It was now the first of March. The brigantine General Knox, Edward Hiller, master, was working her way to the eastward. She was homeward bound from Matanzas, having lain in Portland during a severe gale, where she had discharged her cargo. A heavy sea was still running, and the vessel, close hauled on the wind, and under short sail, being light, was knocking about at a great rate. Captain Hiller had been from boyhood a deep-water sailor, but, having married the year before, took a smaller vessel, traded to the West Indies in winter, and coasted in the summer. He was now bound home for a summer’s coasting, having his brother Sam for mate, and a crew composed of his neighbors’ boys, two of whom, John Reed and Frank Wood, were his cousins. Captain Hiller was amusing himself with humming the old capstan ditty,--
“Storm along, my hearty crew, Storm along, stormy,”--
in tones which sounded like a nor’wester, whistling through a grommet-hole, at times varying his occupation by sweeping the horizon with his glass. At length he said to the man at the helm,--
“John, what island is that on the lee bow?”
“I’ll ask our Sam: he is pilot all along shore, and knows every rock, and everybody. Sam, come aft here.”
“That can’t be, Sam: he took his father’s ship when the old man gave up; there ain’t his equal along shore. I’ve been “shipmates” with him: he wouldn’t be living on such a place as that.”
“It is so, captain; he was offered the ship; but like another man I know of, that is a relation to me, he fell in love with a pretty girl, who vowed she wouldn’t marry him if he went to sea. And so he bought that island, married the girl, and has turned farmer. There’s some trouble there; I can see a woman on the beach, and she has got a petticoat--that’s the flag of all nations--on an oar, and is making signals.”
“If my old shipmate is in trouble, I’m there. Keep her off for the island, John. Flow the main sheet, and set the colors in the main rigging, and then she’ll know we see her signals.”
The vessel, with the wind free, increased her speed, but not sufficiently to suit the impatience of the noble-hearted seaman, who exclaimed,--
“Shake the reefs out of the mainsail! loose the fore-topsail! Why, how slow you move to help a neighbor! Sam, do you know the way in there? It seems to be all breakers.”