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GRAHAM’S MAGAZINE.
Vol. XXXI. August, 1847. No. 2.
Table of Contents
Fiction, Literature and Articles
The Slaver (continued)
Cora Neill
A New Way to Collect an Old Debt
The Islets of the Gulf (continued)
Evelyn Grahame. A Tale of Truth
Reality Versus Romance, or The Young Wife
Review of New Books
Poetry and Fashion
Le Follet
Linolee
The Dreamer
The Demon of the Mirror
The Lifted Veil
Thou Art Cold
The Spanish Lovers
Transcriber’s Notes can be found at the end of this eBook.
* * * * *
[Illustration:
Anaïs Toudouze
LE FOLLET
Boulevart S^{t}. Martin, 61
_Chapeaux de M^{me}._ Penet, _r. N^{ve}. S^{t}. Augustin, N^{o}. 4,_
_Plumes et fleurs de_ Chagot—_Robes de M^{me}._ Leymerie—_Mantilles de_
Violard, _r. Choiseul, 2^{bis}_.
_Mouchoirs de _ L. Chapron & Dubois, _r. de la Paix, 7—Ombrelle de_
Lemaréchal, _b^{t}. Montmartre, 17_.
Graham’s Magazine.]
* * * * *
GRAHAM’S MAGAZINE.
Vol. XXXI. PHILADELPHIA, August, 1847. No. 2.
* * * * *
THE SLAVER.
A TALE OF OUR OWN TIMES.
BY A SON OF THE LATE DR. JOHN D. GODMAN.
(_Continued from page 12._)
CHAPTER V.
All lost! To prayers, to prayers!
All lost!
. . . . . . . . .
He’ll be hanged yet;
Though every drop of water swear against it,
And gape at wid’st to glut him.
Tempest.
The next morning, at the appointed time, accompanied by a young
Spaniard, as second, Willis was on the beach, where he found De Vere and
his friend. The foes saluted each other with the most scrupulous
politeness. Ten paces were measured as the distance, and they took their
positions.
The signal was given, and both fired, but with unequal success; at the
report De Vere sprung up, and then fell senseless at full length upon
the sand; Willis was unharmed, and merely asking his opponent’s second
if his friend wished another shot—to which, of course, he replied in
the negative—he got into his boat, and without even looking at De Vere,
pulled back to the harbor.
Anxious to get away from Havana as soon as possible, for, since his
rencounter with De Vere, he was confident that Francisca must know his
true character, or rather the character De Vere had falsely given him,
and not desiring to meet her or her father, Willis made all possible
dispatch to get through with his business; and in two days after the
duel he was again at sea, and bound for Africa.
The cargo he would bring with him was engaged to a trader on the other
side of the island, and he did not intend returning to Havana.
He had a quick and fortunate run over, and was four days out, on his
return, with the best lot of negroes he had ever obtained, all grown
men, strong and healthy, when he fell in with a sail.
He discovered it to be a large ship, to leeward of him some six or eight
miles; he knew her to be a man-of-war, by the squareness of her yards,
and who, as soon as she saw the Maraposa, took another pull at the
lee-braces, and put her helm a little more a-lee; but she might as well
have tried to sail in the teeth of a tornado as out-weather the
schooner, though the accuracy with which she maintained her distance and
position proved her to be a remarkably fast sailer. Willis had no fear
of the ship overtaking him, and held on his course; day after day, for
nearly a week, the two vessels were in the same relative position,
almost on parallel lines, but between six and eight miles apart; both
under all the sail they could carry. On the eighth day it fell dead
calm, and both the ship and schooner lay motionless on the smooth water.
The scorching beams of an equatorial sun rendered the heat insufferable,
even on deck; but in the hold of the slaver the heat and the stench were
absolutely awful! and the poor negroes, nearly frantic, were continually
shrieking for water and air.
Their cries brought them small relief. The attention of Willis and the
crew was too much occupied by other matters, to pay any more attention
to the blacks than see they were secure; for as soon as the wind died
away, the ship had commenced getting out her boats. Already had Willis
seen three of them lowered over, and he felt confident the captain of
the sloop-of-war intended attacking him with the whole strength of his
crew.
One! two! three! more boats he counted, as they swung an instant in the
air, and then dropped in the water. Aided by his glass, he saw the men
hurrying down the ship’s side to man them.
