and they heaped the contents out upon the table and floor. They piled it
round and under the three drunken men, until each sprawled in a heap of
it. Then they carried Sharkey to the gun and they triced him sitting
over the port-hole, with his body about a foot from the muzzle. Wriggle
as he would he could not move an inch either to right or left, and the
dumb man trussed him up with a sailor's cunning, so that there was no
chance that he should work free.
"Now, you bloody devil," said Copley Banks, softly, "you must listen to
what I have to say to you, for they are the last words that you will
hear. You are my man now, and I have bought you at a price, for I have
given all that a man can give here below, and I have given my soul as
well.
"To reach you I have had to sink to your level. For two years I strove
against it, hoping that some other way might come, but I learnt that
there was no other way. I've robbed and I have murdered--worse still, I
have laughed and lived with you--and all for the one end. And now my
time has come, and you will die as I would have you die, seeing the
shadow creeping slowly upon you and the devil waiting for you in the
shadow."
Sharkey could hear the hoarse voices of his rovers singing their chanty
over the water.
"Where is the trader of Stepney Town?
Wake her up! Shake her up! Every stick a-bending!
Where is the trader of Stepney Town?
His gold's on the capstan, his blood's on his gown.
All for bully rover Jack,
Reaching on the weather tack
Right across the Lowland Sea."
The words came clear to his ear, and just outside he could hear two men
pacing backwards and forwards upon the deck. And yet he was helpless,
staring down the mouth of the nine-pounder, unable to move an inch or to
utter so much as a groan. Again there came the burst of voices from the
deck of the barque.
"So it's up and it's over to Stornoway Bay,
Pack it on! Crack it on! Try her with the stun-sails!
It's off on a bowline to Stornoway Bay,
Where the liquor is good and the lasses are gay,
Waiting for their bully Jack,
Watching for him sailing back,
Right across the Lowland Sea."
To the dying pirate the jovial words and rollicking tune made his own
fate seem the harsher, but there was no softening in his venomous blue
eyes. Copley Banks had brushed away the priming of the gun, and had
sprinkled fresh powder over the touch-hole. Then he had taken up the
candle and cut it to the length of about an inch. This he placed upon
the loose powder at the breach of the gun. Then he scattered powder
thickly over the floor beneath, so that when the candle fell at the
recoil it must explode the huge pile in which the three drunkards were
wallowing.
"You've made others look death in the face, Sharkey," said he; "now it
has come to be your own turn. You and these swine here shall go
together!" He lit the candle-end as he spoke, and blew out the other
lights upon the table. Then he passed out with the dumb man, and locked
the cabin door upon the outer side. But before he closed it he took an
exultant look backwards and received one last curse from those
unconquerable eyes. In the single dim circle of light that ivory-white
face, with the gleam of moisture upon the high, bald forehead, was the
last that was ever seen of Sharkey.
There was a skiff alongside, and in it Copley Banks and the dumb steward
made their way to the beach, and looked back upon the brig riding in the
moonlight just outside the shadow of the palm trees. They waited and
waited, watching that dim light which shone through the stern port. And
then at last there came the dull thud of a gun, and an instant later the
shattering crash of the explosion. The long, sleek, black barque, the
sweep of white sand, and the fringe of nodding, feathery palm trees
sprang into dazzling light and back into darkness again. Voices screamed
and called upon the bay.
Then Copley Banks, his heart singing within him touched his companion
upon the shoulder, and they plunged together into the lonely jungle of
the Caicos.
V
THE "SLAPPING SAL"
It was in the days when France's power was already broken upon the seas,
and when more of her three-deckers lay rotting in the Medway than were
to be found in Brest harbour. But her frigates and corvettes still
scoured the ocean, closely followed ever by those of her rival. At the
uttermost ends of the earth these dainty vessels, with sweet names of
girls or of flowers, mangled and shattered each other for the honour of
the four yards of bunting which flapped from the end of their gaffs.
