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THE PIRATE
AND
THE THREE CUTTERS
[Illustration: Publishers mark]
[Illustration: _Cain._]
THE PIRATE
AND
THE THREE CUTTERS
BY
CAPTAIN MARRYAT
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY EDMUND J. SULLIVAN
AND AN INTRODUCTION BY DAVID HANNAY
London
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1897
_All rights reserved_
INTRODUCTION
Among the few subjects which are still left at the disposal of the
duly-gifted writer of romance is the Pirate. Not but that many have
written of pirates. Defoe, after preparing the ground by a pamphlet
story on the historic Captain Avery, wrote _The Life, Adventures, and
Piracies of Captain Singleton_. Sir Walter Scott made use in somewhat
the same fashion of the equally historic Gow--that is to say, his pirate
bears about the same relation to the marauder who was suppressed by
James Laing, that Captain Singleton does to Captain Avery. Michael Scott
had much to say of pirates, and he had heard much of them during his
life in the West Indies, for they were then making their last fight
against law and order. The pirate could not escape the eye of Mr. R. L.
Stevenson, and accordingly we have an episode of pirates in the episode
of the _Master of Ballantrae_. Balsac, too, wrote _Argow le Pirate_
among the stories which belong to the years when he was exhausting all
the ways in which a novel ought not to be written. Also the pirate is a
commonplace in boys' books. Yet for as much as he figures in stories for
old and young, it may be modestly maintained that nobody has ever yet
done him quite right.
Defoe's Captain Singleton is a harmless, thrifty, and ever moral pirate,
of whom it is impossible to disapprove. Sir Walter's is a mild
gentleman, concerning whom one wonders how he ever came to be in such
company. Michael Scott's pirate is a bloodthirsty ruffian enough, and
yet it is difficult to feel that a person who dressed in such a highly
picturesque manner, and who was commonly either a Don or a Scotch
gentleman of ancient descent, was quite the real thing. Mr. Stevenson's
pirate is nearer what one knows must have been the life. He is a
cowardly, lurking, petty scoundrel. John Silver is certainly something
very different, but then when Mr. Stevenson drew the commanding figure
in Treasure Island he was not making a portrait of a pirate, but was
only making play with the well-established puppet of boys' books. Yet,
after all, the pirate, if he was not such an agreeable rascal as John
Silver, was not always the greedy, spiritless rogue drawn in the _Master
of Ballantrae_. To do him properly and as he was, he ought to be
approached with a mixture of humour and morality, and also with a
knowledge of the facts concerning him, which to the best of my knowledge
have never been combined in any writer.
Captain Johnson, in his valuable _General History of the Pirates from
their First Rise and Settlement in the Island of Providence to the
present time_, begins with antiquity. He mounts up the dark backward
abyss of time till he meets with the pirates who captured Julius Caesar,
and were suppressed by Pompey. This is not necessary. Our pirate was a
very different fellow from those broken men of the ancient world, the
wrecks of States shattered by Rome and the victims of the usury of the
Knights who collected in the creeks of Cilicia. It is not quite easy to
say what he was, but we know well enough what he was not. He was not for
many generations the recognised enemy of the human race. On the
contrary, he was often a comparative respectable person, who was
disposed to render service to his king and country at a crisis, even if
he did not see his advantage in virtuous conduct. To begin with, he was
only a seafaring man who carried on the universal practice of the Middle
Ages after they had ceased to be recognised as legitimate. Then for a
long time a pirate was not thought worthy of hanging until he had shown
a hopelessly contumacious disposition by refusing the king's pardon
several times. Sir William Monson, who was admiral to James I., saw no
harm in recruiting well-known pirates for His Majesty's service. On the
coast of Ireland he found Irish country gentlemen of respectable
position, and the agents of London trading firms, engaged in friendly
business transactions with these skimmers of the sea. The redoubted
Captain Bartholomew Roberts, to skip over a century, went about the
world recruiting for a well-organised piratical business, and there were
many among his followers who would have been honest men if temptation
had not come in their way, and who hastened to leave a life of vice so
soon as the neighbourhood of one of His Majesty's cruisers made it
dangerous. We ought not to speak of these men with harsh contempt. The
king's government was largely responsible for their existence, by
promising pardon to all who would come in before a given date. They came
in and brought their booty with them. Captain Johnson had the pleasure
of the personal acquaintance of several who were living in comfortable
retirement at Rotherhithe or at Limehouse, and in the enjoyment, for
aught we know to the contrary, of the respect of their neighbours. They
had come in on a proclamation, and there was nothing more to be said
against them. In many cases, no doubt, when the booty was spent they
drifted back to the old irregular courses, and on that road those of
them who did not get shot when boarding a galleon, or go down at sea,
or die of starvation among the keys of the West Indies, did sooner or
later contrive to overtake the gallows. But these men, if they were not
quite so moral and orderly as Captain Singleton, or so romantic as the
pirates of Michael Scott, were not altogether bloodthirsty, merciless
scoundrels. Many of them had every intention of returning to their
country upon the appearance of the next proclamation, and as they saw
the prospect of a safe return for themselves they were not under the
necessity of acting on the rule that dead men tell no tales. They did
not make their prisoners walk the plank. They did not even burn their
prizes, but were often content with taking out such provisions and
portable property as their immediate occasions made desirable, and then
allowing the plundered merchant-ship to continue her voyage. They were
by no means so thoroughly hated as they ought to have been, to judge by
the more recent opinion held of the pirate.
