Tom Cringle's Log Part 23

"Hold your blasted tongue"--was the polite rejoinder.

"I say, Captain,"--shouted your humble servant, "you may as well eat pease with a pitchfork, as try to weather him. You are hooked, man, flounder as you will. Old Nick can't shake you clear--so I won't stand this any longer;" and making a spring, I jammed myself through the skylight, until I sat on the deck, looking aft, and confronting him, and there we were, stuck up like the two kings of Brentford, or a couple of smiling cherries on one stalk. I have often laughed over the figure we must have cut, but at the time there was that going on that would have made Comus himself look grave.

I had at length fairly aroused the sleeping devil within him.

"Look out there, Lieutenant--look out there,"--and he pointed with his sinister claw down to leeward. I did so--whew!--what a sight for poor Master Thomas Cringle! "You are booked for an outside place, Master Tommy," thought I to myself--for there was the corvette in very truth--she had just tacked, and was close aboard of us on our lee quarter, within musket-shot at the farthest, bowling along upon a wind, with the green, hissing, mult.i.tudinous sea surging along her sides, and was.h.i.+ng up in foam, like snow flakes, through the mid-s.h.i.+p ports, far aft on the quarterdeck, to the glorification of jack, who never minds a wet jacket, so long as he witnesses the discomfiture of his ally, Peter Pipeclay. The press of canva.s.s she was carrying laid her over, until her copper sheathing, clear as gla.s.s, and glancing like gold, was seen high above the water, throughout her whole length, above which rose her glossy jet black bends, surmounted by a milk-white streak, broken at regular intervals into eleven goodly ports, from which the British cannon, ugly customers at the best, were grinning, tompion out, open-mouthed at us; and above all, the clean, well-stowed white hammocks filled the nettings, from tafferel to cathead oh! that I had been in one of them, snug on the berth deck! Aloft, a cloud of white sail swelled to the breeze, till the cloth seemed inclined to say goodby to the bolt ropes, bending the masts like willow-wands, as if the devil, determined to beat Paganini himself, was preparing fiddlesticks to play a spring with, on the cracking and straining weather shrouds and backstays, and tearing her sharp wedge-like bows out of the bowels of the long swell, until the cut.w.a.ter, and ten yards of the keel next to it, were hove clean out of the sea, into which she would descend again with a roaring plunge, burying every thing up to the hause-holes, and driving the brine into mist, over the fore-top, like vapour from a waterfall, through which, as she rose again, the bright red copper on her bows flashed back the sunbeams in momentary rainbows. We were so near, that I could with the naked eye distinctly see the faces of the men. There were at least 150 determined fellows at quarters, and cl.u.s.tered with muskets in their hands, wherever they could be posted to most advantage.

There they were in groups about the ports, (I could even see the captains of the guns, examining the locks,) in their clean white frocks and trowsers, the officers of the s.h.i.+p, and the marines, clearly distinguishable by their blue or red jackets. I could discern the very sparkle of the epaulets.

High overhead, the red cross, that for a thousand years "has braved the battle and the breeze," blew out strong from the peak, like a sheet of flickering white flame, or a thing instinct with life, struggling to tear away the ensign haulyards, and to escape high into the clouds; while, from the main-royal-masthead, the long white pennant streamed upwards into the azure heavens, like a ray of silver light. Oh! it was a sight "most beautiful to see," as the old song hath it,-----but I confess I would have preferred that pleasure from t'other side of the hedge.

There was no hailing nor trumpeting, although, as we crossed on opposite tacks when we first weathered her, just before she hove in stays, I had heard a shrill voice sing out, "Take good aim, men--Fire"; but now each cannon in thunder shot forth its glance of flame, without a word being uttered, as she kept away to bring them to bear in succession, while the long feathery cloud of whirling white smoke that shrouded her sides from stem to stem, was sparkling brilliantly throughout with crackling musketry, for all the world like fire-flies in a bank of night fog from the hills, until the breeze blew it back again through the rigging, and once more unveiled the lovely craft in all her pride and glory.

"You see all that?' said Obed.

