"O Heaven help him!" says she, clasping her hands and looking up--she was
close in front of me, and she looked most lovely to be sure; "he is not
sufficiently recovered, not strong enough for such strife!"
"If you had seen him, miss," I told her, "as I saw him when he
volunteered, you would have known that his spirit is strong enough for
any strife. It will bear his body, miss, to wherever duty calls him. It
will always bear him to an honourable life, or a brave death."
"Heaven bless you!" says she, touching my arm. "I know it. Heaven bless
you!"
Mrs. Belltott surprised me by trembling and saying nothing. They were
still standing looking towards the sea and listening, after the relief
had come round. It continuing very dark, I asked to be allowed to take
them back. Miss Maryon thanked me, and she put her arm in mine, and I
did take them back. I have now got to make a confession that will appear
singular. After I had left them, I laid myself down on my face on the
beach, and cried for the first time since I had frightened birds as a boy
at Snorridge Bottom, to think what a poor, ignorant, low-placed, private
soldier I was.
It was only for half a minute or so. A man can't at all times be quite
master of himself, and it was only for half a minute or so. Then I up
and went to my hut, and turned into my hammock, and fell asleep with wet
eyelashes, and a sore, sore heart. Just as I had often done when I was a
child, and had been worse used than usual.
I slept (as a child under those circumstances might) very sound, and yet
very sore at heart all through my sleep. I was awoke by the words, "He
is a determined man." I had sprung out of my hammock, and had seized my
firelock, and was standing on the ground, saying the words myself. "He
is a determined man." But, the curiosity of my state was, that I seemed
to be repeating them after somebody, and to have been wonderfully
startled by hearing them.
As soon as I came to myself, I went out of the hut, and away to where the
guard was. Charker challenged:
"Who goes there?"
"A friend."
"Not Gill?" says he, as he shouldered his piece.
"Gill," says I.
"Why, what the deuce do you do out of your hammock?" says he.
"Too hot for sleep," says I; "is all right?"
"Right!" says Charker, "yes, yes; all's right enough here; what should be
wrong here? It's the boats that we want to know of. Except for fire-
flies twinkling about, and the lonesome splashes of great creatures as
they drop into the water, there's nothing going on here to ease a man's
mind from the boats."
The moon was above the sea, and had risen, I should say, some half-an-
hour. As Charker spoke, with his face towards the sea, I, looking
landward, suddenly laid my right hand on his breast, and said, "Don't
move. Don't turn. Don't raise your voice! You never saw a Maltese face
here?"
"No. What do you mean?" he asks, staring at me.
"Nor yet, an English face, with one eye and a patch across the nose?"
"No. What ails you? What do you mean?"
I had seen both, looking at us round the stem of a cocoa-nut tree, where
the moon struck them. I had seen that Sambo Pilot, with one hand laid on
the stem of the tree, drawing them back into the heavy shadow. I had
seen their naked cutlasses twinkle and shine, like bits of the moonshine
in the water that had got blown ashore among the trees by the light wind.
I had seen it all, in a moment. And I saw in a moment (as any man
would), that the signalled move of the pirates on the mainland was a plot
and a feint; that the leak had been made to disable the sloop; that the
boats had been tempted away, to leave the Island unprotected; that the
pirates had landed by some secreted way at the back; and that Christian
George King was a double-dyed traitor, and a most infernal villain.
I considered, still all in one and the same moment, that Charker was a
brave man, but not quick with his head; and that Sergeant Drooce, with a
much better head, was close by. All I said to Charker was, "I am afraid
we are betrayed. Turn your back full to the moonlight on the sea, and
cover the stem of the cocoa-nut tree which will then be right before you,
at the height of a man's heart. Are you right?"
"I am right," says Charker, turning instantly, and falling into the
position with a nerve of iron; "and right ain't left. Is it, Gill?"
A few seconds brought me to Sergeant Drooce's hut. He was fast asleep,
and being a heavy sleeper, I had to lay my hand upon him to rouse him.
