The veteran seaman at the wheel obeyed the order with steadiness, but in vain he kept his eyes riveted on the margin of his head sail, in order to watch the manner the ship would obey its power. Twice more, in as many moments, the tall masts fell towards the horizon, waving as often gracefully upward and then they yielded to the mighty pressure of the wind, until the whole machine lay prostrate on the water.

"Reflect!" said Wilder, seizing the bewildered Earing by the arm, as the latter rushed madly up the steep of the deck; "it is our duty to be calm: Bring hither an axe."

Quick as the thought which gave the order, the admonished mate complied, jumping into the mizzen-channels of the ship, to execute, with his own hands, the mandate that he well knew must follow.

"Shall I cut?" he demanded, with uplifted arms, and in a voice that atoned for his momentary confusion, by its steadiness and force.

"Hold! Does the ship mind her helm at all?"

"Not an inch, sir."

"Then cut," Wilder clearly and calmly added.

A single blow sufficed for the discharge of the momentary act. Extended to the utmost powers of endurance, by the vast weight it upheld, the lanyard struck by Earing no sooner parted, than each of its fellows snapped in succession, leaving the mast dependant on itself alone for the support of all its ponderous and complicated hamper. The cracking of the wood came next; and then the rigging fell, like a tree that had been sapped at its foundation, the little distance that still existed between it and the sea.

"Does she fall off?" instantly called Wilder to the observant seaman at the wheel.

"She yielded a little, sir; but this new squall is bringing her up again."

"Shall I cut?" shouted Earing from the main rigging whither he had leaped, like a tiger who had bounded on his prey.

"Cut!" was the answer.

A loud and imposing crash soon succeeded this order, though not before several heavy blows had been struck into the ma.s.sive mast itself. As before, the seas received the tumbling maze of spars, rigging and sails; the vessel surging, at the same instant from its rec.u.mbent position, and rolling far and heavily to windward.

"She rights! she rights!" exclaimed twenty voices which had been hitherto mute, in a suspense that involved life and death.

"Keep her dead away!" added the still calm but deeply authoritative voice of the young Commander "Stand by to furl the fore-topsail--let it hang a moment to drag the ship clear of the wreck--cut cut--cheerily, men--hatchets and knives--cut _with_ all, and cut _off_ all!"

As the men now worked with the freshened vigour of revived hope, the ropes that still confined the fallen spars to the vessel were quickly severed; and the "Caroline," by this time dead before the gale, appeared barely to touch the foam that covered the sea, like a bird that was swift upon the wing skimming the waters. The wind came over the waste in gusts that rumbled like distant thunder, and with a power that seemed to threaten to lift the ship and its contents from its proper element, to deliver it to one still more variable and treacherous. As a prudent and sagacious seaman had let fly the halyards of the solitary sail that remained, at the moment when the squall approached, the loosened but lowered topsail was now distended in a manner that threatened to drag after it the only mast which still stood. Wilder instantly saw the necessity of getting rid of this sail, and he also saw the utter impossibility of securing it. Calling Earing to his side, he pointed out the danger, and gave the necessary order.

"Yon spar cannot stand such shocks much longer," he concluded; "and, should it go over the bows, some fatal blow might be given to the ship at the rate she is moving. A man or two must be sent aloft to cut the sail from the yards."

"The stick is bending like a willow whip," returned the mate, "and the lower mast itself is sprung. There would be great danger in trusting a life in that top, while such wild squalls as these are breathing around us."

"You may be right," returned Wilder, with a sudden conviction of the truth of what the other had said: "Stay you then here; and, if any thing befal me, try to get the vessel into port as far north as the Capes of Virginia, at least;--on no account attempt Hatteras, in the present condition of"----

"What would you do, Captain Wilder?" interrupted the mate laying his hand powerfully on the shoulder of his Commander, who, he observed, had already thrown his sea-cap on the deck, and was preparing to divest himself of some of his outer garments.

"I go aloft, to ease the mast of that topsail, without which we lose the spar, and possibly the ship."

