We watched the stranger as she was revealed at uncertain but decreasing
intervals by the silent sheet-lightning, which was now flickering up all
round the horizon, affording us momentary glimpses of the great lowering
cloud-masses that overhung our mastheads as though ready to fall and
crush us, the shining undulations of the swell, with the small
overrunning ripples caused by the faint breathing of the breeze, the
distant land, and the brigantine sliding furtively along within its
shadow. When at length she had drawn to a bearing two points abaft our
beam, the Captain gave the word to tack; and when, three minutes later,
we were fairly round, the yards braced up, sheets hauled aft, and the
frigate gathering way on the starboard tack, the stranger lay straight
ahead of us.
Of course, we had taken the precaution to wait until immediately after a
lightning flash before putting our helm down, and, as it happened, the
next gleam did not occur until several minutes after we had tacked; the
probability, therefore, was that the stranger would know nothing about
our manoeuvre until the scene was again illuminated. The question that
now interested us was--how would her people act when they made the
discovery that we had shifted our helm and were standing in their
direction? There were three alternatives open to them. First, they
might follow our example--tack, and endeavour to escape to windward if
they believed their vessel speedy enough to succeed. Secondly, they
might haul their wind and enter the Gulf of Venezuela, along the shores
of which there are two or three shallow inlets, in one or the other of
which they might take refuge and anchor, in the hope of being able to
defend their ship successfully against a boat attack. And, thirdly, if
they were perfectly honest--of which we had our doubts--they might
proceed steadily on their way, taking no notice of us and our movements.
When we next got a sight of them the third alternative seemed to be
their intention, for, so far as we could discover, they had started
neither tack nor sheet; we therefore proceeded to edge down very
cautiously and very gradually toward her, keeping her about a point on
our lee-bow.
Now we discovered that our task was not going to be nearly so easy as we
had at first thought, for in the very light breath of wind that was then
blowing--and which was wholly insufficient to keep our lower canvas
"asleep"--the stranger undoubtedly had the heels of us, slipping along
so fast, indeed, that within a quarter of an hour of tacking we were
running off with the wind abeam and our weather braces checked, instead
of being upon a taut bowline, as we had been at the beginning of the
chase.
Meanwhile the expected storm, though it had been brewing long, showed
unmistakable signs that it was not going to keep us waiting very much
longer, for the sheet--lightning was flickering almost incessantly,
while a low, deep muttering of distant thunder occasionally made itself
heard. The storm seemed to be working up astern of us, for presently a
dazzlingly vivid flash of chain-lightning rent the darkness over our
weather quarter, quickly followed by a deep, hollow, reverberating peal
of thunder that rumbled like the echo of a seventy-four's broadside.
Another and another quickly followed, each nearer than that which had
preceded it; and presently, far away astern of us, we saw advancing
toward us a sort of wall of vapour, the lower edge of which gleamed
white and phosphorescent as the wind in it lashed the surface of the
water into foam.
"Hands, shorten sail!" was now the word. The watch sprang to their
stations, coils of rope were lifted off their pins and flung to the
deck; then in rapid succession followed the orders:--"Royal and
topgallant halliards and sheets let go; clew up and furl! Hands by the
weather braces; square the yards! Raise main tack and sheet; man the
main clew-garnets, buntlines, and leech-lines; clew up cheerily, lads!
Up helm, quartermaster, and let her go off. So; steady as you go.
Hands by the topsail halliards! Brail in the mizen! Haul down the
flying-jib! Here it comes!"
The squall swooped down upon us with a weird, shrieking howl, and a dash
of wet that was half rain and half spray; and the next moment, with a
tremendous creaking and groaning of timbers and gear, with all three
topsail-yards on the caps, and with the chain bobstay half-buried in the
foam that heaped itself up about our bows, away went the frigate, like a
startled sea-bird, speeding down-wind upon the wings of the squall,
enveloped in a sheet of rain that was more than half salt water, with
the lightning flickering and darting all round her, and the thunder
crashing overhead in a continuous booming roar.
The squall lasted very nearly three-quarters of an hour; but long before
that time had elapsed the weather ahead had cleared sufficiently to
enable us again to catch sight of the brigantine, now about two points
on our starboard-bow, running dead before it, like ourselves, under
nothing but a close-reefed topsail and reefed foresail. She was still
maintaining her distance from us in the most wonderful manner; but was
now--possibly in consequence of having been compelled by the squall to
bear up--steering as though to enter the Gulf of Venezuela. We
contrived to gain a little upon her by carefully watching our
opportunities and making sail by degrees as the squall blew itself out;
but in that respect her people were fully as wide awake as we were, and
made sail with a boldness and rapidity which most conclusively proved
that she was very strongly manned, and, therefore, not in the least
likely to be the harmless, innocent trader that they would doubtless
have liked to persuade us she was. She was hugging the land so closely
that some of us were of opinion that her skipper intended to run her
ashore and take to his boats if it should prove impossible to avoid
capture in any other way; but the Captain did not believe this, and the
master also seemed to be of his opinion.