The instant I touched him he came rolling out of his hammock, and upon me
like a tiger. And a tiger he was, except that he knew what he was up to,
in his utmost heat, as well as any man.
I had to struggle with him pretty hard to bring him to his senses,
panting all the while (for he gave me a breather), "Sergeant, I am Gill
Davis! Treachery! Pirates on the Island!"
The last words brought him round, and he took his hands of. "I have seen
two of them within this minute," said I. And so I told him what I had
told Harry Charker.
His soldierly, though tyrannical, head was clear in an instant. He
didn't waste one word, even of surprise. "Order the guard," says he, "to
draw off quietly into the Fort." (They called the enclosure I have
before mentioned, the Fort, though it was not much of that.) "Then get
you to the Fort as quick as you can, rouse up every soul there, and
fasten the gate. I will bring in all those who are at the Signal Hill.
If we are surrounded before we can join you, you must make a sally and
cut us out if you can. The word among our men is, 'Women and children!'"
He burst away, like fire going before the wind over dry reeds. He roused
up the seven men who were off duty, and had them bursting away with him,
before they know they were not asleep. I reported orders to Charker, and
ran to the Fort, as I have never run at any other time in all my life:
no, not even in a dream.
The gate was not fast, and had no good fastening: only a double wooden
bar, a poor chain, and a bad lock. Those, I secured as well as they
could be secured in a few seconds by one pair of hands, and so ran to
that part of the building where Miss Maryon lived. I called to her
loudly by her name until she answered. I then called loudly all the
names I knew--Mrs. Macey (Miss Maryon's married sister), Mr. Macey, Mrs.
Venning, Mr. and Mrs. Fisher, even Mr. and Mrs. Pordage. Then I called
out, "All you gentlemen here, get up and defend the place! We are caught
in a trap. Pirates have landed. We are attacked!"
At the terrible word "Pirates!"--for, those villains had done such deeds
in those seas as never can be told in writing, and can scarcely be so
much as thought of--cries and screams rose up from every part of the
place. Quickly lights moved about from window to window, and the cries
moved about with them, and men, women, and children came flying down into
the square. I remarked to myself, even then, what a number of things I
seemed to see at once. I noticed Mrs. Macey coming towards me, carrying
all her three children together. I noticed Mr. Pordage in the greatest
terror, in vain trying to get on his Diplomatic coat; and Mr. Kitten
respectfully tying his pocket-handkerchief over Mrs. Pordage's nightcap.
I noticed Mrs. Belltott run out screaming, and shrink upon the ground
near me, and cover her face in her hands, and lie all of a bundle,
shivering. But, what I noticed with the greatest pleasure was, the
determined eyes with which those men of the Mine that I had thought fine
gentlemen, came round me with what arms they had: to the full as cool and
resolute as I could be, for my life--ay, and for my soul, too, into the
bargain!
The chief person being Mr. Macey, I told him how the three men of the
guard would be at the gate directly, if they were not already there, and
how Sergeant Drooce and the other seven were gone to bring in the
outlying part of the people of Silver-Store. I next urged him, for the
love of all who were dear to him, to trust no Sambo, and, above all, if
he could got any good chance at Christian George King, not to lose it,
but to put him out of the world.
"I will follow your advice to the letter, Davis," says he; "what next?"
My answer was, "I think, sir, I would recommend you next, to order down
such heavy furniture and lumber as can be moved, and make a barricade
within the gate."
"That's good again," says he: "will you see it done?"
"I'll willingly help to do it," says I, "unless or until my superior,
Sergeant Drooce, gives me other orders."
He shook me by the hand, and having told off some of his companions to
help me, bestirred himself to look to the arms and ammunition. A proper
quick, brave, steady, ready gentleman!
One of their three little children was deaf and dumb, Miss Maryon had
been from the first with all the children, soothing them, and dressing
them (poor little things, they had been brought out of their beds), and
making them believe that it was a game of play, so that some of them were
now even laughing. I had been working hard with the others at the
barricade, and had got up a pretty good breastwork within the gate.
