OVERBOARD.
The _Tartar_ ran rapidly with the breeze. Her white canvas bellied
out before it; her tall and slender topmast, that tapered away aloft
like a fishing-rod, bent as she rolled from side to side; and all her
running gear was blown out in the bend, while far ahead streamed her
long red pennant, rippling on the air like a coach whip. The land
was seen low at the horizon; but I knew not what part of the coast we
were off.
Jack Joyce shared his breakfast with me, and by his interest I
obtained pen, ink, and paper, from the sergeant of marines, to write
a letter home. While thus engaged, under the lee of the cutter's
revolving gun, with a cask for a desk--writing with aching heart and
head, a tremulous hand, and eyes full of tears--I was teased and
mocked by the pressed men, who peeped over my shoulder, punched my
right elbow, and squirted tobacco juice from their quids upon my
paper. This continued for some time, until I lost all patience; and
snatching up a marlinspike, gave one fellow a blow on the head, which
rolled him senseless into the starboard scuppers. After this
ebullition of wrath, which Jack Joyce warmly commended, I was
permitted to finish my letter (Heaven only knows what agony of spirit
I poured out in its pages) in peace. I consigned it to the care of
Jack Joyce, who faithfully promised to have it transmitted ashore for
me.
Postage was not in those days what it is now. Whether Jack ever sent
it I cannot tell, as it never reached its destination.
Two or three days passed monotonously away. We kept close in shore,
as Mr. Cranky, though not afraid of French cruisers, was anxious to
avoid them, for his small cutter being filled with men like a
slaveship, was not in fighting order. We were now off the coast of
England, and on the third night saw the light on Flamborough Head
sparkling like a star among the darkening waves on our lee bow.
Ages seemed now to have elapsed since I had been torn from my home,
while the events of years ago seemed to have occurred but yesterday!
While we were still creeping along the shore, Jack Joyce came to me
one evening, about sunset, when we were tacking with a head wind, in
dangerous and shoal water.
"Can you swim, Master Ellis?" he asked, in a whisper, as we leaned
over the lee bow together.
"Yes," said I.
"Well?"
"Like a fish," I replied, confidently.
"That is lucky--for I have a thought in my head."
"What is it?" I inquired, anxiously.
"You must escape to-night."
"To-night--when--how?"
"Hush!--yes, to-night, or your chances afterwards won't be worth a
piece of spun yarn. We are drawing near Yarmouth, and as there are
lots of the North Sea fleet there, the chances are ten to one that
all our pressed men and boys will be turned over to the first
line-o'-battle-ship that hoists a signal as being short of hands.
And once there, there you must remain, as the impressed are never
allowed to leave the ship; they might as well be chained to the guns,
so you must leave the cutter to-night. Do you see that spark away
down to leeward among the waves just now?"
"Yes," said I breathlessly, as the marine pointed out what really
seemed to be a mere spark that was lost, and seen alternately, as the
yellow and frothy breakers of the shoal-water rose and fell between
it and the cutter.
"That is Sandridge Light. I know it well, and the channel we must
pass through. We shall run close in to the light, and put the cutter
about when within a quarter of a mile of it. Then is the time to let
yourself gently into the water, float till we are some distance off,
and then strike out for the lighthouse. I shall be the sentry aft,
so don't be afraid if an alarm is given, and I am ordered to _fire_
after you. Strike out, I say, boldly and steadily for the lighthouse
steps, and God bless you, Master Ellis. When you get home, tell the
old woman--I beg pardon--I mean the good lady, your mother, what poor
Jack Joyce the marine did for you, and she'll mayhap think of me
sometimes of a Sunday."
He withdrew abruptly, lest we might be seen conferring together, and
left me to my own anxious and bewildering reflections. My heart beat
wildly and my head grew giddy with hope and the anticipation of
baffling my captors and tormentors, for I viewed Lieutenant Cranky
and the crew of his white slave ship as both.
A haze was fortunately setting over the water--I say fortunately for
me, as the long clear twilight of June might have made my projected
escape a perilous experiment. This haze rendered the approaching
night more dusky, and compelled Mr. Cranky to take sail off the
cutter.