"Ay, ay, I see that plain enough; but, shall it be said, Another did the duty of Edward Earing? It is your business to carry the vessel into the Capes of Virginia, and mine to cut the topsail adrift. If harm comes to me, why, put it in the log, with a word or two about the manner in which I played my part: That is always the best and most proper epitaph for a sailor."

Wilder made no resistance, but resumed his watchful and reflecting att.i.tude, with the simplicity of one who had been too long trained to the discharge of certain obligations himself, to manifest surprise that another should acknowledge their imperative character. In the mean time, Earing proceeded steadily to perform what he had just promised. Pa.s.sing into the waist of the ship, he provided himself with a suitable hatchet, and then, without speaking a syllable to any of the mute but attentive seamen, he sprang into the fore-rigging, every strand and rope-yarn of which was tightened by the strain nearly to snapping. The understanding eyes of his observers comprehended his intention; and, with precisely the same pride of station as had urged him to the dangerous undertaking, four or five of the older mariners jumped upon the ratlings, to mount with him into an air that apparently teemed with a hundred hurricanes.

"Lie down out of that fore-rigging," shouted Wilder, through a deck-trumpet; "lie down; all, but the mate, lie down!" His words were borne past the inattentive ears of the excited and mortified followers of Earing, but they failed of their effect. Each man was too much bent on his own earnest purpose to listen to the sounds of recall. In less than a minute, the whole were scattered along the yards, prepared to obey the signal of their officer. The mate cast a look about him; and, perceiving that the time was comparatively favourable, he struck a blow upon the large rope that confined one of the angles of the distended and bursting sail to the lower yard. The effect was much the same as would be produced by knocking away the key-stone of an ill-cemented arch. The canvas broke from all its fastenings with a loud explosion, and, for an instant, was seen sailing in the air ahead of the ship, as though sustained on the wings of an eagle. The vessel rose on a sluggish wave--the lingering remains of the former breeze--and then settled heavily over the rolling surge, borne down alike by its own weight and the renewed violence of the gusts. At this critical instant while the seamen aloft were still gazing in the direction in which the little cloud of canvas had disappeared, a lanyard of the lower rigging parted with a crack that even reached the ears of Wilder.

"Lie down!" he shouted fearfully through his trumpet; "down by the backstays; down for your lives; every man of you, down!"

A solitary individual, of them all, profited by the warning, and was seen gliding towards the deck with the velocity of the wind. But rope parted after rope, and the fatal snapping of the wood instantly followed. For a moment, the towering maze tottered, and seemed to wave towards every quarter of the heavens; and then, yielding to the movements of the hull, the whole fell, with a heavy crash, into the sea. Each cord, lanyard, or stay snapped, when it received the strain of its new position, as though it had been made of thread, leaving the naked and despoiled hull of the "Caroline" to drive onward before the tempest, as if nothing had occurred to impede its progress.

A mute and eloquent pause succeeded this disaster It appeared as if the elements themselves were appeased by their work, and something like a momentary lull in the awful rushing of the winds might have been fancied.

Wilder sprang to the side of the vessel, and distinctly beheld the victims, who still clung to their frail support. He even saw Earing waving his hand, in adieu, with a seaman's heart, and like a man who not only felt how desperate was his situation, but one who knew how to meet his fate with resignation. Then the wreck of spars, with all who clung to it, was swallowed up in the body of the frightful, preternatural-looking mist which extended on every side of them, from the ocean to the clouds.

"Stand by, to clear away a boat!" shouted Wilder, without pausing to think of the impossibility of one's swimming, or of effecting the least good, in so violent a tornado.

But the amazed and confounded seamen who remained needed not instruction in this matter. No man moved, nor was the smallest symptom of obedience given. The mariners looked wildly around them, each endeavouring to trace, in the dusky countenance of the other, his opinion of the extent of the evil; but not a mouth was opened among them all.

"It is too late--it is too late!" murmured Wilder to himself; "human skill and human efforts could not save them!"

"Sail, ho!" Nighthead muttered at his elbow, in a voice that teemed with a species of superst.i.tious awe.

"Let him come on," returned his young Commander bitterly; "the mischief is ready finished to his hands!"

"Should yon be a mortal ship, it is our duty to the owners and the pa.s.sengers to speak her, if a man can make his voice heard in this tempest," the second mate continued, pointing, through the haze at the dim object that was certainly at hand.

