The Pilot

by James Fenimore Cooper

  "It is a collier," Griffith said, "who has hauled from the land in the late gale, and who is luffing up to his course again. If the wind holds here in the south, and he does not get into that fog-bank, we can stand off for him and get a supply of fuel before eight bells are struck."

  "I think his head is to the northward, and that he is steering off the wind," returned the Pilot, in a musing manner, "If that Dillon succeeded in getting his express far enough along the coast, the alarm has been spread, and we must be wary. The convoy of the Baltic trade is in the North Sea, and news of our presence could easily have been taken off to it by some of the cutters that line the coast, I could wish to get the ship as far south as the Helder!"

  "Then we lose this weather tide!" exclaimed the impatient Griffith; "surely we have the cutter as a lookout! besides, by beating into the fog, we shall lose the enemy, if enemy it be, and it is thought meet for an American frigate to skulk from her foes!"

  The scornful expression that kindled the eye of the Pilot, like a gleam of sunshine lighting for an instant some dark dell and laying bare its secrets, was soon lost in the usually quiet look of his glance, though he hesitated like one who was struggling with his passions before he answered:

  "If prudence and the service of the States require it, even this proud frigate must retreat and hide from the meanest of her enemies. My advice, Captain Munson, is, that you make sail, and beat the ship to windward, as Mr. Griffith has suggested, and that you order the cutter to precede us, keeping more in with the land."

  The aged seaman, who evidently suspended his orders only to receive an intimation of the other's pleasure, immediately commanded his youthful assistant to issue the necessary mandates to put these measures in force. Accordingly, the Alacrity, which vessel had been left under the command of the junior lieutenant of the frigate, was quickly under way; and, making short stretches to windward, she soon entered the bank of fog, and was lost to the eye. In the mean time the canvas of the ship was loosened, and spread leisurely, in order not to disturb the portion of the crew who were sleeping; and, following her little consort, she moved heavily through the water, bearing up against the dull breeze.

  The quiet of regular duty had succeeded to the bustle of making sail; and, as the rays of the sun fell less obliquely on the distant land, Katherine and Cecilia were amusing Griffith by vain attempts to point out the rounded eminences which they fancied lay in the vicinity of the deserted mansion of St. Ruth. Barnstable, who had resumed his former station in the frigate as her second lieutenant, was pacing the opposite side of the quarter-deck, holding under his arm the speaking-trumpet, which denoted that he held the temporary control of the motions of the ship, and inwardly cursing the restraint that kept him from the side of his mistress. At this moment of universal quiet, when nothing above low dialogues interrupted the dashing of the waves as they were thrown lazily aside by the bows of the vessel, the report of a light cannon burst out of the barrier of fog, and rolled by them on the breeze, apparently vibrating with the rising and sinking of the waters.

  "There goes the cutter!" exclaimed Griffith, the instant the sound was heard.

  "Surely," said the captain, "Somers is not so indiscreet as to scale his guns, after the caution he has received!"

  "No idle scaling of guns is intended there," said the Pilot, straining his eyes to pierce the fog, but soon turning away in disappointment at his inability to succeed—"that gun is shotted, and has been fired in the hurry of a sudden signal!—can your lookouts see nothing, Mr. Barnstable?"

  The lieutenant of the watch hailed the man aloft, and demanded if anything were visible in the direction of the wind, and received for answer that the fog intercepted the view in that quarter of the heavens, but that the sail in the east was a ship, running large, or before the wind. The Pilot shook his head doubtingly at this information, but still he manifested a strong reluctance to relinquish the attempt of getting more to the southward. Again he communed with the commander of the frigate, apart from all other ears; and while they yet deliberated, a second report was heard, leaving no doubt that the Alacrity was firing signal-guns for their particular attention.

  "Perhaps," said Griffith, "he wishes to point out his position, or to ascertain ours; believing that we are lost like himself in the mist"

  "We have our compasses!" returned the doubting captain; "Somers has a meaning in what he says!"