But he knew it was a work of time and labor to row eight miles in the
intense heat, and it was not until he had seen the launch, four cutters,
and even the gig, six boats in all, pull round the sloop’s bows, crowded
with men, and forming a line, stretch out toward the Maraposa, that he
commenced preparations to repel the attack.
The force approaching was formidable, nearly an hundred men, and the
crew of the slaver, counting all hands, even Willis and the cook, was
barely half the number.
The schooner, acting only on the defensive, and being so much higher out
of the water than the boats, made this disparity in numbers less to be
dreaded; and the confidence Willis had in his men, and they in him, made
the slavers feel secure in the result of the approaching struggle; and
it was with a loud and hearty shout that his crew answered, when Willis
called—
“All hands to quarters!”
“Open the magazine! Trice up the boarding-nettings! and stand by, to
give those English fools h—l! for meddling with what don’t concern
them.”
These orders were soon obeyed, and the schooner with her six caronnades
looking through the port-holes, double boarding-nettings triced up, and
her desperate crew armed to the teeth, with calm, determined resolution
printed on their countenances, quietly watching the coming foe, was the
personification of men “grown old in desperate hardihood;” fortified
with the determination of resisting to the death.
The line of black boats, with their long oars regularly rising and
falling, resembled huge beetles, as they came across the glass-like sea;
and in an hour and a half they were within a mile of the schooner. Shot
after shot was fired at them from the long gun of the Maraposa, but
unharmed they steadily approached to within the distance of a hundred
yards, when, with a loud huzza, they formed abreast, the launch a little
in advance, and made a dash at the schooner, with the intention of all
boarding at once.
Then was heard the thunder of the three larboard caronnades, as they
hurled forth their iron hail, and a yell of agony, and the sudden
swamping of the launch and fourth cutter attested the deadly effect of
the fire; but the other boats undaunted, before the guns could be again
loaded, had reached the vessel, and, with shouts and hoarse huzzas, were
trying to board her.
But the attempt was futile! with boarding-pike, cutlas point, and pistol
shot, her hardy crew repulsed them. Again! and again! with the
determined and dogged courage of English tars, they endeavored to get on
deck, but the men of the slaver, cheered on by Willis, drove them back
each time with loss, and the lieutenant in command of the expedition,
fearing all his men would be lost, drew off. Another broadside from the
schooner sunk one more of the boats, and pulling as quickly as possible
out of the range of the slavers’ guns, with slow and feeble strokes,
crest fallen, and deprived of half their boats and men, the attacking
party proceeded toward their ship.
Ere they had accomplished a third of the distance, the ship was seen to
square away her yards, and commenced moving through the water to meet
them; the wind had sprung up again, but coming out from the south’ard,
it brought the ship to windward, instead of to leeward, as she had been
before the calm, and feeling its effects first, she was gathering way
before the schooner felt it; soon however it reached the slaver, and
with her sheets eased off, the Maraposa commenced merrily to continue
her course.
Willis had only four men killed in the late action, and with his
feelings elated at the severe repulse he had given the men-of-wars-men,
whom he cordially hated for their incessant persecution of the slavers,
and whose boasted philanthropy, the motive which they pretend actuates
them, he was aware was only practiced for the effect it had upon the
world, and not for any benefit the Africans derived; for he knew that
the condition of the recaptured negroes, as English apprentices, was
infinitely worse than as Spanish slaves; for in the one case they had
all the horrors of slavery without the name or benefits, in the other
the name without the horrors.
He was congratulating himself on his good fortune, and the prospect of
making a safe and profitable voyage, when the current of his thoughts
were changed by the appearance of a sail on his weather bow. The sloop
lost time by heaving-to, to get in her boats, and was about ten miles
astern; and the strange sail was some six miles ahead, standing to the
northward and eastward, a course that would bring her exactly across the
schooner’s track.
“Take the glass, Mateo,” said Willis, “and jump up on the fore-topsail
yard, and see if you can make out that chap ahead; he may be only some
merchantman after all.”
Mateo took the glass, and rapidly going aloft, sung out in a voice of
surprise—“Soul of my mother! if it is not our old friend the Scorpion!
who must have a new captain, for you left the other past service!”