In fact, till towards the end of the pirate's existence he was nearly as
much the product of the Government's management as of his own sins.
During Charles II.'s reign, his governors in Jamaica gave what they were
pleased to term commissions to all who would plunder the Spaniard. The
Spaniards retaliated by giving commissions to all who would plunder
anyone else. The marauder who victimised the Spaniard was sure of a
market, and a refuge in Jamaica. The other marauder who was prepared to
feed upon English, Dutch, or French, was sure of a welcome in Cuba. When
Governments suddenly took to being virtuous, a sense of wrong inflamed
the minds of the men who had hitherto been allowed to live in recognised
lawlessness. Captain Kidd, for example, manifestly thought that Lord
Bellomont and the other gentleman who sent him out to Madagascar to
cruise against the pirates, were only assuming a decent excuse for a
little speculation in piracy on their own account. The freebooters who
settled at Providence, in the Bahamas, were really to be pardoned for
not realising that the happy days of Governor Moddiford at Jamaica were
over. When they were made to understand that there were to be no more of
these cakes and ale, the majority, under the command of Captain
Jennings, promptly came in. Captain Jennings was the owner of an estate
in Jamaica, and he brought a comfortable little sum back with him from
his piratical adventures. The residue, who probably had no comfortable
sum to bring with them, did not come in, and as they were given to
understand that they would certainly be hanged if caught, they took in
self-defence to giving no quarter. So at the end of the great war, the
powers who had encouraged privateering while the fighting lasted,
without inquiring too closely how far the privateer confined his
operations to the enemy only without plundering the neutral, became
suddenly very strict. Then the men whom they had allowed to become
hardened to a life of pillage took refuge in downright piracy. These men
were the _Pescadores del Puerto Escondido_ who enlightened the pages of
Michael Scott. The Spaniards tolerated them as the English Governors of
Jamaica had once encouraged the Buccaneers. It was not until a combined
vigorous effort of the English and the United States navies had driven
them off the sea, and till they had begun to support themselves by
plundering plantations, that the Captains-General of Cuba took them in
hand.
Now, in all this life, floating as it did between the honest and the
dishonest, there was room for something more human than the be-sashed,
velvet-jacketed, crimson-capped, and long-knifed heroes of Michael
Scott, or than the mere rogue and floating footpad we meet in _The
Master of Ballantrae_. There was also room, it must be candidly allowed,
for something better than Captain Cain of the _Avenger_. The _Pirate_ is
not among the books which one most willingly re-reads out of Marryat's
very respectably lengthy list of stories. Yet it is not without gaiety,
and, as is ever the case with him, the man-of-war scenes are all alive.
Captain Plumpton, and Mr. Markital the first lieutenant, and Edward
Templemore the midshipman, are credible. Whenever Marryat has to
introduce us to a man-of-war, he could draw on inexhaustible treasure of
reminiscences, or of what is for the story-writer's purpose quite as
good, of types and incidents which his imagination had made out of
incidents supplied by his memory. The naval parts of the _Pirate_ are no
doubt variations on what he had recently written in _Midshipman Easy_,
but they are not mere repetitions, and they have the one saving quality
of life, which will make even a poorly constructed story readable.
