Roving Jack, The Pirate Hunter — page 16: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

12 ROVING JACK, THE PIRATE HUNTER. et arrived at a little bay, sheltered on either side by projecting cliffs, Here it was comparatively calm. Jack had not proceeded far when he perceived a large boat lying on the verge of the advancing tide. “That’s old Clem’s shallop,” said Jack. “The old chap was so scared that he did not stay to drag it up above the tide line ; in afew minutes it would be floating adrift, I think there’s depth enough to float her already. Heave yo!” Jack applied his shoulders to the stern of the boat, and, driving hard against her, disengaged her from the little hillock of sand, and she shot clear; and while Jack, drenched to the skin, was“8crambling over her bows, she bounced over a mighty breaker, and danced out to the open sea, “She’s away!” cried Jack, exultingly, as he righted himself on the thwart, and seized the oars, for the boat was waddling like a wash-tub in the rough cross seas. Alone in the frail little vessel on the angry seas —alone in the night and the darkness—launched for an enterprise of deadly danger, Roving Jack felt just a pleasurable sensation of excitement and awe; but fear was absent from his dauntlegs heart ; he pulled hard, and panted at the oar, but he gave no homeward glance, and only turned his head to stare impatiently through the gloom towards the dark peaks and crags of the Foamy Reef. Again the mystic light haloed the rugged crag towards which our brave boy hero was bounding in the old weather-worn shallop, now heaved aloft on a briny mountain, crested with snowy foam, then plunging deep down into the dark and dreadful trough of the sea, The more immediate and definite danger of having his frail open vessel swamped by the heavy seas that burst in cataracts over her bows, or ground to pieces against the sharp points of the cruel, hidden rocks, countervailed the natural horror that our gallant Jack might feel at the prospect of being brought face to face with pallid ghosts of the guilty dead, or grizzly phantoms and fiends of the storm. His main thought was only how to save himself from drowning, and with most admirable skill did the young steersman pilot his boat through those raging, rocky waters. The wild wind shrieked fiercely past, hissing fountains of briny spray drenched him to the skin, while from time to time the keel of the boat grazed against the sunken rocks, and communicated its grating shudder to Jack’s half-numbed body, and electrified his stout heart with a keen pang. But still the intrepid lad forged bravely on, and at length, rising on the erest of a tremendous billow, he was borne abreast of the Foamy Reef, Yor a moment he stared aghast at the blue, luminous mist, then with a shiver he closed his eyes and clenched his teeth. On the top of the minor crags composing the reef a table of rock, rising a few feet above the seething surface of the raging waters, stood, still as a statue, a tall, dark, and weird form. Vanderdecken }—the Flying Dutchman himself | At least the figure bore a perfect resemblance to that described as belonging to the phantom skipper of the Phantom Ship, The rough, ungainly, but picturesque Dutch costume, the broad belt and leathern kilt, huge bucket boosts, and peaked hat, while from his shoulders, its massy folds waving heavily in the rushing blast, streamed a jet black pall, on which was broidered, in hideously contrasting white, the ghastly symbols of the pirate’s bloody trade—the death’s head and cross-bones, He stood, his pale, stern, evil countenance rigid and inanimate, his eyes dully glaring upon vacancy, as though he were oblivious of all but the fiery thoughts surging in his tortured heart—smitten and blighted by the awful punishment that had fallen upon him by which he was doomed, an exile from bliss or hope, to roam for ever and ever and ever the wild and restless salt sea, which he had in life so often stained crimson with warm, human blood. Jack drew his sword, and unclosing his eyelids, shaded his eyes with his hand, and kept his gaze hungrily fixed upon the strange, ghostly sentinel of the reef. The light flickers, fades—darkness, A sullen red glare, that faintly streaks the eastern horizon, throws into dark but strong relief the rugged line of the rocks. The stony platform is void—the phantom has vanished |! Then a blinding, forked flash of livid blue light- ning rips the lowering black clouds, and sets the earth and sky in one electric blaze. Yes, the Phantom has vanished! Lit by the living glare, the glittering jets of surf fount over the green, sea-slimed rocks, flow down in pure, briny sheets, and drip in falls of flashing, twinkling diamond-drops from the narrow ledge on which the spectre had appeared—but he was gone! Utter darkness !—the darkness of plague-stricken ‘Egypt—the gloom of the deep grave | A roar! All the firmament—volley on volley of rattling thunder, rolling, growling, muttering, dying away ! Jack clutches the thwart of the boat, for the wind, which had fallen, comes now in a strong, hot gust, and close in its wake tumbles along a giant tidal wave, which bashes and shatters against the reef, lashing the waters around it till they bubble and seeth ag if the gulf were a boiling caldron. Knocked down, bruised, battered, half-stunned, poor Jack sinks on the grating of the creaking oat, which dances like a nutshell in a mill-dam, The heavy sea pours onwards; then the .boat slowly rises on a green, glassy, gliding hillock of brine, Now she is drifting—smoothly, swiftly, steadily, drifting. Jack leaps up. His hair rouses, his eyes fix, his lips part; in a second, however, he masters his emotion. He set his foot lightly on the gunwale, The boat lurches.. He springs wide. fle plunges head foremost into the smooth, treacherous bosom of the billow that was bearing him so calmly to destruction. Down, down, in the chill depths he glides, and then he struggles to the surface. He rises amidst the roars of the bursting breakers pie haye dashed his boat to splinters against the reef, Gasping, sinking from weakness, then struggling up again to the surface by desperate efforts, Roving Jack fights his way to the reef. For an instant he has foothold on the point of a sunken rock ; but his foot slips, and again he is dashed away into deep water. Utterly faint and exhausted, down he sinks hopelessly it would seem. Yet he rallies once more, and madly he clutches at ae sae ae vegetable fur that coats the rocks, e lithe, tough, slipper -bi round his hands. Bi UPBSISE eas Unk Os He has a hold! No, for the weed tears out by the roots, and once more down, deep down, he plunges, Afloat again, and upraised on a mighty wave as Eomichooksrco