OUR PROGRESS TO THE CHANNEL.
When I started to relate my adventure I never designed to write an
account of the journey home at large. On the contrary, I foresaw that,
by the time I had arrived at this part, you would have had enough of the
sea. Let me now, then, be as brief as possible.
The melting of the ice and the slowly increasing power of the sun were
inexpressibly consoling to me who had had so much of the cold that I do
protest if Elysium were bleak, no matter how radiant, and the abode of
the fiends as hot as it is pictured, I would choose to turn my back upon
the angels. I cannot say, however, that the schooner was properly thawed
until we were hard upon the parallels of the Falkland Islands; she then
showed her timbers naked to the sun, and exposed a brown solid deck
rendered ugly by several dark patches which, scrape as we might, we
could not obliterate. We struck the guns into the hold for the better
ballasting of the vessel, got studding-sail booms aloft, overhauled her
suits of canvas and found a great square sail which proved of
inestimable importance in light winds and in running. After the ice was
wholly melted out of her frame she made a little water, yet not so much
but that half an hour's spell at the pump twice a day easily freed her.
But, curiously enough, at the end of a fortnight she became tight again,
which I attribute to the swelling of her timbers.
We were a slender company, but we managed extraordinarily well. The men
were wonderfully content; I never heard so much as a murmur escape one
of them; they never exceeded their rations nor asked for a drop more of
liquor than we had agreed among us should be served out. But, as I had
anticipated, our security lay in our slenderness. We were too few for
disaffection. The negroes were as simple as children, Wilkinson looked
to find his account in a happy arrival, and if I was not, strictly
speaking, their captain, I was their navigator without whom their case
would have been as perilous as mine was on the ice.
Outside the natural dangers of the sea we had but one anxiety, and that
concerned our being chased and taken. This fear was heartily shared by
my companions, to whom I also represented that it must be our business
to give even the ships of our country a wide berth; for, though I had
long since flung all the compromising bunting overboard, and destroyed
all the papers I could come across, which being written in a language I
was ignorant of, might, for all I knew, contain some damning
information, a British ship would be sure to board us and I should have
to tell the truth or take the risks of prevaricating. If I told the
truth, then I should have to admit that the lading of the vessel was
piratical plunder; and though I knew not how the law stood with regard
to booty rescued from certain destruction after the lapse of hard upon
half a century, yet it was a hundred to one that the whole would be
claimed in the king's name under a talk of restitution, which signified
that we should never hear more of it. On the other hand prevarication
would not fail to excite suspicion, and on our not being able to
satisfactorily account for our possession of the ship and what was in
her, it might end in our actually being seized as pirates and perhaps
executed.
This reasoning went very well with the men and filled them with such
anxiety that they were for ever on the look-out for a sail. But, as you
may guess, my own solicitude sank very much deeper; for, supposing the
schooner to be rummaged by an English crew, it was as certain as that my
hand was affixed to my arm that the chests of treasure would be
transhipped and lost to me by the law's trickery.
Now, till we were to the north of the equator we sighted nothing; no, in
all those days not a single sail ever hove into view to break the
melancholy continuity of the sea-line. But between the parallels of 12°
and 22° N. we met with no less than eight ships, the nearest within a
league. We watched them as cats watch mice; making a point to bear away
if they were going our road, or, if they were coming towards us, to
shift our helm--but never very markedly--so as to let them pass us at
the widest possible distance. Some of them showed a colour, but we never
answered their signals. That they were all harmless traders I will not
affirm; but none of them offered to chase us. Yet could I have been sure
of a ship, I should have been glad to speak. My longitude was little
more than guesswork; my latitude not very certain; and my compass was
out. However, I supported my own and the spirits of my little company by
telling them of the early navigators; how Columbus, Candish, Drake,
Schouten and other heroic marine worthies of distant times had navigated
the globe, discovered new worlds, penetrated into the most secret
solitudes of the deep without any notion of longitude and with no better
instruments to take the sun's height than the forestaff and astrolabe.
We were better off than they, and I had not the least doubt, I told
them, of bringing the old schooner to a safe berth off Deal or
Gravesend.
