KNUCKLEDUSTER'S STORY.
"I was first in the smuggling line, and many are the good cargoes of
Nantz and Geneva I have run ashore all along the coast between
Hartlepool and the Spurnhead, in the bights and bays, clefts and
creeks, known only to ourselves and our friends on shore; till once,
after a hard chase, our sloop was sunk by a twelve-pound shot that
took her between wind and water, from a king's cutter, commanded by
old Cranky, who was then in the Preventive Service. This was in
Brellington Bay, off the coast of Yorkshire, and down she went, with
all her brandy-kegs, and what was worse, all her hands aboard, at
least, all except me; so I was taken and condemned to serve seven
years in a man-of-war.
"I deserted in the West Indies, and joined some lads of the knife and
pistol, who manned a long, low, sharply-prowed polacca, that carried
by turns at her gaff-peak the flag of every nation on earth, and had
a long brass eighteen pounder amidships, that did some mischief, I
can tell you, along the shore of the Spanish Main.
"Tiring of that, I sewed a thousand doubloons, the general stock of
the crew, who were all drunk at the time, in the waistband of my
trowsers, and shoved off in a whale-boat, on a dark night, when the
polacca was creeping under easy sail near the high headlands of
Dominica, and worked my way home on board of an old sugar-ship. In
England, between Jews and girls about Portsmouth, my doubloons melted
like snow on the sea, and I was glad to take the keepership of
Sandridge Light, to save me from the press-gang.
"We had some rare doings in that lighthouse, for a night seldom
passed without stupid craft being lost; for, d'ye see, the machinery
of the lamps often went wrong--at least, so we said--and the devilish
lights went out, at the very time they were most wanted. Well, we
were burned out of that, as you know; and though I escaped to Compton
Rennel, Broken-nosed Bill and Mother Snatchblock, an old girl who was
very fond of me, were shrivelled up like a couple of castanas on the
hob of the galley fire.
"One night I found myself at Hull, entered as a foremast man aboard
of a Quebec timber-ship, when there rose an outcry in the docks that
press-gangs of the West-India fleet were out, and that the gates were
all guarded by lobsters from the barracks. You know all about that
too, for by you I was taken; and I may tell you plainly that for many
a day after that I vowed to be revenged for the trick, though I
suppose you only did your duty, my young cockerel. You know, also,
how I was taken prisoner and employed by that false devil of a French
colonel at Martinique, and all about his pretty little wife.
"Well, within a week after the storming of La Fleur d'Epée, a smart
French sloop that lay in the carenage of Los Santos was taken by Sir
George Grey, of the _Boyne_, to use as a despatch-boat, and on board
of her he sent the gunner's mate, with four hands--of whom I was
one--to convey letters back to Martinique.
"The devil, who has always taken the greatest interest in me, had
surely the entire arrangement of this affair; for the gunner's mate
was the man, of all on board the fleet, whom I hated most, for three
times he had caught me borrowing his rumbo, and had me triced up to
the gangway for a dozen--three dozen for three glasses of grog! Once
he missed a purse, and as its alleged contents were found in my
hammock by the three fellows who were now shipped with me, I received
four dozen, well laid on with a pickled cat, and fainted; but was
well soused by buckets of salt water to bring me round again; then I
forfeited all pay and prize-money for six months. No sooner did the
sloop put to sea, than all these things came crowding into my memory,
and my mind was soon made up to skewer the gunner's mate and his
three men, to plunder the sloop, run her ashore on the first land I
came to, and then trust to Fortune and old Davy for whatever might
turn up next.
"Catch me under a commodore's broad pennant again, thought I, if I
can get this craft into my own hands, and make a clean run for it!
"We bent new canvass on the sloop in the carenage, and passed through
the Rade des Saintes just as the morning gun was fired from La Fleur
d'Epée and the union-jack went up where the tricolour had come down a
week before. While bending the canvass we had a carpenter's gang
aboard from the frigate, and from one of their chests I took the loan
of a fine sharp axe, made like an Indian tomahawk. This I hid in my
belt, and buttoned my jacket over the blade. We had a fine run all
day after leaving Los Santos; the wind was not quite aft; but this
all the better suited the trim of a fore-and-aft rig like that of the
cutter.
"Evening was closing, and already the Point Jacques of Dominica was
visible, and bearing a point or two on our lee-bow. We had the jib
and staysail, the squaresail, the fore-and-aft mainsail, and the gaff
topsail set. The little cutter skimmed along like a flying-fish, and
I had the tiller, when the gunner's mate--who was a handsome young
fellow, by the way--came up from the cabin, and swore that I was not
keeping her full enough.
"I said something in reply--I don't know what--belike it was 'Belay
your jawing-tackle,' not being in a particularly pleasant mood; but
he snatched the coil of a rope off a belaying-pin, cast a knot upon
it, and laid it across my back five or six times, saying,--
"'D--n you! you rebellious lubber; do you dare to reply to me? Look
out, sir, or by ---- I'll have you keelhauled from the yardarm, to
teach you to keep your eyes open!'