It is impossible to say as much for the captain and crew of the
_Avenger_. Cain is not only not a pirate, but he is not a human being.
He is a Byronic or even a Michael Scottish hero--an impossible monster,
compounded of one virtue and a thousand crimes. There never was any such
person, and even on paper he is not tolerable for more than a paragraph
or two without the help of verse. The crew of the _Avenger_ is an
inconceivable ship's complement for any pirate. Credulity itself cannot
even in early life accept the capture of the Portuguese carrack. Marryat
drew on his recollections of the time when he was a midshipman with
Cochrane in the _Imperieuse_, for the figure of the old steersman, who
sticks to his post under the fire of the _Avenger_. He had seen the
mate of a Spanish trading ship behaving in just that way when attacked
by boats from the _Imperieuse_. When he was asked why he did not
surrender, though he was mortally wounded and had no chance of escape,
he answered that he was an 'old Christian.' The term, which by the way
only means a pure-blooded Spaniard, puzzled Marryat and his shipmates.
It is not wonderful that he did not understand its meaning, since in
spite of campaigning in Spain, and many visits to Spanish ports, he
never learnt to avoid the absurd blunder of putting the title Don before
a surname. But if the steersman is drawn from life, so are not either
the carrack, which is a fragment of the sixteenth century, out of its
place, nor 'Don' Ribiera and his sons, nor the bishop, nor anybody else
in that ill-fated ship, nor the stilted, transpontine style of their
conversation. Francisco and his bible are no more credible than the
carrack and the bishop. Francisco's brother and his love affairs are not
more credible, though they are decidedly more tolerable. The daughters
of Spanish Governors who carry on flirtations on the sea-shore with the
captains of English men-of-war, who are carried off by pirates and
rescued in the nick of time, whose papas not only consent to their
marriage with the heretical object of their affections but send boxes
full of gold doubloons, together with their blessing, are so much better
than life that we need not quarrel when invited to meet any number of
them. The sea adventures in Marryat are always good, and so are the
fights. The storms and wrecks, the rafts and wonderful escapes, the
defences of houses, and the escapes of pirates and smugglers from under
the very guns of His Majesty's frigates, are as welcome as, and are much
more credible than, the lovely daughters of benevolent Spanish
governors. Of them there is no want, and for their sake the _Pirate_
can be read; but it is not what Marryat might have made it if he had
written it in the spirit in which he was to write _Snarley-Yow_.
In _The Three Cutters_ Marryat allowed himself to take a little holiday
in company with another kind of sea malefactor whom he knew intimately
well. He had already played with the smuggler in _The King's Own_. In
this little story he reintroduces us to M'Elvina, somewhat disguised,
and in altered circumstances, but essentially the same.
_The Three Cutters_ may be supposed to have been written to fill out the
volume containing _The Pirate_ and those twenty engravings from drawings
by Clarkson Stanfield, which still make the first edition a desirable
possession. This function, whether it was originally designed or not, is
very agreeably fulfilled by the history of the _Arrow_, the _Active_,
and _Happy-go-lucky_. Although he wrote very few of them, Marryat had a
happy hand with a short story. _The S. W. and by W. and 1/4 W. Wind_ and
_Moonshine_ are very happy examples of the magazine story. _The Three
Cutters_ is somewhat longer than either, but the difference in bulk is
due less to any greater amount of pure story there is than to the care
with which Marryat introduces his three vessels, and sketches their
respective starting-places--Plymouth, Portsmouth, and St. Malo. Here
again it is to be noted that Marryat is far more at home in the
man-of-war than in the smuggler or the yacht. Mr. Appleboy, with his
forty-five years' service, and the interesting story which remains
untold of the something which took place in '93 or '94, his seventeen
daily tumblers of gin-toddy, his mate and his midshipman, is a part, and
not an inferior one, of Marryat's inimitable naval gallery. The
_Happy-go-lucky_ is perhaps rather a smuggler of the Pays Bleu than of
the British Channel, but she is sufficiently in place in a story not
intended to be too slavishly faithful to life. Morrison, the
sailing-master, with his augury of the blue pigeon, is real, and nothing
can be more consistent with human nature than that he should have cursed
the bird when he did finally find himself in prison. As for the
adventures, they belong to the region of the fantastic, which does not
pretend to be anything else. The idea of a yacht which endeavours the
capture of a smuggler, and is herself made prize by him, is of course a
motive for farce.
