RELEASING A FEARFUL WEAPON
JACK COCKRELL sprawled flat upon the forecastle roof and knew not what
to do. He could lay hands on nothing to serve as a weapon and he bade
fair to be trapped like the sailors whose cause he had joined. With a
feeling of despair he let his gaze rove to the scrawny figure of Joe
Hawkridge who still bestrode the nine-pounder and took no part in the
fray. But Joe had no comfort for him, as a gesture conveyed. It had been
Joe's wild scheme to obtain the help of Jack and Captain Wellsby, at the
least, and so cast loose the gun and slew it around to rake the deck and
mow the pirates down. But the men were lacking for this heavy task, and
the sailors of the _Plymouth Adventure_ were too intent on fighting
against fearful odds to pay heed to Joe Hawkridge's appeals. He had even
skulked into the galley and was ready with a little iron pot filled with
live coals which was hidden under a bit of tarpaulin.
Ned Rackham was a young man and powerful, with a long reach and a
skilled blade. He fairly hewed his way into the ruck of the dauntless
sailors who had no more bricks to hurl. Several pirates were disabled,
with broken arms or bloody crowns, but the others crowded forward,
grunting as they slashed and stabbed, and well aware that Ned Rackham
would cut the laggards down should he detect them.
At the moment when there seemed no chance of salvation for the crew of
the _Plymouth Adventure_, Joe Hawkridge leaped from the gun and beckoned
Jack. The grin was restored to the homely, freckled visage and the salt
water gamin danced in jubilant excitement. Down from the forecastle roof
tumbled Jack Cockrell and went sliding across the deck, heels over head,
to fetch up in the scupper. Joe hauled him by the leg, close to the
wooden carriage of the gun, and swiftly told him what was to be done.
Obediently Jack began to loose the knots which secured the rope tackles
but it was a slow task. The wet had made the hemp as hard as iron and he
lacked a marlinspike. Joe dodged around the gun, saw the difficulty and
sawed through one rope after another, all but the last strand or two.
Then the lads tailed on to the breeching hawsers, which held the
carriage from sliding on its iron rollers, and eased the strain as well
as they could.
The ponderous mass was almost free to plunge across the deck. Joe
sweated and braced his feet against a ring-bolt while Jack Cockrell
found a cleat. Ned Rackham's men were moving forward, cut and thrust,
while the sailors grappled with them bare-handed and battled grimly
like mastiffs.
"The next time she rolls!" panted Joe Hawkridge as the hawser ripped the
skin from his palms.
"Aye, make ready to cut," muttered Jack.
The ship heaved herself high and then listed far down to starboard. Joe
slashed at the last strands of the tackles and yelled to Jack to let go
the hawser. Instead of discharging the nine-pounder, they were employing
the piece itself, and the carriage of oak and iron, as a terrible
missile. The moment of launching it was shrewdly chosen. The pirates,
still in compact formation as led by Ned Rackham, were directly abreast
of this forward gun of the main deck battery. The deck inclined at a
steep and giddy pitch. With a grinding roar the gun rolled from its
station. It gathered impetus and lunged across the ship as an instrument
of fell destruction. It was more to be feared than an assault of armed
men.
The warning rumble of the iron wheels as they furrowed the planking was
heard by the pirates. They turned from their game of butchery and stood
frozen in their tracks for a frightened instant. Then they tried to flee
in all directions. Their tarry pigtails fairly stood on end. Well they
knew what it meant to have a gun break adrift in a heavy sea. Two or
three who had been badly hurt were unable to move fast enough. The gun
crunched over them and then seemed to pursue a limping pirate, veering
to overtake him as he fled. He was tossed against the bulwark like a
bundle of bloody rags.
The gun crashed into the stout timbers of the ship's side and they were
splintered like match-wood. It rebounded as the deck sloped sharply in
the next wallowing roll, and now this frenzied monster of wood and iron
seemed fairly to run amuck. It was inspired with a sinister
intelligence, resolved to wreak all the damage possible. The pinnace,
the water barrels, the coamings of the cargo hatches, were smashed to
fragments as the gun turned this way and that and went plunging in
search of victims.