Drooce and the seven men had come back, bringing in the people from the
Signal Hill, and had worked along with us: but, I had not so much as
spoken a word to Drooce, nor had Drooce so much as spoken a word to me,
for we were both too busy. The breastwork was now finished, and I found
Miss Maryon at my side, with a child in her arms. Her dark hair was
fastened round her head with a band. She had a quantity of it, and it
looked even richer and more precious, put up hastily out of her way, than
I had seen it look when it was carefully arranged. She was very pale,
but extraordinarily quiet and still.
"Dear good Davis," said she, "I have been waiting to speak one word to
you."
I turned to her directly. If I had received a musket-ball in the heart,
and she had stood there, I almost believe I should have turned to her
before I dropped.
"This pretty little creature," said she, kissing the child in her arms,
who was playing with her hair and trying to pull it down, "cannot hear
what we say--can hear nothing. I trust you so much, and have such great
confidence in you, that I want you to make me a promise."
"What is it, Miss?"
"That if we are defeated, and you are absolutely sure of my being taken,
you will kill me."
"I shall not be alive to do it, Miss. I shall have died in your defence
before it comes to that. They must step across my body to lay a hand on
you."
"But, if you are alive, you brave soldier." How she looked at me! "And
if you cannot save me from the Pirates, living, you will save me, dead.
Tell me so."
Well! I told her I would do that at the last, if all else failed. She
took my hand--my rough, coarse hand--and put it to her lips. She put it
to the child's lips, and the child kissed it. I believe I had the
strength of half a dozen men in me, from that moment, until the fight was
over.
All this time, Mr. Commissioner Pordage had been wanting to make a
Proclamation to the Pirates to lay down their arms and go away; and
everybody had been hustling him about and tumbling over him, while he was
calling for pen and ink to write it with. Mrs. Pordage, too, had some
curious ideas about the British respectability of her nightcap (which had
as many frills to it, growing in layers one inside another, as if it was
a white vegetable of the artichoke sort), and she wouldn't take the
nightcap off, and would be angry when it got crushed by the other ladies
who were handing things about, and, in short, she gave as much trouble as
her husband did. But, as we were now forming for the defence of the
place, they were both poked out of the way with no ceremony. The
children and ladies were got into the little trench which surrounded the
silver-house (we were afraid of leaving them in any of the light
buildings, lest they should be set on fire), and we made the best
disposition we could. There was a pretty good store, in point of amount,
of tolerable swords and cutlasses. Those were issued. There were, also,
perhaps a score or so of spare muskets. Those were brought out. To my
astonishment, little Mrs. Fisher that I had taken for a doll and a baby,
was not only very active in that service, but volunteered to load the
spare arms.
"For, I understand it well," says she, cheerfully, without a shake in her
voice.
"I am a soldier's daughter and a sailor's sister, and I understand it
too," says Miss Maryon, just in the same way.
Steady and busy behind where I stood, those two beautiful and delicate
young women fell to handling the guns, hammering the flints, looking to
the locks, and quietly directing others to pass up powder and bullets
from hand to hand, as unflinching as the best of tried soldiers.
Sergeant Drooce had brought in word that the pirates were very strong in
numbers--over a hundred was his estimate--and that they were not, even
then, all landed; for, he had seen them in a very good position on the
further side of the Signal Hill, evidently waiting for the rest of their
men to come up. In the present pause, the first we had had since the
alarm, he was telling this over again to Mr. Macey, when Mr. Macey
suddenly cried our: "The signal! Nobody has thought of the signal!"
We knew of no signal, so we could not have thought of it.
"What signal may you mean, sir?" says Sergeant Drooce, looking sharp at
him.
"There is a pile of wood upon the Signal Hill. If it could be
lighted--which never has been done yet--it would be a signal of distress
to the mainland."
Charker cries, directly: "Sergeant Drooce, dispatch me on that duty. Give
me the two men who were on guard with me to-night, and I'll light the
fire, if it can be done."
"And if it can't, Corporal--" Mr. Macey strikes in.