The scenes on board the captive yacht are not exactly horse-play. There
are too many ladies concerned, and Marryat, in spite of occasional
lapses of taste, preferred to write like a gentleman. But if there is no
horse-play there is a great deal of what I hope it is permissible to
describe as 'lark.' The sour old maid Miss Ossulton, her niece Cecilia,
who, if she has not much character, is still a very nice girl, the
frisky widow Mrs. Lascelles, make a capital trio. Given a gallant
dashing smuggler, who is really a gentleman in disguise, in possession
of the yacht, and determined to revenge himself on the owner by taking a
little harmless amusement, it follows that lively incidents are to be
expected. Marryat did not work the situation out at any length, probably
because he felt that the stuff would not bear much handling. If he cut
his story short for this reason he was undoubtedly right. It is so
difficult as to be quite impossible for the majority of writers to hang
just on the border of the outrageously impossible for more than a few
pages. While it lasts it is very good fun. The reformation of
Pickersgill through the influence of Mrs. Lascelles is quite in
Marryat's manner. His heroes, when they need reformation, are commonly
brought into the right path by the combined influence of a pretty woman
and a round sum of money. Mrs. Lascelles, too, was unquestionably just
the woman to marry Pickersgill. Having married an old man to please her
parents, and having inherited his money, she had decided both to marry
again and to please herself in her second husband. Experience shows that
the Mrs. Lascelles of real life not uncommonly fall into the hands of a
ruffian or an adventurer. Marryat was not making a study of real life,
and he was too fond of his puppets; and besides that would have been
another story, which would have been superfluous, considering that
Marryat wanted to end this one. So Mrs. Lascelles had her fine dashing
seaman, who stood six feet odd in his stockings, and was also a
gentleman in disguise. Of course she was happy ever after. One has a
haunting suspicion that the story was not only written to fill out the
volume, but also to accompany Clarkson Stanfield's three very pretty
plates of Plymouth, Portsmouth, and St. Malo. If so, that only proves
that when a man is a born storyteller he can write good stories for very
humble business reasons.
CONTENTS
THE PIRATE
PAGE
CHAPTER I
THE BAY OF BISCAY 3
CHAPTER II
THE BACHELOR 11
CHAPTER III
THE GALE 20
CHAPTER IV
THE LEAK 26
CHAPTER V
THE OLD MAID 34
CHAPTER VI
THE MIDSHIPMAN 43
CHAPTER VII
SLEEPER'S BAY 50
CHAPTER VIII
THE ATTACK 60
CHAPTER IX
THE CAPTURE 69
CHAPTER X
THE SAND-BANK 87
CHAPTER XI
THE ESCAPE 93
CHAPTER XII
THE LIEUTENANT 104
CHAPTER XIII
THE LANDING 111
CHAPTER XIV
THE MEETING 124
CHAPTER XV
THE MISTAKE 135
CHAPTER XVI
THE CAICOS 145
CHAPTER XVII
THE TRIAL 158
CHAPTER XVIII
CONCLUSION 173
THE THREE CUTTERS
PAGE
CHAPTER I
CUTTER THE FIRST 185
CHAPTER II
CUTTER THE SECOND 199
CHAPTER III
CUTTER THE THIRD 208
CHAPTER IV
PORTLAND BILL 216
CHAPTER V
THE TRAVESTIE 227
CHAPTER VI
THE SMUGGLING YACHT 239
CHAPTER VII
CONCLUSION 247
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
THE PIRATE
PAGE
Cain _Frontispiece_
'Coco ab ten finger, and take long while suck em all dry' 7
Coco shouted to his utmost, and fortunately attracted notice 9
'That will do, Jonathan; I'll ring for coffee presently' 18
Oswald Bareth gained the helm, which he put hard up 23
'I'll cleave to the shoulder the first man who attempts to break
into the spirit-room' 32
Found his green morocco easy-chair already tenanted by William
the footman 35
'Antony, for shame! fie, for shame!' 41
He walked with his coat flying open, his thumbs stuck into
the arm-holes of his waistcoat 44
A general discharge from a broadside of carronades, and a heavy
volley of muskets, was the decided answer 62
'Take that, babbler, for your intelligence; if these men are
obstinate, we may have worked for nothing' 72
