A PRIZE FOR THE TAKING
"We shall see," said Captain Winterton, when he had listened to all
of the tale that he would hear. He turned about. "Boy," he cried, "go
speedily and send Mr. Rance in to me."
The boy departed in haste and in a moment there entered a junior
officer, who stared in frank curiosity at the three in the cabin.
"Mr. Rance," said the captain, "go aloft in person to the main truck
and look about you sharply. Come back and report what you see."
"Yea, yea, sir," the young man replied, and with that he was gone.
The captain stood by the cabin window and frowned. Plainly he had small
confidence in the good faith of the prisoner and regarded his story as
at best an attempt to save himself at the expense of his friends. The
gentleman of the humours, somewhat sobered by the captain's manner of
grave concern, returned to his desk, but sat tapping his fingers and
watching Philip Marsham.
It had instantly, of course, dawned upon the runaway boatswain that
his peril was more serious than he had had reason earlier to believe.
For supposing the unknown sail should in all truth be the Rose of
Devon,--and since she was cruising idly thereabouts nothing was more
probable,--he stood between the Devil, or at all events the Devil's
own emissary, Thomas Jordan, and a deeper sea than any ship has ever
sailed: the sea upon which many a man with less plain evidence of
piracy against him has embarked from a yardarm with a hempen collar
about his neck and a black cap over his eyes.
Who, pray, would accept for sober truth such a tale as any scoundrel
would make out of whole cloth to save himself from hanging? Despite all
he could do or say, he now saw plainly, he must stand convicted, in
their minds, of being at the very least a spy sent to learn the state
of affairs on board this tall ship in which he was now a prisoner.
Then back to the cabin came young Mr. Rance and very much excited did
he appear.
"Sir," he exclaimed, and stood in the door.
"Tell your tale."
"A ship lieth two cable's lengths from land on the farther side of the
point, and a boat hath set out from her and is following the shore as
if to reconnoitre."
"Ah," said the captain, "it is quite as I thought. No drums, mind you,
nor trumpets, Mr. Rance. Call the men to quarters by word of mouth.
Make haste and put springs on the cables if there be time before the
boat rounds the point. Bid the gunner make all preparations for action
and order a sharp watch kept; but order also that there be no sound or
appearance of unusual activity. Send me a corporal and a file of men,
and the master."
The gentleman at the desk chuckled.
"Come, boy, clear the table," said the captain.
The boy jumped and returned to his work.
The master came first, but the corporal and his men were close at the
master's heels.
"Take this fellow to the gun room, clap him into irons, and set a man
to watch him."
"Yea, yea. Come, fellow, march along."
And thus sending before them Boatswain Marsham, erstwhile of the Rose
of Devon frigate, the corporal and his men departed from the cabin.
There were guns on the right hand and the left--ordnance of a size to
sink the Rose of Devon with a broadside. There were sailormen thronging
between-decks in numbers to appall the young prisoner who came down
among them nearly naked from his swim. Though no greater of burthen
than the Rose of Devon, the ship was better armed and better manned,
and all signs told of the stern discipline of a man-of-war.
The alternatives that Phil Marsham faced, as he sat in shackles with no
spirit to reply to the jibes of the sailors and watched men stripped to
the waist and moving deftly among the guns, were not those a man would
choose. If his old shipmates took this tall and handsome ship, a blow
on the head and a burial over the side was the kindest treatment he
could expect of them. And if not--the gallows loomed beyond a Court of
Admiralty. For hours the hum of voices went up and down the main deck
and for hours Boatswain Marsham sat with the bolts upon his legs and
wrists and saw the life of the ship go on around him. The men leaped
here and there at a word, or lolled by their guns waiting for orders.
The night wore on, and nodding, Phil thought of the two ships lying
one on each side of the point of land and by all appearances two quiet
merchantmen. Yet one, he knew to his sorrow, smelled devilishly of
brimstone; and the other, in which he now sat a prisoner, though her
ports were closed and her claws sheathed, was like some great tiger
watching through half-shut eyes a bold, adventurous goat.
As the night wore on, he dared hope that the reconnoitering boat had
returned to her ship with news that had sent her away in haste, whereby
there was a chance that his tale might yet be taken for the truth that
it was; and the longer he waited the higher rose his hope, and with
the better reason. But an hour or more after midnight he heard men
beginning to talk as if there was something new in the wind, and the
nearest gunner put his ear to a cat-hole.
"The dogs are out; I hear oars," he whispered. "Yea, though they are
rowing softly, I swear I can hear oars."
A hush came over the ship and those below heard faintly a hail given on
deck.
Distant sounds came and went like whispers out of the sky, then
somewhere outside the ship a great shouting arose and one of the men at
a starboard gun cried gleefully, with a round oath, "Verily they are
bent on boarding us, lads! Their foolish audacity seasons the term of
all our weary waiting."
