A Middy of the King Part 8

"She seems to be moving through the water very fast, light as is the wind," remarked the first lieutenant. "Ten minutes ago she was broad on our weather-bow, while now she is almost abeam. I expect we shall find that she is quite as fast as ourselves."

CHAPTER NINE.

THE PIRATE BRIGANTINE.

We watched the stranger as she was revealed at uncertain but decreasing intervals by the silent sheet-lightning, which was now flickering up all round the horizon, affording us momentary glimpses of the great lowering cloud-ma.s.ses that overhung our mastheads as though ready to fall and crush us, the s.h.i.+ning undulations of the swell, with the small overrunning ripples caused by the faint breathing of the breeze, the distant land, and the brigantine sliding furtively along within its shadow. When at length she had drawn to a bearing two points abaft our beam, the Captain gave the word to tack; and when, three minutes later, we were fairly round, the yards braced up, sheets hauled aft, and the frigate gathering way on the starboard tack, the stranger lay straight ahead of us.

Of course, we had taken the precaution to wait until immediately after a lightning flash before putting our helm down, and, as it happened, the next gleam did not occur until several minutes after we had tacked; the probability, therefore, was that the stranger would know nothing about our manoeuvre until the scene was again illuminated. The question that now interested us was--how would her people act when they made the discovery that we had s.h.i.+fted our helm and were standing in their direction? There were three alternatives open to them. First, they might follow our example--tack, and endeavour to escape to windward if they believed their vessel speedy enough to succeed. Secondly, they might haul their wind and enter the Gulf of Venezuela, along the sh.o.r.es of which there are two or three shallow inlets, in one or the other of which they might take refuge and anchor, in the hope of being able to defend their s.h.i.+p successfully against a boat attack. And, thirdly, if they were perfectly honest--of which we had our doubts--they might proceed steadily on their way, taking no notice of us and our movements.

When we next got a sight of them the third alternative seemed to be their intention, for, so far as we could discover, they had started neither tack nor sheet; we therefore proceeded to edge down very cautiously and very gradually toward her, keeping her about a point on our lee-bow.

Now we discovered that our task was not going to be nearly so easy as we had at first thought, for in the very light breath of wind that was then blowing--and which was wholly insufficient to keep our lower canvas "asleep"--the stranger undoubtedly had the heels of us, slipping along so fast, indeed, that within a quarter of an hour of tacking we were running off with the wind abeam and our weather braces checked, instead of being upon a taut bowline, as we had been at the beginning of the chase.

Meanwhile the expected storm, though it had been brewing long, showed unmistakable signs that it was not going to keep us waiting very much longer, for the sheet--lightning was flickering almost incessantly, while a low, deep muttering of distant thunder occasionally made itself heard. The storm seemed to be working up astern of us, for presently a dazzlingly vivid flash of chain-lightning rent the darkness over our weather quarter, quickly followed by a deep, hollow, reverberating peal of thunder that rumbled like the echo of a seventy-four's broadside.

Another and another quickly followed, each nearer than that which had preceded it; and presently, far away astern of us, we saw advancing toward us a sort of wall of vapour, the lower edge of which gleamed white and phosph.o.r.escent as the wind in it lashed the surface of the water into foam.

"Hands, shorten sail!" was now the word. The watch sprang to their stations, coils of rope were lifted off their pins and flung to the deck; then in rapid succession followed the orders:--"Royal and topgallant halliards and sheets let go; clew up and furl! Hands by the weather braces; square the yards! Raise main tack and sheet; man the main clew-garnets, buntlines, and leech-lines; clew up cheerily, lads!

Up helm, quartermaster, and let her go off. So; steady as you go.

Hands by the topsail halliards! Brail in the mizen! Haul down the flying-jib! Here it comes!"

The squall swooped down upon us with a weird, shrieking howl, and a dash of wet that was half rain and half spray; and the next moment, with a tremendous creaking and groaning of timbers and gear, with all three topsail-yards on the caps, and with the chain bobstay half-buried in the foam that heaped itself up about our bows, away went the frigate, like a startled sea-bird, speeding down-wind upon the wings of the squall, enveloped in a sheet of rain that was more than half salt water, with the lightning flickering and darting all round her, and the thunder cras.h.i.+ng overhead in a continuous booming roar.

