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Updated: June 17, 2025
We have heard of eagles soaring into the sun, but I doubt whether even they could soar much higher, or look much grander, than the noble pelican of the desert. We were opening the broad mouth of the Canning, when Meliboeus pointed out two other pelicans fishing in-shore on the lee-bow.
He pointed forward to where, about five miles off the lee-bow, a great junk was slowly sailing in the same direction as we were. "Is that the one which passed us in the night?" I said. "Yes." "Why do you think she is a pirate?" "Ching tink why she no sail light away and not stop while man-o'-war clawl along velly slow. You tellee captain."
The ship seemed to be making no progress, for there it still lay on the lee-bow. Some thought they could hear the roaring of the surges, as with the whole force of a south-westerly gale they were hurled against the cliffs. Still the canvas held the fierce wind, and the well-set-up rigging supported the masts.
It was not without a providential purpose that she was driven in that direction. Three days passed by after the gale had gone down, and just as she had sighted a small island, said to be uninhabited, the look-out at the masthead hailed the deck: "A sail on the lee-bow five miles away!" he shouted. Several of the officers went at once aloft, to have a look at the stranger.
I found, when I came on deck after my watch below, all hands looking out at an object which had just been discovered a little abaft the lee-bow. Some said it was a dead whale; one or two declared that it was a rock; but the officers, after examining it with their glasses, pronounced it to be a vessel bottom uppermost!
Our master, although a good navigator, did not feel himself justified in taking charge of the ship, within the boundaries of a Branch pilot, and we were therefore on the look-out for a pilot vessel, when a lugger was discovered on the lee-bow, and we were on the point of bearing down to her, when we made out first a ship or two, then several sail, and lastly, a whole fleet, which we guessed must be the North Sea Fleet standing for the Nore.
On the other hand, Sir Gervaise may have stretched so far over towards the French coast before night shut in, as to feel satisfied Monsieur de Vervillin is still to the eastward of him; in which case he would keep off a little, and may, at this moment, be nearly ahead of us. So that, under all the circumstances, you will sweep the horizon, from the weather-beam to the lee-bow, ranging forward.
I immediately seized the opportunity to take a squint myself at the compass, noting the exact bearing of the point on the lee-bow and the direction in which the ship was heading. Then I went down below into the midshipmen's berth, where Maxwell, the master's-mate, was laboriously endeavouring to translate some French book with the aid of a grammar and a dictionary.
While I was watching this vessel, our men called out to me that there was another close on our lee-bow, which I had not observed on account of our mainsail. Luckily, however, it proved to be a Ning-po wood-junk, like ourselves, which the pirates had taken a short time before, but which, although manned by these rascals, could do us no harm, having no guns.
The truth then flashed upon him, and he shouted out "All's well, boys! God be praised, we have caught the ebb-tide, under our lee-bow!" These few words explained the reason of the change. Instead of setting to leeward, the schooner was now meeting a powerful tide of some four or five knots, which hawsed her up to windward with irresistible force.
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