'_Blood for blood!_' cried Francisco, as he fired his pistol at
Cain, who staggered, and fell on the deck 82
Before Francisco had gained the sand-bank she was hull-down
to the northward 85
At last he snatched up the haulyards of his boat's sail, and
hastened down to the spot to afford such succour as might
be possible 95
The flames increased in violence, mounting up to the masts
and catching the sails one after another 101
Don Felix de Maxos de Cobas de Manilla d'Alfarez, too busy
with his cigar to pay attention to his daughter 107
Francisco fixed the glass against the sill of the window, and
examined the vessel some time in silence 113
The ball entered the left shoulder of Hawkhurst, and he
dropped his hold 122
'God bless you, boy! God bless you!' said Cain; 'but leave
me now' 129
'Blood for blood I will have,' continued the mate, holding up his
clenched hand, and shaking it almost in the pirate captain's face 139
The pirate captain was seen to raise his body convulsively half
out of the water--he floundered, sank, and was seen no more 152
Clara sprang into his arms, and was immediately in a state of
insensibility 155
The pirates at the bar 160
As soon as she was sufficiently composed, was sworn, and gave
her evidence 166
'Blood for blood!' 171
'Captain Templemore, I wish you joy!' 178
'_Resurgam!_' said the butler 181
THE THREE CUTTERS
The ladies 188
The Hon. Miss Cecilia Ossulton 190
'Fie! Mr. Vaughan,' cried Cecilia Ossulton; 'you know it
came from your heart' 197
Lieutenant Appleboy 201
'Salt water, sir!' cried Jem. 'Yes, sir,' replied Mr. Appleboy,
tossing the contents of the tumbler in the boy's face 206
The captain of the _Happy-go-lucky_, Jack Pickersgill 210
Jeannette held her finger up to Corbett, saying, with a smile,
'_mechant!_' and then quitted the room 214
The gun was loaded, and not being more than a mile from the
smuggler, actually threw the ball almost a quarter of the
way 219
'Well, gentlemen, what do you want?' said Pickersgill 222
'Pirates!--_bloody, murderous stick-at-nothing_ pirates!'
replied the steward 229
'Upon my soul, my lord,' cried Maddox, dropping on his knees,
'there is no Burgundy on board--ask the ladies' 237
Miss Ossulton, frightened out of her wits, took his arm; and,
with Mrs. Lascelles on the other, they went up to the hotel 245
'Mrs. Lascelles,' said Pickersgill, 'before we part, allow me to
observe, that it is _you_ who have induced me to give up
my profession----' 255
THE PIRATE
CHAPTER I
THE BAY OF BISCAY
It was in the latter part of the month of June, of the year 179--, that
the angry waves of the Bay of Biscay were gradually subsiding, after a
gale of wind as violent as it was unusual during that period of the
year. Still they rolled heavily; and, at times, the wind blew up in
fitful, angry gusts, as if it would fain renew the elemental combat; but
each effort was more feeble, and the dark clouds which had been summoned
to the storm now fled in every quarter before the powerful rays of the
sun, who burst their masses asunder with a glorious flood of light and
heat; and, as he poured down his resplendent beams, piercing deep into
the waters of that portion of the Atlantic to which we now refer, with
the exception of one object, hardly visible, as at creation, there was a
vast circumference of water, bounded by the fancied canopy of heaven. We
have said, with the exception of one object; for in the centre of this
picture, so simple, yet so sublime, composed of the three great
elements, there was a remnant of the fourth. We say a remnant, for it
was but the hull of a vessel, dismasted, water-logged, its upper works
only floating occasionally above the waves, when a transient repose from
their still violent undulation permitted it to reassume its buoyancy.
But this was seldom; one moment it was deluged by the seas, which broke
as they poured over its gunwale; and the next it rose from its
submersion, as the water escaped from the portholes at its sides.
