A NIGHT ATTACK.
THE night was a thing of perfection, on the sea. The moon rode aloft and
its light danced merrily on the tips of the waves. A smart breeze pouted
the sails on the “Captain Spencer” till she plowed her way like a
skimming albatross through the phosphorescence of the southern field of
ocean.
On deck the beef-eaters, Adam and William Phipps, with the mate and a
jovial boatswain, were in high spirits. They were nearing their goal,
after a run which would have awakened some sort of a rollicking devil in
a deacon. Captain Phipps had felt a spell of bubbling coming upon him
for days. It always did, the moment he dropped Boston out of sight, over
the green, serrated edge of the riotous Atlantic. Therefore he had
broken off the neck of a bottle of good, red juice, which had lain for a
year in the hold of the brig, and this liquified comfort had circulated
generously.
The beef-eaters, arm in arm, were now spraddling about the deck in a
dance of which Terpsichore had never been guilty, even in her A B C’s of
the art. The boatswain was furnishing music from a tin pipe, the one
virtue of which was that it was tireless.
At length he altered the tune, or at least, so he said, and after a bar
or two of the measure had lost itself in the sails and shrouds, Adam
cleared his throat for a song.
“In the Northern sea I loved a maid,
As cold as a polar bear,
But of taking cold I was not afraid—
Sing too rel le roo,
And the wine is red—
For a kiss is a kiss, most anywhere,
When a man’s heart goes to his head.
Ho! the heart of a man is an onion, boys,
An onion, boys, with a shedding skin.
And it never gets old, for you off with its hide,
When you meet a new love, and it’s fresh within!
In the southern sea I loved a lass,
As warm as a day in June;
And oh that a summer should ever pass—
Sing too rel le roo.
And the wine is red—
For my summer, my lads, was gone too soon,
With a man’s heart gone to his head.
Ho, the heart of a man, etc.
In the Western seas I loved a miss,
As shy as the sharks that swim;
And it’s duties we owe to the art of the kiss—
Sing too rel le roo,
And the wine is red—
If a maiden so shy should be took with a whim,
And a man’s heart gone to his head.
Ho, the heart of a man is an onion, boys,
An onion, boys, with a shedding skin.
And it never grows old, for you off with its hide,
When you meet a new love, and it’s fresh within!”
There were more of these verses, one to fit every sea, of which there be
more than seven, as the song proved. The beef-eaters and Captain Phipps
joined in the chorus, for the boatswain gave it a rare flavor of music.
At the wheel, the second mate had jammed a marlin spike between the
spokes, to hold the brig on the wind, and sitting cosily down had gone
fast asleep. The lookout aloft had become absorbed in the singing, to
which he was bending every attention. In the midst of a chorus, which
might and might not have been the finale of Adam’s ditty, there was a
sudden alarm that rang from one end to the other of the brig, and all
too abruptly a black hulk of a ship, with never a light, came sizzling
the brine in her speed, the length of a few anchor-chains away, and made
for the “Spencer” with dire intent.
The music ceased as if it had been cut off with a knife. Scuttling
swiftly to the side of the ship and then bawling orders, and chasing to
the armory in hot haste, Phipps, Adam and the others yelled that a
pirate was upon them. The words, like an incantation of marvelous
potency, summoned men like so many gnomes, from hatches, companion-ways
and fo’castle, on the instant.
The brig’s deck suddenly swarmed with its own men, running hither and
thither, shouting, stumbling, swearing, while Phipps and Rust came
darting back with arms full of cutlasses, pistols and muskets, gathered
helter-skelter, and now thrown with a great clatter upon the planking.
Scrambling here to arm themselves, the sailors heard a crunch, felt the
brig shudder beneath their feet and beheld half a dozen iron hooks come
flying over the gunwale from the pirate, and saw them jerk snug up to
the rail, as the raiders pulled taut on the lines that quickly lashed
the two vessels together.
A black cascade of men came leaping from the pirate, landing heavily on
the “Spencer’s” deck. Their pistols blazed yellow exclamation points of
fire, as the men struck on their feet, and then with a clash of steel on
steel, Rust, Phipps and half a score of sailors rushed upon the invaders
and a mad scuffle and melée ensued.
Rust was conscious of a few things about him in the confusion. He
thought how cold the naked blades looked, slashing in the moonlight; he
heard the yells and curses against the background of a slapping sail
that was making a sound like a weird alarm; he felt the strength of the
big rascal, who was cutting at him with that brute force and disregard
for skill which is so deadly to engage. He thought the fellow would
slice his saber in two. He lost no time in feinting. The brute of a
buccaneer lurched forward to sweep his blade clean through Adam’s body
and then suddenly a moonbeam seemed to cleave its way through the
ruffian’s neck. He dropped his sword and spun around with his head
lolling sideways and went down.