[Illustration: THE BRAWN OF THESE LADS MADE THE PIKE A MATCH FOR A
PIRATE'S CUTLASS]
Left to themselves, the seamen of the _Plymouth Adventure_ would have
risked their lives to cast ropes about the gun and moor it fast. But now
they were quick to see that the tide had been turned in their favor. The
pirates were demoralized. Some were in the rigging, others atop the
bulwarks, and only the readiest and boldest, with Ned Rackham in the
lead, had an eye to the task in hand, which was to regain possession of
the ship.
And now the boatswain of the _Plymouth Adventure_, a rosy giant of a man
from South Devon, shouted to his comrades to follow him. They delayed
until the runaway cannon crashed into another gun, and then they broke
like sprinters from the mark and sped straight for the mainmast, seeking
the rack of boarding-pikes. They ran nimbly, as men used to swaying
decks, and compassed the distance in a few strides.
Ned Rackham perceived their purpose and tried to intercept but his few
staunch followers moved warily, expecting to see that insensate monster
of a gun bear down upon them. The swiftest of the merchant sailors laid
hands on the pikes and whirled to cover their shipmates, until all hands
could be armed. Then the gun came roaring down at them but they ducked
behind the mast or stepped watchfully aside. Men condemned to death are
not apt to lose their wits in the face of one more peril.
These pikes were ashen shafts with long steel points and the merchant
seamen had been trained to use them. And the brawn of these lads made
the pike a match for a pirate's cutlass. Ned Rackham bounded forward to
swing at the broad, deep-chested boatswain. A wondrous pair of
antagonists they were, in the prime of their youth and vigor. The
pirate's cutlass bit clean through the pike shaft as the boatswain
parried the blow but the apple-cheeked Devonshire man closed in and
wrapped his arms around his foe. They went to the deck clutching for
each other's throats and the fight trampled over them.
Meanwhile Joe Hawkridge and Jack Cockrell, unwilling to twiddle their
thumbs, had rushed aft as fast as their legs could carry them. It was a
mutual impulse, to release such of the men passengers as might have a
stomach for fighting and also the ship's officers. Into the doorway
which led from the waist, the two lads dived and scurried through the
main cabin now clear of pirates. Locked doors they smashed with a
broadaxe found in the small-arms chest and so entered all the rooms.
The women passengers were almost dead with suffering, what with the
turbulence of the storm and the wild riot on deck. The lads pitied them
but had no time to console. Several of the men, merchants and planters
of some physical hardihood, begged for weapons and Joe Hawkridge bade
them help themselves from the spare arms which the pirates had left in
the great cabin. In another little room the boys found the mates,
steward, surgeon, and gunner of the _Plymouth Adventure_ and you may be
sure that they came boiling out with a raging thirst for strife.
"Harkee, Jack," said Joe before they climbed to the poop deck, "if the
pirates are driven aft, as I expect, they will make a last stand in this
cabin house which is like a fort. These 'fenseless women must be hidden
safe from harm. Do you coax 'em into the lazarette."
This was a room on the deck below, in the very stern of the ship where
were kept the extra sails and coils of rope and various stores. It was
the surest shelter against harm in such stress as this. Alas, Jack's
persuasions were vain. The frantic women were in no humor to listen, and
so the lads bundled them through the hatch as gently as possible and
for company gave them such male passengers as lacked strength or courage
to join the battle.
While they were thus engaged, two pirates came flying down the ladder
from the poop deck into the main cabin. They revolved like windmills in
a jumble of arms and legs. Close behind them, in a manner more orderly
came Captain Jonathan Wellsby who had tossed the one and tremendously
booted the other. They were the helmsmen whom he had replaced with his
own officers at the steering tackles, while his first mate had been left
in charge of handling the ship.