"His object," said Trimble, "is undoubtedly to get round Point Espada
and fairly into the Gulf. If he can succeed in that, there are plenty
of little coves, especially along the western shore, in which he might
anchor and, sheltered from our guns, bid defiance to a boat attack."
"Ah!" observed the skipper, with much meaning. "Well, we shall see. It
is perfectly evident that he is anxious to keep out of our clutches,
which desire argues a guilty conscience on his part, and only makes me
the more determined to overhaul him. Confound it, here comes the rain
again! Mr Gascoigne, have the goodness to slip into my cabin and
desire my steward to bring my oilskins on deck. Or, stay, the fellow
will have turned-in by this time; I will get them myself."
The rain came swooping down upon us with the tail-end of the squall, and
for a quarter of an hour it was so thick that we could see nothing a
couple of ships'-lengths outside the bulwarks. Then it cleared away,
the clouds dispersed, the stars came out, the wind dropped to a moderate
breeze, and presently the moon, with nearly half her disc in shadow,
crept up above the horizon, flooding the heaving waters with ruddy gold
that quickly changed to silver as the satellite climbed high enough to
clear herself of the vapours that distorted her shape and imparted to
her the colour of burnished copper.
But where was the brigantine? Ahead, abeam, on our quarter we looked,
but nowhere could we discern the faintest trace of her. We had lost
sight of her a bare quarter of an hour, and in that brief space of time
she had contrived to vanish as completely as though she had gone to the
bottom in deep-water, leaving not so much as a fragment of floating
wreckage to furnish a clue to her fate.
The skipper was as much puzzled as he was annoyed, and in his perplexity
he turned to the master.
"What do you think has become of her, Mr Trimble?" he demanded. "She
cannot have gone ashore and broken up so completely in a quarter of an
hour that no sign of her would remain. We should see something at least
in the nature of wreckage to give us a hint of what had happened. Yet I
see nothing; although if she had been stranded, either purposely or by
accident, her wreck ought to be away in there somewhere about abreast of
us. And there are no off-shore dangers, are there?"
"The nearest that I know of are The Monks, away out here, some
twenty-five miles to the nor'ard and east'ard of us," answered the
master. "The coast inshore of us is, of course, a bit rocky, but there
is nothing, so far as I know, in the nature of hidden dangers to cause
the wreck of the brigantine. No, sir, it is my belief that there is
some snug little secret cove, known to the skipper of that brigantine,
and that he took advantage of the rain squall to slip into it, in the
hope of dodging us."
"Ah!" said the skipper, "yes; that is, after all, the only feasible
explanation of his disappearance. He is neither ahead nor astern nor to
seaward of us; therefore he must be hidden somewhere inshore. Mr
Galway,"--to the first lieutenant--"we will shorten sail, if you please,
with the ship's head off the land, remaining in sight of the coast until
daylight, when we shall perhaps be able to discover the hiding-place of
that brigantine."
This was done, and during the remainder of the night the _Europa_, under
her three topsails, jib and spanker, stood off and on, never going
farther from the shore than a distance of six miles, and very gradually
working her way back to--as nearly as we could guess it--the spot where
we had lost sight of the brigantine. As the night wore on all traces of
the recent storm passed away; the sky cleared, the moon and stars beamed
down upon us in tropical splendour, affording us an ample sufficiency of
light to enable us to maintain an effective watch upon the coast, and
ensure that the stranger did not creep out from her place of concealment
and give us the slip. The _terral_, or land wind, overpowered by the
recent squall, once more resumed its sway and piped up strongly,
bringing off to us the warm, fragrant odour of land and vegetation.
At length the day dawned, the sun soared into view above the eastern
horizon, and with the coming of the light some half-dozen of the best
telescopes in the ship were brought to bear upon the line of coast that
lay about five miles distant on our port beam. I happened to be the
lucky possessor of an exceptionally good instrument--a present from my
father--and I had not been long at work with it when I discovered what
was unmistakably a small indentation in the coast-line, sheltered and
all but concealed by two headlands which approached each other so
closely that, viewed from a distance, they appeared almost to overlap.