  "See!" cried Katherine, with girlish delight, "see, my cousin! see, Barnstable! how beautifully that vapor is wreathing itself in clouds above the smoky line of fog! It stretches already into the very heavens like a lofty pyramid!"

  Barnstable sprang lightly on a gun, as he repeated her words:

  "Pyramids of fog! and wreathing clouds! By heaven!" he shouted, "'tis a tall ship! Royals, skysails, and stud-dingsails all abroad! She is within a mile of us, and comes down like a racehorse, with a spanking breeze, dead before it! Now know we why Somers is speaking in the mist!"

  "Ay," cried Griffith, "and there goes the Alacrity, just breaking out of the fog, hovering in for the land!"

  "There is a mighty hull under all that cloud of canvas, Captain Munson," said the observant but calm Pilot: "it is time, gentlemen, to edge away to leeward."

  "What, before we know from whom we run!" cried Griffith; "my life on it, there is no single ship King George owns but would tire of the sport before she had played a full game of bowls with—"

  The haughty air of the young man was daunted by the severe look he encountered in the eye of the Pilot, and he suddenly ceased, though inwardly chafing with impatient pride.

  "The same eye that detected the canvas above the fog might have seen the flag of a vice-admiral fluttering still nearer the heavens," returned the collected stranger; "and England, faulty as she may be, is yet too generous to place a flag-officer in time of war in command of a frigate, or a captain in command of a fleet. She knows the value of those who shed their blood in her behalf, and it is thus that she is so well served! Believe me, Captain Munson, there is nothing short of a ship of the line under that symbol of rank and that broad show of canvas!"

  "We shall see, sir, we shall see," returned the old officer, whose manner grew decided, as the danger appeared to thicken; "beat to quarters, Mr. Griffith, for we have none but enemies to expect on this coast"

  The order was instantly issued, when Griffith remarked, with a more temperate zeal:

  "If Mr. Gray be right, we shall have reason to thank God that we are so light of heel!"

  The cry of "a strange vessel close aboard the frigate" having already flown down the hatches, the ship was in an uproar at the first tap of the drum. The seamen threw themselves from their hammocks, and lashing them rapidly into long, hard bundles, they rushed to the decks, where they were dexterously stowed in the netting, to aid the defences of the upper part of the vessel. While this tumultuous scene was exhibiting, Griffith gave a secret order to Merry, who disappeared, leading his trembling cousins to a place of safety in the inmost depths of the ship.

  The guns were cleared of their lumber and loosened. The bulkheads were knocked down, and the cabin relieved of its furniture; and the gun-deck exhibited one unbroken line of formidable cannon, arranged in all the order of a naval battery ready to engage. Arm-chests were thrown open, and the decks strewed with pikes, cutlasses, pistols, and all the various weapons for boarding. In short, the yards were slung, and every other arrangement was made with a readiness and dexterity that were actually wonderful, though all was performed amid an appearance of disorder and confusion that rendered the ship another Babel during the continuance of the preparations. In a very few minutes everything was completed, and even the voices of the men ceased to be heard answering to their names, as they were mustered at their stations, by their respective officers. Gradually the ship became as quiet as the grave; and when even Griffith or his commander found it necessary to speak, their voices were calmer, and their tones more mild than usual. The course of the vessel was changed to an oblique line
from that in which their enemy was approaching, though the appearance of flight was to be studiously avoided to the last moment. When nothing further remained to be done, every eye became fixed on the enormous pile of swelling canvas that was rising, in cloud over cloud, far above the fog, and which was manifestly moving, like driving vapor, swiftly to the north. Presently the dull, smoky boundary of the mist which rested on the water was pushed aside in vast volumes, and the long taper spars that projected from the bowsprit of the strange ship issued from the obscurity, and were quickly followed by the whole of the enormous fabric to which they were merely light appendages. For a moment, streaks of reluctant vapor clung to the huge floating pile; but they were soon shaken off by the rapid vessel, and the whole of her black hull became distinct to the eye.

