sighted the Isle of Pines and False Cape on the morning of the 19th
and Cape S. Antonio in the evening, but were prevented from rounding
the same by a true Norther, the first of the season, on the 22nd,
however, the wind coming round sufficiently we rounded the cape in
a lively fashion and stood N½E. well away from the Coloradoes which
are a dangerous reef lying off this part of the Cuban coast. At six
o’clock on the morning of the 23rd there being light airs only I
sighted three sail in the North-East, evidently merchantmen bound on
the same course as ourselves, at the same time a schooner of similar
character was observed standing out towards us from the direction
of Black Key, and I pointed her out to my mate just before going
below, having the wind of us he was within hailing distance by ten
in the morning, judge then of our astonishment when he rudely opened
ten or twelve disguised gun-ports and unmasked a whole broadside
of artillery trained upon us, ordering us at the same time in the
most peremptory manner to heave-to or he would sink us instanter.
There was nothing to do but to comply although considering the
friendly relations at present existing between the English and all
other governments my mate was quite at a loss to account for his
action, and imagined it due to a mistake which would be speedily
explained, we were immediately boarded by about fifty or seventy
ruffians of the worst Spanish type, armed with knives and cutlasses,
who took possession of the ship and confined me in my cabin and my
mate and crew forward while they ransacked the vessel committing
every possible excess broaching rum-casks and breaking the necks
off wine-bottles and soon a great number of them were lying about
the deck in an intoxicated condition, their leader then informed
me he was aware I had a considerable sum in specie on board and
used _every possible threat which villainy could devise_ to make
me disclose its hiding-place, it was useless for me to assure him
that beyond the fifty or so pounds they had already discovered I
carried none, he grew even more insistent in his demands, declaring
that his information was certain, tearing down the panelling in my
cabin in his search. He carried off my instruments, my clothes, and
all my personal possessions, even taking from me the poor Locket in
which I was used to carry the portrait of my Wife, and no appeal to
his sensibility, tho’ I shed tears, would make him return this to
him worthless object, he also tore down and carried away the cabin
bell-pulls, which could be of no possible use to him and was an act
of the most open _piracy_, at length, seeing I was obdurate, he
threatened to blow up the ship _and all in it_ if I would not yield,
he prepared the train and would have proceeded to carry out this
devilish threat if I had not in this last extremity, consented.
I come now to the latter part of my tale. The children had taken
refuge in the deck-house and had been up to now free from harm,
except for a cuff or two and the Degrading Sights they must have
witnessed, but no sooner was the specie some five thousand pounds in
all mostly my private property and most of our cargo (chiefly rum
sugar coffee and arrowroot) removed to the schooner than her captain,
in sheer infamous wantonness, had them all brought out from their
refuge your own little ones and the two Fernandez children who were
also on board and murdered them, every one. That anything so wicked
should look like a man I should not have believed, had I been told,
tho’ I have lived long and seen all kinds of men, I think he is mad:
indeed I am sure of it; and I take Oath that he shall be brought
to at least that tithe of justice which is in Human hands, for two
days we drifted about in a helpless condition, for our rigging had
all been cut, and at last fell in with an American man-of-war, who
gave us some assistance, and would have proceeded in pursuit of the
miscreants himself had he not most explicit orders to elsewhere. I
then put in to the port of Havana, where I informed the correspondent
of Lloyds, the government, and the representative of the _Times_
newspaper, and take the opportunity of writing you this melancholy
letter before proceeding to England.
There is one point on which you will still feel some anxiety,
considering the sex of some of the poor innocents, and on which I am
glad to be able to set your minds at rest, the children were taken
onto the other vessel in the evening and I am glad to say there done
to death _immediately_, and their little bodies cast into the sea, as
I saw with great relief with my own eyes. There was no time for what
you might fear to have occurred, and this consolation I am glad to be
able to give you.--I have the honour to be,
Your obedient servant,
JAS. MARPOLE,
Master, barque _Clorinda_.
_Chapter 3_
The passage from Montego Bay to the Caymans, where the children had
written their letters, is only a matter of a few hours: indeed, in
clear weather one can look right across from Jamaica to the peak of
Turquino in Cuba.
There is no harbour; and the anchorage, owing to the reefs and ledges,
is difficult. The _Clorinda_ brought up off the Grand Cayman, the
look-out man in the chains feeling his way to a white, sandy patch of
bottom which affords the only safe resting-place there, and causing the
anchor to be let go to windward of it. Luckily, the weather was fine.
