The Honour of the Flag Part 5

_The Strange Adventures of a South Seaman._

On November 4th, 1830, a number of convicts were indicted at the Admiralty Sessions of the Old Bailey for having on the 5th of September in the previous year piratically seized a brig called the _Cyprus_. A South Seaman was innocently and most involuntarily, as shall be discovered presently, involved in this tragic business, to which he is able to add a narrative that is certainly not known to any of the chroniclers of crime. But first as to the piratical seizure.

The _Cyprus_, a colonial brig, had been chartered to convey a number of convicts from Hobart Town to Macquarie Harbour, on the northern coast of Tasmania, and Norfolk Island, distant about a week's sail from Sydney--in those days a penal settlement. There were thirty-two felons in all. These men had been guilty of certain grave offences at Hobart Town, and they had rendered themselves in consequence liable to new punishment; they were tried before the Supreme Court of Judicature there, and sentenced to be transported to the place above mentioned.

Only the very worst sort of prisoners were sent to Norfolk Island and Macquarie Harbour. The discipline at those penal settlements was terrible; the labour that was exacted, heart-breaking. The character of the punishment was well known, and every felon re-sentenced to transportation from the colonial convict settlements very well understood the fate that was before him.

The _Cyprus_ sailed from Hobart Town in August, 1829. In addition to the thirty-two convicts, she carried a crew of eight men and a guard of twelve soldiers, under the command of Lieutenant Carew, who was accompanied by his wife and children. The prisoners, as was always customary in convict s.h.i.+ps, were under the care of a medical man named Williams.

Nothing of moment happened until the brig either brought up or was hove-to in Research Bay, where Dr. Williams, Lieutenant Carew, the mate of the vessel, a soldier, and a convict named Popjoy went ash.o.r.e on a fis.h.i.+ng excursion. They had not been gone from the s.h.i.+p above half-an-hour when they heard a noise of firearms. Instantly guessing that the convicts had risen, they made a rush for the boat and pulled for the brig. It was as they had feared: the felons had mastered the guard and seized the brig. They suffered no man to come on board save Popjoy, who, however, later on sprang overboard, and swam to the beach. They then sent the crew, soldiers, and pa.s.sengers ash.o.r.e, but without provisions and the means of supporting life. Then, amongst themselves, the prisoners lifted the anchor and trimmed sail, and the little brig slipped away out of Research Bay.

The chroniclers state that the vessel was never afterward heard of, though some of the convicts were apprehended, separately, in various parts of Suss.e.x and Ess.e.x. The posthumous yarn of the mate of an English whaler disproves this. He relates his extraordinary experience thus:

"We had been fis.h.i.+ng north of the Equator, and had filled up with a little 'grease,' as the Yankees term it, round about the Galapagos Islands, but business grew too slack for even a whaleman's patience.

Eleven months out from Whitby, and, if my memory fails me not, less than a score of full barrels in our hold! So the Captain made up his mind to try south, and working our way across the Equator, we struck in amongst the Polynesian groups, raising the Southern Cross higher and higher, till we were somewhere about lat.i.tude 30 deg., and longitude 175 deg. E.

"I came on deck to the relief at four o'clock one morning: the weather was quiet, a pleasant breeze blowing off the starboard beam; our s.h.i.+p was barque-rigged, with short, topgallant masts--Cape Horn fas.h.i.+on; she was thrusting through it leisurely under topsails and a maintopgallantsail, and the whole Pacific heave so cradled her as she went that she seemed to sleep as she sailed.

"Day broke soon after five, and as the light brightened out I caught sight of a gleam on the edge of the sea. It was as white with the risen sun upon it as an iceberg. I levelled the gla.s.s and made out the topmast canvas of a small vessel. There was nothing to excite one in the spectacle of a distant sail. The barque's work went on; the decks were washed down, the look-out aloft hailed and nothing reported, and at seven bells the crew went to breakfast, at which hour we had risen the distant sail with a rapidity that somewhat puzzled the captain and me. For, first of all, she was not so far off now but that we could distinguish the lay of her head. She looked to be going our way, but clearly she was stationary, for the _Swan_, which was the name of our barque, though as seaworthy an old tub as ever went to leeward on a bowline, was absolutely without legs: nothing more sluggish was ever afloat; for _her_ then to have overhauled anything that was actually under way would have been marvellous.

"'Something wrong out there, Grainger?' said the captain.

"'Looks to me to be all in the wind with her,' I answered.

"'Make out any colour?' said the captain.

"'Nothing as yet,' said I.

"'s.h.i.+ft your helm by a spoke or two,' said he. 'Meanwhile, I'll go to breakfast.'

"He was not long below. By the time he returned we had risen the distant vessel to the line of her rail. I got some breakfast in the cabin; on pa.s.sing again through the hatch I found the captain looking at the sail through the telescope.

"'She is a small brig,' said he, 'and she has just sent the English colours aloft with the jack down. She is all in the wind, as you said.

Her people don't seem to know what to do with her.'

"She now lay plain enough to the naked sight; a small black brig of about a hundred and eighty tons, apparently in ballast as she floated high on the water. She, like ourselves, carried short topgallantmasts, but the canvas she showed consisted of no more than topsails and courses. I took the gla.s.s from the captain, and believed I could make out the heads of two or three people showing above the bulwark rail abaft the mainmast.

"'What's their trouble going to prove?' said the captain.

"'They're waiting for us,' said I. 'They saw us, and put the helm down, and got their little s.h.i.+p in irons instead of backing their topsail yard. No sailor-man there, I doubt.'

"'A small colonial trader, you'll find,' said the captain, 'with a crew of four or five Kanakas. The captain's sick and the mate was accidentally left ash.o.r.e at the last island.'