  "One, two, three rows of teeth!" said Boltrope, deliberately counting the tiers of guns that bristled along the sides of the enemy; "a three- decker! Jack Manly would show his stern to such a fellow t, and even the bloody Scotchman would run!"

  "Hard up with your helm, quartermaster!" cried Captain Munson; "there is indeed no time to hesitate, with such an enemy within a quarter of a mile! Turn the hands up, Mr. Griffith, and pack on the ship from her trucks to her lower studdingsail-booms. Be stirring, sir, be stirring! Hard up with your helm! Hard up, and be damn'd to you!"

  The unusual earnestness of their aged commander acted on the startled crew like a voice from the deep, and they waited not for the usual signals of the boatswain and drummer to be given, before they broke away from their guns, and rushed tumultuously to aid in spreading the desired canvas. There was one minute of ominous confusion, that to an inexperienced eye would have foreboded the destruction of all order in the vessel, during which every hand, and each tongue, seemed in motion; but it ended in opening the immense folds of light duck which were displayed along the whole line of the masts, far beyond the ordinary sails, overshadowing the waters for a great distance, on either side of the vessel. During the moment of inaction that succeeded this sudden exertion, the breeze, which had brought up the three-decker, fell fresher on the sails of the frigate, and she started away from her dangerous enemy with a very perceptible advantage in point of sailing.

  "The fog rises!" cried Griffith; "give us but the wind for an hour, and we shall run her out of gunshot!"

  "These nineties are very fast off the wind," returned the captain, in a low tone, that was intended only for the ears of his first lieutenant and the Pilot; "and we shall have a struggle for it."

  The quick eye of the stranger was glancing over the movements of his enemy, while he answered:

  "He finds we have the heels of him already! he is making ready, and we shall be fortunate to escape a broadside! Let her yaw a little, Mr. Griffith; touch her lightly with the helm; if we are raked, sir, we are lost!"

  The captain sprang on the taffrail of his ship with the activity of a younger man, and in an instant he perceived the truth of the other's conjecture.

  Both vessels now ran for a few minutes, keenly watching each other's motions like two skilful combatants; the English ship making slight deviations from the line of her course, and then, as her movements were anticipated by the other, turning as cautiously in the opposite direction, until a sudden and wide sweep of her huge bows told the Americans plainly on which tack to expect her. Captain Munson made a silent but impressive gesture with his arm, as if the crisis were too important for speech, which indicated to the watchful Griffith the way he wished the frigate sheered, to avoid the weight of the impending danger. Both vessels whirled swiftly up to the wind, with their heads towards the land; and as the huge black side of the three-decker, checkered with its triple batteries, frowned full upon her foe, it belched forth a flood of fire and smoke, accompanied by a bellowing roar that mocked the surly moanings of the sleeping ocean. The nerves of the bravest man in the frigate contracted their fibres, as the hurricane of iron hurtled by them, and each eye appeared to gaze in stupid wonder, as if tracing the flight of the swift engines of destruction. But the voice of Captain Munson was heard in the din, shouting while he waved his hat earnestly in the required direction:

  "Meet her! meet her with the helm, boy! meet her, Mr. Griffith, meet her!"

  Griffith had so far anticipated this movement as to have already ordered the head of the frigate to be turned in its former course, when, struck by the unearthly cry of the last tones uttered by his commander, he bent his head, and beheld the venerable seaman driven through the air, his hat still waving, his gray hair floating in the wind, and his eye set in the wild look of death.

  "Great God!" exclaimed the young man, rushing to the side of the ship, where he was just in time to see the lifeless body disappear in the waters that were dyed in its blood; "he has been struck by a shot! Lower away the boat, lower away the jolly-boat, the barge, the tiger, the—"

  "'Tis useless," interrupted the calm, deep voice of the Pilot; "he has met a warrior's end, and he sleeps in a sailor's grave! The ship is getting before the wind again, and the enemy is keeping his vessel away."