The island, a longish one at the western end of the group, is low,
and covered with palms. Presently a succession of boats brought out
a quantity of turtles, as Emily described. The natives also brought
parrots to sell to the sailors: but failed to dispose of many.
At last, however, the uncomfortable Caymans were left behind, and
they set their course towards the Isle of Pines, a large island in a
gulf of the Cuban coast. One of the sailors, called Curtis, had once
been wrecked there, and was full of stories about it. It is a very
unpleasant place; sparsely inhabited, and covered with labyrinthine
woods. The only food available is a kind of tree. There is also a
species of bean which looks tempting: but it is deadly poison. The
crocodiles, Curtis said, were so fierce they chased him and his
companions into trees: the only way to escape from them was to throw
them your cap to worry: or if you were bold, to disable them with a
blow of a stick on the loins. There were also a great many snakes,
including a kind of boa.
The current off the Isle of Pines sets strongly to the east: so
the _Clorinda_ kept close inshore, to cheat it. They passed Cape
Corrientes--looking, when first sighted, like two hummocks in the
sea: they passed Holandes Point, known as False C. Antonio: but were
prevented for some time, as Captain Marpole told in his letter, from
rounding the true one. For to attempt C. Antonio in a Norther is to
waste your labour.
They lay-to in sight of that long, low, rocky, treeless promontory
in which the great island of Cuba terminates, and waited. They were
so close that the fisherman’s hut on its southern side was clearly
discernible.
For the children, those first few days at sea had flashed by like a
kind of prolonged circus. There is no machine invented for sober
purposes so well adapted also to play as the rigging of a ship: and
the kindly captain, as Mrs. Thornton had divined, was willing to give
them a lot of freedom. First came the climbing of a few rungs of the
ratlines in a sailor’s charge: higher each time, till John attained a
gingerly touching of the yard: then hugged it: then straddled it. Soon,
running up the ratlines and prancing on the yard (as if it were a mere
table-top) had no further thrill for John or Emily either. (To go out
on the yard was not allowed.)
But when the ratlines had palled, the most lasting joy undoubtedly
lay in that network of foot-ropes and chains and stays which spreads
out under and on each side of the bowsprit. Here, familiarity only
bred content. Here, in fine weather, one could climb or be still:
stand, sit, hang, swing, or lie: now this end up, now that: and all
with the cream of the blue sea being whipt up for one’s own especial
pleasure, almost within touching distance: and the big white wooden
lady (Clorinda herself), bearing the whole vessel so lightly on her
back, her knees in the hubble-bubble, her cracks almost filled up
with so much painting, vaster than any living lady, as a constant and
unannoying companion.
In the midst there was a kind of spear, its haft set against the
under-side of the bowsprit, its point perpendicularly down towards
the water--the dolphin-striker. Here it was that the old monkey (who
had the Sore tail) loved to hang, by the mere stub which was all a
devouring cancer had left him, chattering to the water. He took no
notice of the children, nor they of him: but both parties grew attached
to each other, for all that.
--How small the children all looked, on a ship, when you saw them
beside the sailors! It was as if they were a different order of beings!
Yet they were living creatures just the same, full of promise.
_John_, with his downy, freckled face, and general round
energeticalness.
_Emily_, with her huge palm-leaf hat, and colourless cotton frock tight
over her minute impish erect body: her thin, almost expressionless
face: her dark grey eyes contracted to escape the blaze, yet shining
as it were in spite of themselves: and her really beautiful lips, that
looked almost as if they were sculptured.
_Margaret Fernandez_, taller (as midgets go: she was just thirteen),
with her square white face and tangled hair, her elaboratish clothes.
Her little brother _Harry_, by some throw-back for all the world like a
manikin Spaniard.
And the smaller Thorntons: _Edward_, mouse-coloured, with a general
mousy (but pleasing) expression: _Rachel_, with tight short gold curls
and a fat pink face (John’s colouring watered down): and last of all
_Laura_, a queer mite of three with heavy dark eyebrows, and blue eyes,
a big head-top and a receding chin--as if the Procreative Spirit was
getting a little hysterical by the time it reached her. A silver-age
conception, Laura’s, decidedly.
When the Norther blew itself out, it soon fell away almost dead calm.
The morning they finally rounded Cape San Antonio was hot, blazing hot.
But it is never stuffy at sea: there is only this disadvantage, that
while on land a shady hat protects you from the sun, at sea nothing can
protect you from that second sun which is mirrored upwards from the
water, strikes under all defences, and burns the unseasoned skin from
all your under-sides. Poor John! His throat and chin were a blistered
red.