The squall lasted very nearly three-quarters of an hour; but long before that time had elapsed the weather ahead had cleared sufficiently to enable us again to catch sight of the brigantine, now about two points on our starboard-bow, running dead before it, like ourselves, under nothing but a close-reefed topsail and reefed foresail. She was still maintaining her distance from us in the most wonderful manner; but was now--possibly in consequence of having been compelled by the squall to bear up--steering as though to enter the Gulf of Venezuela. We contrived to gain a little upon her by carefully watching our opportunities and making sail by degrees as the squall blew itself out; but in that respect her people were fully as wide awake as we were, and made sail with a boldness and rapidity which most conclusively proved that she was very strongly manned, and, therefore, not in the least likely to be the harmless, innocent trader that they would doubtless have liked to persuade us she was. She was hugging the land so closely that some of us were of opinion that her skipper intended to run her ash.o.r.e and take to his boats if it should prove impossible to avoid capture in any other way; but the Captain did not believe this, and the master also seemed to be of his opinion.

"His object," said Trimble, "is undoubtedly to get round Point Espada and fairly into the Gulf. If he can succeed in that, there are plenty of little coves, especially along the western sh.o.r.e, in which he might anchor and, sheltered from our guns, bid defiance to a boat attack."

"Ah!" observed the skipper, with much meaning. "Well, we shall see. It is perfectly evident that he is anxious to keep out of our clutches, which desire argues a guilty conscience on his part, and only makes me the more determined to overhaul him. Confound it, here comes the rain again! Mr Gascoigne, have the goodness to slip into my cabin and desire my steward to bring my oilskins on deck. Or, stay, the fellow will have turned-in by this time; I will get them myself."

The rain came swooping down upon us with the tail-end of the squall, and for a quarter of an hour it was so thick that we could see nothing a couple of s.h.i.+ps'-lengths outside the bulwarks. Then it cleared away, the clouds dispersed, the stars came out, the wind dropped to a moderate breeze, and presently the moon, with nearly half her disc in shadow, crept up above the horizon, flooding the heaving waters with ruddy gold that quickly changed to silver as the satellite climbed high enough to clear herself of the vapours that distorted her shape and imparted to her the colour of burnished copper.

But where was the brigantine? Ahead, abeam, on our quarter we looked, but nowhere could we discern the faintest trace of her. We had lost sight of her a bare quarter of an hour, and in that brief s.p.a.ce of time she had contrived to vanish as completely as though she had gone to the bottom in deep-water, leaving not so much as a fragment of floating wreckage to furnish a clue to her fate.

The skipper was as much puzzled as he was annoyed, and in his perplexity he turned to the master.

"What do you think has become of her, Mr Trimble?" he demanded. "She cannot have gone ash.o.r.e and broken up so completely in a quarter of an hour that no sign of her would remain. We should see something at least in the nature of wreckage to give us a hint of what had happened. Yet I see nothing; although if she had been stranded, either purposely or by accident, her wreck ought to be away in there somewhere about abreast of us. And there are no off-sh.o.r.e dangers, are there?"

"The nearest that I know of are The Monks, away out here, some twenty-five miles to the nor'ard and east'ard of us," answered the master. "The coast insh.o.r.e of us is, of course, a bit rocky, but there is nothing, so far as I know, in the nature of hidden dangers to cause the wreck of the brigantine. No, sir, it is my belief that there is some snug little secret cove, known to the skipper of that brigantine, and that he took advantage of the rain squall to slip into it, in the hope of dodging us."

"Ah!" said the skipper, "yes; that is, after all, the only feasible explanation of his disappearance. He is neither ahead nor astern nor to seaward of us; therefore he must be hidden somewhere insh.o.r.e. Mr Galway,"--to the first lieutenant--"we will shorten sail, if you please, with the s.h.i.+p's head off the land, remaining in sight of the coast until daylight, when we shall perhaps be able to discover the hiding-place of that brigantine."

This was done, and during the remainder of the night the _Europa_, under her three topsails, jib and spanker, stood off and on, never going farther from the sh.o.r.e than a distance of six miles, and very gradually working her way back to--as nearly as we could guess it--the spot where we had lost sight of the brigantine. As the night wore on all traces of the recent storm pa.s.sed away; the sky cleared, the moon and stars beamed down upon us in tropical splendour, affording us an ample sufficiency of light to enable us to maintain an effective watch upon the coast, and ensure that the stranger did not creep out from her place of concealment and give us the slip. The _terral_, or land wind, overpowered by the recent squall, once more resumed its sway and piped up strongly, bringing off to us the warm, fragrant odour of land and vegetation.

