"Keep a bright look-out, Collins, and let me be called if any thing like
a sail appears in sight," said Captain Staunton, as he was quitting the
quarter-deck of His Majesty's brig "Sylph," which he had the honour to
command. She was then stationed on the coast of Africa. Some years
have passed by, it must be remembered, since the time to which I now
allude.
"Ay, ay, sir," answered the first lieutenant, who was the officer
addressed. "With so many sharp eyes on board it shall be hard if we
miss seeing him, should he venture to approach the coast, and if we see
him, harder still if he escape us."
Captain Staunton descended to his cabin, and feverish and ill from long
watching and the effects of the pestiferous climate, he threw himself
into his cot, and endeavoured to snatch a few hours' repose, to better
prepare himself for the fresh exertions he expected to be called on to
make. But sleep, which kindly so seldom neglects to visit the seaman's
eyelids, when wooed even amid the raging tempest, refused for some time
to come at his call.
"I would sacrifice many a year's pay to catch that fellow," he
continued, as he soliloquised half aloud. "The monstrous villain! while
he lives I feel that the stain yet remains on the cloth he once
disgraced. We will yet show him that the honour of the service cannot
be insulted with impunity, although he dares our vengeance by venturing
among us when he knows every vessel on the station is on the watch for
him. And yet I once regarded that man as a friend; I loved him almost
as a brother, for I thought his heart beat with the most noble
sentiments. I thought him capable of the like deeds; but all the time
he must have been a most accomplished hypocrite, though still he has one
good quality, he is brave, or perhaps, it may be, he possesses rather
physical insensibility to danger and utter recklessness of all
consequences. He started fairly in life, and at one time gave good
promise of rising in his profession. I knew him to be wild and
irreligious; but I fancied his faults arose from thoughtlessness and
high spirit, and I hoped that experience of their ill effects and a good
example would cure them; but I now see that vice, from an ill-regulated
education, was deeply rooted in him, and, alas! has that good example
which might have saved him always been set him? I fear not. Ah! if
those in command could foresee the dreadful results of their own acts,
of their careless expressions, they would keep a better watch over
themselves, and often shudder with horror at the crime and misery they
have caused."
With a prayer to Heaven to enable him to avoid the faults of which he
felt with pain that he had himself too often been guilty, the commander
of the brig fell asleep.
The officer of the watch, meantime, continued his walk on the
quarter-deck, his thoughts taking a turn very similar to those of his
chief, for they had often together discussed the subject, and the same
train of ideas were naturally suggested by the same circumstance, as he
also had known the person of whom the captain was thinking.
The "Sylph" was at this time some miles off the African coast, which,
although not seen from the deck, was faintly distinguishable from the
masthead; it appeared like a long blue line drawn on the ocean with a
slight haze hanging over it, scarcely to be perceived by unpractised
eyes. The part visible was about the mouth of the Pongos River, a
well-known slave depot, the favourite resort of the Spanish South
American slavers.
The surface of the ocean was smooth, although occasionally ruffled by a
light breeze, which, coming from seaward, served to cool the brows of
the crew, and restore some vigour to their exhausted limbs; yet there
was the usual swell, which seldom leaves the bosom of the Atlantic to
perfect tranquillity. It came in from the west, slowly and silently,
making the vessel roll from side to side like a drunken man. Though she
was not, it must be understood, at anchor, she had not a stitch of
canvas spread which would have contributed, had there been any wind, to
steady her. All her sails were closely furled, but her studding-sail
booms were at their yard-arms, their gear was rove, and the
studding-sails themselves were on deck, ready to set in a moment. The
boats, too, were clear to hoist out in an instant, and there, was every
sign on deck that the now apparently listless crew would, at first sound
of the boatswain's whistle, spring into life and activity, and that the
now bare tracery of spars and rigging would, the second after, be
covered with a broad sheet of snowy canvas.
The "Sylph" had been about a year on the coast. When she left England,
her officers and crew were a particularly fine, healthy set of men, and
the whole of them could scarcely, in the course of their lives, have
mustered a month's illness among them. Since they came to their present
station, the second lieutenant and second master had died, as had two
midshipmen and thirteen of the crew, and nearly all the remainder had,
more or less, suffered, few retaining any traces of their former ruddy
and healthy appearance.
They had, however, to be sure, before being well acclimated, or having
learned the necessary precautions to take against illness, been exposed
to a good deal of hard service in boats up the rivers, where were sown
the seeds of the disease which afterwards proved so fatal among them.
Fresh officers and men had been appointed to fill the places of those
who had died, and the brig was now again the same model of discipline
and beauty which she had before been. When Captain Staunton joined the
brig, he is reported to have called the men aft, and to have made them a
speech much to this effect:--
"Now, my men, that you may not have any long discussions as to the
character of your new commander, I wish to let you clearly understand
that I never overlook drunkenness, or any other crime whatever, either
in my officers or men. I shall not say whether I like flogging or not,
but while it is awarded by the articles of war, I shall inflict it.
Remember, however, I would much rather reward than punish. The men who
do their duty well and cheerfully, I will advance as far as I have the
power. I wish this to be a happy ship, and it will be your own faults
if you do not make it so. Now pipe down."
The men agreed, as they sat in knots together after they had knocked off
work for the day, that they liked the cut of their new skipper's jib,
and that his speech, though short, was good, and had no rigmarole in it.