"To be sure I do, and I feel something too'; for a sharp rasping jar was repeated in rapid succession three or four times, as so many shot struck our hull, and made the splinters glance about merrily; and the musketb.a.l.l.s were mottling our top sides and spars, plumping into the timber, whit whit!

as thick as ever you saw schoolboys' plastering a church door with clay-pellets. There was a heavy groan, and a stir amongst the seamen in the run.

"And, pray, do you see and hear all that yourself, Master Obed? The iron has clenched some of your chaps down there.--Stay a bit, you shall have a better dose presently, you obstinate old"--

He waved his hand, and interrupted me with great energy--"I dare not give in, I cannot give in; all I have in the world swims in the little hooker, and strike I will not so long as two planks stick together.

"Then," quoth I, "you are simply a d.a.m.ned, cold-blooded, calculating scoundrel--brave I will never call you." I saw he was now stung to the quick.

"Lieutenant, smuggler as I am, don't goad me to what worse I may have been; there are some deeds done in my time, which at a moment like this I don't much like to think upon. I am a desperate man, Master Cringle; don't, for your own sake, as well as mine, try me too far.'

"Well but"--persisted I. He would hear nothing.

"Enough said, sir, enough said; there was not an honester trader nor a happier man in all the Union, until your infernal pillaging an burning squadron in the Chesapeake captured and ruined me; but I paid it off on the prize-master, although we were driven on the rocks after all. I paid it off, and, G.o.d help me, I have never thriven since, enemy although he was.

I see the poor fellow's face yet, as I!"--He checked himself suddenly, as if aware that he might say more than could be conveniently retracted. "But I dare not be taken; let that satisfy you, Master Cringle, so go below--below with you, sir"--I saw he had succeeded in las.h.i.+ng himself into a fury--"or, by the Almighty G.o.d, who hears me, I shall be tempted to do another deed, the remembrance of which will haunt me till my dying day."

All this pa.s.sed in no time, as we say, much quicker than one can read it; and I now saw that the corvette had braced up sharp to the wind again, on the same tack that we were on; so I slipped down like an eel, and once more stretched myself beside Paul, on the lee side of the cabin. We soon found that she was indeed after us in earnest, by the renewal of the cannonade, and the breezing up of the small arms again. Two round shot now tore right through the deck, just beneath the larboard coamings of the main hatchway; the little vessel's deck, as she lay over, being altogether exposed to, the enemy's fire, they made her whole frame tremble again, smas.h.i.+ng every thing in their way to s.h.i.+vers, and going right out through her bottom on the opposite side, within a dozen streaks of her keel, while the rattling of the cl.u.s.tered grapeshot every now and then made us start, the musketry all the while peppering away like a hail shower. Still the skipper, who I expected every moment to see puffed away from the tiller like smoke, held upon deck as if he had been bullet-proof, and seemed to escape the h.e.l.lish tornado of missiles of all sorts and sizes by a miracle.

"He is in league with the old one, Paul," said I; "howsoever, you must be nabbed, for you see the s.h.i.+p is forereaching on you, and you can't go on t'other tack, surely, with these pretty eyelet holes between wind and water on the weather side there? Your captain is mad why will you, then, and all these poor fellows, go down, because he dare not surrender, for some good deed of his own, eh?"

The roar of the cannon and noise of the musketry made it necessary for me to raise my voice here, which the small scuttle, like Dionysius's ear, conveyed unexpectedly to my friend, the captain, on deck.

"Hand me up my pistols, Paul."

It had struck me before, and I was now certain, that from the time he had become so intensely excited as he was now, he spoke with a pure English accent, without the smallest dash of Yankeeism.

"So, so; I see--no wonder you won't strike, you renegade," cried I.

