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Updated: May 12, 2025
"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 I ask no better favour than that this hurricane may blow until the sun shall rise." Knighthead started, and cast an oblique glance, which resembled denunciation, at his companion.
The mariners looked wildly around them, each endeavouring to trace in the dusky countenance of some shipmate his opinion of the extent of the evil; but not a mouth opened among them all. "It is too late it is too late!" murmured Wilder; "human skill and human efforts could not save them!" "Sail, ho!" Knighthead shouted in a voice that was teeming with superstitious awe.
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 an encounter. "Too many see us there already!" said Wilder. "No, no," muttered Knighthead; "no fear but we are seen; and by such eyes, too, as never yet looked out of mortal head!" The seamen paused.
"Let it blow!" cried the other, striking his hands together a little wildly; "I pray for wind!" All the doubts of Knighthead, as to the character of the young stranger who had so unaccountably got possession of the office of Nicholas Nichols, if any remained, were now removed. He walked forward among the silent and thoughtful crew, with the air of a man whose opinion was settled.
"Ay," resumed Knighthead, "I call the Caroline fast for an honest trader. There are few square-rigged boats who do not wear the pennants of the king, that can eat her out of the wind on a bowline, or bring her into their wake with studding-sails set. But this is a time and an hour to make a seaman think.
I have just this much, and no more, to say: give me for consort a craft whose captain I know, or give me none!" "Such is your taste, Mr. Knighthead," said Wilder, coldly; "mine may, by some accident, be different."
"Ay, in mist or clouds," responded Knighthead, 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 he be gone." "Most seamen would rejoice to sec a strange sail, from the hull of a vessel shaved to the deck like this."
"We have had time to gather in our kites, 'tis true, sir; but there are signs and warnings that come with this change which the oldest seaman must dread!" "Yes," continued Knighthead, in a voice that sounded hoarse and powerful, even amid the fearful accessories of that scene; "yes, it is no trifling commission that can call people that I shall not name out upon the water in such a night as this.
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