COOPER'S CAPTAIN SPIRE.
THE exhaustion which was felt in Mr. Cooper's last novel of Mark's Reef has become distinctly visible in Captain Spike or the Islets of the Gull. There is perhaps not so obvious an "indebtedness " to the ideas of others—" Robinson Crusoe," for instance, and Marryat : indeed, Mr. Cooper bas seized upon the Mexican war as a means of varying his staple matter ; be has dropped down to a humbler (we must not say lower) class of life in his persons; and be introduces an American vessel of war overhauling one of her own Yankee traders, instead of putting that invidious task upon a British cruiser. But his Captain Spike has a worse fault than imitation of others, or perhaps even repetition of himself. He is substituting the mere mechanical power of a practised writer —the knack of habit—for the freshness and fullness of a mind charged with its subject and wishing to pour it forth. He does not even seem to use his materials to the hest advantage, whether in point of structure or of composition. Fre- quently the scene shifts, and time passes with the abruptness of the drama, leaving matters to supposition or description, which in a novel might as well have been presented. Some of the scenes which are presented, are less to carry on the story, or even to develop characters, than to occupy a certain space by tedious conversations, or to exhibit this author's ever-repeated nautical manoeuvres ; and these in Cap- tain Spike are getting rather technical than exciting, seeming also to have too much contrivance—to be possible, but not probable. Part of these defects as regards structure and stuffing may arise from the original design; as we believe the fiction was written for a periodical work, and the successive scenes have the air of being planned for sepa- rate exhibition. But we hardly understand how this could extend to produce a want of interest in the characters, and a jogtrot indifference to the particular incidents or the final result : yet so it is. Lovers are se- parated; the hero and heroine are in difficulties from hunger, thirst, danger, and Captain Spike ; a whole ship's company are drowned, or rather murdered before our eyes, including two females and "a gentle- man" of Mr. Cooper's painting; the villain is punished, and the lovers are made happy ; yet one is rather insensible to it all. Either Mr. Cooper is getting into that condition which is expressed by the word ex- haustion, or we are getting to desire something beyond the repetition of a very often-told tale.
The story of the novel runs thus. Captain Spike, an old mercantile skipper, has been knocked about the world, without having an originally coarse nature greatly improved by hard service and ill luck in the lowest walk of the mercantile marine. At New York he has fallen in with an agent of the Mexican Government ; and most traitorously undertakes to supply that hostile republic with a cargo of gunpowder, concealed in flour-casks, to carry on the war against his native country. In addition to this atrocity, he has fixed his eye upon the niece of his old commander, partly tempted by her beauty, partly by her fortune present and prospect- ive. He accordingly bamboozles Mrs. Budd, the aunt of Rose Budd the heroine, into undertaking a sea voyage for the benefit of her niece's health, while he persuades the niece that her aunt requires a trip to the Tropics. Captain Spike's idea in this scheme is to inveigle both Mrs. and Miss Budd to Mexico; where he hopes to force or persuade Rose into a mar- riage, having a mistaken idea of his own qualifications and powers of Esuasion. Unluckily for the skipper, Harry Mulford, the true lover of is Captain Spike's mate: it is, of course, his business to pro- tect Rose and himself too from the persecutions and villany of Spike ; until that worthy, after drowning his crew, partly by accident, partly by design in order to lighten his overladen boat, pursued by one of "Uncle Sam's cruisers," is himself shot, and dies in the hospital of Key West; Mulford and Rose etting married of course, but poor Mrs. Budd being ibug
thrown over with seviakitthers durit_Igthe boat-chase.
The "the r rof Captain Spike is a voyage from New York to an islet of the group of the Dry Tortugas, situate at the Western extremity of the Florida Reef, where he is to deliver his cargo of gunpowder; the incidents on his passage and after his arrival forming the action of the piece. These consist of a double chase by revenue cruisers at starting, with two wonderful escapes by Spike's wonderful seamanship; the overhaul- ing of the ship by an American frigate ; the transfer of the cargo to the ascription schooner—which is sunk in a hurricane, to furnish a full nautical of her being raised again ; Mulford's dissatisfaction and disgust, personal and public, with Spike; his efforts to escape with Rose and the women ; their wreck on the reef, and all but starvation; their recapture by Spike, and Mulford's exposure on a barren rock ; whence he again escapes, to rescue Rose; and the final scenes that lead to the catastrophe. Con- sidering Cooper's powers of nautical description, and of conceiving charac- ter as well as of developing it in discourse, the elements of a better novel existed in this outline than he has managed to fill up. The greater part of it is forced, slow, and unlikely : Rose, after full knowledge of Spike's designs against herself and the state, has ready means of escaping on board the frigate, but remains, simply because her departure would stop the story ; and there are other incongruities of a similar kind. The vanity of good-hearted but foolish Mrs. Budd, with her misappropria- tion of sea phrases, becomes flat from continued iteration ; there is a "machine" in the shape of a lawful wife of Spike, long since supposed to be dead, who makes the voyage in the disguise of a sailor, but is not very pleasantly managed ; and while the more level passages are of this nature, what should be the interesting passages have little interest except- ing for what playwrights call " situation.' Still, the power of habit remains, and bits especially of description may be pinked out which only Cooper or Marryat could write. Perhaps the tornado with its concomitants is one of the best.
