“The deed is done.”
MACBETH.
When Appadocca with his party had gained the schooner, he immediately
ordered the prisoner Willmington to be taken to the torture-room and to
be there kept in custody: at the same time the men were summoned to the
main deck, and the booty of the previous night, was distributed in the
same manner as we have described at the beginning of this tale.
In the meantime the morning dawned more brightly, and the waters of the
gulf lay smooth and shining before the piercing rays of the morning sun,
unbroken as they were by the faintest breath.
The heavy sails of the man-of-war were still seen to ascend one by one,
and fall, as they were spread, heavily against the masts.
They reflected the sunbeams from their white and clear surface, far
and wide: and amidst the number of vessels in the harbour, the huge
ship-of-war, with all its canvass spread, and its stern decorated with
the fiery ensign of England, looked like a gigantic monarch of the sea
that floated at the head of its smaller subjects.
She was now ready to weigh anchor, and was now evidently only waiting
for the wind which was certain to spring about the hour of ten in the
forenoon.
When Appadocca had superintended the division of the spoil amongst his
followers, he ordered the young midshipman to be brought before him.
That individual, in a few moments, made his appearance. He had scarcely
as yet recovered from the effects of his torture; he was pale, and
appeared still weak and emaciated. Yet in his eye there could now be
read a more earnest seriousness—the fruit of the self dependent position
in which he had for some time so accidentally found himself, and the
consequence of the example to whose power he had been exposed, in the
stern and manly society into which he had been thrown.
From a boy whose yearnings had been continually after excitement and
pleasure, he was suddenly transformed into a man, whose thoughts began to
be characterised by the seriousness of purpose which alone can be worthy
of the highest of the animal creation.
A change was marked on his face, and his demeanour was more subdued and
more self-possessed.
“Young man,” said Appadocca, as he stood before him, “I set you at
liberty, you shall have a small boat, which will in a moment be ready for
you, you will be able to skull to your ship. I cannot, I am sorry to say,
spare any of my men to help you. I see she is preparing to weigh anchor.
Take my compliments to the commander himself, and tell him, to take the
advice of one, who has experienced much kindness at his hands, and by no
means to move from his anchorage to-day. Ask him to consult a calculation
which I made on the partition of the cabin in which I was confined, and
he will know the reason. Before you leave the schooner, ask the officer
of the watch for a letter which I shall send to your commander’s son.”
Appadocca then descended into his cabin and wrote thus:—
“DEAR HAMILTON,
“The consummation of my existence is now fast approaching;
I, therefore, write to you, as I fear it will be the last
time that I may have the opportunity of communicating with
a dear friend, from whose heart I have experienced so much
consideration, and from whose hands I have received so much
kindness! It is scarcely necessary for me to tell you, that
destiny preserved me from the perils from which few could have
hoped to escape.
“I am at the head of my faithful followers once more, and it
rejoices me to think that my escape was effected entirely by my
own efforts and quite unknowingly to one on whose escutcheon
I should not have even virtue itself accidentally to paint a
blot. I shall lead the men who have followed me so bravely, and
who have served me so faithfully, to some remote spot on the
fertile and vast continent that lies on our right, and build
them a city in which they may live happily, quietly, and far
removed from the world, whose sympathy they cannot hope, and
care not, to possess. For myself....
Receive, my dear Charles, the sincere good wishes of one who
esteems you.
“EMMANUEL APPADOCCA.”
“N.B.—Recollect and prevail upon your father not to set sail
to-day. Remember the tempest of which I spoke, it will come
within these twenty-four hours.
“E. A.”
The young midshipman was withdrawn and in a few moments he pushed off
gladly from the schooner, and was soon seen gradually leaving it behind.
Ten o’clock came, and with it the steady trade wind. The placid gulf
curled before it—the vessels at anchor in the harbour, swung to and fro
on their long cables, as they felt its force, and the vessel-of-war
sheered off under her canvass that swelled and looked full and turgid
with the wind. The sprays flew about her broad bows, and she was bearing
straight down on the schooner with the wind on her quarter. Every sail
that could be hoisted was set, and her commander seemed again determined
to make another powerful effort, in order to have a chance of bringing
his batteries to bear against the Black Schooner. As for that vessel
herself, she remained in the same place where she was, and seemed quite
indifferent to the movements of the man-of-war.
