With dauntless hardihood
And brandish'd blade rush on him,
And shed the luscious liquor on the ground,
...though he and his cursed crew
Fierce sign of battle make, and menace high.
MILTON.
The information received from Mr Hardsett induced our hero to break off
his conversation with Debriseau, and he immediately quitted the hut. A
party of men, wild in their appearance and demeanour, were bounding down
through the rocks, flourishing their bludgeons over their heads, with
loud shouts. They soon arrived within a few yards of the shealing, and,
to the astonishment of Seymour and the boatswain, who, with a dozen
more, had resumed their clothes, seemed to eye them with hostile, rather
than with friendly glances. Their intentions were, however, soon
manifested by their pouncing upon the habiliments of the seamen which
were spread out to dry, holding them rolled up under one arm, while they
flourished their shillelahs in defiance with the other.
"Avast there, my lads!" cried the boatswain "why are you meddling with
those clothes?"
A shout, with confused answers in Irish, was the incomprehensible reply.
"Conolly," cried Seymour, "you can speak to them. Ask them what they
mean?"
Conolly addressed them in Irish, when an exchange of a few sentences
took place.
"Bloody end to the rapparees!" said Conolly, turning to our hero. "It's
helping themselves they're a'ter, instead of helping us. They say all
that comes on shore from a wreck is their own by right, and that they'll
have it. They asked me what was in the cask, and I told them it was the
cratur, sure enough, and they say that they must have it, and everything
else, and that if we don't give it up peaceably, they'll take the lives
of us."
Seymour, who was aware that the surrender of the means of intoxication
would probably lead to worse results, turned to his men, who had
assembled outside of the hut, and had armed themselves with spars and
fragments of the wreck on the first appearance of hostility, and
directed them to roll the cask of rum into the hut, and prepare to act
on the defensive. The English seamen, indignant at such violation of
the laws of hospitality, and at the loss of their clothes, immediately
complied with his instructions, and, with their blood boiling, were with
difficulty restrained from commencing the attack.
A shaggy-headed monster, apparently the leader of the hostile party,
again addressed Conolly in his own language.
"It's to know whether ye'll give up the cask quietly, or have a fight
for it. The devil a pair of trousers will they give back, not even my
own, though I'm an Irishman, and a Galway man to boot. By Jesus, Mr
Seymour, it's to be hoped ye'll not give up the cratur without a bit of
a row."
"No," replied Seymour. "Tell them that they shall not have it, and that
they shall be punished for the theft they have already committed."
"You're to come and take it," roared Conolly, in Irish, to the opposing
party.
"Now, my lads," cried Seymour, "you must fight hard for it--they will
show little mercy, if they gain the day."
The boatswain returned his Bible to his breast, and seizing the mast of
the frigate's jolly-boat, which had been thrown up with the other spars,
poised it with both hands on a level with his head, so as to use the
foot of it as a battering-ram, and stalked before his men.
The Irish closed with loud yells, and the affray commenced with a
desperation seldom to be witnessed. Many were the wounds given and
received, and several of either party were levelled in the dust. The
numbers were about even; but the weapons of the Irish were of a better
description, each man being provided with his own shillelah of hard
wood, which he had been accustomed to wield. But the boatswain did
great execution, as he launched forward his mast, and prostrated an
Irishman every time, with his cool and well-directed aim. After a few
minutes' contention, the Englishmen were beaten back to the shealing,
where they rallied, and continued to stand at bay. Seymour, anxious at
all events that the Irish should not obtain the liquor, directed
Robinson, the captain of the forecastle, to go into the hut, take the
bung out of the cask, and start the contents. This order was obeyed,
while the contest was continued outside, till McDermot, the leader of
the Irish, called off his men, that they might recover their breath for
a renewal of the attack.
"If it's the liquor you want," cried Conolly to them, by the direction
of Seymour, "you must be quick about it. There it's all running away
through the doors of the shealing."