It had blown hard in the night, but the wind had dropped with the
dawning, and now the rising sun tinted the fringe of the storm-wrack as
it dwindled into the west and glinted on the endless crests of the long,
green waves. To north and south and west lay a skyline which was
unbroken save by the spout of foam when two of the great Atlantic seas
dashed each other into spray. To the east was a rocky island, jutting
out into craggy points, with a few scattered clumps of palm trees and a
pennant of mist streaming out from the bare, conical hill which capped
it. A heavy surf beat upon the shore, and, at a safe distance from it,
the British 32-gun frigate _Leda_, Captain A. P. Johnson, raised her
black, glistening side upon the crest of a wave, or swooped down into an
emerald valley, dipping away to the nor'ard under easy sail. On her
snow-white quarter-deck stood a stiff little brown-faced man, who swept
the horizon with his glass.
"Mr. Wharton!" he cried, with a voice like a rusty hinge.
A thin, knock-kneed officer shambled across the poop to him.
"Yes, sir."
"I've opened the sealed orders, Mr. Wharton."
A glimmer of curiosity shone upon the meagre features of the first
lieutenant. The _Leda_ had sailed with her consort, the _Dido_, from
Antigua the week before, and the admiral's orders had been contained in
a sealed envelope.
"We were to open them on reaching the deserted island of Sombriero,
lying in north latitude eighteen, thirty-six, west longitude
sixty-three, twenty-eight. Sombriero bore four miles to the north-east
from our port-bow when the gale cleared, Mr. Wharton."
The lieutenant bowed stiffly. He and the captain had been bosom friends
from childhood. They had gone to school together, joined the navy
together, fought again and again together, and married into each other's
families, but so long as their feet were on the poop the iron discipline
of the service struck all that was human out of them and left only the
superior and the subordinate. Captain Johnson took from his pocket a
blue paper, which crackled as he unfolded it.
"The 32-gun frigates _Leda_ and _Dido_ (Captains A. P. Johnson
and James Munro) are to cruise from the point at which these
instructions are read to the mouth of the Caribbean sea, in the
hope of encountering the French frigate _La Gloire_ (48), which
has recently harassed our merchant ships in that quarter. H.M.
frigates are also directed to hunt down the piratical craft
known sometimes as the _Slapping Sal_ and sometimes as the
_Hairy Hudson_, which has plundered the British ships as per
margin, inflicting barbarities upon their crews. She is a small
brig, carrying ten light guns, with one twenty-four pound
carronade forward. She was last seen upon the 23rd. ult. to the
north-east of the island of Sombriero.
"(Signed) JAMES MONTGOMERY
"(_Rear-Admiral_).
"H.M.S. _Colossus_, Antigua."
"We appear to have lost our consort," said Captain Johnson, folding up
his instructions and again sweeping the horizon with his glass. "She
drew away after we reefed down. It would be a pity if we met this heavy
Frenchman without the _Dido_, Mr. Wharton. Eh?"
The lieutenant twinkled and smiled.
"She has eighteen-pounders on the main and twelves on the poop, sir,"
said the captain. "She carries four hundred to our two hundred and
thirty-one. Captain de Milon is the smartest man in the French service.
Oh, Bobby boy, I'd give my hopes of my flag to rub my side up against
her!" He turned on his heel, ashamed of his momentary lapse. "Mr.
Wharton," said he, looking back sternly over his shoulder, "get those
square sails shaken out and bear away a point more to the west."
"A brig on the port-bow," came a voice from the forecastle.
"A brig on the port-bow," said the lieutenant.
The captain sprang upon the bulwarks and held on by the mizzen-shrouds,
a strange little figure with flying skirts and puckered eyes. The lean
lieutenant craned his neck and whispered to Smeaton, the second, while
officers and men came popping up from below and clustered along the
weather-rail, shading their eyes with their hands--for the tropical sun
was already clear of the palm trees. The strange brig lay at anchor in
the throat of a curving estuary, and it was already obvious that she
could not get out without passing under the guns of the frigate. A long,
rocky point to the north of her held her in.
"Keep her as she goes, Mr. Wharton," said the captain. "Hardly worth
while our clearing for action, Mr. Smeaton, but the men can stand by the
guns in case she tries to pass us. Cast loose the bow-chasers and send
the small-arm men to the forecastle."
A British crew went to its quarters in those days with the quiet
serenity of men on their daily routine. In a few minutes, without fuss
or sound, the sailors were knotted round their guns, the marines were
drawn up and leaning on their muskets, and the frigate's bowsprit
pointed straight for her little victim.
"Is it the _Slapping Sal_, sir?"
"I have no doubt of it, Mr. Wharton."
"They don't seem to like the look of us, sir. They've cut their cable
and are clapping on sail."
