ON BOARD THE PIRATE BRIG.
I started up. It was broad daylight. The ill-favoured countenance of
the mule-driver was the first thing that met my gaze. The fellow was
kneeling on the deck beside me, and there was a sardonic grin upon his
swarthy visage as he stared at me.
“No can possible wake them mans,” he said, indicating my still
slumbering shipmates with a jerk of one of his skinny fingers; “dare
say you can do him.”
I started violently.
This rascal, then, spoke English, or a rude smattering of it, at any
rate!
The mule-driver noted my surprise, and gave a guffaw. Then he pointed
to three basins of some kind of porridge which stood upon the deck
close beside him. In each reposed a wooden spoon of very ample
dimensions.
“Brokefast!” he ejaculated. “Englishmans get plenty fat on him,” and
before I had recovered from my astonishment he had glided away and
disappeared swiftly and silently up the hatchway.
“An evil spirit!” I muttered to myself with an involuntary shudder, and
then I aroused my shipmates by calling them by their names. At first
they seemed greatly startled, but they quickly realized their position,
and asked me how I had slept.
I told them of the mule-driver’s appearance, and of his knowledge of
English; and then I pointed to the three basins of porridge, which were
just within my reach.
“Understands our lingo, does he?” remarked Mr. Triggs thoughtfully.
“Then he’s a smart fellow in his way, you may depend, and knows a
doosid sight more about us than he ought to.”
“He wouldn’t have been of much use to his mates as a spy if he hadn’t
ferreted out summat or another,” said Ned. “Will you be so kind, Mr.
Darcy, as to give me up one of them basins of skilly, for I’m mortal
empty and mortal dry?”
I glanced at my coxswain, and was pleased to see that he was looking
better and cheerier.
In a moment we each had a basin of porridge in our hands, and were
assiduously stirring the not very appetizing compound contained therein.
The gunner sniffed scornfully at his.
“Hominy stirabout, as I’m a living sinner!” he ejaculated; “and
flavoured with rancid butter.”
“A villanous compound, but not bad at the price,” I said, trying to put
a good face upon the matter.
Ned made no observations, but was already half-way through his portion.
When he had completely emptied his basin, he placed it carefully on
the deck beside him, wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his jumper, and
remarked sententiously,—
“Must keep body and soul together somehow. Don’t you sniff at yer
wittles, Mr. Triggs, or maybe the swabs’ll put you on half-rations!”
I managed to swallow a few mouthfuls; but it really was a villanous
compound, and I could get no further.
“I suppose there ain’t no chance of getting soap and water out of these
thunderin’ thieves,” said Ned, glancing at his grimy hands; “’tain’t in
their line, as you may say.”
“I’m afraid not,” said I; “but we can ask the mule-driver next time we
see him.”
At this very moment the subject of our conversation came down
the ladder, and approached us with the object of removing our
porridge-basins. I noticed that he glanced in a furtive, underhand
manner at Ned Burton.
“No,” he growled out in answer to my request that we might have some
soap and water; “we no wash ourself, why you do him?” Then he slouched
off whistling.
“No soap and no baccy!” said Ned plaintively, as soon as the fellow was
out of hearing. “’Tis hard upon a chap, and no mistake.”
At Mr. Triggs’s suggestion, we exercised our arms gently, so as to get
the stiffness out of them; and the good effect it had was wonderful. I
am afraid my coxswain found it rather a painful operation, but he made
no complaint.
“I’d like to practise fisticuffs on some of these rascals’ heads,”
observed Ned after we had finished. “A lesson or two in boxing ’twould
be, and nothing to pay for the larnin’.”
The deck on which we were confined was rather dark even in broad
daylight, being illuminated only by the rays of light which came down
the small adjacent hatchway, and by three or four remarkably dirty
scuttles in the ship’s side. Amidships, I noticed that there were a
good many casks and cases securely fastened to stanchions by stout
rope; but what they contained I had no means of ascertaining. Close to
my left hand was a row of bulkheads, and these stretched athwartships
right across the deck, and had a door in the middle, which I fancied
opened into the crew’s sleeping-quarters.