But it happened that we were chased when on the polar verge of the
North-East Trade-wind. It was blowing brisk, the sea breaking in snow
upon the weather bow, the sky overcast with clouds, and the schooner
washing through it under a single-reefed mainsail and whole topsail. It
was noon: I was taking an observation, when Pitt at the tiller sang out
"Sail ho!" and looking, I spied the swelling cloud-like canvas of a
vessel on a line with our starboard cathead. I told Pitt to let the
schooner fall off three points, and with slackened sheets the old _Boca
del Dragon_ hummed through it brilliantly, flinging the foam as far aft
as the gangway. The strange sail rose rapidly, and the lifting of her
hull discovered her to be a line-of-battle ship. We held on as we were,
hoping to escape her notice; but whether she did not like our
appearance, or that there was something in the figure we cut that
excited her curiosity, she, on a sudden, put her helm up and steered a
true course for us.
At the first sight of her I had called Wilkinson and Cromwell on deck,
and I now cried out, "Lads, d'ye see, she's after us. If she catches us
our dream of dollars is over. Lively now, boys, and give her all she can
stagger under; and what she can't carry she must drag." And we sprang to
make sail, briskly as apes, and every one working with two-man power. I
knew the old _Boca's_ best point; it was with the wind a point abaft the
beam; we put her to that, got the great square-sail on her, shook out
all reefs, and gave all she had to the wind. The wake roared away from
her like a white torrent that flies from the foot of a foaming cataract.
She had the pirate's instincts, and being put to her trumps, was nimble.
God! how she did swing through it! Never had I driven the aged bucket
before like this, and I understood that speed at sea is not
irreconcilable with odd bodies. But the great ship to windward hung
steady; a cloud of bland and swelling cloths. When we had set the
studding-sail we had nothing more to fly with; and so we stood looking.
She slapped six shots at us, one after another, as a haughty hint to us
to stop; but we meant to escape, and at last we did, outsailing her by
thirteen inches to her foot--one foot to her twelve--though she stuck to
our skirts the whole afternoon and kept us in an agony of anxiety.
The sun was setting when she abandoned us: she was then some five or six
miles distant on our weather quarter. What her nation was I did not
know; but Wilkinson reckoned her French when she gave us up. We rushed
steadily along the same course into the darkness of the night and then,
shortening sail, brought the schooner to the wind again, after which we
drank to the frisky old jade in an honestly-earned bowl.
It was on the 5th of December that we sighted the Scilly Isles. I
guessed what that land was, but so vague had been my navigation that I
durst not be sure; until, spying a smack with her nets over, I steered
for her and got the information I needed from her people. They answered
us with an air of fear, and in truth the fellows had reason; for,
besides the singular appearance of the ship, the four of us were
apparelled in odds and ends of the antique clothes, and I have little
doubt they considered us lunatics of another country, who had run away
with a ship belonging to parts where the tastes and fashions were behind
the age.
Now, as you may suppose, by this time I had settled my plans; and as we
sailed up channel, I unfolded them to my companions. I pointed out that
before we entered the river it would be necessary to discharge our
lading into some little vessel that would smuggle the booty ashore for
us. The figure the schooner made was so peculiar she would inevitably
attract attention; she would instantly be boarded in the Thames on our
coming to anchor, and, if I told the truth, she would be seized as a
pirate, and ourselves dismissed with a small reward, and perhaps with
nothing.
"My scheme," said I, "is this: I have a relative in London to whom I
shall communicate the news of my arrival and tell him my story. You,
Wilkinson must be the bearer of this letter. He is a shrewd, active man,
and I will leave it to him to engage the help we want. There is no lack
of the right kind of serviceable men at Deal, and if they are promised a
substantial interest in smuggling our lading ashore, they will run the
goods successfully, do not fear. As there is sure to be a man-of-war
stationed in the Downs, we must keep clear of that anchorage. I will
land you at Lydd, whence you will make your way to Dover and thence to
London. Cromwell and Pitt will return and help me to keep cruising. My
letter to my relative will tell him where to seek me, and I shall know
his boat by her flying a jack. When we have discharged our lading we
will sail to the Thames, and then let who will come aboard, for we shall
have a clean hold. This," continued I, "is the best scheme I can devise.
