"I have known far less notice given of a shift of wind," was the steady answer.
"We have had time to gather in our kites, 'tis true, sir; but there are signs and warnings, that come with this change, at which the oldest seaman has reason to take heed!"
"Yes," continued Nighthead, in a voice that sounded hoarse and powerful, even amid the fearful accessories of that scene; "yes, it is no trifling commission that can call people, that I shall not name, out upon the water in such a night as this. It was in just such weather that I saw the 'Vesuvius' ketch go to a place so deep, that her own mortar would not have bein able to have sent a bomb into the open air, had hands and fire been there fit to let it off!"
"Ay; and it was in such a time that the Greenlandman was cast upon the Orkneys, in as flat a calm as ever lay on the sea."
"Gentlemen," said Wilder, with a peculiar and perhaps an ironical emphasis on the word, "what is it you would have? There is not a breath of air stirring, and the ship is naked to her topsails!"
It would have been difficult for either of the two malcontents to have given a very satisfactory answer to this question. Both were secretly goaded by mysterious and superstitious apprehensions, that were powerfully aided by the more real and intelligible aspect of the night; but neither had so far for gotten his manhood, and his professional pride, as to lay bare the full extent of his own weakness, at a moment when he was liable to be called upon for the exhibition of qualities of a far more positive and determined character. Still, the feeling that was uppermost betrayed itself in the reply of Earing, though in an indirect and covert manner.
"Yes, the vessel is snug enough now," he said, "though eye-sight has shown us all it is no easy matter to drive a freighted ship though the water as fast as one of your flying craft can go, aboard of which no man can say, who stands at the helm, by what compass she steers, or what is her draught!"
"Ay," resumed Nighthead, "I call the 'Caroline' fast for an honest trader, and few square-rigged boats are there, who do not wear the pennants of the King, that can eat her out of the wind, or bring her into their wake, with studding-sails abroad. But this is a time, and an hour, to make a seaman think. Look at yon hazy light, here, in with the land, that is coming so fast down upon us, and then tell me whether it comes from the coast of America, or whether it comes from out of the stranger who has been so long running under our lee, but who has got, or is fast getting, the wind of us at last, and yet none here can say how, or why. I have just this much, and no more, to say: Give me for consort a craft whose Captain I know, or give me none!"