The morning dawned upon a wild sea. We were running off to the eastward
so fast that it was necessary to stop the _Arrow_. The tremendous sea
following us threatened several times to board, and about nine o’clock
in the morning a big fellow fell in the waist. A dozen men were standing
near the galley door when the water fell on deck, and a full hundred
tons of it thundered upon the rascals. All forward disappeared in the
white smother, and I had just a glimpse of a puff of white steam
mingling with the storm of spray and splinters. The whole side of the
galley had been swept away and the place gutted, the double planking
being torn off as though a heavy shell had struck and exploded within.
Six men were carried overboard with the wash, and nothing could be done
for them. They passed out of sight before we recovered from the shock
of the rushing water. Benson stood near me on the poop and smiled
grimly.
“She won’t stand many like that, will she?” he asked.
“One or two more will finish her,” I assented. “We will have to stop
her.”
By desperate endeavour I managed to get some men to the braces, and
after half an hour’s hard work hove the _Arrow_ to in as mighty a sea as
ever ran in the South Atlantic. She would drop her long jib-boom down
the side of a hill of water until it dipped, while looking over the
stern we could still see a long way up the slanting sea. It was a grand
but disagreeable sight, for we were ill manned for heavy weather, and I
had no officers except Brown to help or relieve me. But she rode it down
without further mishap, plunging for two days before the gale subsided
and allowed us to get way upon her again. Then the weather moderated and
we stood along upon our course to the southwest. The stove was rigged
up in the galley, and the hungry men, now desperate with the hardship,
grumbled and growled and showed a temper which boded no good.
We had made nothing toward our destination for some days, and when this
fact became known, I was treated to growls and surly looks from all
hands.
On the sixteenth day of our run we were about three hundred miles to the
eastward of the River Plate and had crossed the thirty-fifth parallel.
One or two sails had been sighted; but we had never raised the craft
above the horizon’s rim, and the men had become hopeful in their
security. But, with a gang of cutthroats, an easy, quiet life soon
palls. After the danger of hanging disappears for a time, they soon
become discontented for lack of excitement. They long for some new
danger to interest them. The past is not pleasant to dwell upon and the
present is dull.
On this sixteenth day the men were grouped about the main-deck in the
afternoon, as had been their custom from the start. Some were playing
cards in the lee of the deck-house, while others threw dice or lounged
and smoked in the gangways. Benson was below, but his trusty man,
Johnson, was on the poop. I had occasion to send a man aloft to overhaul
a leech-line, and the man who went up was a sharp-eyed young villain who
had been to sea before and knew what was needed.
He had hardly reached the crosstrees when he hailed the deck:
“Sail on port bow!” he bawled, and pointed in the direction the vessel
bore, which was just over the port cat-head. My heart gave a jump, but I
tried to appear careless. I climbed up a few ratlines in the mizzen and
looked forward. In a moment I saw a tiny white speck reflecting the
slanting light of the sun. Then I looked down on deck and caught the
look in Brown’s eyes. He was ready for action.
Our vessel had been fitted out for a long voyage, the run to China often
taking five months; but the excesses of the convicts had quickly
finished off the kegs of spirits and the bottled liquors for the
after-cabin mess. The three men who acted as cooks were kept busy all
the time serving out the plundered victuals meant for the after-guard,
so that after the first week Benson was forced to cut them down to
ship’s rations. This had caused a mutiny, and it was only put down after
a few men were killed and some injured. The effects of the disturbance
were still visible and there was a good deal of loud grumbling done
forward at meal-time.
Johnson gazed at the strange sail a few moments, and then told the man
at the wheel to luff all he could and bade me attend to the bracing of
the yards. I saw what he meant to do, and never did I jam a ship’s yards
on to her backstays as I did them.
I believe the villain intended to commit piracy from the first; but,
aside from this, he had such an overpowering taste for liquor that he
was willing to run any risk in order to procure some, either by trade or
otherwise, without waiting for Benson.
The wind held steady and we went through the smooth sea at the rate of
eight or nine knots. The stranger rose rapidly on our weather bow, and
it was evident that we were overhauling him fast enough.
At eight bells his courses were rising above the water, and my heart was
pounding away under my ribs like a sledge. The men aboard us were about
as poor sailors as, inversely, they were a fine set of rascals.
Otherwise, they would have been suspicious, on seeing the depth of the
stranger’s topsails, and stood away to leeward with all possible speed.
When I had had a good look at the canvas ahead, I could hardly keep from
smiling, and I feared I might do something to show my thoughts. I knew
no merchant vessel afloat hoisted a full topsail fore and aft.
“What is he?” asked Johnson, coming close to me when I came on the poop.
“I can’t tell at this distance,” I answered, “but he looks to be a West
Coast trader. Most likely he is one with a mixed cargo.”
“There’ll not be many men on him, then?”
“No,” I answered, carelessly, well knowing what the scoundrel was
thinking of. “Probably a dozen or fifteen at the most.”
Benson had now come on deck, and he, together with Johnson and the few
leading men, held a conference as to what they should do about the
strange ship ahead. It didn’t take long for them to decide after I gave
them to understand the number of men they would probably find in the
crew.
“There’ll be no trouble about overhauling him before dark?” asked
Benson.
“None in the world,” I answered; “we can go ten fathoms to his one any
time.”
“Then hoist the Roger and let him know his time has come,” said the
swaggering villain.
Some of the more reckless spirits among the men had made a black flag
and had stitched the canvas figures of a skull and cross-bones across
its centre. They had never used it, and had made it more out of a spirit
of bravado, while trying to kill time, than anything else. In a few
moments it flew free and straight from the peak of the monkey-gaff.
The men were almost wild when they found it was decided to take the
strange ship. Benson stood on the break of the poop and gave orders for
getting things in readiness forward. Then it was as though a pack of
wolves had broken loose on the main-deck.
Weapons were gotten out and cleaned. Cutlasses from the _Countess of
Warwick_ and sheath-knives from the slop-chest were carefully sharpened.
Before the sun had sunk near the horizon, the black hull of the stranger
rose above the sea, and the villains were ready to take him.
He was about three miles ahead now and drawing a little to leeward, so
there was no trouble about him seeing our flag if he chose to look. I
felt that he would be interested in its peculiar colour.
I passed Brown and made a sign for him to be ready. I fixed my knife
where it would be handy.
Every moment was precious now. If the stranger would only see that flag
before the convicts could tell of their mistake and crowd on canvas and
get the weather-gage, all would be well.
I watched him and saw the slanting rays of the sun shining on carefully
scraped spars and snowy canvas, but no funnel showed above his deck and
no ports showed in the long, smooth stretch of his shining black sides.
Suddenly something fluttered in the wind. I looked harder, for we were
so close now that the British ensign could be seen distinctly as it
stood out straight in the breeze.
Yes, I was not mistaken. Surely he was springing his luff and the canvas
was slatting. Then I saw something that made my heart jump.
Up he came to the wind, and as he did so I saw a line of even breaks in
the smooth black hull as he dropped his ports outboard. Then a puff of
white smoke spurted from his side, and by the time the report of the gun
reached our ears the convicts saw an English gunboat awaiting the
explanation of the flying of that black flag.