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The rain poured down in amazing volume; the ear-splitting thunder-peals broke nearer and nearer; the wind increased in fury and began to wrench off boughs and tree-tops and send them sailing away through space; the pilot-house fell to rocking and straining and cracking and surging, and I went down in the hold to see what time it was.
"Who is that smooth-faced, animated outrage yonder in the fine clothes?" "That's Captain L , the owner of the ship he's one of the main bosses." In the course of time I brought up on the starboard side of the pilot-house and found a sextant lying on a bench. Now, I said, they "take the sun" through this thing; I should think I might see that vessel through it.
"Spottswood, how is the captain?" called the major from the pilot-house. "Just the same: he don't seem to be any better," replied the sergeant. "He ought to have a doctor; for the poor fellow may die here, away from any proper attendance," said the major, with more feeling than the new captain supposed he possessed. "There is a very skilful surgeon on board of the Bellevite," suggested Christy.
Pork and hay would suggest corn and fodder; corn and fodder would suggest cows and horses; cows and horses would suggest the circus and certain celebrated bare-back riders; the transition from the circus to the menagerie was easy and natural; from the elephant to equatorial Africa was but a step; then of course the heathen savages would suggest religion; and at the end of three or four hours' tedious jaw, the watch would change, and Brown would go out of the pilot-house muttering extracts from sermons he had heard years before about the efficacy of prayer as a means of grace.
Frank deposited his weapons on a bench in the pilot-house and ran down into the cabin, where he found the lieutenant and two engineers seated at the table.
When I first went on deck I entered the captain's room adjoining the pilot-house, and threw myself on a sofa. I did not keep that position a moment, but rose to go out on the deck to observe what was going on. I had scarcely left when a musket ball entered the room, struck the head of the sofa, passed through it and lodged in the foot.
"Well, my darling, what is to be the next scene in the comedy?" asked Felix, as he seated himself by Louis in the bow. "I don't know, Felix; but whatever it may be, Captain Scott is evidently getting ready to play his part in it," replied Louis, still watching the captain through the open front windows of the pilot-house.
The binnacle from the whaleboat had been brought into the pilot-house, and Christy compared it with the compass in the Teaser's apparatus, after Dave had lighted it. There was no disagreement, and as the tide was still coming in, the head of the steamer was pointed to the westward, which would be her first course down the bay.
Perceiving, at a glance, that the 'Pennsylvania' was in no danger, Brown gathered up the big spy-glass, war-club fashion, and ordered me out of the pilot-house with more than Comanche bluster.
It did not look much like it when the ship began to roll quite violently. It was a sharp squall that suddenly struck the Guardian-Mother, heeling her over so that everything movable on her decks or below went over to the lee side, and sending no small quantity of salt water over her pilot-house.
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