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Updated: June 11, 2025
It were a main place for pirates once, and a hand we had on board knowed all their names for it. That hill to the nor'ard they calls the Fore-mast Hill; there are three hills in a row running south'ard fore, main, and mizzen, sir.
On our way there, avore ever we got so far south as Cape Blanc, we captured a Portingal caravel; pickin' up another of 'em a little way to the nor'ard of Cape Verde.
"She's probably French, or she would not be so close in with the coast." "As to that, our cruisers stand in close enough at times, and she may be English notwithstanding," answered Jack. "Unless we are certain that she's English we shall be wiser to avoid her," remarked Bill, "so we'll pull away to the nor'ard." "But what do you think of the ship out there?" asked Jack, pointing ahead.
We're within sixty miles of the Equator, whilst on my last outward voyage I was left becalmed close upon two hundred miles to the nor'ard of it. And we're not alone in our misery; I counted no less than fifteen sail in sight from the deck just before dark, but I couldn't make out the Cross among 'em. I am in hopes of getting a start across and into the south- easters before she comes up."
In less than an hour from the time of starting the light ship was reached; and as the smack, luffing into the wind, shaved close under the vessel's stern with all her canvas ashiver, Bill's stentorian voice pealed out "Middle, ahoy! where a way's the wrack?" "About a mile and half to the nor'ard, on the weather side of the Gunfleet. Fancy she must have broke up, can't make her out now.
During the afternoon, however, the horizon clearing to the nor'ard and a gleam of sunshine lighting up the sea, a distant sail was seen hull down on our lee quarter. "Signalman," hailed the officer of the watch, "what do you make her out to be?" "Can't say yet, sir," replied the man, with the glass screwed to his eye, squinting to leeward. "She's too fur off, sir."
"But it ended at last, when, from the cold and the wet and the strain on my voice, I found myself unable to call out any more. And it struck me as rather hard, too; for at daylight the fog lifted a bit, and there, about a mile and a half to the nor'ard, showed the lug sail of one of the boats.
"If we'd been a little more to the nor'ard we should likely enough have been on it, but a miss is as good as a mile. We may be thankful to have escaped." He afterwards told me that we passed another reef to the northward while I was below, how many we escaped during the night we could not tell. Thus some of the dangers to be encountered by those navigating among coral islands will be understood.
To the nor'ard, from horizon almost to zenith, already the sky was black as ink, the sea beneath white with flying spume. Then like magic the sea got up, and the White Star turned to run for Eyemouth, with the Myrtle in company. But darkness and the fierce turmoil of waters forced them to lay to in order to make certain of their position.
If you steer to the nor'ard o' that, you'll run on the Scotch coast; if you bear away to the south'ard of it, you'll run a chance, in this state o' the tide, of getting wrecked among the Farne Islands; so keep her head due east." Ruby said this very impressively; so much so, that the Frenchman looked at him in surprise. "Why you so particulare?" he enquired, with a look of suspicion.
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