From the point itself there is a whitish bank in two fathoms, bowed
from north to north-east. The outer side is clean and steep-to, and
in fine weather one can steer along it by eye. It ends in Black Key,
a rock standing out of the water like a ship’s hull. Beyond that
lies a channel, very foul and difficult to navigate: and beyond that
again the Coloradoes Reef begins, the first of a long chain of reefs
following the coast in a north-easterly direction as far as Honde Bay,
two-thirds the way to Havana. Within the reefs lies the intricate Canal
de Guaniguanico, of which this channel is the westernmost outlet, with
its own rather dubious little ports. But ocean traffic, needless to
say, shuns the whole box of tricks: and the _Clorinda_ advisedly stood
well away to the northward, keeping her course at a gentle amble for
the open Atlantic.
John was sitting outside the galley with the sailor called Curtis, who
was instructing him in the neat mystery of a Turk’s-head. Young Henry
Marpole was steering. Emily was messing around--not talking, just being
by him.
As for the other sailors, they were all congregated in a ring, up in
the bows, so that one saw nothing but their backs. But every now and
then a general guffaw, and a sudden surging of the whole group, showed
they were up to something or other.
John presently tiptoed forward, to see what it might be. He thrust his
bullet-head among their legs, and worked his way in till he had as good
a view as the earliest comer.
He found they had got the old monkey, and were filling him up with
rum. First they gave him biscuit soaked in it: then they dipped rags
in a pannikin of the stuff, and squeezed them into his mouth. Then
they tried to make him drink direct: but that he would not do--it only
wasted a lot of spirit.
John felt a vague horror at all this: though of course he did not guess
the purpose behind it.
The poor brute shivered and chattered, rolled his eyes, spluttered.
I suppose it must have been an excruciatingly funny sight. Every now
and then he would seem altogether overcome by the spirit. Then one of
them would lay him on the top of an old beef barrel--but hey presto, he
would be up like lightning, trying to streak through the air over their
heads. But he was no bird: they caught him each time, and set to work
to dope him again.
As for John, he could no more have left the scene now than Jacko the
monkey could.
It was astonishing what a lot of spirit the wizened little brute could
absorb. He was drunk, of course: hopelessly, blindly, madly drunk. But
he was not paralytic, not even somnolent: and it seemed as if nothing
could overcome him. So at last they gave up the attempt. They fetched
a wooden box, and cut a notch in the edge. Then they put him on the
barrel-top, and clapped the box over him, and after much manœuvring his
gangrenous tail was made to come out through the notch. Anaesthetised
or not, the operation on him was to proceed. John stared, transfixed,
at that obscene wriggling stump which was all one could see of the
animal: and out of the corner of his eye he could see at the same time
the uproarious operators, the tar-stained knife.
But the moment the blade touched flesh, with an awful screech the
mommet contrived to fling off his cage--leapt on the surgeon’s
head--leapt from there high in the air--caught the forestay--and in a
twinkling was away and up high in the fore-rigging.
Then began the hue and cry. Sixteen men flinging about in lofty
acrobatics, all to catch one poor old drunk monkey. For he was drunk
as a lord, and sick as a cat. His course varied between wild and
hair-raising leaps (a sort of inspired gymnastics), and doleful
incompetent reelings on a taut rope which threatened at every moment to
catapult him into the sea. But even so they could never quite catch him.
No wonder that all the children, now, stood open-mouthed and open-eyed
on the deck beneath in the sun till their necks nearly broke--_such_ a
Free Fun Fair and Circus!
And no wonder that on that passenger-schooner which Marpole, before
going below, had sighted drifting towards them from the direction
of the Black Key channel, the ladies had left the shade of the
awning and were crowding at the rail, parasols twirling, lorgnettes
and opera-glasses in action, all twittering like a cage of linnets.
Just too far off to distinguish the tiny quarry, they might well
have wondered what sort of a bedlam-vessel of sea-acrobats the light
easterly air was bearing them down upon.
They were so interested that presently a boat was hoisted out, and the
ladies--and some gentlemen as well--crowded into it.
Poor little Jacko missed his hold at last: fell plump on the deck
and broke his neck. That was the end of him--and of the hunt too,
of course. The aerial ballet was over, in its middle, with no final
tableau. The sailors began, in twos and threes, to slide to the deck.
But the visitors were already on board.
That is how the _Clorinda_ really was taken. There was no display of
artillery--but then, Captain Marpole could hardly know this, seeing he
was below in his bunk at the time. Henry was steering by that sixth
sense which only comes into operation when the other five are asleep.