The risk of smuggling attend it, to be sure; but against those risks we
have to put the certainty of our forfeiting our just claims to the
property if we carry the schooner to the Thames. Even suppose, when
there, that we should not be immediately visited, and so be provided
with an opportunity to land our stuff--whom have we to trust? The Thames
abounds with river thieves, with lumpers, scuffle-hunters, mud-larks,
glutmen, rogues of all sorts, to hire whom would mean to bribe them with
the value of half the lading and to risk their stealing the other half.
But this is the lesser difficulty; the main one lies in this: there are
some sixteen hundred men employed in the London Custom House, most of
whom are on river duty as watchmen; thirty of these people are clapped
aboard an East Indiaman, five or six on West India ships, and a like
proportion in other vessels. So strange a craft as ours would be
visited, depend on't, and smartly, too. D'ye see the danger, lads? What
do you say, then, to my scheme?"
The negroes immediately answered that they left it to me; I knew best;
they would be satisfied with whatever I did.
Wilkinson mused a while and then said, "Smuggling was risky work. How
would it be if we represented that we had found the schooner washing
about with nobody aboard?"
"The tale wouldn't be credited," said I. "The age of the vessel would
tell against such a story, even if you removed all other evidence by
throwing the clothes and small-arms overboard and whatever else might go
to prove that the schooner must have been floating about abandoned since
the year 1750!"
"Musn't lose de clothes, massa, on no account," cried Pitt.
"Well, sir," says Wilkinson, after another spell of reflection, "I
reckon you're right. If so be the law would seize the vessel and goods
on the grounds that she had been a pirate and all that's in her was
plunder, why, then, certainly, I don't see nothin' else but to make a
smuggling job of it, as you say, sir."
This being settled (Wilkinson's concurrence being rendered the easier by
my telling him that, providing the lading was safely run, I would adhere
to my undertaking to give them six hundred and sixty pounds each for
their share), I went below and spent half an hour over a letter to Mr.
Jeremiah Mason. There was no ink, but I found a pencil, and for paper I
used the fly-leaves of the books in my cabin. I opened with a sketch of
my adventures, and then went on to relate that the _Boca_ was a _rich
ship_; that as she had been a pirate, I risked her seizure by carrying
her to London; that I stood grievously in need of his counsel and help,
and begged him not to lose a moment in returning with the messenger to
Deal, and there hiring a boat and coming to me, whom he would find
cruising off Beachy Head. That I might know his boat, I bade him fly a
jack a little below the masthead. "As for the _Boca del Dragon_," I
added, "Wilkinson would recognize her if she were in the middle of a
thousand sail, and indeed a farmer's boy would be able to distinguish
her for her uncommon oddness of figure." I was satisfied to underscore
the words "a rich ship," quite certain his imagination would be
sufficiently fired by the expression. At anything further I durst not
hint, as the letter would be open for Wilkinson to read.
When I had finished, I took a lanthorn and the keys of the chest and
went very secretly and expeditiously to the run, and removing the layers
of small-arms from the top of the case that held the money, I picked out
some English pieces, quickly returned the small-arms, locked the chest,
and returned.
All this time we were running up Channel before a fresh westerly wind.
It was true December weather, very raw, and the horizon thick, but I
knew my road well, and whilst the loom of the land showed, I desired
nothing better than this thickness.
But wary sailing delayed us; and it was not till ten o'clock on the
night of the seventh that we hove the schooner to off the shingly beach
of Lydd within sound of the wash of the sea upon it. The bay sheltered
us; we got the boat over; I gave Wilkinson the letter and ten guineas,
bidding him keep them hidden and to use them cautiously with the silver
change he would receive, for they were all guineas of the first George
and might excite comment if he, a poor sailor, ill-clad, should pull
them out and exhibit them. Happily, in the hurry of the time, he did not
think to ask me how I had come by them. He thrust them into his pocket,
shook my hand and dropped into the boat, and the negroes immediately
rowed him ashore.
I stood holding a lanthorn upon the rail to serve them as a guide,
waiting for the boat to return, and never breathed more freely in my
life than when I heard the sound of oars. The two negroes came
alongside, and, clapping the tackles on to the boat, we hoisted her with
the capstan, and then under very small canvas stood out to sea again.