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"Yes, we're safe enough here 's long as the wind's blowin' as 'tis now, an' I guess it allers does blow that way, round this speck of an island. It must be all o' five mile to that land either side, an' in their rickety canoes the Feweegins never venture fur out in anythin' o' a rough sea. I calculate, Captain, we needn't trouble ourselves much about 'em leastways, not jest yet."
It took them off the course to Nassau, but it forced their pursuer to take in her sails, and an exciting chase under steam right into the wind's eye began.
In every case there had been two walls, as it were, of furious blow, and between the two a lane of comparative calm, caused by the shelter of a clump of brush or weeds, in which the snow had taken refuge from the wind's rough and savage play. Between these capes of snow there was an occasional bare patch of clean swept ground.
"Hard-a-lee!" shouted Jasper, letting fly the jib-sheet with his own hands, when the cutter came swiftly up to the breeze, with all her canvas flapping, or was running into the wind's eye, as seamen term it, until the light craft was a hundred feet to windward of her former position.
Will you be ready, sir?" "Yes. Where are we?" "In sight of land. I saw it through the mists just this morning, twenty miles to the east." "What land is it?" "I've no idea, but whatever it is, there we'll take refuge." "Yes, Ned! We'll escape tonight even if the sea swallows us up!" "The sea's rough, the wind's blowing hard, but a twenty-mile run in the Nautilus's nimble longboat doesn't scare me.
It was just like the East Wind's nature to inflict starvation upon the bodies of unoffending sailors, while he corrupted their simple souls by an exasperation leading to outbursts of profanity as lurid as his blood-red sunrises. They were followed by gray days under the cover of high, motionless clouds that looked as if carved in a slab of ash-coloured marble.
And of thee, dead but yesterday, all thy fame leaves But a cross in the dim chapel's darkness, alone. "A cross and oblivion, silence, and death! Hark! the wind's softest sob; hark! the ocean's deep breath! Hark! the fisher boy singing his way o'er the plains! Of thy glory, thy hope, thy young beauty's bright wreath, Not a trace, not a sigh, not an echo remains."
Presently she began to fetch more and more to the westward, so that I thought they had sighted me and were going about in chase. At last, however, she fell right into the wind's eye, was taken dead aback, and stood there a while helpless, with her sails shivering. "Clumsy fellows," said I; "they must still be drunk as owls." And I thought how Captain Smollett would have set them skipping.
It was not will that she wanted, but the capacity; again and again she declared, it were as easy to enchain the sea, to put reins on the wind's viewless courses, as for her to take truth for falsehood, deceit for honesty, heartless communion for sincere, confiding love.
It was true, that by paddling to windward, he greatly lessened the danger he ran from the two vessels, since it would not be in their power to overtake him in the narrow channels of the group, so long as he went in the wind's eye. It is probable that the savages understood this, and that the circumstance greatly encouraged them in the effort they immediately made to get into the eastern passage.
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