"You have tampered with my crew, sir, and abused me," he announced, in a stem, slow tone, much more alarming than his former fierceness, "so take that, to quiet you;" and deuce take me if he did not, the moment he received the pistols from his mate, fire slap at me, the ball piercing the large muscle of my neck on the right side, missing the artery by the merest accident. Thinking I was done for, I covered my face with my hands, and commanded myself to G.o.d, with all the resignation that could be expected from a poor young fellow in my grievous circ.u.mstances, expecting to be cut off in the prima vera of his days, and to part for ever from--. Poo, that there line is not my forte. However, finding the haemorrhage by no means great, and that the wound was in fact slight, I took the captain's rather strong hint to be still, and lay quiet, until a 32-pound shot struck us bang on the quarter. The subdued force with which it came, showed that we were widening our distance, for it did not drive through and through with a crash, but lodged in a timber; nevertheless it started one of the planks across which Paul and I lay, and pitched us both with extreme violence bodily into the run amongst the men, three of them lying amongst the ballast, which was covered with blood, two badly wounded, and one dead. I came off with some slight bruises, however; not so the poor mate. He had been nearest the end or but that was started, which thereby struck him so forcibly, that it fractured his spine, and dashed him amongst his s.h.i.+pmates, shrieking piercingly in his great agony, and clutching whatever he could grasp with his hands, and tearing whatever he could reach with his teeth, while his limbs below his waist were dead and paralysed.

"Oh, Christ! water, water," he cried, "water, for the love of G.o.d, water!"

The crew did all they could; but his torments increased--the blood began to flow from his mouth--his hands became clay--cold and pulseless--his features sharp, blue, and death--like--his respiration difficult--the choking death--rattle succeeded, and in ten minutes he was dead.

This was the last shot that told--every report became more and more faint, and the musketry soon ceased altogether.

The breeze had taken off, and the Wave, resuming her superiority in light winds, had escaped.

CHAPTER IX.--Cuba Fishermen

"El Pescador de Puerto Escondido, Pesca mas que Peseado, Quando la Luna redonda Reflexado en la mar profunda.

Pero cuidado, El pobre sera el nino perdido Si esta por Anglisman cogido.

Ay de mi".

It was now five in the afternoon, and the breeze continued to fall, and the sea to go down, until sunset, by which time we had I run the corvette hull down, and the schooner nearly out of sight. Right ahead of us rose the high land of Cuba, to the westward of Cape Maize, clear and well-defined against the northern sky; and as we neither hauled our wind to weather the east end of the island, nor edged away for St Jago, it was evident, beyond all doubt, that we were running right in for some one of the piratical haunts on the Cuba coast.

The crew now set to work, and removed the remains of their late messmate, and the two wounded men, from where they lay upon the ballast in the Run, to their own berth forward in the bow of the little vessel; they then replaced the planks which they had started, and arranged the dead body of the mate along the cabin floor, close to where I lay, faint and bleeding, and more heavily bruised than I had at first thought.

The captain was still at the helm; he had never spoken a word either to me or any of the crew, since he had taken the trifling liberty of shooting me through the neck, and no thanks to him that the wound was not mortal; but he now resumed his American accent, and began to drawl out the necessary orders for repairing damages.

When I went on deck shortly afterwards, I was surprised beyond measure to perceive the injury the little vessel had sustained, and the uncommon speed, handiness, and skill, with which it had been repaired. However lazily the command might appear to have been given, the execution of it was quick as lightning. The crew, now reduced to ten working hands, had, with an almost miraculous prompt.i.tude, knotted and spliced the rigging, mended and s.h.i.+fted sails, fished the sprung and wounded spars, and plugged and nailed lead over the shot-holes, and all within half an hour.

I don't like Americans; I never did, and never shall like them; I have seldom met with an American gentleman, in the large and complete sense of the terms. I have no wish to eat with them, drink with them, deal with, or consort with them in any way; but let me tell the whole truth, nor fight with them, were it not for the laurels to be acquired, by overcoming an enemy so brave, determined, and alert, and every way so worthy of one's steel, as they have always proved. One used to fight with a Frenchman, as a matter of course, and for the fun of the thing as it were, never dreaming of the possibility of Johnny c.r.a.peau beating us, where there was any thing approaching to an equality of force; but, say as much as we please about larger s.h.i.+ps and more men, and a variety of excuses which proud John Bull, with some truth very often I will admit, has pertinaciously thrust forward to palliate his losses during the short war, a regard for truth and fair dealing, which I hope are no scarce qualities amongst British seamen, compels me to admit, that although I would of course peril my life and credit more readily with an English crew, yet I believe a feather would turn the scale between the two countries, so far as courage and seamans.h.i.+p goes; and let it not be forgotten, although we have now regained our superiority in this respect, yet, in gunnery and smallarm practice, we were as thoroughly weathered on by the Americans during the war, as we overtopped them in the bulldog courage with which our boarders handled those genuine English weapons, the cutla.s.s and the pike.