"Look at these ladies and children, sir!" says Charker. "I'd sooner
_light myself_, than not try any chance to save them."
We gave him a Hurrah!--it burst from us, come of it what might--and he
got his two men, and was let out at the gate, and crept away. I had no
sooner come back to my place from being one of the party to handle the
gate, than Miss Maryon said in a low voice behind me:
"Davis, will you look at this powder? This is not right."
I turned my head. Christian George King again, and treachery again! Sea-
water had been conveyed into the magazine, and every grain of powder was
spoiled!
"Stay a moment," said Sergeant Drooce, when I had told him, without
causing a movement in a muscle of his face: "look to your pouch, my lad.
You Tom Packer, look to your pouch, confound you! Look to your pouches,
all you Marines."
The same artful savage had got at them, somehow or another, and the
cartridges were all unserviceable. "Hum!" says the Sergeant. "Look to
your loading, men. You are right so far?"
Yes; we were right so far.
"Well, my lads, and gentlemen all," says the Sergeant, "this will be a
hand-to-hand affair, and so much the better."
He treated himself to a pinch of snuff, and stood up, square-shouldered
and broad-chested, in the light of the moon--which was now very bright--as
cool as if he was waiting for a play to begin. He stood quiet, and we
all stood quiet, for a matter of something like half-an-hour. I took
notice from such whispered talk as there was, how little we that the
silver did not belong to, thought about it, and how much the people that
it did belong to, thought about it. At the end of the half-hour, it was
reported from the gate that Charker and the two were falling back on us,
pursued by about a dozen.
"Sally! Gate-party, under Gill Davis," says the Sergeant, "and bring 'em
in! Like men, now!"
We were not long about it, and we brought them in. "Don't take me," says
Charker, holding me round the neck, and stumbling down at my feet when
the gate was fast, "don't take me near the ladies or the children, Gill.
They had better not see Death, till it can't be helped. They'll see it
soon enough."
"Harry!" I answered, holding up his head. "Comrade!"
He was cut to pieces. The signal had been secured by the first pirate
party that landed; his hair was all singed off, and his face was
blackened with the running pitch from a torch.
He made no complaint of pain, or of anything. "Good-bye, old chap," was
all he said, with a smile. "I've got my death. And Death ain't life. Is
it, Gill?"
Having helped to lay his poor body on one side, I went back to my post.
Sergeant Drooce looked at me, with his eyebrows a little lifted. I
nodded. "Close up here men, and gentlemen all!" said the Sergeant. "A
place too many, in the line."
The Pirates were so close upon us at this time, that the foremost of them
were already before the gate. More and more came up with a great noise,
and shouting loudly. When we believed from the sound that they were all
there, we gave three English cheers. The poor little children joined,
and were so fully convinced of our being at play, that they enjoyed the
noise, and were heard clapping their hands in the silence that followed.
Our disposition was this, beginning with the rear. Mrs. Venning, holding
her daughter's child in her arms, sat on the steps of the little square
trench surrounding the silver-house, encouraging and directing those
women and children as she might have done in the happiest and easiest
time of her life. Then, there was an armed line, under Mr. Macey, across
the width of the enclosure, facing that way and having their backs
towards the gate, in order that they might watch the walls and prevent
our being taken by surprise. Then there was a space of eight or ten feet
deep, in which the spare arms were, and in which Miss Maryon and Mrs.
Fisher, their hands and dresses blackened with the spoilt gunpowder,
worked on their knees, tying such things as knives, old bayonets, and
spear-heads, to the muzzles of the useless muskets. Then, there was a
second armed line, under Sergeant Drooce, also across the width of the
enclosure, but facing to the gate. Then came the breastwork we had made,
with a zigzag way through it for me and my little party to hold good in
retreating, as long as we could, when we were driven from the gate. We
all knew that it was impossible to hold the place long, and that our only
hope was in the timely discovery of the plot by the boats, and in their
coming back.
