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Updated: May 19, 2025
The dawn showed us a storm-torn ocean, and the morning passed without bringing us a sight of the land; but at 1 p.m., through a rift in the flying mists, we got a glimpse of the huge crags of the island and realized that our position had become desperate. We were on a dead lee shore, and we could gauge our approach to the unseen cliffs by the roar of the breakers against the sheer walls of rock.
I took the glass which hung on the side of the grating and cleaned the lens with my hand. Sweeping the storm-torn horizon to the southward, nothing showed but rolling seas and haze. I turned the glass to the northward, and in a moment I saw a black speck rise and then disappear from the line of vision. "Vessel to lor'ard, sir," I bawled to the captain. "I don't care for forty vessels, Rolling.
Now the old Roman was gone, and John Burnham looked with sad eyes at the last stronghold of him and his kind the rambling old house stuccoed with aged brown and covered with ancient vines, knotted and gnarled like an old man's hand; the walls three feet thick and built as for a fort, as was doubtless the intent in pioneer days; the big yard of unmown blue-grass and filled with cedars and forest trees; the numerous servants' quarters, the spacious hen- house, the stables with gables and long sloping roofs and the arched gateway to them for the thoroughbreds, under which no hybrid mule or lowly work-horse was ever allowed to pass; the spring-house with its dripping green walls, the long-silent blacksmith-shop; the still windmill; and over all the atmosphere of careless, magnificent luxury and slow decay; the stucco peeled off in great patches, the stable roofs sagging, the windmill wheelless, the fences following the line of a drunken man's walk, the trees storm-torn, and the mournful cedars harping with every passing wind a requiem for the glory that was gone.
At any rate, if he were spared to greet the dawn, it would be right ahead, and, as a few seconds might then be of utmost value, that was a small point in his favor. Yet, two hours! Could he dare to hope for so long a respite? How could the ship escape the unnumbered fangs which a storm-torn land thrust far out into the Pacific for its own protection?
When morning dawned, and the light came struggling feebly through the thick pall of murky, storm-torn vapour that overspread the sky, it became apparent that the skipper's surmise as to the character of the fleet had been correct: the Dolphin being in the midst of some two hundred and fifty sail of vessels of different rigs, from the stately ship to the saucy schooner, in charge of two seventy-fours, a fifty-gun ship, a frigate, and four eighteen-gun-brigs.
We love the Roy Outremer, as he is called there. If he would but come to our land, instead of to treacherous Flanders or feeble, storm-torn Brittany, for his soldiers and for his starting place, I trow his arms would meet with naught but victory. The Sieur d'Albret, men whisper, has been to the Court, and has looked with loving eyes upon one of the King's daughters for his son.
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