Appadocca pensively paced her deck, and looked from time to time towards
the eastern shore.
“The rash and fiery old man,” he muttered, with an expression half
anxious, half indignant, when he saw the large vessel fall off from her
anchorage.
When the wind had become fairly settled in, the order was given to set
sail.
With the usual rapidity, the masts of the schooner became sheeted in her
ample sails, her small kedges were let go, and she turned gracefully
to the wind. Her bow pointed to the southern outlet of the gulf—the
Serpent’s Mouth.
The calm and placid picture which the two vessels presented, as they
sailed in the same direction, bore in itself but a faint resemblance to
the fierce passions that might animate their crews, or the bloody deeds
which might be done if once they came within gun-shot of each other.
The usually quiet gulf smiled under the freshness of the morning: the two
vessels sailed smoothly on its even bosom. There was no labouring, no
plunging, no heaving of terrible seas, to call forth any feeling, akin to
terror.
The dark blue waves appeared through the thin vapours of the morning
like a landscape in a picture, and the light slender fishing canoes,
with their feather-like sails, which seemed to play on the waters, like
butterflies in the beams of a sunny day, added a peculiar and peaceful
appearance to the scene.
The high and solitary mountain of Naparima, with a few scattered and
scathed trees on its crown, rose in the distance; while the low sloping
shores before, seemed entirely to enclose the gulf, and to hem it round
against the violence of intrusive winds. Upon the whole, a beholder,
on seeing the two vessels together, with the thousand sailing boats and
sloops that followed in the wake of the man-of-war in order to witness
the exciting scene of an action, might have taken them to be the pleasure
ships of luxurious lordlings, who had launched forth on the deep to seek
another subject of excitement, in order to cheat monotony of some of its
victim-days.
The pirate schooner held its course with an indifference that would not
have led one to believe she was pursued. The watchful chief stood by the
shroud of the mainmast, with his arms folded on his breast, calm and
impassable as he was at almost all the moments of his life.
Not so the pursuing man-of-war. Ever and anon, as any of the small
sailing vessels that navigate the gulf came in sight, signals upon
signals went up her masts, to intimate that the vessel ahead was a
pirate, and to command it to be harassed and hindered in its course. But
all these were lost on the simple skippers of those simple crafts.
The chase continued. The terrible rock that is known by the name of
the “soldier,” and that true to its appellation, seems to guard with
unsurprizeable vigilance the passage of the Serpent’s Mouth, was passed.
Point Icacos, too, was doubled, and the two vessels were now riding on
the atlantic billows, with the low Orinoco marshes on the right, and the
rocky and wild coast of Trinidad on the left.
The sun was setting, when, suddenly, as if some monster screen had been
abruptly raised from earth to heaven, in order to keep one part of the
globe from the other, the wind fell, and the sails lay like humid sheets
against the masts.
“Nature will now begin to speak,” said Appadocca to himself, with a
certain air of contentment now lighting up his stern brow, and then
looked aloft and around.
At his order, the spars were instantaneously armed with steel spears,
from whose feet, conducting wires hung down along the shrouds and dipped
into the sea. At another order, the large jibs, foresail, and mainsail
of the schooner were stripped from the masts, and in their place, small
narrow sails, which, from their size, could not have been supposed to be
capable of having the least effect, were set.
The guns were doubly secured in their places, and the arms were fastened
with even greater care than usual in their cases, in the bulwarks.
The two vessels now lay on the ocean, that now heaved as if from its own
convulsions; for the lightest vane hung straight and stiffly down. There
was not a breath of air. The vessels turned round and round helplessly
on the seas, and as they rose on this wave, and were beaten athwart, or
astern by the other, for the billows rolled at this time in no regular
course, they fell into the troughs, or rose on the brows of the waves
with such sudden and straining movements, that the wood and iron that
formed them, seemed scarcely strong enough to hold together.
Night closed in; with it came a darkness that in itself was awful. No man
could see his hand before him, shipmate could not see even the shipmate
that stood at his side; which was the sea, which the deck, no one could
tell, save when some counter-running wave broke suddenly on the side or
bow of the schooner, and threw up the myriads of shining insects that
inhabited its full and swollen bosom.