It was evident that the brig meant struggling for her freedom. One
little patch of canvas fluttered out above another, and her people could
be seen working like madmen in the rigging. She made no attempt to pass
her antagonist, but headed up the estuary. The captain rubbed his hands.
"She's making for shoal water, Mr. Wharton, and we shall have to cut her
out, sir. She's a footy little brig, but I should have thought a
fore-and-after would have been more handy."
"It was a mutiny, sir."
"Ah, indeed!"
"Yes, sir, I heard of it at Manilla: a bad business, sir. Captain and
two mates murdered. This Hudson, or Hairy Hudson as they call him, led
the mutiny. He's a Londoner, sir, and a cruel villain as ever walked."
"His next walk will be to Execution Dock, Mr. Wharton. She seems heavily
manned. I wish I could take twenty topmen out of her, but they would be
enough to corrupt the crew of the ark, Mr. Wharton."
Both officers were looking through their glasses at the brig. Suddenly
the lieutenant showed his teeth in a grin, while the captain flushed a
deeper red.
"That's Hairy Hudson on the after-rail, sir."
"The low, impertinent blackguard! He'll play some other antics before we
are done with him. Could you reach him with the long eighteen, Mr.
Smeaton?"
"Another cable length will do it, sir."
The brig yawed as they spoke, and as she came round a spurt of smoke
whiffed out from her quarter. It was a pure piece of bravado, for the
gun could scarce carry half-way. Then with a jaunty swing the little
ship came into the wind again, and shot round a fresh curve in the
winding channel.
"The water's shoaling rapidly, sir," repeated the second lieutenant.
"There's six fathoms by the chart."
"Four by the lead, sir."
"When we clear this point we shall see how we lie. Ha! I thought as
much! Lay her to, Mr. Wharton. Now we have got her at our mercy!"
The frigate was quite out of sight of the sea now at the head of this
river-like estuary. As she came round the curve the two shores were seen
to converge at a point about a mile distant. In the angle, as near shore
as she could get, the brig was lying with her broadside towards her
pursuer and a wisp of black cloth streaming from her mizzen. The lean
lieutenant, who had reappeared upon deck with a cutlass strapped to his
side and two pistols rammed into his belt, peered curiously at the
ensign.
"Is it the Jolly Rodger, sir?" he asked.
But the captain was furious.
"He may hang where his breeches are hanging before I have done with
him!" said he. "What boats will you want, Mr. Wharton?"
"We should do it with the launch and the jolly-boat."
"Take four and make a clean job of it. Pipe away the crews at once, and
I'll work her in and help you with the long eighteens."
With a rattle of ropes and a creaking of blocks the four boats splashed
into the water. Their crews clustered thickly into them: bare-footed
sailors, stolid marines, laughing middies, and in the sheets of each the
senior officers with their stern schoolmaster faces. The captain, his
elbows on the binnacle, still watched the distant brig. Her crew were
tricing up the boarding-netting, dragging round the starboard guns,
knocking new portholes for them, and making every preparation for a
desperate resistance. In the thick of it all a huge man, bearded to the
eyes, with a red nightcap upon his head, was straining and stooping and
hauling. The captain watched him with a sour smile, and then snapping up
his glass he turned upon his heel. For an instant he stood staring.
"Call back the boats!" he cried in his thin, creaking voice. "Clear away
for action there! Cast loose those main-deck guns. Brace back the yards,
Mr. Smeaton, and stand by to go about when she has weigh enough."
Round the curve of the estuary was coming a huge vessel. Her great
yellow bowsprit and white-winged figure-head were jutting out from the
cluster of palm trees, while high above them towered three immense masts
with the tricolour flag floating superbly from the mizzen. Round she
came, the deep-blue water creaming under her fore foot, until her long,
curving, black side, her line of shining copper beneath and of
snow-white hammocks above, and the thick clusters of men who peered over
her bulwarks were all in full view. Her lower yards were slung, her
ports triced up, and her guns run out all ready for action. Lying behind
one of the promontories of the island, the lookout men of the _Gloire_
upon the shore had seen the _cul de sac_ into which the British frigate
was headed, so that Captain de Milon had served the _Leda_ as Captain
Johnson had the _Slapping Sal_.