At length the day dawned, the sun soared into view above the eastern horizon, and with the coming of the light some half-dozen of the best telescopes in the s.h.i.+p were brought to bear upon the line of coast that lay about five miles distant on our port beam. I happened to be the lucky possessor of an exceptionally good instrument--a present from my father--and I had not been long at work with it when I discovered what was unmistakably a small indentation in the coast-line, sheltered and all but concealed by two headlands which approached each other so closely that, viewed from a distance, they appeared almost to overlap.

I immediately directed the first lieutenant's attention to the spot, at the same time handing him my gla.s.s, and he presently picked it up. He agreed with me that it was undoubtedly a cove, or tiny bay of some sort, but was rather of the opinion that it was too small to afford shelter to a vessel of the dimensions of the missing brigantine. Nevertheless, since it was the only opening that we could discover, and was, moreover, about the spot where the stranger had disappeared, it was determined to give the place an overhaul, and the helm was accordingly eased down, the yards braced in, and we began to work in toward it. Then the fighting boats' crews were told off to overhaul the boats and prepare them for service, yard and stay tackles were got aloft for the purpose of hoisting out the launch, the boat-guns were slung all ready for lowering over the side as soon as the boats should be brought alongside, ammunition boxes were brought on deck, and, in short, every preparation was made for a boat expedition; after which all hands were piped to breakfast.

By the time that this meal was finished the frigate had worked in to within about a mile from the sh.o.r.e, at which point she ran into a calm, the land-breeze having died away. The boats were then got into the water and brought to the gangway, the guns were lowered down and secured to platforms in the bows of the launch and the two cutters, shot was pa.s.sed down and stowed on the bottom-boards on either side of the keel, the ammunition boxes were stowed in the stern-sheets, and then, all else being ready, those who were to take part in the expedition were mustered for inspection prior to being dispatched on what was likely enough to prove a dangerous errand. But little recked any of us of possible danger; on the contrary, if an onlooker had judged only by the satisfied smirk which our countenances wore, it might have been supposed that we were all bound ash.o.r.e for a day's holiday in the woods.

The expedition was to be under the command of Mr Gadsby, the second lieutenant, who would go in the launch; the first cutter was to be commanded by Mr O'Donnel, the boatswain, and the command of the second cutter was entrusted to me. We mustered fifty altogether, including marines; and when at length, after having been carefully inspected by the first lieutenant, we were given the word to shove off, the men who were left behind sprang into the rigging and sped us on our way with a hearty cheer.

We took it very easily as we pulled sh.o.r.eward, in line abreast, for it was by this time scorching hot, and it was important that the men's strength should be husbanded to the utmost extent, in view of the possible fight that might be awaiting us at the end of our journey; but I kept a sharp lookout ahead, for, although the country in sight showed no sign of habitations, there was no knowing how soon a masked battery on one, or perhaps each, of the headlands might declare itself by dropping a few shot among us. Nothing, however, happened to hinder our progress over the gla.s.s-smooth surface of the water, and in the course of about twenty minutes we reached the opening between the two headlands, and found ourselves in the mouth of a small, practically land-locked cove of some twenty acres in area, with our friend the brigantine in the very centre of it, with four anchors down--two ahead and two astern--with boarding nettings triced up, ports open, guns run out--eight long 12-pounders in each battery--and her starboard broadside bearing full upon the entrance!

"There she is!" exclaimed a dozen eager voices in chorus; and, while the words were still upon our lips, eight jets of flame burst from her side, followed by eight wreaths of whirling white smoke that instantly commingled, forming a curtain that completely hid her long low black hull from us, and as a shower of grape came hurtling about our ears I saw a big black flag go slowly soaring up to her main truck!

"A self-confessed pirate, by the Piper!" exclaimed Fred Gascoigne, who had calmly crawled out from under the bow-sheets of my boat when we were half-way between the frigate and the sh.o.r.e. "Now--"

"Give way, men!" shouted Gadsby, springing to his feet in the stern-sheets of the launch, and waving his sword above his head. "Give way, and get alongside before they can fire again. Gunners, fire slap at his bulwarks, and we'll board in the smoke. Marines, fire in through the open ports. Hurrah, lads, put your backs into it!"

At that moment, as the smoke of the brigantine's broadside thinned away and permitted us again to catch a glimpse of her hull, I noticed a peculiarity about the craft that seemed to offer us a very important advantage; her captain had, in fact, committed the same oversight as the Frenchman in Pleher Bay, and I instantly hailed:

"Launch ahoy! Do you notice, Mr Gadsby, that she has no nettings triced up on her port side? Apparently they are making certain that we intend to go alongside on her starboard side, and--"

"By Jove! Yes, you are right, Delamere," answered Gadsby. "We will board her on the port side. First cutter on the port quarter; second cutter on her port bow. Keep up your fire, marines. Now, gunners, as soon as you are ready, blaze away!"

