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The yellow hood over her powerful engines glistened with the wet of the great bow-wave her speed had occasioned, and her powerful motor was exhausting with a roar like a battery of machine guns. Crouched aft of the engine hood was Sam Redding, who held the wheel. Jack Curtiss and Bill Bender were in the stern. They sat tandem-wise in the narrow racing shell.
To any one unaccustomed to the sea the change thus wrought in the course of a few short minutes would have seemed marvellous, almost miraculous, indeed; for whereas while we were hove-to, head to wind and sea, the plunging of the ship had been so furious that it was only with the utmost difficulty even the most seasoned among us could maintain our footing; while the howling and shrieking of the wind aloft, and the savage force with which it struck us when the frigate rolled to windward, irresistibly suggested the idea that we were in the grip of a hurricane; now, when we were scudding away almost dead before it, the gale seemed to have suddenly softened to the strength of no more than a moderate breeze; there were no repetitions of those sickening lee lurches as the ship was flung aloft on the steep breast of a mountainous, swift-running sea, but, in place of it, a gentle, rhythmical, pendulum-like swinging roll, and a long, easy, gliding rush forward, with an acre of foam seething and hissing about our bows as those same steep, mountainous seas caught us under the quarter and hurled us headlong forward with our bow-wave roaring and boiling ahead of us, glass-smooth, and clear as crystal.
At least, this is the picture she presented from the forecastle head looking aft. Her great main yard swung far over the water to leeward, and the huge bellying courses, setting tight as a drumhead with the pressure, sent the roaring of the bow-wave back in a deep booming echo, until the air was full of vibration from the taut fabric.
The plane roared, shot down the deck, and was gone to form one of the string of climbing objects which grew smaller with incredible swiftness as they shot for the sky. Coburn saw another carrier. There was a huge bow-wave before it. Destroyers ringed it, seeming to bounce in the choppy sea made by so many great ships moving so close together.
Now the oncoming launch came in sight; the same launch that had carried Leyden up the river, which Barry had lost track of on that dark night before he was taken and given to the ants; and she foamed straight down between the schooner and the creek with creaming bow-wave and flying funnel-sparks.
Frequently he caught himself gazing astern and persuaded himself it was the wake he was looking at; but when he snatched his eyes away from the stern and bent them forward at the blustering, smashing bow-wave thrown off to the leeward by the snub-nosed brigantine, he knew that his own wake was one of his lesser worries.
There appeared to be a fine breeze blowing, for the vessel was heeling strongly; the thunder of the wind in the sails, and the piping of it through the taut rigging came down through the scuttle with a pleasant, slumberous sound, and the roar of the bow-wave, close to my ear, with the quick, confused swirl and gurgle of water along the planks, assured me that the ship was moving at a tolerably rapid rate.
The wash of the oars and the gurgle of the bow-wave were the only sounds that were audible. After half an hour of this I arose and sent a hail through the bank of mist, which I thought would reach a vessel within half a mile. There was no sound of an answer, the dank vapor appearing to deaden my hail and swallow up all noise a short distance beyond the boat.
"The smooth bow-wave hove it up as if for a closer inspection, and then the ship, brought again to her course, turned her back on it with indifference, while twenty pairs of eyes on her deck stared in all directions trying to see what they could see. "The commanding officer and his second in command discussed the object with understanding.
The fish boats were still coming, one behind the other, lurching and swinging in the trough of the sea, rising and falling, with wheeling gulls crying above them. On each deck a solitary fisherman humped over his steering gear. From each cleaving stem the bow-wave curled in white foam. There was something in the wind. MacRae felt it like a premonition.
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