JACK MANLY.
BY JAMES GRANT
Price 2s. each, Fancy Boards.
THE ROMANCE OF WAR.
THE AIDE-DE-CAMP.
THE SCOTTISH CAVALIERS.
BOTHWELL.
JANE SETON; OR, THE KING'S ADVOCATE.
PHILIP ROLLO.
LEGENDS OF THE BLACK WATCH.
MARY OF LORRAINE.
OLIVER ELLIS; OR, THE FUSILIERS.
LUCY ARDEN; OR, HOLLYWOOD HALL.
FRANK HILTON; OR, THE QUEEN'S OWN.
THE YELLOW FRIGATE.
HARRY OGILVIE; OR, THE BLACK DRAGOONS.
ARTHUR BLANE.
LAURA EVERINGHAM; OR, THE HIGHLANDERS OF GLENORA.
THE CAPTAIN OF THE GUARD.
LETTY HYDE'S LOVERS.
THE CAVALIERS OF FORTUNE.
SECOND TO NONE.
THE CONSTABLE OF FRANCE.
THE PHANTOM REGIMENT.
THE GIRL HE MARRIED.
FIRST LOVE AND LAST LOVE.
DICK RODNEY.
THE WHITE COCKADE.
THE KING'S OWN BORDERERS.
LADY WEDDERBURN'S WISH.
ONLY AN ENSIGN.
JACK MANLY.
THE ADVENTURES OF ROB ROY.
THE QUEEN'S CADET.
GEORGE ROUTLEDGE AND SONS.
THE BROADWAY, LUDGATE.
JACK MANLY;
His Adventures by Sea and Land.
by
JAMES GRANT,
AUTHOR OF
"THE ROMANCE OF WAR," "OLIVER ELLIS,"
ETC. ETC.
LONDON:
GEORGE ROUTLEDGE AND SONS,
THE BROADWAY, LUDGATE.
NEW YORK: 416, BROOME STREET.
LONDON:
RAVILL, EDWARDS AND CO., PRINTERS, CHANDOS STREET,
COVENT GARDEN.
CONTENTS.
CHAP.
I. WHY I WENT TO SEA
II. ADVENTURE IN A CASK
III. THE NARROWS OF ST. JOHN
IV. THE BRIG "LEDA"
V. KIDD THE PIRATE
VI. THE "BLACK SCHOONER"
VII. THE CHASE
VIII. OUR REVENGE SCHEMED
IX. OUR REVENGE EXECUTED
X. THE SEAL-FISHERS
XI. COMBAT WITH A SEA-HORSE
XII. ON AN ICEBEEG
XIII. ON THE ICEBERG--THE MASSACRE AT HIERRO
XIV. ESCAPE FROM THE ICEBERG
XV. UNDER WEIGH ONCE MORE
XVI. BESET WITHOUT HOPE
XVII. THE DEATH-SHIP
XVIII. LEAVES FROM THE LOG
XIX. THE GRAVES ON THE STARBOARD BOW
XX. ADRIFT ON THE DEAD FLOE
XXI. CAPE FAREWELL
XXII. THE MUSK-OX
XXIII. THE FOUR BEARS
XXIV. WOLMAR FYNBÖE
XXV. ADIEU TO THE REGION OF ICE
XXVI. A SHARK
XXVII. THE FATAL VOYAGE OF THE HEER VAN ESTELL
XXVIII. THE FATAL VOYAGE--HOW THEY CAST LOTS
XXIX. ADVENTURE WITH A WHALE
XXX. LOSS OF THE "LEDA"
XXXI. THE CRY
XXXII. THE TWELFTH DAY
XXXIII. WHAT FOLLOWED
XXXIV. THE SAILOR'S POST-OFFICE
XXXV. MS. LEGEND OF EL CABO DOS TORMENTOS
XXXVI. LEGEND CONTINUED--THE CATASTROPHE
XXXVII. LEGEND CONCLUDED--THE SEQUEL
XXXVIII. WE LAND IN AFRICA
XXXIX. THE KING OF THE SNAKE RIVER
XL. THE GABON CLIFF
XLI. HOW THE CAPTAIN PERISHED
XLII. AMOO
XLIII. THE RESCUE OF HIS CHILD
XLIV. THE GRATITUDE OF HIS WIFE
XLV. FLIGHT
XLVI. FLIGHT CONTINUED
XLVII. THE WOOD OF THE DEVIL
XLVIII. RETAKEN
XLIX. THE CARAVAN
L. WE REACH THE CAPITAL
LI. AN OLD FRIEND IN A NEW PLACE
LII. HARTLY'S STORY
LIII. THE FEMALE GUARDS
LIV. ATTEMPT TO ESCAPE AGAIN
LV. THE FORMOSA
LVI. A PERILOUS JOURNEY
LVII. PURSUIT AGAIN--CONCLUSION
JACK MANLY.