I and my men were now thrown forward to the gate. From a spy-hole, I
could see the whole crowd of Pirates. There were Malays among them,
Dutch, Maltese, Greeks, Sambos, Negroes, and Convict Englishmen from the
West India Islands; among the last, him with the one eye and the patch
across the nose. There were some Portuguese, too, and a few Spaniards.
The captain was a Portuguese; a little man with very large ear-rings
under a very broad hat, and a great bright shawl twisted about his
shoulders. They were all strongly armed, but like a boarding party, with
pikes, swords, cutlasses, and axes. I noticed a good many pistols, but
not a gun of any kind among them. This gave me to understand that they
had considered that a continued roll of musketry might perhaps have been
heard on the mainland; also, that for the reason that fire would be seen
from the mainland they would not set the Fort in flames and roast us
alive; which was one of their favourite ways of carrying on. I looked
about for Christian George King, and if I had seen him I am much mistaken
if he would not have received my one round of ball-cartridge in his head.
But, no Christian George King was visible.
A sort of a wild Portuguese demon, who seemed either fierce-mad or fierce-
drunk--but, they all seemed one or the other--came forward with the black
flag, and gave it a wave or two. After that, the Portuguese captain
called out in shrill English, "I say you! English fools! Open the gate!
Surrender!"
As we kept close and quiet, he said something to his men which I didn't
understand, and when he had said it, the one-eyed English rascal with the
patch (who had stepped out when he began), said it again in English. It
was only this. "Boys of the black flag, this is to be quickly done. Take
all the prisoners you can. If they don't yield, kill the children to
make them. Forward!" Then, they all came on at the gate, and in another
half-minute were smashing and splitting it in.
We struck at them through the gaps and shivers, and we dropped many of
them, too; but, their very weight would have carried such a gate, if they
had been unarmed. I soon found Sergeant Drooce at my side, forming us
six remaining marines in line--Tom Packer next to me--and ordering us to
fall back three paces, and, as they broke in, to give them our one little
volley at short distance. "Then," says he, "receive them behind your
breastwork on the bayonet, and at least let every man of you pin one of
the cursed cockchafers through the body."
We checked them by our fire, slight as it was, and we checked them at the
breastwork. However, they broke over it like swarms of devils--they
were, really and truly, more devils than men--and then it was hand to
hand, indeed.
We clubbed our muskets and laid about us; even then, those two
ladies--always behind me--were steady and ready with the arms. I had a
lot of Maltese and Malays upon me, and, but for a broadsword that Miss
Maryon's own hand put in mine, should have got my end from them. But,
was that all? No. I saw a heap of banded dark hair and a white dress
come thrice between me and them, under my own raised right arm, which
each time might have destroyed the wearer of the white dress; and each
time one of the lot went down, struck dead.
Drooce was armed with a broadsword, too, and did such things with it,
that there was a cry, in half-a-dozen languages, of "Kill that sergeant!"
as I knew, by the cry being raised in English, and taken up in other
tongues. I had received a severe cut across the left arm a few moments
before, and should have known nothing of it, except supposing that
somebody had struck me a smart blow, if I had not felt weak, and seen
myself covered with spouting blood, and, at the same instant of time,
seen Miss Maryon tearing her dress and binding it with Mrs. Fisher's help
round the wound. They called to Tom Packer, who was scouring by, to stop
and guard me for one minute, while I was bound, or I should bleed to
death in trying to defend myself. Tom stopped directly, with a good
sabre in his hand.
In that same moment--all things seem to happen in that same moment, at
such a time--half-a-dozen had rushed howling at Sergeant Drooce. The
Sergeant, stepping back against the wall, stopped one howl for ever with
such a terrible blow, and waited for the rest to come on, with such a
wonderfully unmoved face, that they stopped and looked at him.
"See him now!" cried Tom Packer. "Now, when I could cut him out! Gill!
Did I tell you to mark my words?"
I implored Tom Packer in the Lord's name, as well as I could in my
faintness, to go to the Sergeant's aid.