How many thousands of vessels--how many millions of property--have been
abandoned, and eventually consigned to the all-receiving depths of the
ocean, through ignorance or through fear! What a mine of wealth must lie
buried in its sands! what riches lie entangled amongst its rocks, or
remain suspended in its unfathomable gulf, where the compressed fluid is
equal in gravity to that which it encircles, there to remain secured in
its embedment from corruption and decay, until the destruction of the
universe and the return of chaos! Yet, immense as the accumulated loss
may be, the major part of it has been occasioned from an ignorance of
one of the first laws of nature, that of specific gravity. The vessel to
which we have referred was, to all appearance, in a situation of as
extreme hazard as that of a drowning man clinging to a single rope-yarn;
yet, in reality, she was more secure from descending to the abyss below
than many gallantly careering on the waters, their occupants dismissing
all fear, and only calculating upon a quick arrival into port.
The _Circassian_ had sailed from New Orleans, a gallant and
well-appointed ship, with a cargo, the major part of which consisted of
cotton. The captain was, in the usual acceptation of the term, a good
sailor; the crew were hardy and able seamen. As they crossed the
Atlantic, they had encountered the gale to which we have referred, were
driven down into the Bay of Biscay, where, as we shall hereafter
explain, the vessel was dismasted, and sprang a leak, which baffled all
their exertions to keep under. It was now five days since the frightened
crew had quitted the vessel in two of her boats, one of which had
swamped, and every soul that occupied it had perished; the fate of the
other was uncertain.
We said that the crew had deserted the vessel, but we did not assert
that every existing being had been removed out of her. Had such been the
case, we should not have taken up the reader's time in describing
inanimate matter. It is life that we portray, and life there still was
in the shattered hull thus abandoned to the mockery of the ocean. In the
_caboose_ of the _Circassian_, that is, in the cooking-house secured on
deck, and which fortunately had been so well fixed as to resist the
force of the breaking waves, remained three beings--a man, a woman, and
a child. The two first-mentioned were of that inferior race which have,
for so long a period, been procured from the sultry Afric coast, to
toil, but reap not for themselves; the child which lay at the breast of
the female was of European blood, now, indeed, deadly pale, as it
attempted in vain to draw sustenance from its exhausted nurse, down
whose sable cheeks the tears coursed, as she occasionally pressed the
infant to her breast, and turned it round to leeward to screen it from
the spray which dashed over them at each returning swell. Indifferent to
all else, save her little charge, she spoke not, although she shuddered
with the cold as the water washed her knees each time that the hull was
careened into the wave. Cold and terror had produced a change in her
complexion, which now wore a yellow, or sort of copper hue.
The male, who was her companion, sat opposite to her upon the iron range
which once had been the receptacle of light and heat, but was now but a
weary seat to a drenched and worn-out wretch. He, too, had not spoken
for many hours; with the muscles of his face relaxed, his thick lips
pouting far in advance of his collapsed cheeks, his high cheekbones
prominent as budding horns, his eyes displaying little but their whites,
he appeared to be an object of greater misery than the female, whose
thoughts were directed to the infant and not unto herself. Yet his
feelings were still acute, although his faculties appeared to be
deadened by excess of suffering.
'Eh, me!' cried the negro woman faintly, after a long silence, her head
falling back with extreme exhaustion. Her companion made no reply, but,
roused at the sound of her voice, bent forward, slid open the door a
little, and looked out to windward. The heavy spray dashed into his
glassy eyes, and obscured his vision; he groaned, and fell back into his
former position. 'What you tink, Coco?' inquired the negress, covering
up more carefully the child, as she bent her head down upon it. A look
of despair, and a shudder from cold and hunger, were the only reply.
It was then about eight o'clock in the morning, and the swell of the
ocean was fast subsiding. At noon the warmth of the sun was communicated
to them through the planks of the _caboose_, while its rays poured a
small stream of vivid light through the chinks of the closed panels. The
negro appeared gradually to revive; at last he rose, and with some
difficulty contrived again to slide open the door. The sea had gradually
decreased its violence, and but occasionally broke over the vessel;
carefully holding on by the door-jambs, Coco gained the outside, that he
might survey the horizon.
'What you see, Coco?' said the female, observing from the _caboose_ that
his eyes were fixed upon a certain quarter.
'So help me God, me tink me see something; but ab so much salt water in
um eye, me no see clear,' replied Coco, rubbing away the salt which had
crystallised on his face during the morning.
'What you tink um like, Coco?'
'Only one bit cloud,' replied he, entering the _caboose_, and resuming
his seat upon the grate with a heavy sigh.
