CHAPTER XVII. The strongest minds may tamper with and tempt HALF an hour had scarcely elapsed since the corporal had recited to Ramsay the details of all the circumstances which had occurred on board the The Flying Dutchman since the death of Captain Livingstone, and already it was known that the command of the mutineers had been offered to and refused by their old officer-the long sought and tardily discoverd maroon. But on What could he mean by refusing such a post? All of them discussed what none of them could know. board a ship, the nine day's wonder of the shore dwindles into the topic of scarcely more than as many minutes. They had already, on numerous occasions, fully proved the wisdom of their first choice, the corporal-Mynheer, as they jocularly styled him-and soon ceased to think that they could in any way be the gainers by transferring the command into any other hands. True, he was severe and moody, distant and unhappy; but success seemed to await on all he undertook, and that success was invariably made to conduce to their enjoyment. They asked no more. Many of them-the idle portion-endeavoured to rebel against his impartial, fearless execution of those summary laws themselves had framed; but with a touch of the adamantine vigour of Aurelian-undaunted, and not to be turned back-he had acquired an ascendency over them, which all their efforts and insubordination only tended to root the firmer. Brief as his reign had been, many plots had been formed against him during its short existence; but these were, for the most part, momentarily struck out, under the influence of some of his terrible administrations of even-handed justice; so that, ere they came to a head, the older seamen, perceiving, with an intuitive wisdom, that no other successor could be found to keep their jarring band together if he should be cut off, generally contrived to give him notice of what was hatching. Whenever the hand of the conspirator was levelled solely at his life, he freely forgave his intended murderer; but once, in the most formidable of these combinations, when the designs of the intriguers had been levelled rather at the existence of the confederacy in toto than himself especially, he caused eighteen of his subjects to be tried by their fellows, and being found guilty of treason, he, without asking a further opinion, had them all drawn up upon the strand, and shot, within twenty minutes after the passing of their doom. Three men also he had slain with his own hand, in different attempts made upon his person; and now he stalked a lonely thing, apart from all-a mystery none could fathom-having no pleasure in the rude and sensual enjoyments of his crew, and seemingly without any other object in life than to descend, reluctantem draconem, to the grave-heeding not how sadly his life was passed, so long as he was master of himself, and free. With all this untameable obduracy of purpose, still the crew loved while they feared him. It is true they had made him chief, and he was determined the rule should neither be wrested from nor diminished in his hands. Still his unsurpassable bravery, his truth of purpose, and frugality, won upon their hardy hearts. He took no man's store-he sought to entice away no man's intended bride. He interfered in none of those petty meannesses in which a ruler is so often involved in hatred and contempt. None ever appealed to him in a just cause in vain. No one ever dared to shrink from his duty; but that done, he never wished to make them feel less free and unfettered than himself. Mentally and bodily, they saw in their "skipper" one whom nature had made their superior; and however envy might prompt, neither detraction nor rebellion could drag him from that indestructible elevation. Gradually they prepared to submit. Their disappointment, therefore, at Ramsay's having refused the dangerous and questionable honour they had once sought to confer on him, was speedily forgotten. The late crew of the Spider, recoverd from the abject state of intoxication into which they had allowed their fears to drive them, were now the objects of the mutineer's seductive tales and most persuasive hospitalities, and in songs and merriment of every description which the watchful discipline of Mynheer permitted, they were passing the third night of their voyage home. Even the dark and hopeless countenance of Mynheer seemed to be most unaccountably touched with some latent joy, since the recovery of Ramsay and his bride, to whom the dreaded chief showed all the gentleness that was in his nature. The lights had been long extinguished on the decks of The Flying Dutchman, but this was no check to the mirth of the crew; they assembled in groups, according to the sudden friendships they had formed with their new comrades, and the laugh, song, and joke went round, and gathering on the forecastle with such of their wives as they had brought to sea, they gave way to the exuberance of their spirits in the dance. It was well, perhaps, for the mutineers, that all was cheerfulness and mirth within their ship; for far different was the scene without, upon the sullen waste of the unbounded seas. The late gale had, it is true, blown itself out, and a dubious hazy state of the atmosphere had succeeded. On this evening in particular, a uniform canopy of dun-gray clouds, slightly mottled at intervals, hung low over the sea. The long heavy swell of the mighty ocean rolled surgingly under the bright copper of the frigate, but little or no wind played upon its surface, to fill the large sails which, now set in reality and absence of all trick, were intended to waft the pirates to their eagerly-desired home-those thoughtless men who had steeped themselves in so many crimes to obtain its unlawful pleasures! In the western quarter of the obscure heavens a leadlike radiation of the departed sun still lingered, with a vividness and duration rarely or ever seen within the tropics; while, in the east, the moon, which had scarcely gained the zenith of the heavens, glowered with a dull red misty glare through the intervening haze, showing more distinctly a long black bank of clouds, that hung suspended half way betwixt herself and the horizon, while a ray or two of bright light, escaping beyond all, fell in intense spots upon the dismal horizon, and rendered the shade still deeper and more drear. Had such a sky but topped some blasted heath, there had been the very scene of Macbeth's witches; and the gloomy supernatural appearance of the hour was not lessened by its louring upon a limitless expanse of dark and restless water, rolling in vast surges with a slow and solemn motion, and showing to the eye a wild and sluggish surface, broken in its sterner aspect only where a streak of dim light was for a moment caught, reflected, and lost again. The breeze seemed gradually to be dying more and more away; the large sails flapped heavily every now and then upon the groaning masts, and at intervals a low unearthly moaning came over the weary stretch of ocean, as it heaved its troubled breast around them, and sighed to the night air. Of all the hundreds on board, Ramsay alone was musing on the ominous aspect of the night, and thinking in his own mind it was just such weather as, with "portents strange and terrible, perplexes monarchs with the fear of change." CHAPTER XVIII. What! have we trifled with the Tomb till Death WERTHER. WHILE plunged in these sombre reveries, one of The Flying Dutchman's look-outs cried-"A sail on the weather-beam!" The officer of the first watch was young Herbert, the nephew of the maintopman, whom the latter had saved at the risk of his own life. Seizing his glass at the word, he directed it on the distant object, which now catching one of the partial rays of the moon, shot forth beneath the dark and superincumbent bank of cloud, with a strange and silvery freshness that rendered every part of her form distinct, though not less than five or six miles off. "By Jove here comes a regular heavy squall!” cried the young seaman, as he examined the stranger-" a noble frigate, under close-reefed fore and maintopsails, scudding before it! We must shorten sail quickly, or we shall be on our beam-ends in a crack. For a thousand doubloons she brings the gale down with her. Hawkins," (turning to his mate,) "do you take charge of the deck while I run down and call Mynheer. In the meanwhile pipe all hands, and shorten sail." With these words, down jumped young Herbert to the deck below. The hands were called, and at their post, when the corporal rushed on deck, followed by young Herbert at his heel. 66 By all that's sharp," cried the latter, when they gained the gangway, "how rapidly she bears down before northeaster! When I left the deck, she was at least five miles distant." "You must be wrong," said Mynheer; "now she is scarcely three miles off." "I see it; but she certainly seemed nearly half as far distant again just now. It is very strange." "You must mistake. But this is a regular tornado. I |