THE ESCAPE
Francisco's eyes were fixed upon the vessel, over which the sea now
broke with terrific violence. There appeared to be about eight or nine
men on her deck, who sheltered themselves under the weather bulwarks.
Each wave, as it broke against her side and then dashed in foam over
her, threw her, with a convulsive jerk, still further on the sand-bank.
At last she was so high up that their fury was partly spent before they
dashed against her frame. Had the vessel been strong and well-built--had
she been a collier coasting the English shores--there was a fair chance
that she might have withstood the fury of the storm until it had
subsided, and that by remaining on board the crew might have survived;
but she was of a very different mould, and, as Francisco justly
surmised, an American brig, built for swift sailing, very sharp, and,
moreover, very slightly put together.
Francisco's eyes, as may easily be supposed, were never removed from the
only object which could now interest him--the unexpected appearance and
imminent danger of his fellow-creatures at this desolate spot. He
perceived that two of the men went to the hatches and slid them over to
leeward; they then descended, and although the seas broke over the
vessel, and a large quantity of water must have poured into her, the
hatches were not put on again by those who remained on deck. But in a
few minutes this mystery was solved; one after another, at first, and
then by dozens, poured forth, out of the hold, the kidnapped Africans
who composed her cargo. In a short time the decks were covered with
them: the poor creatures had been released by the humanity of two
English sailors, that they might have the same chance with themselves
of saving their lives. Still, no attempt was made to quit the vessel.
Huddled together, like a flock of sheep, with the wild waves breaking
over them, there they all remained, both European and African; and as
the heavy blows of the seas upon the sides of the vessel careened and
shook her, they were seen to cling, in every direction, with no
distinction between the captured and their oppressors.
But this scene was soon changed; the frame of the vessel could no longer
withstand the violence of the waves, and as Francisco watched, of a
sudden it was seen to divide amidships, and each portion to turn over.
Then was the struggle for life; hundreds were floating on the raging
element and wrestling for existence, and the white foam of the ocean was
dotted by the black heads of the negroes who attempted to gain the bank.
It was an awful, terrible scene, to witness so many at one moment tossed
and dashed about by the waves--so many fellow-beings threatened with
eternity. At one moment they were close to the beach, forced on to it by
some tremendous wave; at the next, the receding water and the undertow
swept them all back; and of the many who had been swimming one half had
disappeared to rise no more. Francisco watched with agony as he
perceived that the number decreased, and that none had yet gained the
shore. At last he snatched up the haulyards of his boat's sail which
were near him, and hastened down to the spot to afford such succour as
might be possible; nor were his efforts in vain. As the seas washed the
apparently inanimate bodies on shore, and would then have again swept
them away to return them in mockery, he caught hold of them and dragged
them safe on the bank, and thus did he continue his exertions until
fifteen of the bodies of the negroes were spread upon the beach.
Although exhausted and senseless they were not dead, and long before he
had dragged up the last of the number, many of those previously saved
had, without any other assistance than the heat of the sun, recovered
from their insensibility.
Francisco would have continued his task of humanity, but the parted
vessel had now been riven into fragments by the force of the waves, and
the whole beach was strewed with her timbers and her stores, which were
dashed on shore by the waters, and then swept back again by the return.
In a short time the severe blows he received from these fragments
disabled him from further exertion, and he sank exhausted on the sand;
indeed, all further attempts were useless. All on board the vessel had
been launched into the sea at the same moment, and those who were not
now on shore were past all succour. Francisco walked up to those who had
been saved: he found twelve of them were recovered and sitting on their
hams; the rest were still in a state of insensibility. He then went up
to the knoll where his chest and provisions had been placed, and,
throwing himself down by them, surveyed the scene.
[Illustration: _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._]
The wind had lulled, the sun shone brightly, and the sea was much less
violent. The waves had subsided, and, no longer hurried on by the force
of the hurricane, broke majestically and solemnly, but not with the
wildness and force which, but a few hours before, they had displayed.
The whole of the beach was strewed with the fragments of the vessel,
with spars and water-casks; and at every moment was to be observed the
corpse of a negro turning round and round in the froth of the wave, and
then disappearing.
For an hour did he watch and reflect, and then he walked again to where
the men who had been rescued were sitting, not more than thirty yards
from him; they were sickly, emaciated forms, but belonging to a tribe
who inhabited the coast, and who, having been accustomed from their
infancy to be all the day in the water, had supported themselves better
than the other slaves, who had been procured from the interior, or the
European crew of the vessel, all of whom had perished.
The Africans appeared to recover fast by the heat of the sun, so
oppressive to Francisco, and were now exchanging a few words with each
other. The whole of them had revived, but those who were most in need of
aid were neglected by the others. Francisco made signs to them, but they
understood him not. He returned to the knoll, and pouring out water into
a tin pan from the breaker, brought it down to them. He offered it to
one, who seized it eagerly; water was a luxury seldom obtained in the
hold of a slave-vessel. The man drank deeply, and would have drained the
cup, but Francisco prevented him, and held it to the lips of another. He
was obliged to refill it three times before they had all been supplied:
he then brought them a handful of biscuit and left them, for he
reflected that, without some precautions, the whole sustenance would be
seized by them and devoured. He buried half a foot deep, and covered
over with sand, the breakers of water and the provisions, and by the
time he had finished this task, unperceived by the negroes, who still
squatted together, the sun had sunk below the horizon. Francisco had
already matured his plans, which were, to form a raft out of the
fragments of the vessel, and with the assistance of the negroes attempt
to gain the mainland. He lay down, for the second night, on this
eventful spot of desolation, and commending himself to the Almighty
protection, was soon in a deep slumber.