The skipper was now free to follow his own desires and he fell upon
those two stunned pirates in the cabin and trussed them tight with bits
of rope. Then he reloaded with dry powder all the pistols he could find
and made a walking arsenal of himself. The two lads who now joined him
needed no word of command. At his heels they made for the main deck and
the shout which arose from those British sailors, so sorely beset, was
mightily heartening.
Blazing away with his pistols, the skipper cleared a path for himself,
the pirates being taken aback when they were attacked in the rear. And
they were leaderless, for Ned Rackham had been dragged aside with the
marks of the boatswain's fingers on his throat and a sheath-knife buried
in his side. He was alive but nobody paid heed to his groans.
With the skipper in the thick of it, there was no danger of being penned
in the forecastle again. The pirates were crowded aft, step by step,
before the play of those wicked boarding-pikes. It would be hard to
match a sea fight like this, amid the spray and the washing seas, on a
deck that tipsily danced and staggered, with a truant gun smashing a
good ship to bits and the wounded screaming as they saw this horror
thundering at them. Captain Wellsby's men were at pains to drag their
helpless comrades to safety but the pirates were too callous and too
hard pressed to care for aught save their own worthless skins. They
fought like wolves but they lacked the gristle and endurance of the
stalwart sailors. Wheezing for breath, they ceased to curse and reeled
back in silence while the sailors huzzaed and seemed to wax the lustier.
As was bound to happen, the stubborn retreat broke into a rout. It was
every man for himself and the devil take the hindmost. The pirates fled
for the after cabin-house, there to take cover behind the timbered walls
and use the small port-holes for musketry fire. Thus they could find
respite and it would be immensely difficult to dislodge them.
The first mate of the _Plymouth Adventure_ and his own two helmsmen saw
what was taking place and they were of no mind to be cut off at the
stern of the ship. They footed it along the poop and the cabin roof as
the pirates were scampering inside and so gained the waist and were
with their comrades. The tiller deserted, the vessel careened into the
trough of the sea with a portentous creaking of spars and rending of
canvas.
The mainmast had been dealt more than one splintering blow by the
fugitive gun. This sudden strain, of a ship broached to and hurled
almost on her beam ends, was too much for the damaged mast. It broke
short off, a few feet above the deck, and the ragged butt ripped the
planks asunder as it was dragged overside by the weight of the towering
fabric of yards and canvas. One merciful circumstance befell, for the
tangle of shrouds and sheets and halliards ensnared the ramping monster
of a cannon and overturned it. Caught in this manner, the gun was
dragged to the broken bulwark and there it was held with the battered
carriage in air.
The mainmast was floating alongside the ship which it belabored with
thumps that jarred the hull. It was likely to stave in the skin of the
vessel and Captain Wellsby shouted to his men to hack at the trailing
cordage and send the mast clear before it did a fatal injury. A dozen
men risked drowning at this task while the others guarded the after
cabin lest the pirates attempt a sally. These besieged rogues were given
an interval in which to muster their force, organize a defense, and
break into the magazine for muskets and powder and ball.
Now Captain Wellsby was no dullard and he purposed to make short work of
these vile pirates. Otherwise his crippled ship might not survive the
wind and weather. He conferred with his gunner who had bethought
himself, by force of habit, to fetch from aft his powder-horn and
several yards of match, or twisted tow, which were wrapped around his
body, beneath the tarred jerkin.
"It grieves me sore to wreck yonder goodly cabin house," said the
skipper in his beard, "but, by Judas, we'll blow 'em out of it. Haul and
belay your pieces, Master Gunner, and let 'em have a salvo of round
shot."
Reckless of the musket balls which began to fly among them, the sailors
jumped for their stations at the guns. First they set aright that
capsized nine-pounder which had wreaked so much mischief and found that
it could be discharged, despite the broken carriage. Joe Hawkridge and
Jack Cockrell blithely aided to swing and secure it with emergency
tackles and Joe exclaimed, with a chuckle:
"This dose is enough to surprise Blackbeard hisself. 'Tis an
ironmonger's shop I rammed down its throat."