'Eh, me!' cried the negress, who had uncovered the child to look at it,
and whose powers were sinking fast. 'Poor lilly Massa Eddard, him look
very bad indeed--him die very soon, me fear. Look, Coco, no ab breath.'
The child's head fell back upon the breast of its nurse, and life
appeared to be extinct.
'Judy, you no ab milk for piccaninny; suppose um ab no milk, how can
live? Eh! stop, Judy, me put lilly finger in um mouth; suppose Massa
Eddard no dead, him pull.'
Coco inserted his finger into the child's mouth, and felt a slight
drawing pressure. 'Judy,' cried Coco, 'Massa Eddard no dead yet. Try
now, suppose you ab lilly drop oder side.'
Poor Judy shook her head mournfully, and a tear rolled down her cheek;
she was aware that nature was exhausted. 'Coco,' said she, wiping her
cheek with the back of her hand, 'me give me heart blood for Massa
Eddard; but no ab milk--all gone.'
This forcible expression of love for the child, which was used by Judy,
gave an idea to Coco. He drew his knife out of his pocket, and very
coolly sawed to the bone of his forefinger. The blood flowed and
trickled down to the extremity, which he applied to the mouth of the
infant.
'See, Judy, Massa Eddard suck--him not dead,' cried Coco, chuckling at
the fortunate result of the experiment, and forgetting at the moment
their almost hopeless situation.
The child, revived by the strange sustenance, gradually recovered its
powers, and in a few minutes it pulled at the finger with a certain
degree of vigour.
[Illustration: '_Coco ab ten finger, and take long while suck em all
dry._']
'Look, Judy, how Massa Eddard take it,' continued Coco. 'Pull away,
Massa Eddard, pull away. Coco ab ten finger, and take long while suck em
all dry.' But the child was soon satisfied, and fell asleep in the arms
of Judy.
'Coco, suppose you go see again,' observed Judy. The negro again crawled
out, and again he scanned the horizon.
'So help me God, dis time me tink, Judy--yes, so help me God, me see a
ship!' cried Coco joyfully.
'Eh!' screamed Judy faintly, with delight; 'den Massa Eddard no die.'
'Yes, so help me God--he come dis way!' and Coco, who appeared to have
recovered a portion of his former strength and activity, clambered on
the top of the _caboose_, where he sat, cross-legged, waving his yellow
handkerchief, with the hope of attracting the attention of those on
board; for he knew that it was very possible that an object floating
little more than level with the water's surface might escape notice.
As it fortunately happened, the frigate, for such she was, continued her
course precisely for the wreck, although it had not been perceived by
the look-out men at the mast-heads, whose eyes had been directed to the
line of the horizon. In less than an hour our little party were
threatened with a new danger, that of being run over by the frigate,
which was now within a cable's length of them, driving the seas before
her in one widely extended foam, as she pursued her rapid and impetuous
course. Coco shouted to his utmost, and fortunately attracted the
notice of the men who were on the bowsprit, stowing away the
foretopmast-staysail, which had been hoisted up to dry after the gale.
[Illustration: _Coco shouted to his utmost, and fortunately attracted
notice_.]
'Starboard, hard!' was roared out.
'Starboard it is,' was the reply from the quarter-deck, and the helm was
shifted without inquiry, as it always is on board of a man-of-war;
although, at the same time, it behoves people to be rather careful how
they pass such an order, without being prepared with a subsequent and
most satisfactory explanation.
The topmast studding-sail flapped and fluttered, the foresail shivered,
and the jib filled as the frigate rounded to, narrowly missing the
wreck, which was now under the bows, rocking so violently in the white
foam of the agitated waters that it was with difficulty that Coco could,
by clinging to the stump of the mainmast, retain his elevated position.
The frigate shortened sail, hove-to, and lowered down a quarter-boat,
and in less than five minutes Coco, Judy, and the infant were rescued
from their awful situation. Poor Judy, who had borne up against all for
the sake of the child, placed it in the arms of the officer who relieved
them, and then fell back in a state of insensibility, in which condition
she was carried on board. Coco, as he took his place in the stern-sheets
of the boat, gazed wildly round him, and then broke out into peals of
extravagant laughter, which continued without intermission, and were the
only replies which he could give to the interrogatories of the
quarter-deck, until he fell down in a swoon, and was entrusted to the
care of the surgeon.