I immediately directed the first lieutenant's attention to the spot, at
the same time handing him my glass, and he presently picked it up. He
agreed with me that it was undoubtedly a cove, or tiny bay of some sort,
but was rather of the opinion that it was too small to afford shelter to
a vessel of the dimensions of the missing brigantine. Nevertheless,
since it was the only opening that we could discover, and was, moreover,
about the spot where the stranger had disappeared, it was determined to
give the place an overhaul, and the helm was accordingly eased down, the
yards braced in, and we began to work in toward it. Then the fighting
boats' crews were told off to overhaul the boats and prepare them for
service, yard and stay tackles were got aloft for the purpose of
hoisting out the launch, the boat-guns were slung all ready for lowering
over the side as soon as the boats should be brought alongside,
ammunition boxes were brought on deck, and, in short, every preparation
was made for a boat expedition; after which all hands were piped to
breakfast.
By the time that this meal was finished the frigate had worked in to
within about a mile from the shore, at which point she ran into a calm,
the land-breeze having died away. The boats were then got into the
water and brought to the gangway, the guns were lowered down and secured
to platforms in the bows of the launch and the two cutters, shot was
passed down and stowed on the bottom-boards on either side of the keel,
the ammunition boxes were stowed in the stern-sheets, and then, all else
being ready, those who were to take part in the expedition were mustered
for inspection prior to being dispatched on what was likely enough to
prove a dangerous errand. But little recked any of us of possible
danger; on the contrary, if an onlooker had judged only by the satisfied
smirk which our countenances wore, it might have been supposed that we
were all bound ashore for a day's holiday in the woods.
The expedition was to be under the command of Mr Gadsby, the second
lieutenant, who would go in the launch; the first cutter was to be
commanded by Mr O'Donnel, the boatswain, and the command of the second
cutter was entrusted to me. We mustered fifty altogether, including
marines; and when at length, after having been carefully inspected by
the first lieutenant, we were given the word to shove off, the men who
were left behind sprang into the rigging and sped us on our way with a
hearty cheer.
We took it very easily as we pulled shoreward, in line abreast, for it
was by this time scorching hot, and it was important that the men's
strength should be husbanded to the utmost extent, in view of the
possible fight that might be awaiting us at the end of our journey; but
I kept a sharp lookout ahead, for, although the country in sight showed
no sign of habitations, there was no knowing how soon a masked battery
on one, or perhaps each, of the headlands might declare itself by
dropping a few shot among us. Nothing, however, happened to hinder our
progress over the glass-smooth surface of the water, and in the course
of about twenty minutes we reached the opening between the two
headlands, and found ourselves in the mouth of a small, practically
land-locked cove of some twenty acres in area, with our friend the
brigantine in the very centre of it, with four anchors down--two ahead
and two astern--with boarding nettings triced up, ports open, guns run
out--eight long 12-pounders in each battery--and her starboard broadside
bearing full upon the entrance!
"There she is!" exclaimed a dozen eager voices in chorus; and, while the
words were still upon our lips, eight jets of flame burst from her side,
followed by eight wreaths of whirling white smoke that instantly
commingled, forming a curtain that completely hid her long low black
hull from us, and as a shower of grape came hurtling about our ears I
saw a big black flag go slowly soaring up to her main truck!
"A self-confessed pirate, by the Piper!" exclaimed Fred Gascoigne, who
had calmly crawled out from under the bow-sheets of my boat when we were
half-way between the frigate and the shore. "Now--"
"Give way, men!" shouted Gadsby, springing to his feet in the
stern-sheets of the launch, and waving his sword above his head. "Give
way, and get alongside before they can fire again. Gunners, fire slap
at his bulwarks, and we'll board in the smoke. Marines, fire in through
the open ports. Hurrah, lads, put your backs into it!"
At that moment, as the smoke of the brigantine's broadside thinned away
and permitted us again to catch a glimpse of her hull, I noticed a
peculiarity about the craft that seemed to offer us a very important
advantage; her captain had, in fact, committed the same oversight as the
Frenchman in Pleher Bay, and I instantly hailed:
"Launch ahoy! Do you notice, Mr Gadsby, that she has no nettings
triced up on her port side? Apparently they are making certain that we
intend to go alongside on her starboard side, and--"
"By Jove! Yes, you are right, Delamere," answered Gadsby. "We will
board her on the port side. First cutter on the port quarter; second
cutter on her port bow. Keep up your fire, marines. Now, gunners, as
soon as you are ready, blaze away!"