The little craft was evidently going through the water at a slashing
pace. She was almost on an even keel, but we could plainly hear the
water rushing and gurgling past under her counter. The gunner gave it
as his opinion that she was running before the wind at eight or nine
knots an hour. Silence seemed to prevail fore and aft, and we could not
even hear the flapping of canvas, the cheeping of spars, or the rattle
of a rope through a block.
Once I heard the melancholy bay of a bloodhound, and could not help
thinking that it was a sound of evil omen.
The morning wore on, and we saw nothing of the chief. Every half-hour
or so the mule-driver crept down the hatchway ladder to see that we
were safe. He had pistols stuck ostentatiously into his belt upon these
occasions, but always resolutely and sullenly refused to answer any
questions we addressed to him, so at last we gave it up as a hopeless
job.
It was really a great relief to us that the chief did not put in an
appearance, for we felt strongly that no appeal for mercy, or demand
for release, would have the slightest effect upon him; nor was he
likely to proffer any explanation as to his reasons for kidnapping
us. Again, we none of us wished to renew our acquaintance with his
ferocious-looking bloodhound, nor to be introduced to the latter’s
compatriot, which doubtless was also on board.
The morning passed away wearily. It was a great boon to be able to
converse with one another, but we were a melancholy trio, as the reader
may suppose, for at present we saw no chance of being able to free
ourselves from a terribly irksome and even cruel captivity.
No bells were struck on board the brig—for such I believed the little
craft to be—and we had no means of telling the time. I think, however,
it must have been about noon that the mule-driver, whose name I had
discovered was Miguel, brought us a mess of dried fish and rice for
our mid-day meal. From the ancient smell which seemed to hover about
the former article of food, we did not anticipate much enjoyment from
eating it; but, to our surprise, it did not prove at all unpalatable,
and we finished every morsel of it with great gusto, Ned declaring that
he had not had such a “tuck-in” for months, and that fighting-cocks
weren’t in the running with us at all.
In the afternoon we slept long and heavily, but we awoke—all confessed
to it—feeling feverish and irritable. If Miguel had inadvertently put
his ugly visage at this moment within reach of Ned Burton’s prodigious
fist, I fancy he would quickly have retired from whence he came, a
wiser and an uglier man, and have made tracks for the galley to try to
coax the ship’s cook out of a raw beefsteak.
Happily for us no such fearful _contretemps_ occurred; and, as the
effects of our afternoon snooze wore off, we began to feel more
amicably inclined towards our fellow-creatures.
“Ned,” said Mr. Triggs abruptly, “where’s your knife?”
“My knife!” ejaculated the seaman. “Well, that’s a good un anyhow. Why,
it’s where your ticker and t’other gimcrack vallables is—up the spout!”
“My ticker up the spout!” said the gunner with a sudden assumption of
dignity; “I don’t quite follow your meaning.”
“Well, I was speaking in a sort of parrydox or conundrum, I take it,
Mr. Triggs,” answered Ned, floundering, as was sometimes his wont, into
expressions of which he did not know the meaning. “What I just meant to
say was that these blooming highwaymen, or pirates, or whatever scum
they are, have pouched the whole bag of tricks. My knife and lanyard,
my baccy-box, and a ring my great-aunt give me just afore we sailed
from England, have gone the same way as your watch, and trinkets, and
such like.”
“I’m sorry for it,” said Mr. Triggs; “a knife would have been worth its
weight in gold to us.”
“Likely enough,” assented Ned, looking at his superior a little
curiously. “I reckon you’d have liked it handy to eat bread and cheese
with if the pirates give you a chance.”
“No, I like whittling to amuse myself,” said the gunner with a sly
wink; “though it’s very useful too sometimes to cut one’s stick.”