The gun was laid on the largest cabin port-hole just as it framed the
ugly face of a pirate with a musket while another peered over his
shoulder. Joe shook the powder-horn into the touch-hole and the gunner
was ready with the match which he had lighted with his own flint and
steel. Boom, and the gun recoiled in a veil of smoke. Through the cabin
port-hole flew a deadly shower of spikes and bolts while the framework
around it was shattered to bits. It was a most unhealthy place for
pirates. They forsook it instantly. And the musketry fire slackened
elsewhere. It was to be inferred that there was painful consternation in
the cabin.
With boisterous mirth, the sailors deftly turned other guns to bear and
were careful not to let them get adrift. The muzzles had been well
stopped against wetting by the sea and with a little dry powder for the
priming, most of them could be served. They could not be reloaded for
dearth of ammunition but Captain Wellsby felt confident that one round
would suffice.
Methodically the gun-crews aimed and fired one gun after another,
watching the chance between the seas that broke aboard. The solid round
shot, at short range, ripped through the cabin walls and bulkheads and
buried themselves in the frames and timbers of the ship's stern. A good
gunner was never so happy as when he saw the white splinters fly in
showers and these zealous sailormen forgot they were knocking their own
ship to pieces. They were on the target, and this was good enough.
The beleaguered pirates made no more pretense of firing muskets or
defying the crew to dig them out. Their fort was an untenable position.
At this sport of playing bowls with round shot they were bound to lose.
Captain Wellsby sighted the last gun himself. It was a bronze culverin
of large bore, taken as a trophy from the stranded wreck of a Spanish
galleon. With a tremendous blast this formidable cannon spat out a
double-shotted load and the supports of the cabin roof were torn
asunder. The tottering beams collapsed. Half the structure fell in.
It was the signal for the sailors of the _Plymouth Adventure_ to charge
aft and finish the business. They found pirates crawling from under the
wreckage. It was like a demolished ant-heap. In the smaller cabins and
other rooms far aft, which were more or less intact, some of the rascals
showed fight but they were remorselessly prodded out with pikes and
those unwounded were hustled forward to be thrown into the forecastle.
It was difficult to restrain the seamen from dealing them the death they
deserved but Captain Wellsby was no sea-butcher and he hoped to turn
them over to the colonial authorities to be hanged with due ceremony.
The badly hurt were laid in the forecastle bunks where the ship's
surgeon washed and bandaged them after he had cared for the injured men
of his own crew. Ned Rackham was still alive, conscious and defiant,
surviving a wound which would have been mortal in most cases. Whether he
lived or died was a matter of small concern to Captain Wellsby but he
ordered the surgeon to nurse him with special care.
The dead pirates were flung overboard but the bodies of seven brave
British seamen were wrapped in sailcloth to be committed to the deep on
the morrow, with a round shot at their feet and a prayer to speed their
souls. There were men enough to work the ship but she was in a
situation indescribably forlorn. It was possible to patch and shore the
cabin house and make a refuge, even to find place for the wretched women
who were lifted unharmed out of the lazarette. But the stout ship, her
mainmast gone by the board, the deck ravaged by that infernal catapult
of an errant gun, the hull pounded by the floating wreckage of spars,
would achieve a miracle should she see port again.
The combat with the pirates and their overthrow had been waged in the
last hour before the gray night closed over a somber sea. God's mercy
had caused the wind to fall and the waves to diminish in size else the
ship would have gone to the bottom ere dawn. Much water had washed down
into the hold through the broken cargo hatch and the gaps where the
runaway gun had torn other fittings away. The carpenter sounded the well
and solemnly stared at the wetted rod by the flicker of his horn
lantern. The ship was settling. It was his doleful surmise that she
leaked where the pounding spars overside had started the butts. It was
man the pumps to keep the old hooker afloat and Captain Wellsby ordered
his weary men to sway at the brakes, watch and watch.
