbered one
hundred and sixty-five.
I was in the first lieutenant's watch, and happened to be on deck when
the look-out reported land upon the morning upon which this story
opens. I remember the circumstance as well as though it had occurred
but yesterday, and I have only to close my eyes to bring the whole
scene up before my mental vision as distinctly as a picture. The brig
was, as I have already said, heading to the eastward, close-hauled, on
the port tack, under everything that we could set, to her royals; but the
wind was so scant that even the light upper sails flapped and rustled
monotonously to the sleepy heave and roll of the ship, and it was only
by glancing through a port at the small, iridescent air-bubbles that
drifted astern at the rate of about a knot and a half in the hour that we
were able to detect the fact of our own forward movement at all. We
had been on deck just an hour--for two bells had barely been struck--
when the first faint suggestion of dawn appeared ahead in the shape of
a scarcely-perceptible lightening of the sky along a narrow strip of the
eastern horizon, in the midst of which the morning star beamed
resplendently, while the air, although still warm, assumed a freshness
that, compared with the close, muggy heat of the past night, seemed
almost cold, so that involuntarily I drew the lapels of my thin jacket
together and buttoned the garment from throat to waist. Quickly, yet by
imperceptible gradations, the lightening of the eastern sky spread and
strengthened, the soft, velvety, star-lit, blue-black hue paling to an arch
of cold, colourless pallor as the dawn asserted itself more emphatically,
while the stars dwindled and vanished one by one in the
rapidly-growing light. As the pallor of the sky extended itself
insidiously north and south along the horizon, a low-lying bank of what
at first presented the appearance of dense vapour became visible on the
Barracouta's larboard bow; but presently, when the cold whiteness of
the coming day became flushed with a delicate tint of purest, palest
primrose, the supposed fog-bank assumed a depth of rich purple hue
and a clear-cut sharpness of outline that proclaimed it what it was--land,
most unmistakably. The look-out was a smart young fellow, who had
already established a reputation for trustworthiness, and he more than

half suspected the character of the cloud-like appearance when it first
caught his attention; he therefore kept his eye upon it, and was no
sooner assured of its nature than he raised the cry of--
"Land ho! broad on the port bow!"
The first luff, who had been for some time meditatively pacing the
weather side of the deck from the binnacle to the gangway, with his
hands clasped behind his back and his glance directed alternately to the
deck at his feet and to the swaying main-royal-mast-head, quickly
awoke from his abstraction at the cry from the forecastle, and,
springing lightly upon a carronade slide, with one hand grasping the
inner edge of the hammock-rail, looked long and steadily in the
direction indicated.
"Ay, ay, I see it," he answered, when after a long, steady look he had
satisfied himself of the character of what he gazed upon. "Wheel, there,
how's her head?"
"East-south-east, sir!" answered the helmsman promptly.
The lieutenant shut one eye and, raising his right arm, with the hand
held flat and vertically, pointed toward the southern extremity of the
distant land, held it there for a moment, and murmured--
"A point and a half--east-half-south, distant--what shall we say--twenty
miles? Ay, about that, as nearly as may be. Mr Dugdale, just slip below
and let the master know that the land is in sight on the port bow,
bearing east-half-south, distant twenty miles."
I touched my cap and trundled down to the master's cabin, the door of
which was hooked back wide open, permitting the cool, refreshing
morning air that came in through the open scuttle free play throughout
the full length of the rather circumscribed apartment in which Mr
Robert Bates lay snoring anything but melodiously. Entering