  The youthful lieutenant was recalled by these words to his duty, and reluctantly turned his eyes away from the bloody spot on the waters, which the busy frigate had already passed, to resume the command of the vessel with a forced composure.

  "He has cut some of our running-gear," said the master, whose eye had never ceased to dwell on the spars and rigging of the ship; "and there's a splinter out of the maintopmast that is big enough for a fid! He has let daylight through some of our canvas too; but, taking it by-and- large, the squall has gone over and little harm done. Didn't I hear something said of Captain Munson getting jammed by a shot?"

  "He is killed!" said Griffith, speaking in a voice that was yet husky with horror—"he is dead, sir, and carried overboard; there is more need that we forget not ourselves, in this crisis."

  "Dead!" said Boltrope, suspending the operation of his active jaws for a moment, in surprise; "and buried in a wet jacket! Well, it is lucky 'tis no worse; for damme if I did not think every stick in the ship would have been cut out of her!"

  With this consolatory remark on his lips, the master walked slowly forward, continuing his orders to repair the damages with a singleness of purpose that rendered him, however uncouth as a friend, an invaluable man in his station.

  Griffith had not yet brought his mind to the calmness that was so essential to discharge the duties which had thus suddenly and awfully devolved on him, when his elbow was lightly touched by the Pilot, who had drawn closer to his side.

  "The enemy appear satisfied with the experiment," said the stranger; "and as we work the quicker of the two, he loses too much ground to repeat it, if he be a true seaman."

  "And yet as he finds we leave him so fast," returned Griffith, "he must see that all his hopes rest in cutting us up aloft. I dread that he will come by the wind again, and lay us under his broadside; we should need a quarter of an hour to run without his range, if he were anchored!"

  "He plays a surer game—see you not that the vessel we made in the eastern board shows the hull of a frigate? 'Tis past a doubt that they are of one squadron, and that the expresses have sent them in our wake. The English admiral has spread a broad clew, Mr. Griffith; and, as he gathers in his ships, he sees that his game has been successful."

  The faculties of Griffith had been too much occupied with the hurry of the chase to look at the ocean; but, startled at the information of the Pilot, who spoke coolly, though like a man sensible of the existence of approaching danger, he took the glass from the other, and with his own eye examined the different vessels in sight. It is certain that the experienced officer, whose flag was flying above the light sails of the three-decker, saw the critical situation of his chase, and reasoned much in the same manner as the Pilot, or the fearful expedient apprehended by Griffith would have been adopted. Prudence, however, dictated that he should prevent his enemy from escaping by pressing so closely on his rear as to render it impossible for the American to haul ac
ross his bows and run into the open sea between his own vessel and the nearest frigate of his squadron. The unpractised reader will be able to comprehend the case better by accompanying the understanding eye of Griffith, as it glanced from point to point, following the whole horizon. To the west lay the land, along which the Alacrity was urging her way industriously, with the double purpose of keeping her consort abeam, and of avoiding a dangerous proximity to their powerful enemy. To the east, bearing off the starboard bow of the American frigate, was the vessel first seen, and which now began to exhibit the hostile appearance of a ship of war, steering in a line converging towards themselves, and rapidly drawing nigher; while far in the northeast was a vessel as yet faintly discerned, whose evolutions could not be mistaken by one who understood the movements of nautical warfare.

  "We are hemmed in effectually," said Griffith, dropping the glass from his eye; "and I know not but our wisest course would be to haul in to the land, and, cutting everything light adrift, endeavor to pass the broadside of the flag-ship."

  "Provided she left a rag of canvas to do it with!" returned the Pilot. "Sir, 'tis an idle hope! She would strip your ship in ten minutes, to her plankshears. Had it not been for a lucky wave on which so many of her shot struck and glanced upwards, we should have nothing to boast of left from the fire she has already given; we must stand on, and drop the three-decker as far as possible."