Waterbury evening Democrat., 1888-04-07
CHAPTER xxx.
VALUE THE LADING.

CHAPTER XIX
 VALUE THE LADING
 The day had been so full of business, there had been so much to engage my mind, that it was not until I was seated at supper in the old cook room, in which had passed so many melancholy hours, that found myself able to take a calm survey of my situation, and to compare the various motions of my fortunes. could scarcely indeed believe that was not in a dream, from which I should awaken presently, and discover my self still securely imprisoned in the ice, and all those passages of the powder blasts the liberation of the schooner, my lonely days in her af1oat, my encounter with the whaler, as visionary and vanishing as those dusky forms of vapor which had swarmed in giant shape over my little open boat.
 But even if confirmation had been wanting in the sable visage of Billy Pitt, who sat near the furnace munching away with prodigious enjoyment of his food and bringing his can of hot spiced wine from his vast blubber lips with a mighty sigh of deep delight, I must have found it in each hissing leap and roar ing plunge of the old piratical bucket so full of the vitality of the wind swollen canvas, so quick with all the life instincts of a vessel storming through the deep with buoyant keel and under full control. Oh heaven! how diff ferent from the dull ambling of the morning, the sluggish pitching and rolling to the weak pulling of the spritsail!
 WIS up and down good deal during the night. But for the treasure I should have been less anxious, dare say. had come SO successfully to this point that was resolved, if my hopes were to miscarry, the misfort- une should not be owing to want of vigilance on my part; and there happened an incident which inevitably tended to sharpen my watchfulness, though was perfectly con, sclous rr was a mInon to ono sga,nsv ,us co. curing second time.
 I came on deck to relieve Wilkinson at midnight, after half hours nodding doze by the furnace below. He went to his cabin; I stood under the lee of cloth seized in tho weather main rigging. Pitt arrived. and I told him he could return to the cook house and stay there till I called him. The helm being dashed and the schooner doing very | we'll nothing wanted watching ill particular, yet I would not have the deck abandoned, and meant to keep lookout turn and turn about with Pitt, as Wilkinson and Cromwell had. She snow had ceased, but it was very dark and thick, the ocean roaring, welter- | ing shadow, palpitating upon the eyes in roll ing folds of blackness, with the quick expir- ing flash of foam to windward. On a sud- den, looking over the weather quarter me thought discovered deeper shade in the night there than was elsewhere perceptible, It was like great blot of ink upon the dark l ness. Even while speculated it drew out in the shape of ship running before the gale. 1 She seemed to be heading directly for us. The roof of my mouth turned dry as | desert sand; my tongue and limbs re- fused their office; could neither cry nor stir, being indeed paralyzed by the ter lnsl>1 T | the imminence of our peril. It all happened while you could have told thirty. The great black mass surged up with the water boiling about the bows; she brought thunder along | with her in her rigging and sails as she | scared to the crowns of the Seas she was l sweeping before could not tell what can l vas she was under, but her speed was a full l ten knots, and as I did not see her till she was close she looked to come upon us with a | single bound. She passed us to windward within stones throw, and vanished like a
 dark cloud melting into the surrounding l blackness. Not gleam of light broke from
 her; you heard nothing but the boiling at
 her bows and the thunderous pealing of the | gale in her canvas. A quarter turn of the
 wheel would have sent us to the bottom, and l her, no doubt, on top of us. Whether she | was the Susan Tucker or some other whaler,
 or big South sea man driven low and get l ting what casting she could out of the gale.
 know not. She was as complete mystery
 of the ocean night as any spectral fabric,
 and a heavier terror to me than phantasm
 worked by ghosts could have proved.
 l l knew such a thing could not happen
 again, yet when called Pitt talked to him
 about it as though we must certainly be run | down if he did not keep a sharp lookout: | and when my watch below came round at
 o'clock, was so agitated that I was up and | down till daybreak, as though my duty did 1 not end till then.
 l The gale moderated at sunrise; and though
 it was gloomy, true Cape Horn morning,
 with dark driving clouds, the sea a dusky | olive, very hollow, and frequent small quick
 squalls of sleet, which brought the wind to
 us in sharp guns yet as we could see where
 we were going, got the schooner before it, l heading her east northeast, and under a | reefed topsail, mainsail and staysail the old bucket stormed through 1t with the sputter
 and rage of line-of-battle ship. There was
 a logreel and line on deck, and I found a
 sand glass in the chest in my cabin in which
 had met with the quadrants, perspective
 glass and the like, and I kept this log regu-
 larly going, making point of departure on
 the chart the American captain had given l me, which I afterwards found to be within
 two leagues and a half of the true position.
 But for three days the weather continued so
 heavy that there was nothing to be done in
 the shape of gratifying the mems expecta-
 tions by overhauling what was left of the
 cargo Indeed, we had no leisure for such
 work; all our waking hours had to be strictly
 dedicated to the schooner, and in keeping a
 lookout for ice. But the morning of the
 fourth day broke with fine sky and brisk
 breeze from a little to the east of south, to
 which we showed every cloth the schooner L IL. T l~s~~
 reckoning within few leagues of the mer-
 idian of 60 degs,, I shaped @ course north by
 east by my compass, with the design of get ting view of Staten Island that might