It was not until the powerful rays of the sun blazed on the eyes of the
youth that he awoke, so tired had he been with the anxiety and fatigue
of the preceding day, and the sleepless harrowing night which had
introduced it. He rose and seated himself upon his sea-chest: how
different was the scene from that of yesterday! Again the ocean slept,
the sky was serene, and not a cloud to be distinguished throughout the
whole firmament; the horizontal line was clear, even, and well defined:
a soft breeze just rippled over the dark blue sea, which now had retired
to its former boundary, and left the sand-bank as extended as when first
Francisco had been put on shore. But here the beauty of the landscape
terminated: the foreground was horrible to look upon; the whole of the
beach was covered with the timbers of the wreck, with water-casks and
other articles, in some parts heaped and thrown up one upon another; and
among them lay jammed and mangled the bodies of the many who had
perished. In other parts there were corpses thrown up high and dry, or
still rolling and turning to the rippling wave; it was a scene of
desolation and of death.
The negroes who had been saved were all huddled up together, apparently
in deep sleep, and Francisco quitted his elevated position and walked
down to the low beach, to survey the means which the disaster of others
afforded him for his own escape. To his great joy he found not only
plenty of casks, but many of them full of fresh water, provisions also
in sufficiency, and, indeed, everything that could be required to form a
raft, as well as the means of support for a considerable time for
himself and the negroes who had survived. He then walked up to them and
called to them, but they answered not, nor even moved. He pushed them,
but in vain; and his heart beat quick, for he was fearful that they were
dead from previous exhaustion. He applied his foot to one of them, and
it was not until he had used force, which in any other case he would
have dispensed with, that the negro awoke from his state of lethargy and
looked vacantly about him. Francisco had some little knowledge of the
language of the Kroumen, and he addressed the negro in that tongue. To
his great joy he was answered in a language which, if not the same, had
so great an affinity to it that communication became easy. With the
assistance of the negro, who used still less ceremony with his comrades,
the remainder of them were awakened, and a palaver ensued.
Francisco soon made them understand that they were to make a raft and go
back to their own country; explaining to them that if they remained
there, the water and provisions would soon be exhausted, and they would
all perish. The poor creatures hardly knew whether to consider him a
supernatural being or not; they talked among themselves; they remarked
at his having brought them fresh water the day before; they knew that he
did not belong to the vessel in which they had been wrecked, and they
were puzzled.
Whatever might be their speculations they had one good effect, which
was, that they looked upon the youth as a superior and a friend, and
most willingly obeyed him. He led them up to the knoll, and, desiring
them to scrape away the sand, supplied them again with fresh water and
biscuit. Perhaps the very supply, and the way in which it was given to
them, excited their astonishment as much as anything. Francisco ate with
them, and, selecting from his sea-chest the few tools in his possession,
desired them to follow him. The casks were collected and rolled up; the
empty ones arranged for the raft; the spars were hauled up and cleared
of the rigging, which was carefully separated for lashings; the one or
two sails which had been found rolled up on the spars were spread out to
dry; and the provisions and articles of clothing, which might be useful,
laid together on one side. The negroes worked willingly and showed much
intelligence; before the evening closed everything which might be
available was secured, and the waves now only tossed about lifeless
forms, and the small fragments of timber which could not be serviceable.
It would occupy too much time were we to detail all the proceedings of
Francisco and the negroes for the space of four days, during which they
laboured hard. Necessity is truly the mother of invention, and many were
the ingenious resources of the party before they could succeed in
forming a raft large enough to carry them and their provisions, with a
mast and sail well secured. At length it was accomplished; and on the
fifth day Francisco and his men embarked, and, having pushed clear of
the bank with poles, they were at last able to hoist their sail to a
fine breeze, and steer for the coast before the wind at the rate of
about three miles an hour. But it was not until they had gained half a
mile from the bank that they were no longer annoyed by the dreadful
smell arising from the putrefaction of so many bodies, for to bury them
all would have been a work of too great time. The last two days of their
remaining on the island, the effluvia had become so powerful as to be a
source of the greatest horror and disgust even to the negroes.
But before night, when the raft was about eight leagues from the
sand-bank, it fell calm, and continued so for the next day, when a
breeze sprang up from the south-east, to which they trimmed their sail
with their head to the northward.
This wind, and the course steered, sent them off from the land, but
there was no help for it; and Francisco felt grateful that they had such
an ample supply of provisions and water as to enable them to yield to a
few days' contrary wind without danger of want. But the breeze continued
steady and fresh, and they were now crossing the Bight of Benin; the
weather was fine and the sea smooth; the flying-fish rose in shoals and
dropped down into the raft, which still forced its way through the water
to the northward.