"It blew a four-knot breeze--four knots, I mean, for the _Swan_.

Wrinkling the water under her bows, and smoothing into oil a cable's length of wake astern of her, the whaler floated down to the little brig within hailing distance. We saw but two men, and one of them was at the wheel. There was an odd look of confusion aloft, or rather let me describe it as a want of that sort of precision which a sailor's eye would seek for and instantly miss, even in the commonest old sea-donkey of a collier. Nothing was rightly set for the lack of hauling taut. Running gear was slackly belayed, and swung with the rolling of the little brig like Irish pennants. The craft was clean at the bottom, but uncoppered. She was a round-bowed contrivance, with a spring aft which gave a kind of mulish, kick-up look to the run of her.

"One of the two visible men, a broad-chested, thick-set fellow, in a black coat and a wide, white straw hat, got upon the bulwark, and stood holding on by a backstay, watching our approach, but he did not offer to hail. I thought this queer; it struck me that he hesitated to hail us, as though wanting the language of the sea in this business of speaking.

"'Brig ahoy!' shouted the captain.

"'Hallo!' answered the man.

"'What is wrong with you?'

"'We are short-handed, sir, and in great distress,' was the answer.

"'What is your s.h.i.+p, and where are you from, and where are you bound to?'

"When these questions were put the man looked round to the fellow who stood at the brig's little wheel. It was certain he was not a sailor, and it was possible he sought for counsel from the helmsman, who was probably a forecastle hand. He turned his face again our way in a minute, and shouted out in a powerful voice:

"'We are the brig _Cyprus_, of Sydney, New South Wales, bound to the Cape of Good Hope, and very much out of our reckoning, I dare say, through the distress we're in.'

"The captain and I exchanged looks.

"'Heading as you go,' the captain sang out, 'you're bound on a true course for the Antarctic Circle, and, anyway, it's a long stretch for Agulhas by way of Cape Horn out of these seas. How can we serve you?'"

'Will you send one of your officers in a boat?' came back the reply very promptly, 'that he may put us in the way of steering a course for the Cape of Good Hope? He'll then guess our plight, and if you'll lend us a hand or two we shall be greatly obliged. We can't send a boat ourselves--we're too few.'

"'He's no sailor-man, that fellow,' said the captain, 'and he ha'n't got the colonial brogue, either. I seem to smell Whitechapel in that chap's speech. Is he a pa.s.senger? Why don't he say so? Looks like a play-actor, or a priest. But take a boat, Grainger, and row over and see what you can make of the mess they're in. There's something rather more than out-of-the-way in that job, if I'm not mistaken.'

"A boat was lowered; I entered it, and was rowed across to the brig by three men. No attempt was made to throw us the end of a line, or in any way to help us. The bowman got hold of a chain plate, and I scrambled into the main-chains and so got over the rail, bidding the men shove off and lie clear of the brig, whose rolling was somewhat heavy, owing to her floating like an egg-sh.e.l.l upon the long Pacific heave.

"I glanced along the vessel's decks forward, and saw not a soul. I observed a little caboose, the chimney of which was smoking as though coal had within the past few minutes been thrown into the furnace. I saw but one boat; she stood chocked and lashed abaft the caboose--a clumsy, broad-beamed long-boat, capable of stowing perhaps fifteen or twenty men at a pinch. I also took notice of a pair of davits on the starboard side, past the main rigging; they were empty.

"I stepped up to the heavily-built man who had answered the captain's questions. He received me with a grotesque bow, pinching the brim of his wide straw hat as he bobbed his head. I did not like his looks. He had as hanging a face as ever a malefactor carried. His features were heavy and coa.r.s.e, his brow low and protruding, his eyes small, black, and restless, and his mouth of the bulldog cast.

"'We're much obliged to you for this visit,' he said. 'Might I ask your name, sir?'

"'My name is Grainger--Mr. James Grainger,' I answered, scarcely wondering at the irregularity of such a question on such an occasion, perceiving clearly now that the fellow was no sailor.

"'What might be your position in that s.h.i.+p, Mr. Grainger?' said the man.

"'I'm mate of her,' said I.

"'Then I suppose you're capable of carrying a s.h.i.+p from place to place by the art of navigation?' he exclaimed.

"'Why, I hope so!' cried I. 'But what is it you want?' and here I looked at the man who was standing at the helm, grasping the spokes in a manner that a.s.sured me he was not used to that sort of work; and I was somewhat struck to observe that in some respects he was not unlike the fellow who was addressing me--that is to say, he had quite as hanging a face as his companion, though he wanted the other's breadth and squareness, and ruffian-like set of figure; but his forehead was low, and his eyes black and restless, and he was close-cropped, with some days' growth of beard, as was the case with the other. He was dressed in a bottle-green spencer and trousers of a military cut, and wore one of those caps which in the days I am writing of were the fas.h.i.+on amongst masters and mates.

"'If you don't mind stepping into the cabin,' said the man with whom I was conversing, 'I'll show you a chart, and ask you to pencil out a course for us; and with your leave, sir, I'll tell you over a gla.s.s of wine exactly how it's come about that we're too few to carry the brig to her destination unless your captain will kindly help us.'

"'Are you two the only people aboard?' said I.

"'The only people,' he answered.

"Anywhere else, under any other conditions, I might have suspected a treacherous intention in two men with such hanging countenances as this lonely brace owned; but what could I imagine to be afraid of aboard a brig holding two persons only, with the whaler's boat and three men within a few strokes of the oar, and the old barque, _Swan_, full of livelies, many of them deadly in the art of casting the harpoon, within easy hail?