Adam rushed to the taff-rail. The pirate ship was straining at the ropes
by which her hooks secured the two black hulks together. Smiting these
taut ropes with mad fury, Rust saw the pirate drift away and the gulf of
water widen between the two vessels, while the scoundrels aboard the
robber-ship yelled a discordant chorus of curses.
Then back into the fray, the din of which was rising, as wounded men
smarted and yelled and rushed upon one another anew, like snarling
wolves, Adam darted, pistoling a creature who came running upon him and
then heaving him overboard as the fellow writhed on the planks.
The sailors of the “Spencer” had somewhat the best of the conflict,
which was a match in scuffling hotly all over the deck. Less than a
dozen of the pirates had been able to leap aboard before the vessels
were apart, and their bawlings for help to their ship had been rendered
vain, for the moment, by Adam’s prompt action in cutting the lines.
However, the sea-scoundrels were versed in fighting, where the sailors
were merely rough-and-tumble sons of Cain whose rage was their principal
accoutrement. They were at their adversaries, hammer and tongs. They
were wrestling with some, hacking at others, swearing at all. It was a
small pandemonium in which it was next to impossible to distinguish
friend from foe.
Phipps, like the woodsman from Maine that he was, hewed his way from one
group to another, shouting to his men, hoarsely. The beef-eaters, as
inseparable as when they were dancing, chose but one man between them,
and one such they peeled to a horrid core, as the demon rushed upon
their sharpened weapons.
Adam stepped in a crawling line of gore, its head silver-tipped in the
moonlight, and slipped till it wrenched him to hold his footing. He saw
the sailors crowding three of the pirates to the rail and, joining them,
battered the cutlasses from their fists and helped to hoist them bodily
over and into the sea.
The din had hardly abated anything of its volume. The scene was one of
the maddest activity. But the robbers not already done for, were now at
bay against the masts, the capstan or the rail. One tripped backward
over a coil of rope. The next instant he was screaming help and murder
at the top of his lungs. This he continued even after a dreadful rattle
and spluttering came in his voice.
Over the reddened decks one or two wounded creatures were crawling, one
wiping gore from his face and flinging it off his fingers. Swords and
pistols lay about. One dying human was lying on his side, with his arm
extended and his index finger slowly crooked and straightened and
crooked again, as if he beckoned to death to come more quickly.
The sail began to slap at the mast again, as the brig swung bow on in
the wind and stopped in stays. The croaked curses of the pirates, on
their ship, which was now again drawing swiftly toward the “Spencer,”
made Adam and Phipps suddenly run to the brig’s brass gun, which was
looking dumbly forth toward the pirate.
Rust had filled his pocket with loose powder. The cannon was already
loaded. He poured a small pyramid of powder on the vent and he and
Phipps, with the combined strength of two giants, slewed the piece
around till a ball from the pirate could have been tossed into its
yawning muzzle.
From the galley, the cook came running with blazing coals on a shovel.
He had been watching the gun. The pirate missed her mark. She came up in
stays, just as the “Spencer” got again on the wind. The bows of the
robber-craft were almost in touch with the brig.
Adam saw that the cannon would fail to sweep the pirate’s decks—that the
shot would be practically wasted, if it went at the gun’s present
elevation. With a sudden impulse he leaped astride its smooth, brass
nose and bore it down, depressing the muzzle toward the water, just as
the crazy cook turned his shovel upside down on the primed vent.
There was suddenly a deafening roar. The concussion shook every man’s
feet from under him. The gun leaped backward, like a bucking horse, and
Rust went sprawling on the decks, for he had been left abruptly, with no
support beneath him.
The shot tore a hole in the pirate the size of a hogshead, squarely on
her water-line, in her starboard bow. She came about in the wind and the
sea rushed into her hold in a torrent.
A dreadful silence ensued when the air was clear of the detonation. Then
a moan from a dying wretch on the “Spencer’s” deck seemed to touch into
being a chorus of yells from the doomed pirate, where the murderous crew
found themselves armed to the teeth and yet sinking, defenseless, into
the very jaws of death. Their sails slackened again and shook with a
sound as of funeral shrouds.
The “Spencer” scudded away into the boulevard of silver which the moon
was paving with its light. The sinking pirate gathered the cannon’s
smoke about her and settled swiftly, but not in silence, into the grave
that fitted so snugly about its body.
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