"Hark! They are hailing!" cried another.
"Come, strike your flag. Have an end of all this talk," a distant voice
called. Whereat Philip Marsham, who knew the voice, thought that though
their audacity cost him his life it was in its own mad way superb.
The reply was inaudible below, but a boat crashed against the ship.
There was a burst of yelling, followed by a rattle of musketry, then a
voice boomed down, "Haul up your ports and run out your guns!"
At that the men beside the guns sprang up with running and calling and
the ports flew open and the sounds from without became suddenly louder
and clearer. On the one hand were boys handing up filled budge-barrels;
on the other were gunners with linstocks ready and powder for the
priming. Then, "Ho, Master Gunner," a great voice roared, "withhold
your fire! The boats are under the guns and too near for a fair shot!"
It was such a moment as a man remembers always, for there was the smoke
of powder in the air, with a din of splashing and cursing, and overhead
a great hubbub, then silence save for the quick beat of oars.
"See! See!" cried the men. "There go their boats, splintered and all
but sunk! And see! There go ours! To your oars, lads, to your oars, ere
their ship hath time to flee! See! There they go! Yea, and there go we!"
The Old One had made his last blunder. He had come by night, thinking
to board a peaceful merchantman laden with a rich cargo, and had found
himself at the head of his score of men on the deck of a man-of-war.
To all those below, but most of all to Philip Marsham chained in the
gun room, it was a blind, confusing affair; but the sounds told the
story; and though darkness hid the blood that was spilled, there was no
mistaking the cries for quarter and the shrieks of agony.
Nor was there need for haste to reach the Rose of Devon, since the
men left as keepers of the ship were too few to make sail. Captain
Charles Winterton of the King's navy himself boarded the dark frigate
by starlight, and a capital lark he found it, for behind his stern mien
was a lively taste for such adventure. With lusty shouting he swept
the handful of men from her deck, and having put a prize crew and his
lieutenant in charge of her, he brought back a few more prisoners to
join company with the luckless boarders he had sent down to be locked
in irons below.
They were sad and angry gentlemen, for there are those to whom the
laughter of a hundred sailors is worse than death by the sword. The
first of them all to enter the gun room was Tom Jordan. His cheek
was gashed and his hair was singed and blood smeared his shirt from
shoulder to shoulder and one arm hung limp and broken; but though he
was in great pain he smiled, and when they led him into the gun room
and he saw Philip Marsham with bolts on wrists and ankles, he laughed
aloud.
The fellow was a very mark and pattern of a scoundrel, but he had
the courage and spirit of a hero, and had he first gone to sea under
another king than James or Charles he might in some overwhelming danger
have saved England. Great admirals are made of such timber--bold,
resolute, utterly dauntless--and any bold man might have fallen into
the same trap that had caught Tom Jordan. (Nay, had nothing warned
Captain Winterton or aroused his suspicions, there was a fighting
chance for Tom Jordan to have taken his ship from him even so.) But
Tom Jordan had gone to sea in the days when the navy was going to the
dogs, and, like many another lad of spirit who left the King's service
to join the pirates, he had adventured with the Algerians before he led
the gentlemen of Bideford. And at last, hazarding a final effort to
retrieve his luck, he had unwittingly thrust his head into the halter.
Yet, though they had broken his body, they had failed to touch his
courage; despite his pain, he could smile and even laugh. Turning his
great grief into a jest, he cried, "Holla, O bravest of boatswains!
This is a joy I had not looked for. It seems that, if hang I must, I
shall not hang alone." And laughing again, right merrily, he swooned
away, which Captain Charles Winterton, having himself come down with
the others to see them all shackled, watched with quiet interest.
They brought down the carpenter, who was shaking like a man with an
ague, and his beard waggled as he shook. They brought down Martin
Barwick, whose face was drawn and haggard, and his hand rubbed his
throat, for it itched in a prophetic manner. Then came Harry Malcolm,
who stopped before Phil and spat at him and cursed him, and Paul Craig,
who had neither eye nor thought for any one besides himself, and a
dozen others of whom there was not one that failed to revile at their
erstwhile boatswain. A hapless time of it Philip Marsham had among
them, but it added little to his great burden of misery.
Nor, for the matter of that, did reviling content them; for toward
morning, when the others were dozing, Harry Malcolm, whom they had
locked to a longer chain, crawled over to where Phil lay and very
craftily tried to kill him with bare hands. The guard cried out, but
instead of stopping, the man redoubled his efforts to throttle the lad
whom he had seized from behind when he was asleep; whereupon the guard
struck a sharp blow with the butt of his musket, and when the corporal
had come running and had felt of Harry Malcolm's wrist and had listened
for his heart and had turned him over on his back, he cursed the guard
with fluent oaths for robbing the gallows.