Joe Hawkridge and Jack Cockrell, more fit for duty than the others, put
their backs into it right heartily while the sailors droned to the
cadence of the pump a sentimental ditty which ran on for any number of
verses and began in this wise:
"As, lately I traveled toward Gravesend,
I heard a fair Damosel a Sea-man commend:
And as in a Tilt-boat we passed along,
In praise of brave Sea-men she sung this new Song,
_Come Tradesman or Marchant, whoever he be,
There's none but a Sea-man shall marry with me!_"
Thus they labored all the night through, men near dead with fatigue
whose hard fate it was to contend now with pirates and again with the
hostile ocean. The skipper managed to stay the foremast and to bend
steering sails so that the ship was brought into the wind where her
motion was easier. The sky cleared before daybreak and the rosy horizon
proclaimed a fair sunrise. How far and in what direction the _Plymouth
Adventure_ had been blown by the storm was largely guesswork. By means
of dead reckoning and the compass and cross-staff, Captain Wellsby hoped
to work out a position but meanwhile he scanned the sea with a sense of
brooding anxiety.
Instead of praying for plenty of sea room, he now hoped with all his
heart that the vessel had been set in toward the coast. She was sinking
under his feet and would not live through the day. It was useless to
toil at the pumps or to strive at mending the shattered upperworks. The
men turned to the task of quitting the ship, and of saving the souls on
board. It was a pitiful extremity and yet they displayed a dogged,
unshaken fidelity. Only one boat had escaped destruction. The pinnace
had been staved in by the thunderbolt of a gun and the yawl, stowed upon
the cabin roof, was wrecked by round shot. The small jolly-boat would
hold the women passengers and the wounded sailors, with the hands
required to tend oars and sail.
Nothing remained but to try to knock together one or more rafts. Captain
Wellsby discussed it with his officers and it was agreed that the
able-bodied pirates should be left to build a raft for themselves,
taking their own wounded with them. This was more mercy than they had
any right to expect. The strapping young Devonshire boatswain, with his
head tied up, was for leaving the blackguards to drown in the forecastle
but the shipmaster was too humane a man for that.
It was drawing toward noon when the first mate descried land to the
westward, a bit of low coast almost level with the sea. In the light air
the sluggish ship moved ever so slowly, with canvas spread on the fore
and mizzen masts. Spirits revived and life tasted passing sweet. To
drift in the open sea upon wave-washed rafts was an expedient which all
mariners shuddered to contemplate. It was with feelings far different
that they now assembled spars and planks and lashed and spiked them
together on the chance of needing rafts to ferry them ashore from a
stranded ship.
Well into the bright afternoon the _Plymouth Adventure_ was wafted
nearer and nearer the sandy coast. Within a half mile of it a line of
breakers frothed and tumbled on a shoal beyond which the water deepened
again. The ship could not be steered to avoid this barrier. Her main
deck was almost level with the sea which lapped her gently and sobbed
through the broken bulwarks. With a slight shock she struck the shoal
and rested there just before she was ready to founder.
With disciplined haste, the jolly-boat was launched and filled with its
human freightage. The boatswain went in charge and four seamen tugged at
the sweeps. There were trees and clumps of bushes among the hillocks of
sand and a tiny bight for a landing place. The bulwark was then chopped
away so that the largest raft could be shoved into the water by means of
tackles, rollers and handspikes. It floated buoyantly and supported as
many as fifteen men, who did not mind in the least getting their feet
wet. Upon a raised platform in the centre of the raft were fastened
barrels of beef and bread and casks of fresh water.
The jolly-boat could hope to make other trips between the ship and the
shore but the prudent skipper took no chances with the weather. A sudden
gale might pluck the _Plymouth Adventure_ from the shoal or tear her to
fragments where she lay. Therefore most of the men, including
passengers, were embarked on the raft. Captain Wellsby remained aboard
with a few of his sailors and our two lads, Joe and Jack, who had not
attempted to thrust themselves upon the crowded raft.