But the splendid discipline of the British service was at its best in
such a crisis. The boats flew back; their crews clustered aboard, they
were swung up at the davits and the fall-ropes made fast. Hammocks were
brought up and stowed, bulkheads sent down, ports and magazines opened,
the fires put out in the galley, and the drums beat to quarters. Swarms
of men set the head-sails and brought the frigate round, while the
gun-crews threw off their jackets and shirts, tightened their belts, and
ran out their eighteen-pounders, peering through the open portholes at
the stately Frenchman. The wind was very light. Hardly a ripple showed
itself upon the clear blue water, but the sails blew gently out as the
breeze came over the wooded banks. The Frenchman had gone about also,
and both ships were now heading slowly for the sea under fore-and-aft
canvas, the _Gloire_ a hundred yards in advance. She luffed up to cross
the _Leda's_ bows, but the British ship came round also, and the two
rippled slowly on in such a silence that the ringing of ramrods as the
French marines drove home their charges clanged quite loudly upon the
ear.
"Not much sea-room, Mr. Wharton," remarked the captain.
"I have fought actions in less, sir."
"We must keep our distance and trust to our gunnery. She is very heavily
manned, and if she got alongside we might find ourselves in trouble."
"I see the shakos of soldiers aboard of her."
"Two companies of light infantry from Martinique. Now we have her!
Hard-a-port, and let her have it as we cross her stern!"
The keen eye of the little commander had seen the surface ripple, which
told of a passing breeze. He had used it to dart across the big
Frenchman and to rake her with every gun as he passed. But, once past
her, the _Leda_ had to come back into the wind to keep out of shoal
water. The manoeuvre brought her on to the starboard side of the
Frenchman, and the trim little frigate seemed to heel right over under
the crashing broadside which burst from the gaping ports. A moment later
her topmen were swarming aloft to set her topsails and royals, and she
strove to cross the _Gloire's_ bows and rake her again. The French
captain, however, brought his frigate's head round, and the two rode
side by side within easy pistol-shot, pouring broadsides into each other
in one of those murderous duels which, could they all be recorded, would
mottle our charts with blood.
In that heavy tropical air, with so faint a breeze, the smoke formed a
thick bank round the two vessels, from which the topmasts only
protruded. Neither could see anything of its enemy save the throbs of
fire in the darkness, and the guns were sponged and trained and fired
into a dense wall of vapour. On the poop and forecastle the marines, in
two little red lines, were pouring in their volleys, but neither they
nor the sea-men-gunners could see what effect their fire was having.
Nor, indeed, could they tell how far they were suffering themselves,
for, standing at a gun, one could but hazily see that upon the right and
the left. But above the roar of the cannon came the sharper sound of the
piping shot, the crashing of riven planks, and the occasional heavy thud
as spar or block came hurtling on to the deck. The lieutenants paced up
and down the line of guns, while Captain Johnson fanned the smoke away
with his cocked-hat and peered eagerly out.
"This is rare, Bobby!" said he, as the lieutenant joined him. Then,
suddenly restraining himself, "What have we lost, Mr. Wharton?"
"Our maintopsail yard and our gaff, sir."
"Where's the flag?"
"Gone overboard, sir."
"They'll think we've struck! Lash a boat's ensign on the starboard arm
of the mizzen cross-jackyard."
"Yes, sir."
A round-shot dashed the binnacle to pieces between them. A second
knocked two marines into a bloody, palpitating mash. For a moment the
smoke rose, and the English captain saw that his adversary's heavier
metal was producing a horrible effect. The _Leda_ was a shattered wreck.
Her deck was strewed with corpses. Several of her portholes were knocked
into one, and one of her eighteen-pounder guns had been thrown right
back on to her breech, and pointed straight up to the sky. The thin line
of marines still loaded and fired, but half the guns were silent, and
their crews were piled thickly round them.
"Stand by to repel boarders!" yelled the captain.
"Cutlasses, lads, cutlasses!" roared Wharton.
"Hold your volley till they touch!" cried the captain of marines.
The huge loom of the Frenchman was seen bursting through the smoke.
Thick clusters of boarders hung upon her sides and shrouds. A final
broadside leapt from her ports, and the mainmast of the _Leda_, snapping
short off a few feet above the deck, spun into the air and crashed down
upon the port guns, killing ten men and putting the whole battery out of
action. An instant later the two ships scraped together, and the
starboard bower anchor of the _Gloire_ caught the mizzen-chains of the
_Leda_ upon the port side. With a yell the black swarm of boarders
steadied themselves for a spring.