Thus did Francisco and his negro crew remain for a fortnight floating on
the wide ocean, without any object meeting their view. Day after day it
was the same dreary 'sky and water,' and by the reckoning of Francisco
they could not be far from the land, when, on the fifteenth day, they
perceived two sails to the northward.
Francisco's heart bounded with joy and gratitude to Heaven; he had no
telescope to examine them, but he steered directly for them, and, about
dark, he made them out to be a ship and a schooner hove-to.
As Francisco scanned them, surmising what they might be, the sun set
behind the two vessels, and after it had sunk below the horizon their
forms were, for a few minutes, delineated with remarkable precision and
clearness. There could be no mistake. Francisco felt convinced that the
schooner was the _Avenger_; and his first impulse was to run to the
sweep with which they were steered, and put the head of the raft again
to the northward. A moment's reflection determined him to act otherwise;
he lowered down his sail that he might escape observation, and watched
the motions of the vessels during the few minutes of light which
remained. That the ship bad been captured, and that her capture had been
attended with the usual scene of outrage and violence, he had no doubt.
He was now about four miles' from them, and just as they were vanishing
from his straining eyes he perceived that the schooner had made all sail
to the westward. Francisco, feeling that he was then secure from being
picked up by her, again hoisted his sail with the hope of reaching the
ship, which, if not scuttled, he intended to remove on board of, and
then make sail for the first port on the coast. But hardly had the raft
regained her way when the horizon was lighted up, and he perceived that
the pirates had set fire to the vessel. Then it was useless to proceed
towards her; and Francisco again thought of putting the head of the raft
to the northward, when the idea struck him, knowing the character and
cruelty of the pirates, that there might be some unfortunate people left
on board to perish in the flames. He therefore continued his course,
watching the burning vessel; the flames increased in violence, mounting
up to the masts and catching the sails one after another. The wind blew
fresh, and the vessel was kept before the wind--a circumstance that
assured Francisco that there were people on board. At first she appeared
to leave the raft, but as her sails, one after another, were consumed by
the element, so did she decrease her speed, and Francisco, in about an
hour, was close to her and under her counter.
[Illustration: _The flames increased in violence, mounting up to the
masts and catching the sails one after another._]
The ship was now one mass of fire from her bows to her mainmast; a
volume of flame poured from her main hold, rising higher than her lower
masts, and ending in a huge mass of smoke carried by the wind ahead of
her; the quarter-deck was still free from fire, but the heat on it was
so intense that those on board were all collected at the taffrail; and
there they remained, some violent, others in mute despair; for the
_Avenger's_ people, in their barbarity, had cut away and destroyed all
the boats to prevent their escape. From the light thrown round the
vessel those on board had perceived the approach of Francisco to their
rescue, and immediately that it was under the counter, and the sail
lowered, almost all of them had descended by ropes, or the stern ladder,
and gained a place in her. In a few minutes, without scarcely an
exchange of a word, they were all out of the brig, and Francisco pushed
off just as the flames burst from the cabin windows, darting out in a
horizontal line like the tongues of fiery serpents. The raft, now
encumbered with twelve more persons, was then steered to the northward;
and as soon as those who had been saved had been supplied with some
water, which they so much needed, Francisco obtained the intelligence
which he desired. The ship was from Carthagena, South America; had
sailed from thence to Lisbon with a Don Cumanos, who had large property
up the Magdalen river. He had wished to visit a part of his family at
Lisbon, and from thence had sailed to the Canary Isles, where he also
had property. In their way from Lisbon to South America they had been
beaten by stress of weather to the southward, and afterwards had been
chased by the _Avenger_; being a very fast sailer she had run down
several degrees before she had been captured. When the pirate took
possession, and found that she had little or no cargo of value to them,
for her hold was chiefly filled with furniture and other articles for
the use of Don Cumanos, angry at their disappointment, they had first
destroyed all their boats and then set fire to the vessel, taking care
not to leave her until all chance of the fire being put out was
hopeless. And thus had these miscreants left innocent and unfortunate
people to perish.
Francisco heard the narrative of Don Cumanos, and then informed him in
what manner he had left the schooner, and his subsequent adventures.
Francisco was now very anxious to make the land, or obtain succour from
some vessel. The many who were now on board, and the time that he had
already been at sea, obliged him to reduce the allowance of water.
Fortune favoured him after all his trials; on the third day a vessel
hove in sight, and they were seen by her. She made sail for them, and
took them all on board. It was a schooner trafficking on the coast for
gold dust and ivory; but the magnificent offers of Don Cumanos induced
them to give up their voyage and run across the Atlantic to Carthagena.
To Francisco it was of little moment where he went, and in Don Cumanos
he had found a sincere friend.
'You have been my preserver,' said the Spaniard, 'allow me to return the
obligation--come and live with me.'
As Francisco was equally pleased with Don Cumanos, he accepted the
offer; they all arrived safely at Carthagena, and from thence proceeded
to his estate on the Magdalen river.