Willis was at a loss how to act. If he kept on he would meet the
Scorpion, and the sloop behind would soon be up, and then he would have
them both on him, and the brig alone was more than a match for the
Maraposa; eat them out of the wind he could not, for they were both to
windward of him; to bear away dead before it was only the same thing as
keeping on, for both vessels, spreading a great deal more canvas, would
have outsailed him, going with the wind over the tafferel.
“Well, Mateo, what do you think of the prospect?” asked Willis of his
mate, as he joined him on deck.
“Pretty squally, sir! we can’t run either way!”
“No! but we can keep on and fight!”
“Yes, sir! but if the brig wings us, and we can hardly expect to get off
again with sound spars, we will only fall into the clutches of the
sloop, even if we whip the brig.”
“Well,” said the captain, “we can’t do any better, and must make our
wits help us. To begin with, set the Portuguese flag, and let each man
arm himself with four pistols and a cutlas, and be ready to obey
orders.”
The vessels were rapidly approaching one another, and the brig, getting
within reach, fired. The ball struck in the water so close to the
schooner as to cast the spray on her deck; but another shot coming
through the bulwarks, and lodging in the heel of the bowsprit, Willis
lowered his ensign, in token of submission; and putting his helm up,
lay-to, by bringing the schooner in the wind.
When the ensign was lowered, the brig ceased firing; and getting within
hailing distance, an officer on her forecastle, ordered the Maraposa to
round-to under her lee-quarter.
“Ay, ay,” answered Willis, as he heard the order given on board the brig
to back the main-topsail. Shoving his helm shear a-port, he brought the
schooner directly athwart the brig’s weather bow. As soon as he heard
the vessels grate, as they came in contact, he sung out, “Away, ye
butterflies! away!” and springing up his own fore-rigging, leaped,
cutlas in hand, down on the deck of the brig, followed by his whole
crew, with the exception of two or three, who remained behind to take
charge of the schooner.
The brig’s crew had not time to rally from the surprise of this
unexpected and desperate onslaught; for the slavers rushed upon them
with the ferocity and vindictiveness of bloodhounds. Discharging their
pistols as they jumped on board, they threw them at the heads of their
foes, with wild yells, and then, with boarding-axe and cutlas, they
joined in the deadly encounter.
Surprised by the suddenness of Willis’s attack, and unprepared for it,
the Englishmen gave back before the impetuosity of his first burst, and
he was soon in possession of the forecastle; but, rallying in the
gangways, the slaughter on both sides was immense—hand to hand, toe to
toe, they fought; and as a man on either side fell, another stepped into
his place.
The shouts and huzzas that resounded from both parties, at the
commencement of the affray, had now died away, and the only sounds heard
were the clink of steel, as their weapons came in contact, or the
sullen, dead sound of a boarding-axe, as it crushed through a skull, and
an occasional groan, uttered by some poor fellow in his death-agony. The
termination of the conflict was doubtful, when the state of affairs was
altered, by an event equally startling to both sides.
The negroes confined in the hold of the Maraposa, frantic from their
confinement and suffering, and finding the crew had left her, succeeded
in breaking their bonds, and rushed on deck, wild with delight at being
loose, and burning for revenge, they threw overboard the few men left in
charge of the schooner, and hearing the conflict on the brig, some sixty
of them, armed with handspikes, iron belaying-pins, monkey-tails,[1] and
whatever they could pick up, came tumbling on board, and falling upon
the rear of the slavers, with unearthly and savage noises, they threw
them into great disorder, and created a diversion in favor of the
man-of-war’s men, which they were not slow in taking advantage of, and
with a loud hurrah, they charged over the Maraposas, and thought the day
was already theirs; but the negroes, who had only attacked the slavers
because they met them first as they came over the bow, knew no
difference in the white men; and as the brig’s crew came within their
reach, were assaulted as fiercely as the slavers; and not until every
African had been slain, or forced overboard, was the brig once more in
the possession of her own crew.
The Maraposa, after the men in charge of her were thrown overboard, had
forged clear of the brig, and was now drifting about, sometimes with her
sails full, and then all aback, some quarter of a mile off—the negroes
dancing, jumping, and fighting on her deck like a drove of monkeys.