But their feet were never to reach that blood-stained deck. From
somewhere there came a well-aimed whiff of grape, and another, and
another. The English marines and seamen, waiting with cutlass and musket
behind the silent guns, saw with amazement the dark masses thinning and
shredding away. At the same time the port broadside of the Frenchman
burst into a roar.
"Clear away the wreck!" roared the captain. "What the devil are they
firing at?"
"Get the guns clear!" panted the lieutenant. "We'll do them yet, boys!"
The wreckage was torn and hacked and splintered until first one gun and
then another roared into action again. The Frenchman's anchor had been
cut away, and the _Leda_ had worked herself free from that fatal hug.
But now, suddenly, there was a scurry up the shrouds of the _Gloire_,
and a hundred Englishmen were shouting themselves hoarse: "They're
running! They're running! They're running!"
And it was true. The Frenchman had ceased to fire, and was intent only
upon clapping on every sail that he could carry. But that shouting
hundred could not claim it all as their own. As the smoke cleared it was
not difficult to see the reason. The ships had gained the mouth of the
estuary during the fight, and there, about four miles out to sea, was
the _Leda's_ consort bearing down under full sail to the sound of the
guns. Captain de Milon had done his part for one day, and presently the
_Gloire_ was drawing off swiftly to the north, while the _Dido_ was
bowling along at her skirts, rattling away with her bow-chasers, until a
headland hid them both from view.
But the _Leda_ lay sorely stricken, with her mainmast gone, her bulwarks
shattered, her mizzen-topmast and gaff shot away, her sails like a
beggar's rags, and a hundred of her crew dead and wounded. Close beside
her a mass of wreckage floated upon the waves. It was the stern-post of
a mangled vessel, and across it, in white letters on a black ground, was
painted, "_The Slapping Sal_."
"By the Lord! it was the brig that saved us!" cried Mr. Wharton. "Hudson
brought her into action with the Frenchman, and was blown out of the
water by a broadside!"
The little captain turned on his heel and paced up and down the deck.
Already his crew were plugging the shot-holes, knotting and splicing and
mending. When he came back, the lieutenant saw a softening of the stern
lines about his eyes and mouth.
"Are they all gone?"
"Every man. They must have sunk with the wreck."
The two officers looked down at the sinister name, and at the stump of
wreckage which floated in the discoloured water. Something black washed
to and fro beside a splintered gaff and a tangle of halliards. It was
the outrageous ensign, and near it a scarlet cap was floating.
"He was a villain, but he was a Briton!" said the captain, at last. "He
lived like a dog, but, by God, he died like a man!"
VI
A PIRATE OF THE LAND
ONE CROWDED HOUR
The place was the Eastbourne-Tunbridge road, not very far from the Cross
in Hand--a lonely stretch, with a heath running upon either side. The
time was half-past eleven upon a Sunday night in the late summer. A
motor was passing slowly down the road.
It was a long, lean Rolls-Royce, running smoothly with a gentle purring
of the engine. Through the two vivid circles cast by the electric
head-lights the waving grass fringes and clumps of heather streamed
swiftly like some golden cinematograph, leaving a blacker darkness
behind and around them. One ruby-red spot shone upon the road, but no
number-plate was visible within the dim ruddy halo of the tail-lamp
which cast it. The car was open and of a tourist type, but even in that
obscure light, for the night was moonless, an observer could hardly fail
to have noticed a curious indefiniteness in its lines. As it slid into
and across the broad stream of light from an open cottage door the
reason could be seen. The body was hung with a singular loose
arrangement of brown holland. Even the long black bonnet was banded with
some close-drawn drapery.
The solitary man who drove this curious car was broad and burly. He sat
hunched up over his steering-wheel, with the brim of a Tyrolean hat
drawn down over his eyes. The red end of a cigarette smouldered under
the black shadow thrown by the headgear. A dark ulster of some
frieze-like material was turned up in the collar until it covered his
ears. His neck was pushed forward from his rounded shoulders, and he
seemed, as the car now slid noiselessly down the long sloping road, with
the clutch disengaged and the engine running free, to be peering ahead
of him through the darkness in search of some eagerly-expected object.