The mate and crew had been so intent on what they were doing that the
Flying Dutchman himself might have laid alongside, for all they cared.
ii
Indeed, the whole manœuvre was executed so quietly that Captain Marpole
never even woke--incredible though this will seem to a seaman. But
then, Marpole had begun life as a successful coal-merchant.
The mate and crew were bundled into the fo’c’sle (the Fox-hole, the
children thought it was called), and confined there, the scuttle being
secured with a couple of nails.
The children themselves were shepherded, as related, into the
deck-house, where the chairs, and perfectly useless pieces of old rope,
and broken tools, and dried-up paint-pots were kept, without taking
alarm. But the door was immediately shut on them. They had to wait for
hours and hours before anything else happened--nearly all day, in fact:
and they got very bored, and rather cross.
The actual number of the men who had effected the capture cannot
have been more than eight or nine, most of them ‘women’ at that, and
not armed--at least with any visible weapon. But a second boatload
soon followed them from the schooner. These, for form’s sake, were
armed with muskets. But there was no possible resistance to fear. Two
long nails through the scuttle can secure any number of men pretty
effectually.
With this second boatload came both the captain and the mate. The
former was a clumsy great fellow, with a sad, silly face. He was
bulky; yet so ill-proportioned one got no impression of power. He was
modestly dressed in a drab shore-going suit: he was newly shaven,
and his sparse hair was pomaded so that it lay in a few dark ribbons
across his baldish head-top. But all this shore-decency of appearance
only accentuated his big splodgy brown hands, stained and scarred and
corned with his calling. Moreover, instead of boots he wore a pair of
gigantic heel-less slippers in the Moorish manner, which he must have
sliced with a knife out of some pair of dead sea-boots. Even his great
spreading feet could hardly keep them on, so that he was obliged to
walk at the slowest of shuffles, flop-flop along the deck. He stooped,
as if always afraid of banging his head on something; and carried the
backs of his hands forward, like an orang-outang.
Meanwhile the men set to work methodically but very quietly to remove
the wedges that held the battens of the hatches, getting ready to haul
up the cargo.
Their leader took several turns up and down the deck before he seemed
able to make up his mind to the interview: then lowered himself into
Marpole’s cabin, followed by his mate.
This mate was a small man: very fair, and intelligent-looking beside
his chief. He was almost dapper, in a quiet way, in his dress.
They found Captain Marpole even now only half awake: and the stranger
stood for a moment in silence, nervously twiddling his cap in his
hands. When he spoke at last, it was with a soft German accent:
‘Excuse me,’ he began, ‘but would you have the goodness to lend me a
few stores?’
Captain Marpole stared in astonishment, first at him and then at
the much be-painted faces of the ‘ladies’ pressed against his cabin
skylight.
‘Who the devil are you?’ he contrived to ask at last.
‘I hold a commission in the Columbian navy,’ the stranger explained:
‘and I am in need of a few stores.’
(Meanwhile his men had the hatches off, and were preparing to help
themselves to everything in the ship.)
Marpole looked him up and down. It was barely conceivable that even the
Columbian navy should have such a figure of an officer. Then his eye
wandered back to the skylight:
‘If you call yourself a man-of-war, sir, who in Heaven’s name are
_those_?’ As he pointed, the smirking faces hastily retreated.
The stranger blushed.
‘They are rather difficult to explain,’ he admitted ingenuously.
‘If you had said _Turkish_ navy, that would have been more
reasonable-sounding!’ said Marpole.
But the stranger did not seem to take the joke. He stood, silent, in a
characteristic attitude: rocking himself from foot to foot, and rubbing
his cheek on his shoulder.
Suddenly Marpole’s ear caught the muffled racketing forward. Almost
at the same time a bump that shivered the whole barque told that the
schooner had been laid alongside.
‘What’s that?’ he exclaimed. ‘Is there some one in my hold?’
‘Stores ...’ mumbled the stranger.
Marpole up to now had lain growling in his bunk like a dog in its
kennel. Now for the first time realising that something serious was
afoot he flung himself out and made for the companion-way. The little
silent fair man tripped him up, and he fell against the table.
‘You had much better stay here, yes?’ said the big man. ‘My fellows
shall keep a tally, you shall be paid in full for everything we take.’
The eyes of the marine coal-merchant gleamed momentarily:
‘You’ll have to pay for this outrage to a pretty tune!’ he growled.