The three boat-guns spoke at almost the same instant, and so close were we now to our quarry that our grape-shot literally tore her starboard bulwarks to pieces, and a terrific outburst of shrieks and yells that instantly followed upon the discharge bore eloquent evidence to the terrible havoc that it had wrought among her crew. The moment that we had fired the boats separated, the first cutter making a wide sweep to port in order to pa.s.s under the brigantine's counter, while we sheered away to starboard to get under her bows, the launch pa.s.sing outside of us in order to get a fair run for the brigantine's waist.

Another minute and we were all alongside and hooked on, and then began a most terrific struggle; for the brigantine seemed crowded with men. We had evidently taken them all a little by surprise, by boarding on her insh.o.r.e side instead of that side which was presented to us upon entering the cove. It was clear that, like the prize-crew of the Indiaman in Pleher Bay, they had never expected us to think of pulling round under her bows and stern, instead of das.h.i.+ng straight alongside; but of course it was a very easy matter for the pirates to cross the deck from one side to the other as soon as they discovered our intention; and this they did, lining her bulwarks from her head-rails to her taffrail, popping at us with muskets and pistols, thrusting at us with pikes and cutla.s.ses, and hacking at our hands and heads as we endeavoured to climb her side and force our way over her bulwarks and in on deck. But our lads were not to be daunted by any resistance, however desperate. As we surged up alongside they dropped their oars, allowing them to slide overboard and tow by the lanyards, and drawing pistol and cutla.s.s, leapt to their feet and, with a wild cheer, sprang on to the boats' gunwales and thence to any foothold that they could find, snapping their pistols in the faces of any who dared to show their heads above the rail; while the marines thrust their bayonets through the open ports into the legs of any individual who happened to be within their reach, thus disconcerting the aim of many an otherwise deadly stroke.

For a few breathless seconds all was fire, smoke, and fury, pistols cracking, steel rasping upon steel, cheers, execrations, groans, the dull crunching sound of cutla.s.ses sheering through muscle and bone, the heavy fall of the stricken on deck, the scuffling of feet, and shouts of defiance exchanged between the contending parties; then a few of us contrived to get in on deck, forcing back the pirates and making room for those who followed us, until all who were not too severely hurt to climb the s.h.i.+p's side were inboard. There ensued a deadly hand-to-hand fight in which quarter was neither asked for nor given. The pirates seemed to number about three times as many as ourselves, and were a truly desperate set of ruffians, fighting--as they well knew--with halters round their necks, and doubtless preferring to die in the heat of battle rather than perish ignominiously upon the scaffold.

For a few minutes we had all our work cut out to retain the slight advantage that we had gained. But gradually our lads drove their antagonists back until the latter were all grouped together in a dense ma.s.s round the mainmast, with our people hemming them in on every side and pressing them into such a compact crowd that at least half of them were unable to strike an effective blow. They did what they could, however, by hurling their empty pistols into our faces over the heads of their comrades, and I was busily engaged in defending myself from the attack of a herculean negro when one of these heavy missiles struck me, the hammer taking me fairly in the centre of the forehead and so nearly stunning me that for a moment I all but lost consciousness and was completely thrown off my guard. The next second a terrific blow crashed down upon my bare head--my hat having been lost earlier in the melee-- and I fell to the deck, my last conscious sensation being that I was being trampled upon and by, as it seemed to me, an innumerable crowd of people. Then I swooned.

When I recovered consciousness I found myself in my hammock, in the sick-bay aboard the frigate, with a number of companions in misfortune around me. At first I felt too utterly miserable to take much interest in anything, for my head, swathed in bandages, was aching and smarting so consumedly that for the first quarter of an hour or so I could not bear even the subdued light that entered through the open ports, and was obliged to keep my eyes closed; moreover, I was parched and burnt-up with fever, as weak as a cat, and consumed with an intolerable thirst.

I attempted to turn in my hammock, but was unable to do so, and as I still struggled one of the sick-bay attendants came to my side and asked if he could do anything for me. I gasped out something to the effect that I was peris.h.i.+ng of thirst, whereupon he brought me a pannikin of tepid water, dipped from a bucket that stood near one of the open ports, and, raising me in my hammock, placed it to my lips. Tepid and insipid as it actually was, I thought I had never tasted anything half so delicious, and I not only drained it to the last drop, but asked for more. This, however, he declined to give me without the surgeon's direct permission, having, as he explained to me, been warned that when I awoke I should probably be suffering severely from thirst, but that I was only to be given a very limited quant.i.ty of liquid at the outset and until the surgeon had had an opportunity to examine further into my condition. The man, however, reported the fact of my return to consciousness; and shortly afterward Wilson, the surgeon, came down to see me.