After the captain had given his orders, and seen the men fairly at work, he came down to the cabin, still ghastly and pale, but with none of that ferocity stamped on his grim features, from the outpouring of which I had suffered so severely. He never once looked my way, no more than if I had been a bundle of old junk; but folding his hands on his knee, he sat down on a small locker, against which the feet of the dead mate rested, and gazed earnestly on his face, which was immediately under the open skylight, through which, by this time, the clear cold rays of the moon streamed full on it, the short twilight having already fled, chained as it is in these climates to the chariot wheels of the burning sun. My eye naturally followed his, but I speedily withdrew it. I had often bent over comrades who had been killed by gunshot wounds, and always remarked, what is well-known, that the features wore a benign expression, bland and gentle, and contented as the face of a sleeping infant, while their limbs were composed decently, often gracefully, like one resting after great fatigue, as if nature, like an affectionate nurse, had arranged the deathbed of her departing child with more than usual care, preparatory to his last long sleep; whereas those who had died from the thrust of a pike, or the blow of a cutla.s.s, however mild the living expression of their countenance might have been, were always fearfully contorted both in body and face.

In the present instance, the eyes were wide open, white, prominent, and glazed like those of a dead fish; the hair, which was remarkably fine, and had been worn in long ringlets, amongst which a large gold earring glittered, the poor fellow having been a nautical dandy of the first water was drenched and clotted into heavy ma.s.ses with the death-sweat, and had fallen back on the deck from his forehead, which was well formed, high, broad and ma.s.sive. His nose was transparent, thin, and sharp, the tense skin on the bridge of it glancing in the silver light, as if it had been gla.s.s. His mouth was puckered on one side into angular wrinkles, like a curtain drawn up awry, while a clotted stream of black gore crept from it sluggishly down his right cheek, and coagulated in a heap on the deck. His lower jaw had fallen, and there he lay agape with his mouth full of blood.

His legs, indeed his whole body below his loins, where the fracture of the spine had taken place, rested precisely as they had been arranged after he died; but the excessive swelling and puffing out of his broad chest, contrasted shockingly with the shrinking of the body at the pit of the stomach, by which the arch of the ribs was left as well defined as if the skin had been drawn over a skeleton, and the distortion of the muscles of the cheeks and throat evinced the fearful strength of the convulsions which had preceded his dissolution. It was evident, indeed, that throughout his whole person above the waist, the nervous system had been utterly shattered; the arms, especially, appeared to have been awfully distorted, for when crossed on his breast, they had to be forcibly fastened down at the wrists by a band of spun-yam to the b.u.t.tons of his jacket. His right hand was shut, with the exception of the forefinger, which was extended, pointing upwards; but the whole arm, from the shoulder down, had the horrible appearance of struggling to get free from the cord which confined it.

Obed, by the time I had noticed all this, had knelt beside the shoulder of the corpse, and I could see by the moonlight that flickered across his face as the vessel rolled in the declining breeze, that he had pushed off his eye the uncouth spygla.s.s which he had fastened over it during the chase, so that it now stood out from the middle of his forehead like a stunted horn; but, in truth, "it was not exalted," for he appeared crushed down to the very earth by the sadness of the scene before him, and I noticed the frequent sparkle of a heavy tear as it fell from his iron visage on the face of the dead man. At length he untied the string that fastened the eyegla.s.s round his head, and taking a coa.r.s.e towel from a locker, he spunged poor Paul's face and neck with rum, and then fastened up his lower jaw with the lanyard. Having performed this melancholy office, the poor fellow's feelings could no longer be restrained by my presence.