The three boat-guns spoke at almost the same instant, and so close were
we now to our quarry that our grape-shot literally tore her starboard
bulwarks to pieces, and a terrific outburst of shrieks and yells that
instantly followed upon the discharge bore eloquent evidence to the
terrible havoc that it had wrought among her crew. The moment that we
had fired the boats separated, the first cutter making a wide sweep to
port in order to pass under the brigantine's counter, while we sheered
away to starboard to get under her bows, the launch passing outside of
us in order to get a fair run for the brigantine's waist.
Another minute and we were all alongside and hooked on, and then began a
most terrific struggle; for the brigantine seemed crowded with men. We
had evidently taken them all a little by surprise, by boarding on her
inshore side instead of that side which was presented to us upon
entering the cove. It was clear that, like the prize-crew of the
Indiaman in Pleher Bay, they had never expected us to think of pulling
round under her bows and stern, instead of dashing straight alongside;
but of course it was a very easy matter for the pirates to cross the
deck from one side to the other as soon as they discovered our
intention; and this they did, lining her bulwarks from her head-rails to
her taffrail, popping at us with muskets and pistols, thrusting at us
with pikes and cutlasses, and hacking at our hands and heads as we
endeavoured to climb her side and force our way over her bulwarks and in
on deck. But our lads were not to be daunted by any resistance, however
desperate. As we surged up alongside they dropped their oars, allowing
them to slide overboard and tow by the lanyards, and drawing pistol and
cutlass, leapt to their feet and, with a wild cheer, sprang on to the
boats' gunwales and thence to any foothold that they could find,
snapping their pistols in the faces of any who dared to show their heads
above the rail; while the marines thrust their bayonets through the open
ports into the legs of any individual who happened to be within their
reach, thus disconcerting the aim of many an otherwise deadly stroke.
For a few breathless seconds all was fire, smoke, and fury, pistols
cracking, steel rasping upon steel, cheers, execrations, groans, the
dull crunching sound of cutlasses sheering through muscle and bone, the
heavy fall of the stricken on deck, the scuffling of feet, and shouts of
defiance exchanged between the contending parties; then a few of us
contrived to get in on deck, forcing back the pirates and making room
for those who followed us, until all who were not too severely hurt to
climb the ship's side were inboard. There ensued a deadly hand-to-hand
fight in which quarter was neither asked for nor given. The pirates
seemed to number about three times as many as ourselves, and were a
truly desperate set of ruffians, fighting--as they well knew--with
halters round their necks, and doubtless preferring to die in the heat
of battle rather than perish ignominiously upon the scaffold.
For a few minutes we had all our work cut out to retain the slight
advantage that we had gained. But gradually our lads drove their
antagonists back until the latter were all grouped together in a dense
mass round the mainmast, with our people hemming them in on every side
and pressing them into such a compact crowd that at least half of them
were unable to strike an effective blow. They did what they could,
however, by hurling their empty pistols into our faces over the heads of
their comrades, and I was busily engaged in defending myself from the
attack of a herculean negro when one of these heavy missiles struck me,
the hammer taking me fairly in the centre of the forehead and so nearly
stunning me that for a moment I all but lost consciousness and was
completely thrown off my guard. The next second a terrific blow crashed
down upon my bare head--my hat having been lost earlier in the melee--
and I fell to the deck, my last conscious sensation being that I was
being trampled upon and by, as it seemed to me, an innumerable crowd of
people. Then I swooned.
When I recovered consciousness I found myself in my hammock, in the
sick-bay aboard the frigate, with a number of companions in misfortune
around me. At first I felt too utterly miserable to take much interest
in anything, for my head, swathed in bandages, was aching and smarting
so consumedly that for the first quarter of an hour or so I could not
bear even the subdued light that entered through the open ports, and was
obliged to keep my eyes closed; moreover, I was parched and burnt-up
with fever, as weak as a cat, and consumed with an intolerable thirst.
I attempted to turn in my hammock, but was unable to do so, and as I
still struggled one of the sick-bay attendants came to my side and asked
if he could do anything for me. I gasped out something to the effect
that I was perishing of thirst, whereupon he brought me a pannikin of
tepid water, dipped from a bucket that stood near one of the open ports,
and, raising me in my hammock, placed it to my lips. Tepid and insipid
as it actually was, I thought I had never tasted anything half so
delicious, and I not only drained it to the last drop, but asked for
more. This, however, he declined to give me without the surgeon's
direct permission, having, as he explained to me, been warned that when
I awoke I should probably be suffering severely from thirst, but that I
was only to be given a very limited quantity of liquid at the outset and
until the surgeon had had an opportunity to examine further into my
condition. The man, however, reported the fact of my return to
consciousness; and shortly afterward Wilson, the surgeon, came down to
see me.