"I knew that the gunner's mate was a tearing, swearing fellow, who
did his duty well, and valued no man a quid of tobacco; so this time
I did not reply; but I thought much, and, slipping my right hand into
the breast of my pea-jacket, felt the sharp edge of my little
hatchet, and whistled with quiet satisfaction, while the gunner's
mate, after giving a glance aloft, descended into the cabin.
"On peeping through the skylight, I could see that he was writing by
the glimmer of a ship-lantern, and he often paused to look at a
portrait. It represented an old lady--his mother, as I afterwards
learned. He cut off a lock of his hair with his clasped knife, and
put it on the table, to send home to the old Woman, no doubt. At
this moment two of my messmates were below; the third was sitting in
the lee-bow, smoking quietly, so I lashed the helm with the
tiller-rope, and stole softly behind him.
"'Jack,' said I, 'do you think that _is_ Point Jacques of Dominica,
for I have my doubts about it?'
"He started, and turning to me, asked if I was unwell, and offered to
take the helm, or ask a glass of grog for me; there was something in
my eyes or face which startled him, and I _felt_ that they had an
expression scarcely human. Yet my tone and manner were calm and
collected, though my heart was raging like a hell within my breast.
"'Look!' I repeated; 'is that Point Jacques with the sulphur mountain
over it!'
"He turned his eyes towards the coast.
"At that moment I swung my axe aloft--it crashed into the back part
of his skull, and Jack fell prone with his face upon the gunnel; I
grasped the axe with my teeth, seized him by the legs, and shot him
over into the sea, where he sank like a stone.
"This made some noise, however, and one of those below put up his
head inquiringly from the fore-hatch; just as he did so, I rushed at
him with a yell, and by one blow of the axe cleft him to the nose!
He sank to the foot of the ladder on the deck below. On seeing this,
his messmate, supposing that the cutter was boarded by French or
Caribs, came rushing up with his cutlass, but I met him with one fell
swing of my weapon. Missing his head, it fell on his collar-bone;
his sword-arm dropped; he sank against the combing of the hatchway,
and glared at me with a ghastly and bewildered expression; but as he
attempted to crawl on deck, I soon despatched him by repeated
blows--for now when I saw blood, mine was boiling like liquid lava.
"With another yell of mad triumph I dragged his body to leeward, shot
it into the sea, and it vanished amidst the white foam that smoked
under the counter of the cutter, as she flew from wave to wave.
(At this point of his dreadful narrative, Knuckleduster's face glowed
purple with excitement; his eyes glared like two hot cinders; his
thick coarse nostrils were dilated, and he bit his swollen lips to
repress the passionate triumph of the infernal fury he seemed to feel
again.)
"As he fell into the sea, my axe dropped with him. If the gunner's
mate came up with cutlass or pistols, a death as sudden as any I had
bestowed would be my reward! I thought of dropping a cold shot on
his head through the skylight, forgetting for the moment that the
cutter was unarmed. Then I caught up a handspike from the windlass,
and was rushing aft just as he stepped on deck. The first view he
had of me, and the blood with which I was covered, seemed to explain
everything. He glanced round for a weapon, and then sprang forward,
as full of confidence as a frigate with a free sheet, and tried to
grapple, barehanded, with me; but retiring a pace or two, to give the
handspike full swing, I hurled it again and again on his head and
shoulders till he sank powerless and motionless at my feet. Then I
tore a ring from his finger, and a watch and purse from his pocket,
as being things that were of no use to him or the fishes either; and
as he was too heavy for me to lift, I triced up the lee
quarter-board, and shoved him through it into the sea.
"Dead men tell no tales--and the fourth deed was done!
"I was alone in the cutter--alone on the sea!
"To be alone was to be independent; to be independent was to be free.
I felt no compunction for what I had done; these men were my enemies,
and I could have slain them all over again had the double deed been
to do.
"I descended to the little cabin, where the lantern was still
burning. On the table lay the letter which the gunner's mate had
been writing, and the ink was yet wet on it. It was to his old
mother at Greenwich, saying all his back pay and prize-money were
lodged to her account in London; to keep her heart easy and be jolly,
as she would have him by her side again, and as Sir John Jervis had
promised him promotion for his conduct at La Fleur d'Epée; that all
he could send home was a lock of hair for her and Emmy, and a great
deal more bosh of the same kind; so I laughed as I read, and tore it
to fritters.
"What! you groan, do you, Mr. Ellis?--groan like the wind sighing
through a lee scupper or the galley funnel! Why, you swab of a
sojer, we are both fighting men, only that you fight for honour and
humbug, I for plunder and pay!
"In a locker I found a bottle of brandy, two case-bottles of skiedam,
and some wine; so I set to, and drank from them all in
succession--raw, with the jacket off, none of your grog for me--till
the whole cabin seemed full of cloven heads, gashed faces, and
gunner's mates; and then sinking on the deck, I remembered no more of
that night, or it may be of the next day--or, for aught I know, of
the next after that.