"Speak her!--pa.s.sengers!" muttered Wilder, involuntarily repeating his words. "No; any thing is better than speaking her. Do you see the vessel that is driving down upon us so fast?" he sternly demanded of the watchful seaman who still clung to the wheel of the "Caroline."

"Ay, ay, sir," was the brief, professional reply.

"Give her a birth--sheer away hard to port--perhaps he may pa.s.s us in the gloom, now we are no higher than our decks. Give the ship a broad sheer, I say, sir."

The same laconic answer as before was given and, for a few moments, the Bristol trader was seen diverging a little from the line in which the other approached; but a second glance a.s.sured Wilder that the attempt was useless. The strange ship (and every man on board felt certain it was the same that had so long been seen hanging in the north-western horizon) came on, through the mist, with a swiftness that nearly equalled the velocity of the tempestuous winds themselves. Not a thread of canvas was seen on board her. Each line of spars, even to the tapering and delicate top-gallant-masts, was in its place, preserving the beauty and symmetry of the whole fabric; but nowhere was the smallest fragment of a sail opened to the gale. Under her bows rolled a volume of foam, that was even discernible amid the universal agitation of the ocean; and, as she came within sound, the sullen roar of the water might have been likened to the noise of a cascade. At first, the spectators on the decks of the "Caroline" believed they were not seen, and some of the men called madly for lights, in order that the disasters of the night might not terminate in the dreaded encounter.

"No!" exclaimed Wilder; "too many see us there already!"

"No, no," muttered Nighthead; "no fear but we are seen; and by such eyes, too, as never yet looked out of mortal head!"

The seamen paused. In another instant, the long-seen and mysterious ship was within a hundred feet of them. The very power of that wind, which was wont usually to raise the billows, now pressed the element, with the weight of mountains, into its bed. The sea was every where a sheet of froth, but no water swelled above the level of the surface. The instant a wave lifted itself from the security of the vast depths, the fluid was borne away before the tornado in driving, glittering spray. Along this frothy but comparatively motionless surface, then, the stranger came booming, with the steadiness and grandeur with which a dark cloud is seen to sail before the hurricane. No sign of life was any where discovered about her. If men looked out, from their secret places, upon the straitened and discomfited wreck of the Bristol trader, it was covertly, and as darkly as the tempest before which they drove. Wilder held his breath, for the moment the stranger drew nighest, in the very excess of suspense; but, as he saw no signal of recognition, no human form, nor any intention to arrest, if possible, the furious career of the other, a smile of exultation gleamed across his countenance, and his lips moved rapidly, as though he found pleasure in being abandoned to his distress. The stranger drove by, like a dark vision and, ere another minute, her form was beginning to grow less distinct, in a thickening body of the spray to leeward.

"She is going out of sight in the mist!" exclaimed Wilder, when he drew his breath, after the fearful suspense of the few last moments.

"Ay, in mist, or clouds," responded Nighthead, who now kept obstinately at his elbow, watching with the most jealous distrust, the smallest movement of his unknown Commander.

"In the heavens, or in the sea, I care not, provided she be gone."

"Most seamen would rejoice to see a strange sail, from the hull of a vessel shaved to the deck like this."

"Men often court their destruction, from ignorance of their own interests.

Let him drive on, say I, and pray I! He goes four feet to our one; and now I ask no better favour than that this hurricane may blow until the sun shall rise."

Nighthead started, and cast an oblique glance which resembled denunciation, at his companion. To his blunted faculties, and superst.i.tious mind, there was profanity in thus invoking the tempest, at a moment when the winds seemed already to be pouring out their utmost wrath.

"This is a heavy squall, I will allow," he said, "and such an one as many mariners pa.s.s whole lives without seeing; but he knows little of the sea who thinks there is not more wind where this comes from."

"Let it blow!" cried the other, striking his hands together a little wildly; "I pray only for wind!"

All the doubts of Nighthead, as to the character of the young stranger who had so unaccountably got possession of the office of Nicholas Nichols, if, indeed, any remained, were now removed. He walked forward among the silent and thoughtful crew with the air of a man whose opinion was settled.