“That’s as true as gospel,” answered the seaman with a grin; “but I
tell you what, you might sit there and whittle and whittle till the
crack o’ doom, but you wouldn’t cut no sticks while them young cables
is riveted to your blessed feet. That’s a conundrum if ever there was
one.”
“Ah, I keep a brighter look-out ahead than you do, Ned. I should like
to have a knife handy for operations ashore a little later on.”
My coxswain stared.
“How do you know they’re going to put us ashore?” he asked. “They may
keep at sea for a long time to come.”
“Has it ever occurred to you, Mr. Triggs, that we might be marooned?” I
put in anxiously.
“Pooh!” answered the gunner, “maroon your grandmother. What possible
benefit would it be to them to put us ashore on a desert island, I
should like to know?”
“Some spite against our government, or naval authorities,” I answered.
“Ah, there’s something more than mere spite at the bottom of this
business, my lad, don’t you make any mistake. Now, shall I tell you
what I think these kidnapping fellows are?”
“Fire away!” I said laconically.
“Well, I think they’re out-and-out pirates—that’s what I think they
are,” said the gunner emphatically; “and I’m under the impression that
their headquarters are on some almost unknown island a considerable
distance from Cuba, and that they prey upon the shipping that passes
to and fro in these seas. I also think that they are mixed up in the
smuggling business, and that, owing to the laxity of the Spanish navy,
they have managed to form a depôt in those caves which we—”
“Ha, ha! I see zat you know all that am posshible to tell about him!”
exclaimed a high-pitched voice from the hatchway, and the next moment,
to our great dismay, the crafty sallow visage of Miguel appeared,
glaring at us through the steps of the ladder.
“What a mean spy-cat!” exclaimed Ned indignantly.
The gunner felt very much nonplussed.
“’Tain’t much use my giving you fellows good advice,” he said _sotto
voce_, “when I let my own tongue wag and run away with me like that.
The chief will have a down upon me now, that you may depend upon.”
I watched Miguel curiously to see what he would do next, fully
expecting that he would come and insult us in some way, for I knew
quite well what a mean and petty nature the man had. To my surprise,
however, he only gave one of his sardonic grins, and then disappeared
in his stealthy fashion up the companion ladder.
“A good riddance of bad rubbish,” said Ned contemptuously; “if there’s
anything I loathe in this world it’s an eavesdropper. There’s only one
thing worse, and that’s a religious hypocrite.”
“I only hope he didn’t hear you call him a mean spy-cat, Ned,” I said,
anxiously regarding my coxswain.
“Bless your young heart, sir, I don’t care a snap of the fingers if he
did or not. He can’t do me more harm than he has already, I take it.”
“I wouldn’t give him the chance if I were you, my man,” said Mr. Triggs
in a low tone. “For the future we’d best just talk in whispers, for
that swab is sure to be up to his spy-catting tricks again from time to
time.”
This was good advice, and we determined that we would follow it.
At about the hour of sunset, Miguel brought us our supper of porridge;
but he made no reference to the late episode, and indeed did not
vouchsafe to utter a word, good, bad, or indifferent. We did not at all
object to his taciturnity, but ate our suppers with as good an appetite
as we could muster up—certainly with many wry faces on my part. Even
Ned allowed that the hominy and rancid butter wasn’t a patch on the
salt fish and rice.
We were kept well supplied with water, a pannikin being always near us.
The sun went down, and our prison-deck became wrapped in gloom. It
seemed as if night was to be ushered in by the baying of bloodhounds,
for I distinctly heard a mournful chorus from those four-footed
man-hunters, which was kept up for some little time. Ned was very
superstitious about this, and declared that the Irish “banshee” was
nothing to it.
Soon after darkness fell a couple of armed sentries arrived to mount
guard over us. For the greater part of the time they marched up and
down with rifles in their hands; but occasionally they sat down upon
the deck within easy reach of us, smoked bad cigarettes, and played at
dominoes. They were relieved at intervals, I believe; but I slept very
soundly, strange to say, and was hardly cognizant of what went forward
during the night hours.