This announcement had, however, the contrary effect to that which
Seymour intended it should produce. Enraged at the loss of the spirits,
and hoping to gain possession of the cask before it was all out, the
Irish returned with renewed violence to the assault, and drove the
English to the other side of the shealing, obtaining possession of the
door, which they burst into, to secure their prey. About eight or ten
had entered, and had seized upon the cask, which was not more than half
emptied, when the liquor, which had run out under the door of the hut,
communicated, in its course, with the fire that had been kindled
outside. With the rapidity of lightning the flame ran up the stream
that continued to flow, igniting the whole of the spirits in the cask,
which blew up with a tremendous explosion, darting the fiery liquid over
the whole interior, and communicating the flame to the thatch, and every
part of the building, which was instantaneously in ardent combustion.
The shrieks of the poor disabled wretches, stretched on the sails, to
which the fire had communicated, and who were now lying in a molten sea
of flame like that described in Pandemonium by Milton--the yells of the
Irish inside of the hut, vainly attempting to regain the door, as they
writhed in their flaming apparel, which, like the shirt of Nessus, ate
into their flesh--the burning thatch which had been precipitated in the
air, and now descended in fiery flakes upon the parties outside, who
stood aghast at the dreadful and unexpected catastrophe,--the volumes of
black and suffocating smoke which poured out from every quarter, formed
a scene of horror to which no pen can do adequate justice. But all was
soon over. The shrieks and yells had yielded to suffocation, and the
flames, in their fury, had devoured everything with such rapidity, that
they subsided for the want of further aliment. In a few minutes,
nothing remained but the smoking walls, and the blackened corpses which
they encircled.
Ill-fated wretches! ye had escaped the lightning's blast--ye had been
rescued from the swallowing wave--and little thought that you would
encounter an enemy more cruel still--your fellow-creature--man.
The first emotions of Seymour and his party, as soon as they had
recovered from the horror which had been excited by the catastrophe,
were those of pity and commiseration; but their reign was short--
"Revenge impatient rose, And threw his blood-stain'd sword in thunder
down."
The smoking ruins formed the altar at which he received their vows, and
stimulated them to the sacrifice of further victims. Nor did he fail to
inspire the breasts of the other party, indignant at the loss of their
companions, and disappointed at the destruction of what they so ardently
coveted.
Debriseau, who had played no idle game in the previous skirmish, was the
first who rushed to the attack. Crying out, with all the theatrical air
of a Frenchman, which never deserts him, even in the agony of grief,
"_Mes braves compagnons, vous serez venges_!" he flew at McDermot, the
leader of the Irish savages.
A brand of half-consumed wood, with which he aimed at McDermot's head,
broke across the bludgeon which was raised to ward the blow. Debriseau
closed; and, clasping his arms round his neck, tore him with his strong
teeth with the power and ferocity of a tiger, and they rolled together
in the dust, covered with the blood which poured in streams, and
struggling for mastery and life. An American, one of the _Aspasia's_
crew, now closed in the same way with another of the Irish desperadoes,
and as they fell together, twirling the side-locks on the temples of his
antagonist round his fingers to obtain a fulcrum to his lever, he
inserted his thumbs into the sockets of his eyes, forced out the balls
of vision, and left him in agony and in darkness.
"The sword of the Lord!" roared the boatswain, as he fractured the skull
of a third with the mast of the boat, which, with herculean force, he
now whirled round his head.
"Fight, _Aspasias_, you fight for your lives," cried Seymour, who was
everywhere in advance, darting the still burning end of the large spar
into the faces of his antagonists, who recoiled with suffocation and
pain. It was, indeed, a struggle for life; the rage of each had mounted
to delirium. The English sailors, stimulated by the passions of the
moment, felt neither pain nor fatigue from their previous sufferings.
The want of weapons had been supplied by their clasp knives, to which
the Irish had also resorted, and deadly wounds were given and received.