CHAPTER I.
WHY I WENT TO SEA.
It was the evening of the sixteenth of March.
Exactly six months had elapsed since I left my father's snug villa at
Peckham, with its walls shrouded by roses and honeysuckle; and now I
found myself two thousand three hundred miles distant from it, in his
agent's counting-room, in the dreary little town of St. John, in
Newfoundland, writing in a huge ledger, and blowing my fingers from
time to time, for snow more than ten feet deep covered all the
desolate country, and the shipping in the harbour was imbedded in ice
at least three feet in thickness; while the thermometer, at which I
glanced pretty often, informed me that the mercury had sunk twelve
degrees below the freezing point.
While busily engrossing quintals of salted fish, by the thousand,
barrels of Hamburg meal and Irish pork, chests of bohea, bales of
shingles, kegs of gunpowder, caplin nets, anchors and cables, and
Indian corn from the United States, with all the heterogeneous mass
of everything which usually fill the stores of a wealthy merchant in
that terra nova, I thought of the noisy world of London, from which I
had been banished, or, as tutors and guardians phrased it, "sent to
learn something of my father's business--_i.e._, practically to begin
life as he had begun it;" and so I sighed impatiently over my
monotonous task, while melting the congealed ink, from time to time,
on the birchwood fire, and reverting to what March is in England,
where we may watch the bursting of the new buds and early flowers;
where the birds are heard in every sprouting hedge and tree, and as
we inhale the fresh breeze of the morning, a new and unknown delight
makes our pulses quicken and a glow of tenderness fill the heart--for
then we see and feel, as some one says, "what we have seen and felt
_only_ in _childhood and spring_."
"Belay this scribbling business, Jack," said a hearty voice in my
ear; "come, ship on board my brig, and have a cruise with me in the
North Sea. I shall have all my hands aboard to-morrow."
I looked up, threw away my pen, closed the gigantic ledger with a
significant bang, and shook the hand of the speaker, who was my old
friend and schoolfellow, Bob Hartly, whose face was as red as the
keen frost of an American winter evening could make it, albeit he was
buttoned to the throat in a thick, rough Flushing coat, and wore a
cap with fur ear-covers tied under his chin--a monk-like hood much
worn in these northern regions during the season of snow.
"I don't think your cruise after seals and blubber will be a very
lively affair, Bob," said I, rubbing my hands at the stove, on which
he was knocking the ashes of his long Havannah.
"Lively! if it is not more lively than this quill-driving work, may I
never see London Bridge again, or take,
'Instead of pistol or a dagger, a
Desperate leap down the falls of Niagara!'"
"I am sick of this Cimmerian region!" said I, stamping with vexation
at his jocular mood, when contrasted to my own surly one.
"Cimmerian--ugh! that phrase reminds me of school-times, and how we
used to blunder through Homer together, for he drew all his images of
Pluto and Pandemonium from the dismal country of the Cimmerii. By
Jove! I could give you a stave yet from Virgil or Ovid, hand over
hand, on the same subject; but that would be paying Her Majesty's
colony a poor compliment."
"Well, Bob, I am sick of this place, in which evil fate, or rather
bad luck, has buried me alive--this frozen little town of wood and
tar, without outlet by sea or land in winter, without amusement, and,
at this time, seemingly without life."
"It forms a contrast to London, certainly," said Hartly, assisting
himself, uninvited, to the contents of a case-bottle of Hollands
which stood near; "but there is a mint of money to be made in it."
"The first English folks who came here were reduced to such straits,
we are told, that they killed and ate each other; and those who
returned were such skeletons that their wives and mothers did not
know them."
Hartly laughed loudly, and said--
"But that was in the time of King Henry VIII., and people don't eat
each other here now. But to resume what we were talking about----"
"Old Uriah Skrew, my father's agent, and I are on the worst terms; he
keeps a constant watch over me. I go from my desk to bed, and from
bed to my desk--so passes my existence."
"Why not slip your cable and run, then?"
"Skrew being a partner in the firm," I continued, warming at the idea
of my own rights and fancied wrongs, "cares for nothing but making
money from the riches of the sea, and thinks only of cargoes of fish
to be bartered in Lent, at Cadiz, for fruit and wine, oil, seals, and
blubber; and really in this cold season----"
"Ah, but summer is coming," interrupted Bob, drily.
"Summer! How is the year divided here?"
"Into nine months of winter and three of bad weather."
"A pleasant prospect! If I were once again at Peckham----"
"Well, Jack, I have a grudge at old Uriah Skrew, for, like a swab, he
played me a scurvy trick about a cargo I had consigned to your father
and him, from Cadiz, last year--a trick by which I lost all my profit
and tonnage.
