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Updated: June 2, 2025
Already the frigate was more than half-way across the Atlantic, when one morning a sail was espied on the weather-bow; the sails were trimmed and the frigate gave chase. The stranger took her for an enemy, and did everything to escape, and not without good hopes of success, for she was evidently a fast craft.
In the meantime the frigate had rapidly gained upon the vessels, which still carried on every stitch of canvas, making short tacks inshore. The Aurora was again put about with her head towards them, and they were not two points on her weather-bow. The sky, which had been clear in the morning, was now overcast, the sun was obscured with opaque white clouds, and the sea was rising fast.
"Land on the weather-bow!" reported the boatswain. "Indeed!" said the captain "then the affair will soon be decided." The vessels still continued their course in a slanting direction towards the land, pursuer and pursued running on to destruction; but although various indirect hints were given by the first-lieutenant and others, Captain M turned a deaf ear.
But a second thought destroyed this illusion, and I looked eagerly about me. Directly on our weather-bow, distant perhaps a cable's length, I saw a small sail, and I could distinguish it sufficiently well to perceive it was a proa. I sang out "Sail ho! and close aboard!" Mr. Marble was on his feet in an instant.
I was telling him that I had heard of a ship striking a berg, and of several of her people being saved on it, while she went down, when he startled me by singing out with a voice of thunder, "Ice ahead!" At the same moment old Knowles cried out, "Ice on the weather-bow!" and immediately I had to echo the shout with "Ice on the lee-bow!" and another cried, "Ice abeam!"
Straining my eyes to their utmost I gazed intently into the darkness; the appearance became more pronounced, more defined every second, and as I watched it assumed the form of an irregularly-shaped truncated pyramid. "Sail ho! broad on the weather-bow!" I exclaimed joyously; and in a moment half a dozen voices exultingly reiterated the cry of "Sail ho!"
The Snark had not abated her six-knot gait, and she had not struck Futuna yet. At half-past five I was again on deck. Wada, at the wheel, had seen no land. I sat on the cockpit rail, a prey to morbid doubt for a quarter of an hour. Then I saw land, a small, high piece of land, just where it ought to be, rising from the water on the weather-bow.
But away to windward, ranging from about two points on the weather-bow round to square abeam, the clouds from almost overhead to within some fifteen degrees of the horizon were faintly yet quite perceptibly tinged greenish hue, the tinge being strongest about midway between our weather-bow and beam.
In consequence of having kept away so much, the Plantagenet could not be quite three-fourths of a mile on the weather-bow of le Téméraire, coming up rapidly, and threatening a semi-transverse fire. In order to prevent this, the French ship edged off a little, giving herself an easier and more rapid movement through the water, and bringing her own broadside more fairly to the shock.
It was on the fourth day after we had picked up the Juliet's crew, and we were working our way back toward the mouth of the Congo, making short tacks across the track of vessels running the notorious Middle Passage, when the look-out aloft reported a sail about three points on the weather-bow, running down toward us under a perfect cloud of canvas.
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