Willis, who, looking around when the slaves first fell upon his men to
see what was the matter, had received a severe blow on the back of his
head from a cutlas. His hat turning the edge, he was only stunned by the
force of the blow, and gradually recovering his senses, he raised
himself on his elbow. At first his mind wandered, and he did not
recollect where he was; but soon the familiar faces of many of his own
men, and the bodies of the English sailors who lay around him, covered
with ghastly wounds, and stiff in the cold embrace of death; the groans
of the wounded, as they were borne past him, on their way to the
cockpit, recalled vividly to his imagination his melancholy situation.
Rising to his feet, and looking around, he found that, for the present
at least, his position was nearly hopeless. Scarce half a dozen of his
men had escaped with life, his vessel out of his reach, and he a
prisoner to those from whom he did not expect civil treatment; then with
the certainty, nearly, of the dangling noose, and foreyard-arm in the
future.
A few months previous it would have caused the slaver’s captain not a
moment’s uneasiness, had he been in even a greater strait. If the
gallows-rope had been quivering over his head, its noose gaping to
receive his neck, it would not then have caused a difference in his
pulse, or a pang of sorrow in his heart—for he was then both brave and
reckless; and knowing when he entered his present life that the penalty
was death, he would but have thought the deal had been against him, the
game lost, and he, of course, must pay the stake. For what is life worth
without an aim—an object; living but to eat, drink, and toil. With
nothing to look forward to in the future but a cessation from monotony,
is worse than death. And Willis, driven from the field of honorable
ambition, at enmity with his relations, and loving or beloved by no one,
had little to fear from death or disgrace.
But now, his feelings were altered. Love, that all powerful passion, had
brought about a change; not that he now _feared_ death, but the manner
of it; and the thought that the last Francisca would hear of him, as the
condemned felon, who had paid the penalty of the law without even
repenting of his course, was harrowing. And he had thought, too, that
time, which brings about the most apparently improbable things, might so
arrange events, that he would not always be the outcast he now was; and
even in the dim future he had pictured to himself Francisca as being
his.
It seemed, however, as if his course would now soon be run, and his
hopes blighted; and, steeped in intense agony of mind, he was insensible
to aught around, when he was aroused by a rough grasp on the shoulder,
and a sailor asked if he was not the captain of the schooner.
He answered in the affirmative, and was told the captain of the brig
wished to see him. Following the sailor, he was led to the cabin. Coming
from the light of the sun, it was comparatively dark, and at first
Willis did not observe that any one was in it; but becoming accustomed
to the light, he discovered the figure of De Vere, pale and attenuated,
lying on a sofa.
At first Willis was somewhat shocked; for he thought that De Vere had
been killed in the duel, which belief was confirmed by not seeing him on
deck during the fight; but knowing, now, that he had been only wounded,
he quickly regained his look of quiet composure, and fixing his eye on
De Vere’s, he stood silently before him.
A smile of gratified hatred was playing over De Vere’s white face; and
the sight of Willis, knowing him to be completely in his power, seemed
to afford him so much pleasure, that, gloating on him with a sparkling
eye, he did not break the silence for some moments.
“You thought I was dead, did you, my noble captain?” he at last said, in
a satyrical tone; “but you find I have life enough left yet to be at
your hanging; and I have a mind, for fear I should not, to have you
strung up now. Twice you have had the luck—the third time is mine.”
Willis deigned not an answer; and with a curled lip, expressive of his
scorn, remained motionless.
For a short time the captain of the brig looked at him in silence, and
then, apparently overcome by bodily fatigue, ordered Willis to be put in
double irons, which being put upon him at once, he was carried on the
berth-deck, and placed under the charge of a sentinel.
As soon as the wounded had been carried below, the brig sent a prize
crew on board the captured slaver; and after a short struggle, they
succeeded in reducing her negroes to submission.
By this time the ship that had been chasing the schooner, and whose
boats had been repulsed in the morning, came up, and proved to be the
Vixen, whose captain coming on board of the Scorpion, in consequence of
Capt. De Vere’s inability to leave his cabin, and congratulated him on
his good fortune in capturing the Maraposa, ordered him to proceed to
Havana with the prize, and have her condemned, and her crew, or what
remained of them, tried by the mixed commission;[2] and leaving them to
make the passage, we will return to where we left De Vere, on the beach,
after his duel with Willis.
-----
[1] Monkey-tails. Short, iron crow-bars, used as levers in moving the
breech of the guns.
[2] A court established in Havana, expressly for the trial of slavers.