old in some dreary place, wondering where their course in life had led them, this sunset would appear in their mind and remind them of the wondrous sights of the world they had once seen.
And then the surreal beauty of the cosmos around them changed in a stark instant.
“Sail ho!” The lookout aloft cried out and pointed to the southeast.
“Schooner to the east, hull down. Wing an’ wing downwind, sharp on the wind’ard bow!”
Wake shook himself from his reverie and looked over to Rork standing at the transom. The bosun nodded, and turned his attention aloft to the lookout.
“Has she altered course, son?”
The surprised reply came immediately. “Aye, she has, Bosun! She’s done a flyin’ jibe an’ goin’ on a port broad reach, a bit more southerly now! She ain’t that old army supply schooner, neither. She’s new to me. Looks to me like she spotted us an’ turned tail.”
Rork looked back at Wake, the two minds ruminating the same questions. Do they chase? For how long? What about the water? St. James was close hauled on a port tack. The chase could take a while. Rork knew better than to say it aloud. It was not his decision. It was the captain’s. Wake saw them all watching him.
“Bear off, Bosun Rork! Bear off and after her. She’s probably up to no good, and we’ll have to see.”
“Aye, sir. All hands to your sail stations. Faber, I want her turned off the wind smoother than a baby’s coo. You take the helm. Stand by the sheets, lads! No time to lose, we’ve got to close her so’s we can catch her in the moonlight. ’Twill be a glorious chase, this one, me lads!”
By the time the moon had ascended fully up above the eastern horizon, St. James had borne away from the wind and was crashing along to the south on an intersecting course for the unknown schooner. Both were moving fast, and the distance between them rapidly diminished from seven miles, to five miles, to maybe three. The moonlight cast a silver tint over everything as it rose higher in the sky. Depth perception in the off-light suffered as the men of the St. James tried to gauge whether they were still gaining in the chase.
The lookout aloft, now one of the younger sailors with better eyesight since Wake was taking no chances in the night, yelled out his observation.
“Deck there, she’s turnin’ more southerly!”
“Follow her around, Faber.” Wake was busy trying to gauge the point of interception, now made more difficult by the course change. St. James was now reaching, still on a port tack, with the suspect vessel ahead and to windward of her.
Rork had arrived at the same conclusion.
“Cuba. She’s trying to get to Cuban waters, sir. Thank God she didn’t go north into Quicksand Shoals. Be the devil to follow her through those at night.”
“Yes, Rork, I’m thinking the same. And we need to stay right on her through the night. I want the big fisherman stays’l sent up. We’re too far away from her. We’ve got to speed up.”
“Aye, sir. We’ll put it on and see how she’ll take it.”
“And Rork, all hands are on short water rations as of right now.”
Wake regarded Rork’s expression and laughed. He spoke loudly for the crew’s benefit.
“And just imagine how much prize money that schooner will bring!”
“Aye, me Captain! Enough quid for me whole family to cross ta’ America an’ live like the nobles they should be! Short water now, an’ rich bastards later, sir!”
The men around them were grinning, for they had all been quietly adding up their own share from the future sale of the strange schooner at the Admiralty Court in Key West.
St. James, like a beautiful thoroughbred doing precisely what she was created for, kept up her race to the south into the deep waters of the Straits of Florida—and away from the pleasures of Key West.
***
The night should have seemed long, but the intensity of the chase and the constant evaluations of St. James’s speed made the watches go quickly. The wind backed to the east and held. The moon took its time to cross the sky, allowing the men of the St. James to watch their prey edge slightly to windward with each roll of the sea. Gradually, they changed position to windward until they were behind the mystery ship, keeping in her wake throughout the night.
Near the end of the last watch White, who was the petty officer of the deck, noticed that seas were changing. Though the wind was the same—from the east at a strong breeze—the waves started to get higher and steep sided.
It was a sure sign of their location. The schooner had entered the largest river in the world: the Gulf Stream. It stretched from North America to Europe and was deeper, longer, and wider than any other flow of water on earth. Misunderstood and feared for centuries, it was only recently that seamen had measured its current and temperature. Matthew Fontaine Maury, originally of the United States Navy, lately in the Confederate States Navy, had been one of the first to study the Stream and its effects upon ships and the sea. Such concepts were far from the minds of the watch on deck; all they knew or cared was that the schooner was no longer riding over the seas. Now she was fighting them.
St. James was no longer surging along, with water sluicing past the leeward starboard gunwale. The ship was now crashing into each wave and slowing with each collision. Both the pursuer and the prey were having the same difficulty, and the question soon became which one of them would shorten sail in order to reduce the strain on the hull and rig.
Rork and Wake conferred at the stern while holding onto the taut main sheet as the deck bucked beneath them. Wake raised his arm and gestured out over the crazed sea. He yelled above the sounds of the complaining wood and canvas.
“It’s the Stream!”
Rork’s face showed he didn’t understand.
“I said, it’s the Stream, Rork. We’re in the Gulf Stream!”
The bosun nodded and shrugged his shoulders. “It kicked up fast, sir. How much longer, do ye reckon?”
“It’s the opposing wind against the current. As long as the wind’s easterly it’ll stay this way. All the way to Cuba, or near to it!”
“She’ll not take this much longer, sir. The big stays’l ’ll have to come down. Look at the masts jerkin’ with each sea!”
Rork’s point was valid. The masts were jerking and grating at the deck. Sounds of wood creaking from the spars and hull were getting louder. The lookout aloft had long since been ordered down as the mast tops were whipsawing around wildly.
Two hours until dawn. The chess game of the chase had gotten more difficult with the added dimension of fatigue on ship and men. Wake had to hold on to the main backstay to keep upright. He looked again at the big fisherman stays’l bellying out from the fore and main masts and solidly full of the wind. He couldn’t wait any longer.
“Bosun, take that stays’l down!”
“Aye, sir. They’ll have to shorten too, sir.”
The