‘I will pay you,’ said the stranger, with a sudden magnificence in his
voice, ‘at the very least five thousand pounds!’
Marpole stared in astonishment.
‘I will write you an order on the Columbian government for that
amount,’ the other went on.
Marpole thumped the table, almost speechless:
‘D’you think I believe that cock-and-bull story?’ he thundered.
Captain Jonsen made no protest.
‘Do you realise that you are technically guilty of _piracy_, making a
forced requisition on a British ship like this, even if you pay every
farthing?’
Still Jonsen made no reply: though the bored expression of his mate was
lit up for a moment by a smile.
‘You’ll pay me in _cash_!’ Marpole concluded. Then he went off on a
fresh tack: ‘Though how the devil you got on board without being called
beats me!--Where’s my mate?’
Jonsen began in a toneless voice, as if by rote: ‘I will write you an
order for five thousand pounds: three thousand for the stores, and two
thousand you will give me in money.’
‘We know you’ve got specie on board,’ interjected the little fair mate,
speaking for the first time.
‘Our information is certain!’ declared Jonsen.
Marpole at last went white and began to sweat. It took even Fear an
extraordinarily long time to penetrate his thick skull. But he denied
that he had any treasure on board.
‘Is that your answer?’ said Jonsen. He drew a heavy pistol from his
side pocket. ‘If you do not tell us the truth, your life shall pay the
forfeit.’ His voice was peculiarly gentle, and mechanical, as if he did
not attach much meaning to what he said. ‘Do not expect mercy, for this
is my profession, and in it I am inured to blood.’
A frightful squawking from the deck above told Marpole that his
chickens were being moved to new quarters.
In an agony of feeling Marpole told him that he had a wife and
children, who would be left destitute if his life was taken.
Jonsen, with rather a perplexed look on his face, put the gun back in
his pocket, and the two of them began to search for themselves, at the
same time stripping the saloon and cabins of everything they contained:
firearms, wearing apparel, the bedclothes, and even (as Marpole with a
rare touch of accuracy mentioned in his report) the bell-pulls.
Overhead there was a continuous bumping: the rolling of casks, cases,
etc.
‘Remember,’ Jonsen went on over his shoulder while he searched, ‘money
cannot recall life, nor in the least avail you when you are dead.
If you regard your life in the least, at once acquaint me with the
hiding-place, and your life shall be safe.’
Marpole’s only reply was again to invoke the thought of his wife
and children (he was, as a matter of fact, a widower: and his only
relative, a niece, would be the better off by his death to the tune of
some ten thousand pounds).
But this reiteration seemed to give the mate an idea: and he began to
talk to his chief rapidly in a language Marpole had never even heard.
For a moment a curious glint came into Jonsen’s eye: but soon he was
chuckling in the sentimentalest manner, and rubbing his hands.
The mate went on deck to prepare things.
Marpole had no inkling of what was afoot. The mate went on deck to
prepare his plan, whatever it was: and Jonsen busied himself with a
last futile search for the hiding-place, in silence.
Presently the mate shouted down to him, and he ordered Marpole on deck.
Poor Marpole groaned. Unloading cargo is inclined to be a messy
business anyway: but these visitors had been none too careful. There is
no smell in the world worse than when molasses and bilge-water marry:
now it was let loose like ten thousand devils. His heart was almost
broken when he saw the havoc that had been made with the cargo: broken
cases, casks, bottles, all about the deck: everything in the greatest
confusion: tarpaulins cut to pieces: hatches broken.
From the deck-house came the piercing voice of Laura:
‘_I want to come out!_’
The Spanish ladies seemed to have returned to the schooner. His own men
were shut up in the fo’c’sle. It was obvious where all the children
were, for Laura was not the only vociferator. But the only persons to
be seen were six members of the visiting crew, who stood in a line,
facing the deck-house, a musket apiece.
It was the little mate who now took charge of the situation:
‘Where is your specie hid, Captain?’
The musketeers having their backs to him, ‘Go to the Devil!’ replied
Marpole.
A startling volley rang out: six neat holes were punctured in the top
of the deck-house.
‘Hi! Steady there, what are you doing?’ John cried out indignantly from
within.
‘If you refuse to tell us, next time their aim will be a foot lower.’
‘You fiends!’ cried Marpole.
‘Will you tell me?’
‘_No!_’
‘_Fire!_’
The second row of holes can only have missed the taller children by a
few inches.
There was a moment’s silence: then a sudden wild shriek from within the
deck-house. It was so terrified a sound not their own mothers could
have told which throat it came from. One only, though.