McDermot, the Irish leader, had just gained the mastery of Debriseau,
bestriding his body and strangling him, with his fingers so fixed in his
throat that they seemed deeply to have entered into the flesh. The
Guernsey man was black in the face, and his eyes starting from their
sockets: in a few minutes he would have been no more, when the mast in
the hands of the boatswain descended upon the Irishman's head, and
dashed out his brains. At the same moment, one of the Irishmen darted
his knife into the side of Seymour, who fell, streaming with his own
blood. The fate of their officer, which excited the attention of the
seamen, and the fall of McDermot, on the opposite side, to whose
assistance the Irish immediately hastened, added to the suspension of
their powers from want of breath, produced a temporary cessation of
hostilities. Dragging away their killed and wounded, the panting
antagonists retreated to the distance of a few yards from each other,
tired, but not satisfied with their revenge, and fully intending to
resume the strife as soon as they had recovered the power. But a very
few seconds had elapsed, when they were interrupted by a third party;
and the clattering of horses' hoofs was immediately followed by the
appearance of a female on horseback, who, galloping past the Irishmen,
reined up her steed, throwing him on his haunches, in his full career,
in the space between the late contending parties.
"'Tis the daughter of the House!" exclaimed the Irishmen, in
consternation.
There wanted no such contrast as the scene described to add lustre to
her beauty, or to enhance her charms. Fair as the snow-drift, her
cheeks mantling with the roseate blush of exercise and animation--her
glossy hair, partly uncurled, and still played with by the amorous
breeze, hanging in long ringlets down her neck--her eye, which
alternately beamed with pity or flashed with indignation, as it was
directed to one side or the other--her symmetry of form, which the close
riding-dress displayed--her graceful movements, as she occasionally
restrained her grey palfrey, who fretted to resume his speed, all
combined with her sudden and unexpected appearance to induce the
boatswain and his men to consider her as superhuman.
"She's an angel of light!" muttered the boatswain to himself.
She turned to the Irish, and, in an energetic tone, addressed them in
their own dialect. What she had said was unknown to the English party,
but the effect which her language produced was immediate. Their weapons
were thrown aside, and they hung down their heads in confusion. They
made an attempt to walk away, but a few words from her induced them to
remain.
The fair equestrian was now joined by two more, whose pace had not been
so rapid; and the boatswain, who had been contemplating her with
astonishment, as she was addressing the Irish, now that she was about to
turn towards him, recollected that some of his men were not exactly in a
costume to meet a lady's eye. He raised his call to his mouth, and,
with a sonorous whistle, cried out, "All you without trousers behind
shealing, hoy!" an order immediately obeyed by the men who had been
deprived of their habiliments.
Conolly, who had understood the conversation which had taken place,
called out in Irish, at the same time as he walked round behind the
walls, "I think ye'll be after giving us our duds now, ye dirty
spalpeens, so bring 'um wid you quick;" a request which was immediately
complied with, the clothes being collected by two of the Irish, and
taken to the men who had retired behind the walls of the shealing.
Mr Hardsett was not long in replying to her interrogations, and in
giving her an outline of the tragical events which had occurred, while
the ladies, trembling with pity and emotion, listened to the painful
narrative.
"Are you the only officer then of the frigate that is left?"
"No, madam," replied the boatswain, "the third-lieutenant is here; but
there he lies, poor fellow, desperately wounded by these men, from whom
we expected to have had relief."
"What was the name of your frigate?"
"The _Aspasia_, Captain M---."
"O heaven!" cried the girl, catching at the collar of the boatswain's
coat in her trepidation.
"And the wounded officer's name?"
"Seymour."
A cry of anguish and horror escaped from all the party as the beautiful
interrogatress tottered in her seat, and then fell off into the arms of
the boatswain.
In a few seconds, recovering herself, she regained her feet. "Quick,
quick--lead me to him."
Supported by Hardsett, she tottered to the spot where Seymour lay, with
his eyes closed, faint and exhausted with loss of blood, attended by
Robinson and Debriseau.
She knelt down by his side, and taking his hand, which she pressed
between her own, called him by his name.
Seymour started at the sound of the voice, opened his eyes, and in the
beauteous form which was reclining over him, beheld his dear, dear
Emily.