Those that were obliged to move about, clung cautiously to the bulwarks,
and set one foot carefully before the other, that they might not throw
themselves over.
The cries of the terror-stricken sea-birds, as they wandered on the still
and suffocating air, with even instinct failing to lead them to their
resting place on the shore, sounded hoarse and ominous to the ear.
Not a sound was heard on board the schooner, except the creaks of the
straining cordage, as the vessel violently and madly plunged.
Now, like molten lead, the rain began to fall in large, heavy, and
leisurely drops. Then distant sounds, like the groans of a labouring
world, when earthquakes shake it to its base, were heard. A sudden and
faint gush of wind, like the fluttering of gigantic wings, came and
turned the schooner round and round, and passed away, leaving the deadly
calm as it was before. Flash—flash—the lightning came, and by its lurid
light, the ocean to the southward shone in one sheet of foam.
“How is your helm?” inquired Appadocca of the steersman.
“Very slack, your excellency. She does not feel it,” the man replied.
The sounds increased; they approached nearer and nearer; they came, and
like a toy in the hand of a giant, the schooner was suddenly thrown on
her beam-ends. The water washed one-half of her long deck, and the first
gust of the hurricane swept with a terrible noise, over the prostrate
vessel, and seemed to crush her, like a mountain that had fallen from its
base, and had met some paltry obstacle in its way, while it was rolling
along to find its level.
“Luff,” cried the chief to the steersman.
“Luff.”
The schooner lay on her side for a few minutes, as if she would never
right again: at last, like an impatient steed, whose course has been
arrested by some temporary barrier, after sustaining the violence of
the gust, she sprang forth into the face of the wind, and seemed like a
thing of passion and pride, roused to brave the power of the overwhelming
hurricane.
With the scanty storm sails, which the foresight of Appadocca had had
bent, she shot through the mountain billows with her usual speed,
cleaving them through, and throwing the sprays mast high.
On—on, she went, as if actuated by the bold spirit of the man who
commanded her, she sought to penetrate the very bosom of the hurricane.
Her slender masts bent like willows to and fro, as she mounted the
mountains of rushing water, that struck and shook her to the very keel.
By the flashes of glaring and frequent lightning, the fierce sailors
could now and then be seen standing stolidly at their respective
stations, their red caps drawn far down over their puckered brows, and
their black beards dripping with spray and rain.
A rope fastened each man to his post, and unmoved, like carved wood,
they stood in the terrors of the howling winds: the bonds of discipline
were still on them.
As for Appadocca himself far from evincing any anxiety, he seemed to
take pleasure in the terrible convulsions of nature. With the dark
heavens above him re-echoing far and wide with the rolls of the loud
and never-ceasing thunder; with the balancing ocean below him, and the
terrifying howls of the devastating hurricane around him, he was the same
unimpassioned, collected, intrepid man, as when the schooner rode on the
calmest sea, under the most smiling sky. He seemed to take pleasure—if
his nature could receive pleasure—in the awe-striking scene. Ever and
anon he took up his red cap, and pressed his hand over his brow in
apparent delight.
The schooner still laboured in the seas that now began to grow higher and
higher, and heavier and heavier. The lightnings came and played about
her masts, like the spirits of the tempest, that seemed marking her as
their victim; but the fluid glided down the wires, and lost itself in the
foaming deep.
Still on—on—on she went. A terrible gust.... She was laid on her beams
again. The wind was gone: the air was calm and close: not a breath;—her
narrow sails hung to her masts, and she was tossed about without wind
enough to feel her helm.
At this frightful interval the echoes of rending broadsides were heard
towards the north. They were the reports of the man-of-war’s distress
guns.
“Take in the fore and mainsail,” cried Appadocca, in a voice that seemed
to sound solitary and lonely amidst the terrors of the night.
“Reef the jib.”