His boatswain, a weather-beaten old salt, who knew all the dangerous
shoals they were among, as if they were his own patrimony, now took
the wheel, and I saw his iron frame planted firmly on the deck, while
the red glare of the binnacle-lamps shone on his nut-brown visage,
his bearded chin, and bare brawny throat, as he fixed his eyes in
succession on the compass, the cutter's sails, the rising light of
Sandridge, and a single star that twinkled alternately on each side
of the topmast, above the cross-trees.
Close by, stood his crusty commander, wearing a tarpaulin hat and
coarse pea-jacket, watching intently the compass-box with his
solitary but fiery orb, to see how the cutter headed, and uttering
from time to time deep growls of satisfaction, as his old shipmate,
with unerring hand, kept her full and steady.
"If this wind holds," said he, "in an hour we shall be past Sandridge
Light--it rises fast--and then we shall be out of this infernal
shoal-water. What a devil of a bubble it kicks up under the counter!"
In an hour then, thought I, my fate will have been decided; I shall
be drowned or free!
So cloudy or hazy had the sky become, that I was not without the most
cheering hope of achieving an escape. The waves had become black as
ink, though flecked with sandy foam, as they went in long and crested
rollers over the shoaly ridges. I could nowhere see the land; but I
cared not for that--the beacon light was my guiding star, and the
bourne of all my present hopes!
The cutter was running towards it, close hauled on the larboard tack,
and I soon made out the beacon to be a huge octagonal edifice of
timber, planked, tarred, and pitched, like a ship's side, and placed
upon a long ridge of sand, from which it rose on piers of wood and
iron, inserted deeply in a submerged rock. I discovered all this by
a night-glass, through which the old quartermaster, with wonderful
condescension, permitted me to peep for a moment. I then crept away;
and after securing a strong line to one of the starboard swivel-guns,
coiled up the slack of it, and lay down close by, pretending to be
asleep, till the tender altered her course, which was to be my signal
for starting.
In about a quarter of an hour--a quarter that seemed like an age to
me--I heard Mr. Cranky hoarsely give the orders requisite for putting
the _Tartar_ about. The wheel was sharply revolved, the gaff topsail
flapped heavily, and still more heavily did the immense boom swing
round as it was jibed, and the smart cutter, when her square sail
yard was braced sharp up, fell off on the other tack. At that
moment, when all was hubbub and noise--bracing and hauling and
coiling up ropes--I grasped my line, and slid noiselessly, and
feet-foremost, into the sea! I instantly let go the rope, with a
prayer of thankfulness on my lips, as if, in doing so, I was leaving
for ever the place of my captivity.
I felt myself borne along with the cutter, and pressed against her
side for some seconds; and it was only by exerting all the strength
with which despair induced me that I was enabled, by striking out
vigorously, to release myself from this strange influence, by which,
in the water, a greater body always attracts the lesser. Then I lay
still, floating, and scarcely daring to breathe, as the cutter passed
me; anon I struck out, as Jack Joyce advised, "boldly and steadily,"
for the beacon, the three lights of which cast three long and
tremulous lines of radiance over the frothy shoal water that rolled
around it.
I had scarcely taken three strokes, when the boatswain's voice
exclaimed, over the cutter's quarter,--
"Shorten sail--a boat, a boat--man overboard!"
"Pipe away, the crew of the dingy," added the quartermaster.
"A deserter!" roared Mr. Cranky, with one of his terrible oaths;
"come back, you rascally porpus--heave to, or it will prove the worse
for you! Fire, sentry--fire, and send him to Davy Jones or the
devil, with an ounce of lead in his skull for ballast!"
In terror I looked back, and saw a marine (but not Joyce, who
unfortunately had been posted forward), in the act of levelling his
musket at me. There was a flash as he fired, and I heard the ball
strike the water, from which it sent up a spout near me. With a
tact, for which, under all the circumstances, I give myself no small
credit, lest another of these blue pills might follow, I uttered a
loud cry as if struck by the shot, and dashed about in the water, as
if disabled and sinking.
"There, d--n you, take that whoever you are, and go down to feed the
fishes," I heard the old savage Cranky cry, with a triumphant laugh,
as the cutter passed slowly and solemnly, like a tall and shadowy
spectre, into the gathering mist, and disappeared, leaving nothing
astern but her white wake and me.