The pirates were making a commotion in the forecastle, yammering to be
freed, but the skipper had no intention of loosing them until all his
people had safely abandoned ship. The jolly-boat made a landing without
mishap and returned to the wreck as the sun went down. More stores were
dumped into it, sacks of potatoes and onions which had been overlooked,
bedding for the women, powder and ball for the muskets, and other things
which it was necessary to keep dry.
Captain Wellsby got rid of the rest of his men on this trip, excepting
the gunner and carpenter, and these lingered with him as a kind of
body-guard pending the ticklish business of releasing the imprisoned
pirates and forsaking them to their own devices. The jolly-boat was
laden to the gunwales and Jack Cockrell held back, saying to Joe
Hawkridge:
"Why trouble the captain to set us ashore? Let us make a raft of our
own. The breeze holds fair to the beach and it will be a lark."
"It suits me well," grinned Joe. "If we wait to go off with the master,
and those sinful pirates see me aboard, I'll need wings to escape 'em.
They saw me serve the gun that was filled with spikes to the muzzle.
Aye, Jack, I will feel happier to be elsewhere when Cap'n Wellsby unbars
the fo'castle and holds 'em back with his pistols till he can cast off
in the jolly-boat."
"Yes, the sight of you is apt to put them in a vile temper," laughingly
agreed Jack, "and 'tis awkward for the master to bother with us. Now
about a little raft----"
"Two short spars are enough. There they lie. And the cabin hatch will do
for a deck. Spikes for thole-pins, and oars from the pinnace. Unlace the
bonnet of the jib for a sail."
"You are a proper sailorman, Joe. A voyage by starlight to an unknown
coast. 'Tis highly romantic."
They set to work without delay. Captain Wellsby had occupations of his
own and no more than glanced at them in passing. Jack insisted on
carrying a water breaker and rations, he being hungry and too busy to
pause for supper. They would make a picnic cruise of the adventure.
Handily Joe reeved a purchase and they hauled away until their raft slid
off the sloping deck to leeward. With a gay hurrah to Captain Wellsby,
they paddled around the stern of the ship and through the ruffle of surf
that marked the shoal.
In the soft twilight they trimmed the sail and swung at the clumsy oars,
while a fire blazing on the beach was a beacon to guide their course.
After a time they rested and wiped the sweat from their faces. The
progress of the raft was like that of a lazy snail. In the luminous
darkness they pulled with all their strength. The wind had died to a
calm. The sail hung idle from its yard. They heard, faint and afar, the
deep voices of the sailors in the jolly-boat as they returned to take
the skipper and his two companions from the ship on which a light
burned.
The lads shouted but there came no answering hail from the unseen boat.
They were perplexed to understand how their courses could be so far
apart. Presently the night breeze drew off the land, bringing with it
the scent of green things growing. Joe Hawkridge stared at the fire on
the beach and then turned to look at the spark of light on the ship. The
raft had drifted considerably to the southward. Anxiously Joe said to
his shipmate:
"The flood o' the tide must be setting us down the coast, in some crazy
current or other. Mayhap it runs strong through this race betwixt the
shoal and the beach with a slant that's bad for us."
"I noted it," glumly agreed Jack. "The jolly-boat passed too far away to
please me. And this landward breeze is driving us to sea."
"No sense in breaking our backs at these oars," grumbled Joe. "We go
ahead like a crab, with a sternboard. Think ye we can swing the raft to
fetch the ship?"
"After Captain Wellsby turns the pirates loose and quits her?" scoffed
Jack.
"I am a plaguey fool," cheerfully admitted Joe Hawkridge. "'Twould be
out of the frying-pan into the fire, with a vengeance."
"And no way to signal our friends," sadly exclaimed Jack. "We forgot
flint and steel. It looks much like another voyage."
"Straight for the open sea, my bully boy," agreed Joe. "And I'd as soon
chance it on a hen-coop."