CHAPTER IX.

A HURRICANE DRIVES US TO THE FORTUNATE ISLES.

Some days after this we passed a carraca, as the Portuguese name those large and round-built vessels which they send to Brazil and the Indies, and which are alike adapted for burden, fighting, and sailing.

On exchanging the bearings--which, when vessels pass each other, are usually chalked on a blackboard hung over the quarter--Weston and Hislop found a considerable difference between the Portuguese and ours; but never doubting that we were correct, they bore on without hailing the carraca, as we passed each other on opposite tacks under a press of sail.

The weather continued cloudy, and an increased difference was found on exchanging the latitude and longitude with another vessel next morning. Then, after an observation at noon. Weston found that for more than fifty hours the _Eugenie_ had been going several miles to the south-east of her due course.

The compass was immediately overhauled by Hislop, who found that the standard of the needle was loose.

On that night there commenced a long course of head winds and foul weather, during which the compass never worked properly, and the captain and mate found, by the first solar observation, that we had drifted so far to leeward as to be somewhere between the parallels of 28° and 28° 35' north.

Tattooed Tom and old Roberts, the man-o'-war's-man, were superstitious enough to give me the entire blame of all this, in consequence of having fired one day at some of Mother Cary's chickens; an action, they averred, which never failed to give the craft of the perpetrator a head wind for the remainder of her voyage--if she ever finished it at all.

"If this foul weather holds for another day," said Weston, as he trod the deck with a sulkiness quite professional under the circumstances, "we shall see land sooner than I wished."

"Land!" I reiterated, brightening at the idea more than he relished.

"Yes, some part of the Canaries--Santa Cruz de la Palma, most likely; but we shall have very rough weather before another sun rises. I know well the signs, Mr. Rodney. Don't you see what is brewing yonder, Hislop?" he said in a low voice to his mate.

"You say just what old Roberts, Tattooed Tom, and I were observing forward," replied Hislop. "We have not all of us seen a hurricane off the west coast of Africa, a tornado in the Windward Isles, and a regular roaring pampero off the Rio de la Plata, without learning something--eh, Captain?"

"I hope not; so remember that this gloomy weather, with the wind lulling away and then coming again in hot gusts with a moaning sound--in my part of England we name it 'the calling of the sea'--are always signs of a coming squall."

As the night closed in, the canvas on the brig was reduced; the royals were struck and the yards sent on deck; the dead lights were shipped on the stern windows; the quarter boat was hoisted within the taffrail, and there lashed hard and fast, for there were increasing tokens of a coming tempest, and ere midnight it came with a vengeance.

The sky at first was all a deep, dark blue, wonderfully dark for that region, and the stars, especially the planets, shone with singular clearness and beauty; but in the north-west quarter of the heavens we could see the coming blast.

From the horizon to the zenith, there arose with terrible rapidity a mighty bank of sable cloud, forming a vast and gloomy arch, at the base of which a pale and phosphorescent light seemed to play upon the heaving sea.

This light brightened and sunk alternately. Now it would shoot downward with a lurid glare, steadily and brilliantly, under the flying vapor, and then it died away with an opal tint.

Sheet lightning, of a pale and ghastly green, extending over ten or twelve points of the horizon, flashed and played upon it. Then we heard the rush of rain, as if a great lake had been falling from a vast height into the sea, and next the roar of the mighty blast; while furrowing up the ocean in its passage, the tempest came swooping down upon us and _around_ us, in a species of whirlwind.

Bravely the _Eugenie_ met it, for her captain and men handled her nobly.

She had her topgallant sails furled, her courses up, the topsails lowered upon the cap, and the reef-tackles close out; but she swayed fearfully when careening beneath the hot breath of the mighty blast, and riding over those black mountains of water, which in fierce succession it impelled toward her. High she went over a sloping sheet of foam one moment, and the next saw her plunging into a deep, black valley of that midnight sea; so deep, that the wind seemed to pass over us, the canvas flapped to the mast, and we only caught its weight and power when rising quickly on the crest of the next mighty roller.