"G.o.d help me, I have not now one friend in the wide world. When I had neither home, nor food, nor clothing, he sheltered me, and fed me, and clothed me, when a single word would have gained him five hundred dollars, and run me up to the fore yardarm in a wreath of white smoke; but he was true as steel; and oh that he was now doing for me what I have done for him! who would have moaned over me,--me, who am now without wife or child, and have disgraced all my kin! alack-a-day, alack-a-day!"--And he sobbed and wept aloud, as if his very heart would have burst in twain.--"But I will soon follow you, Paul; I have had my warning already; I know it, and I believe it." At this instant the dead hand of the mate burst the ligature that kept it down across his body, and slowly rose up and remained in a beckoning att.i.tude. I was seized with a cold s.h.i.+vering from head to foot, and would have shrieked aloud, had it not been for very shame, but Obed was unmoved.--"I know it, Paul. I know it. I am ready, and I shall not be long behind you."

He fastened the arm down once more, and having called a couple of hands to a.s.sist him, they lashed up the remains of their s.h.i.+pmate in his hammock, with a piece of iron ballast at his feet, and then, without more ado, handed the body up through the skylight; and I heard the heavy splash as they cast it into the sea. When this was done, the captain returned to the cabin, bringing a light with him, filled and drank off a gla.s.s of strong grog. Yet he did not even now deign to notice me, which was by no means soothing; and I found that, since he wouldn't speak, I must, at all hazards.

"I say, Obed, do you ever read your Bible?" He looked steadily at me with his lackl.u.s.tre eyes. "Because, if you do, you may perhaps have fallen in with some such pa.s.sages as the following:--Behold I am in your hand; but know ye for certain, that if ye put me to death, ye shall surely bring innocent blood upon yourselves."

"It is true, Mr Cringle, I feel the truth of it here," and he laid his large bony hand on his heart. "Yet I do not ask you to forgive me; I don't expect that you can or will; but unless the devil gets possession of me again--which, so sure as ever there was a demoniac in this world, he had this afternoon when you so tempted me--I hope soon to place you in safety, either in a friendly port, or on board of a British vessel; and then what becomes of me is of little consequence, now since the only living soul who cared a dollar for me is at rest amongst the coral branches at the bottom of the deep green sea."

"Why, man," rejoined I, "leave off this stuff; something has turned your brain, surely; people must die in their beds, you now, if they be not shot, or put out of the way somehow or other; and as for my small affair, why I forgive you, man--from my heart I forgive you; were it only for the oddity of your scantling, mental and corporeal, I would do so; and you see I am not much hurting--so lend me a hand, like a good fellow, to wash the wound with a little spirits--it will stop the bleeding, and the stiffness will soon go off."

"Lieutenant Cringle, I need not tell what I know you have found out, that I am not the vulgar Yankee smuggler, fit only to be made a b.u.t.t of by you and your friends, that you no doubt at first took me for; but who or what I am, or what I may have been, you shall never know--but I will tell you this much...."

"Devil confound the fellow!--why this is too much upon the brogue, Obed.

Will you help me to dress my wound, man, and leave off your cursed sentimental speeches, which you must have gleaned from some old novel or another? I'll hear it all by and by."

At this period I was a reckless young chap, with strong nerves, and my own share of that animal courage, which generally oozes out at one's finger ends when one gets married and turned of thirty; nevertheless I did watch with some anxiety the effect which my unceremonious interruption was to have upon him. I was agreeably surprised to find that he took it all in good part, and set himself, with great alacrity and kindness even, to put me to rights, and so successfully, that when I was washed and cleansed, and fairly coopered up, I found myself quite able to take my place at the table; and having no fear of the College of Surgeons before my eyes, I helped myself to a little of the needful, and in the plenitude of my heart, I asked Obed's pardon for my ill-bred interruption.

"It was not quite the thing to cut you short in the middle of your Newgate Calendar, Obed--beg pardon, your story I mean; no offence now, none in the world--eh? But where the deuce, man, got you this fine linen of Egypt?" looking at the sleeves of the s.h.i.+rt Obed had obliged me with, as I sat without my coat. "I had not dreamt you had any thing so luxurious in your kit."

I saw his brow begin to lower again, so the devil prompted me to advert, by way of changing the subject, to a file of newspapers, which, as it turned out, might have proved to be by far the most dangerous topic I could have hit upon. He had laid them aside, having taken them out of the locker when he was rummaging for the linen. "What have we here?