Chapter 9 - Page 2

point the preparations appeared suspended, as if the mariners, having thus
invited the breeze, were awaiting to see if their invocation was likely to
be attended with success.

It was perhaps but a natural transition for him, who so closely observed
these indications of departure in the ship so often named, to turn his
eyes on the vessel which lay without the fort, in order to witness the
effect so manifest a signal had produced in her, also. But the closest and
the keenest scrutiny could have detected no sign of any bond of interest
between the two. While the firmer was making the movements just described,
the latter lay at her anchors without the smallest proof that man existed
within the mass of her black and inanimate hull. So quiet and motionless
did she seem, that one, who had never been instructed in the matter,
might readily have believed her a fixture in the sea, some symmetrical and
enormous excrescence thrown up by the waves, with its mazes of lines and
pointed fingers, or one of those fantastic monsters that are believed to
exist in the bottom of the ocean, darkened by the fogs and tempests of
ages. But, to the understanding eye of Wilder, she exhibited a very
different spectacle. He easily saw, through all this apparently drowsy
quietude, those signs of readiness which a seaman only might discover. The
cable, instead of stretching in a long declining line towards the water
was "short," or nearly "up and down," as it is equally termed in technical
language, just "scope" enough being allowed out-board to resist the power
of the lively tide, which acted on the deep keel of the vessel. All her
boats were in the water, and so disposed and prepared, as to convince him
they were in a state to be employed in towing, in the shortest possible
time. Not a sail, nor a yard, was out of its place, undergoing those
repairs and examinations which the mariner is wont to make so often, when
lying within the security of a suitable haven, nor was there a single rope
wanting, amid the hundreds which interlaced the blue sky that formed the
background of the picture, that might be necessary, in bringing every art
of facilitating motion into instant use. In short, the vessel, while
seeming least prepared, was most in a condition to move, or, if necessary,
to resort to her means of offence and defence. The boarding-nettings, it
is true, were triced to the rigging, as on the previous day; but a
sufficient apology was to be found for this act of extreme caution, in the
war, which exposed her to attacks from the light French cruisers, that so
often ranged, from the islands of the West-Indies, along the whole coast
of the Continent, and in the position the ship had taken, without the
ordinary