Meanwhile the green-forked lightning flashed so brightly that at times we could see every rope in the vessel, our own blanched and pale faces, as we held on by ringbolts and belaying-pins to save ourselves from being washed overboard by the blinding sheets of mingled foam and rain that deluged the deck, over which the sea was also breaking heavily every instant.

Each time the _Eugenie_ rose in her buoyancy, her decks were half full of water, and the longboat amidships filled so fast that a man with a bucket could scarcely keep it baled.

Following the whirlwind, we went round _five_ times in _thirty-five_ minutes, with the after-yards _squared_ and the head-yards braced _sharp up_.

Then the black mass of sulphureous cloud in which we were enveloped seemed to ascend, and with the same rapidity with which it approached, passed away into the sky; "the chamber of the thunder," as the Bard of Cona names it, became again clear, blue, and starry, though marked by occasional masses of flying vapor. The rain ceased, and the _Eugenie_ heaved upon a foam-covered sea, over which there passed, from time to time, short squalls, compelling us to lower the double-reefed topsails and run before the wind.

Now a stiff glass of grog was served round to all, and by turns we contrived to get some dry clothing.

In the end of the middle watch--about four o'clock, A.M.--there was suddenly visible, upon our larboard bow, a faint and vapory light that shot upward in the sky, from time to time, like jets of steam.

This singular appearance was high above the horizon, and first caught the anxious eye of Captain Weston.

"Hah! do you see that?" said he to me.

"What is it?"

"The Peak of Adam,--Teneriffe."

"The great volcanic peak in the Fortunate Isles!"

"Old Tenny Reef in the Canaries, we calls it, sir," said Tattooed Tom, who was at the wheel. "It ain't a volcano now; but it can't give over its old trade o' smoking altogether, and blows up steam like a screw propeller, or just as a whale does water through his spiracles."

"Tom means what the Spaniards term the ventas, or nostrils, of the peak, through which the aqueous vapors come with a buzzing sound, and these cause a species of light," said Hislop.

"Well, thank Heaven, though we are far out of our course, that blast has done no more than wet our storm jackets, and scrape some of our paint off."

"We have come out of it uncommon well, sir," said Tom, as he stood with his feet planted firmly apart on the deck, his hard brown hands grasping the wheel, with the helm amidships, as we were still before the wind, and the light of the binnacle flaring upward on his weather-beaten face, with its strange zebra-like stripes,--at least, on so much of his grim visage as the peak of his sou'-wester and a scarlet cravat that was round his throat and jaws permitted us to see. "The last time I was in such a breeze was a pampero off the mouth of the Rio de la Plata, but then we had our foresail split to ribbons, and the ship was canted over on her beam ends almost. The mainsail was blown right out of the men's hands, and flapped in the sky like thunder, while the craft--a five-hundred ton ship she was, and all copper-fastened--was just on the point of capsizing, when with a crash that made our hearts ache, snap went the jibboom and topmasts off at the caps, just as you'd break a 'bacca-pipe at the bowl. She righted after _that_; but four of our best men were swept away to leeward, and never seen again. And now, Master Rodney, with all your book-learning, or you, Master Hislop, with all yours, can you tell me why such things as tornadoes, hurricanes, pamperos, and the like, are sent to torment poor hard-working fellows such as me?"

"I can," said Hislop, turning his handsome but wet and weather-beaten face to the steersman.

"You can, sir?" reiterated Tom, loudly and incredulously.

"Yes, in four lines. Listen,--

"'Perhaps _this_ storm was sent with healing breath, From distant climes to scourge disease and death; 'Tis ours on Thine unerring laws to trust; With Thee, great Lord,--whatever _is_ is _just_!"

"Faith, you are right, sir," said honest Tom Lambourne, touching his tarry hat in respect to the mate, mingled with that piety which, in his own rugged way, a seaman is never without.