He afterwards invited his officers to dine with him, and in the course
of conversation impressed on their minds that he considered gross
language and swearing not only ungentlemanly, but wicked, and that he
was certain the men did not obey at all the more readily for having it
applied to them; that the men would follow the example they set them;
that their influence depended on their doing their duty, and that if
they did it the men would do theirs. "Drunkenness," he observed, "is by
some considered a very venial offence, but as the lives of all on board,
as the discipline of the ship depends on the judgment of those in
command, however much I shall regret the necessity, I shall break any
officer who is guilty of it." As Captain Staunton himself practised
what he preached, and set an example of all the high qualities which
adorn his noble profession, the necessity he would have deplored never
occurred; punishment was very rare, and the "Sylph" _was_ a happy ship.
Having made this digression, we will return to the time when the "Sylph"
lay on the waste of waters, rolling her polished sides in the shining
ocean, while the drops of spray which they threw off sparkled like
diamonds in the rays of the burning sun. Had it not been for the light
breeze we spoke of, the heat would have been intolerable on deck, for
there was not the usual shade from the sails to shelter the seamen from
the fury of the burning orb; but all were far too eager for the
appearance of a vessel they were looking for to think of the
inconvenience.
Three days before, an English homeward-bound merchantman had spoken
them, and brought them the information that a large slaver was every
moment expected in the river; a very fast-sailing schooner, which had
already once before escaped them by the daring and good seamanship of
her commander, who was supposed to be an Englishman. Thus much the crew
knew, and they added their own comments, believing him to be a character
similar to the famed Vanderdecken, or, at all events, in league with the
prince of terror, Davy Jones.
They had already been two days thus watching, after having ascertained,
by sending the boats up the river, that the slaver was not there.
Captain Staunton, knowing the man with whom he had to deal, was aware
that his only chance of capturing him was by extreme caution. He had
therefore furled all the sails of the brig in the way we have described,
that she might not be discovered by the slaver till the fellow had got
close up to her, and he then hoped to be able, without a long chase, to
bring her to action. Each night, as soon as it grew dusk, the "Sylph"
made sail and stood in-shore, in order better to watch the coast, and
before daylight she was again at her former post. It has been asserted
that the African cruisers have allowed the slavers to get into port, and
have not attempted to capture them till they have got their slaves on
board, in order either to gain the head-money, or to make more sure of
their condemnation; but if this was ever done, Captain Staunton was not
the person to do so; he knew, moreover, that the man who commanded the
slaver he was in search of would not yield her up without a struggle,
and, for the sake of saving many lives which must otherwise inevitably
be sacrificed, he was anxious to bring her to action before she got her
slaves on board. The officer of the watch continued pacing the deck
with his spy-glass under his arm, every now and then hailing the
masthead to keep the lookouts on the alert, but the same answer was each
time given.
"Nothing in sight, sir."
Thus the day wore on. Towards the evening the breeze, which had since
the morning been sluggish, increased considerably; but as the current
which is to be found in nearly every part of the ocean set in an
opposite direction to it, the brig did not materially alter her
position. A fresh hand had just relieved the look-out at the masthead
at eight bells in the afternoon watch. His eyes, from not being
fatigued, were sharper than his predecessor's, and he had scarcely
glanced round the horizon, when he hailed the deck with words which
roused everybody up--
"A sail in sight!"
"Where away?" asked the officer of the watch. The brig's head was now
tending on shore.
"Right over the starboard quarter, sir," was the answer.
"Call the captain, Mr Wildgrave," said the second lieutenant, who had
charge of the deck, to the midshipman of the watch.
"Which way is she standing?" asked the officer.
"Directly down for us, sir," was the answer.
In five seconds the captain himself was on deck, and the remainder of
the officers soon after appeared. The first lieutenant went aloft with
his glass, and on his return pronounced the stranger to be a large
square-rigged vessel, but whether a man-of-war, a slaver, or an honest
trader, it was difficult to say, though he was inclined to suppose her
belonging to either of the two former classes, from the broad spread of
canvas she showed. On she came towards them, probably ignorant of their
vicinity, as, stripped as they were, they would not be perceived by her
till long after she was seen by them.
"What do you now make her out to be, Mr Collins?" inquired the
commander of the first lieutenant, who had again returned, after a
second trip to the masthead.
"A large schooner, at all events, sir; and if I mistake not, she is the
`Espanto.'"
"Pipe all hands on deck, then, for we shall soon be discovered, and must
make sail in chase."
The men were in a moment at their stations, and in silence waited the
orders of their commander. Still the stranger came on, her sails slowly
rising, as it were, from out of the ocean. She was now clearly seen
from the deck of the "Sylph." Apparently there was a very bad lookout
kept on board her, or else she was not the vessel they supposed, as
otherwise the British cruiser must before this have been perceived by
her.
Captain Staunton and his officers stood watching her with almost
breathless anxiety, with their glasses constantly at their eyes, ready
to observe the first indication of any alteration in her course. Nearer
and nearer she approached, with studding-sails alow and aloft, on either
side. Suddenly they were observed to be taken in, and the vessel's
course was altered to the southward.
"Aloft there, and make sail!" shouted the commander, in a quick tone.
The men, with alacrity, sprang up the rigging; the sails were let fall,
the tacks were sheeted home, and in a minute the "Sylph," under a spread
of canvas, was standing on a bowline in chase of the stranger.