The order was scarcely executed, when the rumbling sounds were again
heard. It was coming—it was coming; the schooner was thrust forward, as
if some immense rock had been let to fall against her; her bows were
dashed through the approaching billows; as she emerged for a moment,
the same power thrust her backwards; her stern sank under the volumes
of water that washed over her decks; and then, as quick as thought,
she was lifted from the surface, and twisted, and twisted, and turned
reelingly round in mid-air, and was let to fall with a tremendous crash
again. Crack—crack—her two tapering masts snapt from the deck. They were
overboard, and the lately resisting schooner was now borne with the
rapidity of lightning before the hurricane.
“Get up the anchors,” the voice of Appadocca was again heard; as he
recovered from the concussion of the whirlwind.
The prostrate sailors scrambled from the corners into which they had been
thrown; the hatches were raised, and the only hope of the schooner,—the
anchors—were quickly drawn on deck.
The hurricane was now at its height. Like a feather on the overturning
currents of an overflowing cataract, the vessel was furiously borne away
before the sweeping wind.
The anchors, with their immense coils of chain-cable were thrown
overboard, to arrest the progress of the vessel for a time, until
jury-masts could be rigged.
It was of no avail.—Fast—fast—before the wind the schooner went; and then
a grating noise, and a dreadful shock;—every man fell on his face—she was
ashore—on the rocks.
“Save yourselves, my brave men,” the deep-toned Appadocca cried, as he
stood boldly prominent amidst the surrounding rack and ruin.
The ocean was fringed with foam, as it broke on the rocks of Trinidad,
on which the once beautiful schooner was at this moment being dashed to
pieces.
The sailors now thought of saving themselves. The distance from dry land
was not much, and it might be gained on the crest of the waves, if no
rock dashed to pieces the daring fugitives in their attempt.
Each bold pirate watched his time, and leapt boldly on the crest of the
billow, as it came washing by, and in the twinkling of an eye, was thrown
up high and dry, alive or dead, on the top of the rocks.
Already every man had left the schooner, and had perished or been tossed
up alive.
Appadocca still stood leaning on the bulwarks, contemplating the sad
remnants of his once all but animated vessel.
Lorenzo and Jack Jimmy drew together imperceptibly to his sides. They
stood around him silent, and unperceived.
The schooner was breaking up; still Appadocca stood where he was.
“Will not your excellency go on shore?” Lorenzo at last ventured to say.
Appadocca started slightly, as if awakened from a dream or reverie.
“Yes, Lorenzo; but save yourselves first. Watch the wave; here it is—jump
in—you, too, Jack Jimmy, quickly, so, so.”
The two men jumped on the billow as it swept by the schooner, Appadocca
followed, and they reached the shore.
Now the wind suddenly ceased as before.
Appadocca, with Lorenzo and Jack Jimmy, were sitting on the top of a
lofty rock: they were viewing the last struggles of their vessel.
“A terrible night, this is, Lorenzo,” said Appadocca.
“It is, indeed, your excellency, a frightful night! for——hark! What cry
is that? It is from the schooner,” cried Lorenzo, as he stood up.
A supernatural shriek fell on the ear. It came from the schooner. Again
it came—again—and again—as she was battered against the rock.
The three persons were silent.
“Oh, I know,” cried Lorenzo.
“It is the prisoner—I may save him yet—I may save him yet,” said Lorenzo.
They were the shrieks of James Willmington, who was still battened down
in the narrow torture-room, into which he had been thrown, and was
undergoing more than a thousand deaths; dying as he was, thus cooped up
in a dark narrow cabin, and the vessel breaking asunder under him.
The cabin was so close, that his terrified shrieks could not be heard
before; but now, when the seams were opened, they alone, prolonged, and
agonizing as they were, were now to be heard in the lull of the wind, on
the silent, close, and death-strewn air.
Lorenzo rushed down the rock, but ere he could devise a means to rescue
him, the schooner broke in two, and the unhappy Willmington sank for
ever, still a prisoner in the torture-room.
The schooner went to pieces, and soon the billows rolled on the rocks
over her once graceful form.
Appadocca silently watched the gradual destruction of his vessel, and
silently listened to the shrieks of his father.
When not a timber of her remained above water, he heaved a heavy sigh.
The first, that Lorenzo had ever heard from him. It was the sigh that
came from a hurricane of feelings within him, which equalled the raging
hurricane of nature without.