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Updated: May 7, 2025
There was a brisk wind blowing, and the moon kept peeping through the rifts of the scud, so that our road was sometimes silver-clear, and sometimes so black that we found ourselves among the brambles and gorse-bushes which lined it.
The assassin's hand, too, tore the steersman from the rudder, and with William of Orange the career, seemingly, of the infant republic and all her guardian angels fled; but the ship continued to scud along in the storm, and the swelling canvas carried her safe without the steersman's help. Philip II missed the fruits of a deed which cost him his royal honor and perhaps also his self-respect.
However, I was certain that, being provided with two large beams of bamboos, it could keep its position in the current between two waters and not capsize, if we had the precaution and strength to scud before the wind, and not turn the side to a wave, for in such case we should all have been drowned. What I foresaw, happened.
The last was the most serious danger; for, though exceedingly weatherly under her canvas, and totally without top-hamper, the Scud was so light, that the combing of the swells would seem at times to wash her down to leeward with a velocity as great as that of the surges themselves. During this night Cap slept soundly, and for several hours.
The crew of the Frenchman were seen assembling to windward, and a few muskets were pointed, as if to order the people of the Scud to keep off. Gesticulations were observed, but the sea was too wild and menacing to admit of the ordinary expedients of war.
I was no prophet, as I say; but I was something else I was an observer; and one thing I knew I knew when a man was terrified. Captain Trent, of the British brig Flying Scud, had been glib; he had been ready; he had been loud; but in his blue eyes I could detect the chill, and in the lines of his countenance spy the agitation, of perpetual terror. Was he trembling for his certificate?
I could overhear the men debate the character of Captain Trent, and set forth competing theories of where the opium was stowed; and, as they seemed to have been eavesdropping on ourselves, I thought little shame to prick up my ears when I had the return chance of spying upon them. In this way I could diagnose their temper and judge how far they were informed upon the mystery of the Flying Scud.
A little later, and a scudding white dust-cloud in the road informs us that one of the dining 'scapists flees breathlessly vinegar- or salt-ward. Still another five minutes, and the other diner hies him in chase of the white scud, calling vigorously to it that there is no butter for the rice, no sugar for the fruit.
Every night saw a deeper inroad into the bones of the Flying Scud more beams tapped and hewn in splinters, more planking peeled away and tossed aside and every night saw us as far as ever from the end and object of our arduous devastation. In this perpetual disappointment, my courage did not fail me, but my spirits dwindled; and Nares himself grew silent and morose.
We now tried to put the ship's head to the wind and "lay to", by which landsmen will understand that we tried to face the storm, and remain stationary. But the gale was so fierce that this was impossible. The last rag of sail was blown away, and then there was nothing left for us but to show our stern to the gale, and "scud under bare poles".
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