I was awoke in the early hours of the morning by a chorus of shouts and
angry yells, and a grinding and buffeting noise and vibration which
seemed to shake our little vessel violently from her cutwater to her
stern-post.
“We’ve struck on a rock, I’m afraid!” cried the gunner, starting up in
great alarm. “I hope, if the vessel begins to sink, they’ll knock off
our manacles in time to give us a chance for our lives.”
“Maybe ’tis a collision,” said Ned, “and that would be as bad perhaps.
I take it these furriners are only fair-weather sailors at the best of
times.”
Our guards had rushed on deck at the first sound of alarm.
At this moment the crash of a volley of musketry rang out above the
confused din on deck. Then we heard shrieks and yells of agony mingled
with the shouts of commanding voices and the baying of the bloodhounds.
We exchanged glances of astonishment and horror.
“Didn’t I say they were pirates?” exclaimed Mr. Triggs in an excited
tone of voice. “This proves it. There is no need to be on deck to watch
their villanous deeds, for ’tis all as plain as a pikestaff. We’ve run
alongside some merchant vessel, and these precious scamps are going to
board and take possession of her.”
I clung to the hope that the other vessel was the attacking one, and
might prove to be a Spanish man-of-war or revenue boat; but I could not
help feeling that the gunner was most likely correct in his conjecture.
Without doubt we were in the hands of lawless, bloodthirsty pirates.
A brisk fire of musketry was being kept up, and now and again I
distinguished the sharp crack of pistols and the clash of steel. The
shouts and yells of the contending parties were indescribable, so
prolonged and violent were they. The fight was evidently a desperate
one.
The grinding and buffeting noise still continued as if the two vessels
were lashed to each other pending the issue of the conflict. We
listened intently for every sound, exchanging remarks now and again in
awestruck, subdued whispers.
At times we thought we could distinguish the voice of the chief
ringing out like a brazen trumpet, as he directed the operations of
his followers. To my surprise, no guns were fired from the upper deck,
although, in my hasty glance around, when I was carried on board, I had
noticed that the brig was provided with some sort of armament.
Presently the shouts and yells of the combatants grew fainter, as also
did the rolling reports of the musketry and the sharp, spiteful cracks
of the death-dealing pistols.
“The pirates have boarded ’em, poor chaps,” said the gunner; “there
can be no doubt about that. The fight is being carried on aboard
t’other craft now.”
“God help ’em if they gets the worst of it, poor chaps!” said Ned; “I
don’t believe they’d get quarter from men like Miguel and his mates.”
At this moment a piercing shriek rent the air, followed by a dead
silence which lasted for some seconds. Then we heard loud hails,
apparently from a distance, and answering shouts from some one on board
our brig. This was immediately followed by some orders given in a
piercing voice by an officer on deck.
A rush of men’s feet—a rattling of ropes and blocks—a steady tramp,
tramp, tramp, tramp.
“Bracing up the yards,” said Mr. Triggs, “and altering course to close
t’other craft, which has shot clear of us somehow. That shriek haunts
me, shipmates, and I’m afraid it meant some deed of infamy.”
There was no doubt that the gunner was quite correct as to the two
vessels having in some way swung clear of each other, for we had
noticed for some little time that the two hulls were no longer clashing
and colliding together.
“Well, I’d give summat to be on deck and to see what’s going forward!”
exclaimed Ned impatiently; “and what’s more, I’d like to be striking a
blow for those poor chaps what’s in danger of losing their vessel.”
Bump, bump, bump! The two ships were evidently alongside each other
once more. We heard shots, the creaking of spars, and the rattling of
cordage, but no sounds of conflict.
The fight had evidently been settled the one way or the other.
A few minutes later, the chief, with a look of animal ferocity
gleaming from his sombre eyes, came slowly down the ladder. He had a
bloodstained bandage around his head, and walked with a limp. Close at
his heels stalked his bloodhound, which had evidently lost an ear in
the fray.