"I hate and detest him," says Tom, moodily wavering. "Still, he is a
brave man." Then he calls out, "Sergeant Drooce, Sergeant Drooce! Tell
me you have driven me too hard, and are sorry for it."
The Sergeant, without turning his eyes from his assailants, which would
have been instant death to him, answers.
"No. I won't."
"Sergeant Drooce!" cries Tom, in a kind of an agony. "I have passed my
word that I would never save you from Death, if I could, but would leave
you to die. Tell me you have driven me too hard and are sorry for it,
and that shall go for nothing."
One of the group laid the Sergeant's bald bare head open. The Sergeant
laid him dead.
"I tell you," says the Sergeant, breathing a little short, and waiting
for the next attack, "no. I won't. If you are not man enough to strike
for a fellow-soldier because he wants help, and because of nothing else,
I'll go into the other world and look for a better man."
Tom swept upon them, and cut him out. Tom and he fought their way
through another knot of them, and sent them flying, and came over to
where I was beginning again to feel, with inexpressible joy, that I had
got a sword in my hand.
They had hardly come to us, when I heard, above all the other noises, a
tremendous cry of women's voices. I also saw Miss Maryon, with quite a
new face, suddenly clap her two hands over Mrs. Fisher's eyes. I looked
towards the silver-house, and saw Mrs. Venning--standing upright on the
top of the steps of the trench, with her gray hair and her dark eyes--hide
her daughter's child behind her, among the folds of her dress, strike a
pirate with her other hand, and fall, shot by his pistol.
The cry arose again, and there was a terrible and confusing rush of the
women into the midst of the struggle. In another moment, something came
tumbling down upon me that I thought was the wall. It was a heap of
Sambos who had come over the wall; and of four men who clung to my legs
like serpents, one who clung to my right leg was Christian George King.
"Yup, So-Jeer," says he, "Christian George King sar berry glad So-Jeer a
prisoner. Christian George King been waiting for So-Jeer sech long time.
Yup, yup!"
What could I do, with five-and-twenty of them on me, but be tied hand and
foot? So, I was tied hand and foot. It was all over now--boats not come
back--all lost! When I was fast bound and was put up against the wall,
the one-eyed English convict came up with the Portuguese Captain, to have
a look at me.
"See!" says he. "Here's the determined man! If you had slept sounder,
last night, you'd have slept your soundest last night, my determined
man."
The Portuguese Captain laughed in a cool way, and with the flat of his
cutlass, hit me crosswise, as if I was the bough of a tree that he played
with: first on the face, and then across the chest and the wounded arm. I
looked him steady in the face without tumbling while he looked at me, I
am happy to say; but, when they went away, I fell, and lay there.
The sun was up, when I was roused and told to come down to the beach and
be embarked. I was full of aches and pains, and could not at first
remember; but, I remembered quite soon enough. The killed were lying
about all over the place, and the Pirates were burying their dead, and
taking away their wounded on hastily-made litters, to the back of the
Island. As for us prisoners, some of their boats had come round to the
usual harbour, to carry us off. We looked a wretched few, I thought,
when I got down there; still, it was another sign that we had fought
well, and made the enemy suffer.
The Portuguese Captain had all the women already embarked in the boat he
himself commanded, which was just putting off when I got down. Miss
Maryon sat on one side of him, and gave me a moment's look, as full of
quiet courage, and pity, and confidence, as if it had been an hour long.
On the other side of him was poor little Mrs. Fisher, weeping for her
child and her mother. I was shoved into the same boat with Drooce and
Packer, and the remainder of our party of marines: of whom we had lost
two privates, besides Charker, my poor, brave comrade. We all made a
melancholy passage, under the hot sun over to the mainland. There, we
landed in a solitary place, and were mustered on the sea sand. Mr. and
Mrs. Macey and their children were amongst us, Mr. and Mrs. Pordage, Mr.
Kitten, Mr. Fisher, and Mrs. Belltott. We mustered only fourteen men,
fifteen women, and seven children. Those were all that remained of the
English who had lain down to sleep last night, unsuspecting and happy, on
the Island of Silver-Store.