4' This dialogue between Harry and Rose occurred just after the turn in the day, and it lasted fully an hour. Each bad been too much interested to observe the heavens; but, as they were on the point of separating, Rose pointed out to her companion the unusual and most menacing aspect of the sky in the Western ho- rizon. It appeared as if a fiery heat was glowing there, behind a curtain of black vapour; and what rendered it more remarkable, was the circumstance that an ex- traordinary degree of placidity prevailed in all other parts of the heavens. Mu!_ ford scarce knew what to make of it; his experience not going so far as to enable him to explain the novel and alarming appearance. He stepped on a gun, and gazed around him for a moment. There lay the schooner, without a being visible on board of her; and there stood the lighthouse, gloomy in its desertion and soli- tude. The birds alone seemed to be alive and conscious of what was approach_ ing. They were all on the wing, wheeling wildly in the air, and screaming dim cordantly, as belonged to their habits. The young man leaped off the gun, gave a loud call to Spike, at the companion-way, and sprang forward to call all hands. " One minute only was lost, when every seaman on board the Swash, from the captain to Jack Tier, was on deck. Mulford met Spike at the cabin-door, and pointed toward the fiery column that was booming down upon the anchorage, with a velocity and direction that would now admit of no misinterpretation. 'For one instant that sturdy old seaman stood aghast; gazing at the enemy as one conscious of his impotency might have been supposed to quail before an aqqanit that he foresaw must prove irresistible. Then his native spirit, and most dell the effects of training, began to show themselves in him; and he became at once, not only the man again, but the resolute, practised, and ready commander.
" Come aft to the spring, men '—he shouted= clap on the spring, Mr. Mul- ford, and bring the brig head to wind.'
" This order was obeyed as seamen best obey in cases of sudden and extreme emergency; or with intelligence, aptitude, and power. The brig had swung nearly round, in the desired direction, when the tornado struck her. It will be difficult, we do not know but it is impossible, to give a clear and accurate account of what followed. As most of our readers have doubtless felt how great is the power of the wind whiffling and pressing different ways in sudden and passing gusts, they have only to imagine this power increased many, many fold, and the baffling of the currents made furious, as it might be by meeting with resistance, to firm some notion of the appalling strength and frightful inconstancy with which it blew for about a minute.
"Notwithstanding the circumstances of Spike's precaution had greatly lessened the danger, every man on the deck of the Swash believed the brig was gone when the gust struck her. Over she went, in fact, until the water came pouring in above her half-ports, like so many little cascades, and spouting up through her scupper-holes, resembling the blowing of young whales. It was the whiffling energy of the tornado that alone saved her. As if disappointed in not destroying its intended victim at one swoop, the tornado let up' in its pressure, like a dex- terous wrestler, making a fresh and desperate effort to overturn the vessel by a alight variation in its course. That change saved the Swash: she righted, and even rolled in the other direction, or what may be called to windward, with her decks full of water. For a minute longer these baffling changing gusts continued, each causing the brig to bow like a reed to their power, one lilting as another pressed her down; and then the weight or the more dangerous part of the tornado was passed, though it continued to blow heavily, always in whiffling blasts, seve- ral minutes longer. " During the weight of the gust, no one had leisure or indeed inclination to look to aught beyond its effect on the brig. Bad one been otherwise disposed, the attempt would have been useless, for the wind had filled the sir with spray, and near the islets even with sand. The lurid but fiery tinge, too, interposed a veil that no human eye could penetrate. As the tornado passed onward, how- ever, and the wind lulled, the air again became clear; and in five minutes after the moment when the Swash lay nearly on her side, with her lower yard-arm actually within a few feet of the water, all was still and placid around her, as one is accustomed to see the ocean in a calm of a summer's afternoon. Then it was that those who had been in such extreme jeopardy could breathe freely and look about them. On board the Swash all was well; not a rope-yarn had parted, or an eye-bolt drawn. The timely precautions of Spike had saved his brig; and great was his joy thereat.
" As Mulford saw all was well in the cabin, he hastened on deck, followed by Senor Montefalderon. Just as they emerged from the companion-way, Spike was hailing the forecastle.
"'Forecastle, there, he cried, standing on the trunk himself as he did so, and moving from side to side, as if to catch a glimpse of some object ahead.
" Sir!' came back from an old salt, who was coiling up rigging in that seat of seamanship. " Where away is the schooner? She ought to be dead ahead of us as we tend now; but blast me if I can see as much as her mast-heads.'
" At this suggestion a dozen men sprang upon guns or other objects to look for the vessel in question. The old salt forward, however, had much the best chance; for he stepped on the heel of the bowsprit and walked as far out as the knight-heads, to command the whole view ahead of the brig. There he stood half a minute, looking first on one side of the head-gear then on the other; when he gave his trousers a hitch, put a fresh quid in his mouth, and called out, in a voice almost as hoarse as the tempest that had just gone by, The schooner has gone down at her anchor, Sir: there's her buoy watching still, as if nothing had hap- pened; but as for the craft itself, there's not so much as a bloody yard-arm or mast-head of her to be seen.'"
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