"Likely enough; this ledger is Uriah's bible--and his God----"
"Is gold! So I care not a jot if, for the mere sake of provoking
him, I lend you a hand to give him the slip, for a few months at
least. Ship with me to-morrow--as a volunteer, passenger, or
whatever you please."
"I shall," said I, throwing my pen resolutely into the fire.
"Your hand on it! I like this. Get your warmest toggery sent on
board; you'll need it all, I can tell you! I can give you a long
gun, and bag for powder and slugs; and then, with a bowie-knife in
your belt, a seal-skin cap with long flaps, and a stout pea-jacket,
you will make as smart a seal fisher as ever sailed through the
Narrows! By this time to-morrow you may be forty miles from your
ledger, running through the North Sea with a flowing sheet. By Jove,
I know a jolly old Esquimau who lives at Cape Desolation under an old
whaleboat. He will be delighted to make your acquaintance, and give
you a feed of sea weed and blubber that will make your mouth water,
though we eat it when the mercury is frozen in the bulb."
This cheerful prospect of Arctic hospitality might have persuaded me
to remain where I was, but soured by the treatment I experienced from
Mr. Skrew, who misrepresented my conduct and habits to my family at
home, and tired of the monotony of his counting-room, I looked
forward with eagerness to an anticipated escape.
How little could I foresee the consequences of my impatience, folly,
and wayward desire for rambling! Ere a month was past, I had
repented in bitterness my boyish repugnance for steady application
and industrious habits.
My friend, Robert Hartly, who was eight years my senior, was master
and owner of the _Leda_, a smart brig of two hundred and fifty tons
register--a craft in which he had invested all his savings. Last
year he had lost a wife and two children, whom he tenderly loved; he
had come to St. John from Cadiz, missed a freight and been frozen-in,
and now, with all a sailor's restlessness and dread of being idle,
even for a month or two, he had resolved to sail for the spring seal
fishery, as a change of scene, and a trip which he hoped would not
prove unprofitable, as his vessel was one of a class far superior to
those which usually venture into the region of ice, being well found,
well manned, coppered to the bends, and, in short, the perfection of
a British merchant brig.
"By the bye," said he, "talking of powder and slugs, we may need
both, for other purposes than shooting seals."
"How?" I asked.
"I mean if we came athwart the _Black Schooner_ which has been
prowling and plundering about the coast for the last six weeks."
"Are there more news of her?"
"No; but here is a placard given to all shipmasters yesterday," said
he, unfolding a paper surmounted by the royal arms, and running in
the name of "His Excellency the Governor and Commander-in-Chief over
the Island of Newfoundland and its Dependencies," offering 500_1._ to
the crew of any ship that would capture "the vessel known as the
_Black Schooner_," &c. "She is a queer craft," continued Hartly,
"and said to be a slaver, bankrupt, and out of business; though Paul
Reeves, my mate, maintains that she is the _Adventure_ galley. which
sailed from London in the time of King William III., and that her
crew are the ghosts of Kidd and his pirates; but ghosts don't steal
beef and drink brandy."
Hartly's father had been in the navy; thus he had received a good and
thorough nautical education, but early in life had been left to work
his way in the world; so he made the watery portion thereof his home
and means of livelihood. He was a handsome, hardy, and cheerful
young fellow, and the _beau idéal_ of a thorough British seaman.
On the third finger of his left hand he wore a curious ring of base
metal, graven with runes of strange figures. This was the gift of an
old woman to whom he had rendered some service when in Iceland, and
who had promised, that while he wore it, he could _never be drowned_;
consequently Hartly was too much imbued with the superstition of his
profession to part with it for a moment.
"But how am I to elude old Skrew, and get on board," said I, after we
had concluded all our arrangements, over a glass of hot brandy-punch,
in Bob's lodgings in Water-street.
"True--the brig lies frozen-in at the end of his wharf, the hatches
are all locked, and the hands ashore."
"If he sees me on board, there will be an end of our project, for I
have no wish to quarrel with him in an unseemly manner; but merely to
'levant' quietly, leaving a letter to announce where I am gone, and
when I may, perhaps, return."
"All right--I have it! I'll send an empty cask to Skrew's store
to-morrow. Paul Reeves, the mate, and Hammer, the carpenter, will
head you up in it, and so you may be brought on board unknown to all
save them--ay, under the very nose of old Uriah. Will that suit you?"
"Delightfully!" said I, clapping my hands. The whole affair had the
appearance of an adventure, and though there were a hundred ways by
which I might have joined the brig, when the _cutting-out_ of the
sealing fleet took place next day, like a young schoolboy--for in
some respects I was little more--I accepted the strange proposal of
going on board in a cask, and retired to bed, to dream of adventures
on the high seas; for being young, healthy, and active, I could
always have pleasant dreams without studying the art of procuring
them--an art on which Dr. Franklin wrote so learnedly in the last
century.