"On recovering, I found myself in the dark, and half in the water.
Thirst--thirst, as if the flames of that hot place the parsons preach
about were in my throat, and in my lower spirit-room, assailed me. I
groped about for some time without being able to comprehend my
circumstances, or where the deuce I was. By the motion and sounds I
knew that I was on board some craft, and at sea; but _how_--for her
strange position puzzled me. I groped about, half gasping, the while
for air, and, as I felt with my hands the details of the woodwork
around, gradually, but surely, a horrible conviction came over me. I
was still in the cabin of the sloop, but its position was _inverted_;
the upper deck was below me, and the lower deck above! I was in mirk
darkness, and felt the water rising above my knees. There was a
sucking, gurgling sound with every heave of the sea; but this could
be easily accounted for by the air, which was confined in the hull of
the cutter, and had no means of escape.
"I now understood the whole catastrophe!
"While I had been in a state of stupor, a breeze or squall, mayhap
the same squall that foundered your ship, had arisen. Left to
herself, the cutter's sails had been thrown aback, her main-boom had
jibed; she had been _capsized_, and was now floating, keel upmost, in
the sea; floating, I knew not where, with me imprisoned helplessly
and dying of hunger, thirst, terror, and suffocation, (but I cannot
add remorse,) in her dark, inverted, and waterlogged cabin!
"I felt the fishes, cold and slimy, darting about and touching me.
What, if a shark, even of the smallest size, found its way _up_ the
companion hatch into my dreadful floating tomb! The idea nearly
drove me mad. Amidst water which I dared not drink, I endured the
most maddening thirst, and envied the dead body of my second victim,
which, or shall I say _whom_, I supposed to be floating in the
forehold.
"How long I had been in this wretched condition there were no means
of determining, neither could I distinguish day from night. I
searched about for the bottles that were left on the cabin table,
resolving to drink myself into a state of stupefaction, from which I
might never wake more; but sought in vain. I found the locker like
everything else, _inverted_, and, of course, empty.
"My thirst was an overwhelming agony; moreover, I endured great cold;
my limbs were cramped, and hideous faces, smeared with blood, winked
their goggle eyes and grinned at me, amid the dense obscurity which
was almost palpable.
"At times it seemed as if the capsized cutter sank deeper in the
water; and on these occasions I dared neither move, breathe, or
think; for though I had recklessly slain others, I was haunted by an
awful dread of dying there.
"Once I thought that the jaws of a huge shark yawned beside me, and
in a paroxysm of terror, I swooned, as they seemed to engulf me.
"On recovering, some time after, half-choked and half-drowned, I
started up with a howl of despair, and beat madly against the cabin
wall with my clenched hands, till they were covered with blood and
bruises. Was I deceived, or was it reality? A sound outside seemed
to reply.
"I heard a kind of grating noise without, and then the blows of some
instrument--an axe or hammer--rang again and again like thunder in my
excited ears.
"The blows were redoubled, and I continued to knock and to shout. At
last a plank of the inner sheathing was started in the side of one of
the starboard berths, and a vivid stream of light burst blindingly
into the darkness around me. Springing to it, I thrust up my head
and found alongside a boat full of men, who had seen the capsized
cutter from their vessel, and had come off to reconnoitre. They had
fortunately heard me shouting or hammering in my prison, and by means
of a hatchet proceeded to investigate the cause of this noise.
"They drew me out, and then judge of my horror, when the first man
whose eyes encountered mine, was the gunner's mate, sitting pale as
death in the stern-sheets of the boat with the tiller-ropes in his
hands.
"On beholding him, I tried to leap into the sea, but was seized and
lashed to the boat-thwarts by a rope, and while the foundered cutter,
on the air escaping as if with a heavy sigh, from her cabin, filled
and sank out of sight, I was conveyed on board the vessel of my
deliverers. She proved to be the _George Third_ of Bristol a
privateer brig armed with sixteen 12-pounders, and her crew had
picked up the gunner's mate a quarter of an hour after I had chucked
him overboard, stunned but _not_ killed.
"I knew that my life was not worth a tester now unless I played a
desperate game, and I played it well; for I performed so many pranks,
that conceiving they were produced by insanity and remorse, instead
of reeving me up to the foreyard-arm as the gunner's mate urged, the
privateersmen marooned me on the first land they came to, my old
enemy only obtaining leave to bind me well to the stump at which you
found me; and now, as I am thirsty after this precious yarn of blood
and desperation--this long talkee-talkee as the niggers call it--I
shall have one more suck at my old toddy-tree, and then turn into my
hole for the night."
Such was the bare narrative of crime related to me by Knuckleduster.
He was certainly a pleasant companion to have on that lonely island,
and I had no reason to doubt the veracity of his atrocious
revelations, for he was too inebriated to invent--if he had the power
of invention--and situated as we were, on that wild Caribean isle, he
cared nothing for me or my opinion of him.