Wilson's "bedside manner" was somewhat bluff, but, nevertheless,
judicious; for I had once heard him say, in a confidential moment, that
he always, upon principle, made light of his patients' aches and
ailments, as he had discovered, by long experience, that this had a good
effect upon the invalids, causing them to believe that there was never
anything very seriously wrong with them, and thus calling in the aid of
their imagination to assist in the curative process. This was
illustrated in his behaviour toward me upon the occasion of which I am
now speaking. He came and stood by the side of my hammock, looking down
upon me with a whimsical expression as he took my wrist in his hand and
pressed his fingers lightly upon my pulse.
"Put out your tongue," he ordered abruptly, and I did so obediently. He
glanced at it for a few seconds, then remarked:
"Humph! not much the matter with you, I see. How d'ye feel?"
I explained that my head was giving me excruciating pain, and that I
felt burnt-up with fever and thirst; at which he laughed.
"Pooh! pooh!" he exclaimed, "that's nothing. Thank your lucky stars
that you have got off so lightly as you have. Some of the poor fellows
here have lost a limb or two, while others of the boarding party have
lost the number of their mess altogether. Yours is simply a broken
head; and, since your skull appears to be abnormally thick, I daresay it
will very soon mend again. Aches badly, does it? Ah, well, that is an
excellent sign; but perhaps you had better remain on the sick list for a
few days, and keep to your hammock until the pain passes off--no good
going on duty while you are blind with headache, you know. And--yes,
now that I am here and you are awake I may as well look at your wound
again."
He walked over to the screen, put his head round the end of it, and
called sharply:
"Sentry, pass the word for Mr Burroughs to come to me; and ask him to
bring a basin of hot water, a sponge, a roll of bandage, and anything
else he thinks I am likely to want. Tell him that I am going to dress
Mr Delamere's head."
Then, returning to my side, he drew out his penknife and with quick,
gentle fingers proceeded to cut away a number of stitches that kept the
bandage in place, and when at length he had unwound it he flung it
deftly away behind him, though not so deftly but that I caught a glimpse
of it out of the corner of my eye and saw that it was drenched with
blood. By the time that he had removed the bandage, gently clipping
away, with a pair of scissors, the hair that stuck to it here and there,
Burroughs, the assistant surgeon, had turned up with hot water and a
number of odds and ends, and Wilson took the sponge in his hand, saying:
"Now, I shall probably hurt you a little; but don't yell, if you can
help it, because if you do you will disturb the poor fellows around you.
So set your teeth and, if you feel anything, just grin and bear it. I
will be as gentle as I can."
And he was gentle--no man could have been more so; nevertheless, during
the next quarter of an hour he inflicted so much agony upon me as he
extracted little splinters of bone with his forceps, and so on, that
long before he had finished I was drenched with perspiration, and felt
so sick that I finally swooned again; and he completed his operation
upon my senseless body.
That night, I afterward learned, I passed in a state of high delirium,
and for several days I had only a very vague idea of where I was and
what was happening around me; my predominating sensations being that the
top of my head was on fire and blazing furiously, while I was consumed
by fever and a thirst that was almost as exquisite a torture as the pain
of my head. The only radical difference between the two was that when I
was permitted to quench my thirst that particular form of torture was
alleviated for a few brief seconds, while the other was continuous and
distracting almost to the point of being unendurable. It seemed to me
that I lay for an age in that suffocating sick-bay, every moment of the
time being heavy with indescribable torment; but as a matter of fact I
was there little more than forty-eight hours, the skipper cracking on
for Jamaica, in order that several bad cases--of which I was one of the
worst--might have the advantage of the lofty, airy wards of the naval
hospital at Port Royal, where we arrived on the morning but one after
our attack upon the pirate brigantine. I may as well complete the story
of that adventure by saying--what I only learned afterward--that we
captured the vessel, with a loss to ourselves of five killed, and
eighteen wounded, of whom seven--including myself--were so badly hurt
that Wilson gravely doubted whether we should ever pull round. As for
the pirates, out of a crew of one hundred and twenty-six men,
twenty-three were found dead on her deck after we had taken her, and
fifty-four were wounded, some of them so desperately that no less than
eleven of them died before we anchored in Port Royal harbour. The
remainder were in due course brought to trial for piracy, and found
guilty. Five of them were hanged at Gallows Point, while the rest were
condemned to work on the roads in chains for the remainder of their
miserable lives.