Wilson's "bedside manner" was somewhat bluff, but, nevertheless, judicious; for I had once heard him say, in a confidential moment, that he always, upon principle, made light of his patients' aches and ailments, as he had discovered, by long experience, that this had a good effect upon the invalids, causing them to believe that there was never anything very seriously wrong with them, and thus calling in the aid of their imagination to a.s.sist in the curative process. This was ill.u.s.trated in his behaviour toward me upon the occasion of which I am now speaking. He came and stood by the side of my hammock, looking down upon me with a whimsical expression as he took my wrist in his hand and pressed his fingers lightly upon my pulse.

"Put out your tongue," he ordered abruptly, and I did so obediently. He glanced at it for a few seconds, then remarked:

"Humph! not much the matter with you, I see. How d'ye feel?"

I explained that my head was giving me excruciating pain, and that I felt burnt-up with fever and thirst; at which he laughed.

"Pooh! pooh!" he exclaimed, "that's nothing. Thank your lucky stars that you have got off so lightly as you have. Some of the poor fellows here have lost a limb or two, while others of the boarding party have lost the number of their mess altogether. Yours is simply a broken head; and, since your skull appears to be abnormally thick, I daresay it will very soon mend again. Aches badly, does it? Ah, well, that is an excellent sign; but perhaps you had better remain on the sick list for a few days, and keep to your hammock until the pain pa.s.ses off--no good going on duty while you are blind with headache, you know. And--yes, now that I am here and you are awake I may as well look at your wound again."

He walked over to the screen, put his head round the end of it, and called sharply:

"Sentry, pa.s.s the word for Mr Burroughs to come to me; and ask him to bring a basin of hot water, a sponge, a roll of bandage, and anything else he thinks I am likely to want. Tell him that I am going to dress Mr Delamere's head."

Then, returning to my side, he drew out his penknife and with quick, gentle fingers proceeded to cut away a number of st.i.tches that kept the bandage in place, and when at length he had unwound it he flung it deftly away behind him, though not so deftly but that I caught a glimpse of it out of the corner of my eye and saw that it was drenched with blood. By the time that he had removed the bandage, gently clipping away, with a pair of scissors, the hair that stuck to it here and there, Burroughs, the a.s.sistant surgeon, had turned up with hot water and a number of odds and ends, and Wilson took the sponge in his hand, saying:

"Now, I shall probably hurt you a little; but don't yell, if you can help it, because if you do you will disturb the poor fellows around you.

So set your teeth and, if you feel anything, just grin and bear it. I will be as gentle as I can."

And he was gentle--no man could have been more so; nevertheless, during the next quarter of an hour he inflicted so much agony upon me as he extracted little splinters of bone with his forceps, and so on, that long before he had finished I was drenched with perspiration, and felt so sick that I finally swooned again; and he completed his operation upon my senseless body.

That night, I afterward learned, I pa.s.sed in a state of high delirium, and for several days I had only a very vague idea of where I was and what was happening around me; my predominating sensations being that the top of my head was on fire and blazing furiously, while I was consumed by fever and a thirst that was almost as exquisite a torture as the pain of my head. The only radical difference between the two was that when I was permitted to quench my thirst that particular form of torture was alleviated for a few brief seconds, while the other was continuous and distracting almost to the point of being unendurable. It seemed to me that I lay for an age in that suffocating sick-bay, every moment of the time being heavy with indescribable torment; but as a matter of fact I was there little more than forty-eight hours, the skipper cracking on for Jamaica, in order that several bad cases--of which I was one of the worst--might have the advantage of the lofty, airy wards of the naval hospital at Port Royal, where we arrived on the morning but one after our attack upon the pirate brigantine. I may as well complete the story of that adventure by saying--what I only learned afterward--that we captured the vessel, with a loss to ourselves of five killed, and eighteen wounded, of whom seven--including myself--were so badly hurt that Wilson gravely doubted whether we should ever pull round. As for the pirates, out of a crew of one hundred and twenty-six men, twenty-three were found dead on her deck after we had taken her, and fifty-four were wounded, some of them so desperately that no less than eleven of them died before we anch.o.r.ed in Port Royal harbour. The remainder were in due course brought to trial for piracy, and found guilty. Five of them were hanged at Gallows Point, while the rest were condemned to work on the roads in chains for the remainder of their miserable lives.