CHAPTER XXVIII.

THE ARK THAT JACK BUILT.

"Good heaven, befriend that little boat,

And guide her on her way!

A boat, they say, has canvas wings,

But can not fly away;

Though, like a merry singing-bird,

She sits upon the spray."

The land wind sighed and murmured; the sea-breeze wafted its rustling

influence over the waves; the long swells broke over the ledge; the

inlet flowed pure and limpid; and the gulls and sea-mews floated

gracefully over the reef, as if a hurricane had never poured its baneful

wrath upon it or the lonely island.

Day by day and week by week, the man and boy, getting each hour stronger

and better, worked and worked. He with his great arms hewing and sawing,

and the child attending upon him like a shadow. By great toil and

exertion the doctor had succeeded in placing some of the timbers of the

jetty together as launching-ways, and on the cradle he had laid the

wreck of the old boat. Then, with an old saw and some tools he found

near the site of the mat sheds by the cove, he began to build the frail

ark which was to carry him and the child from the hated island. From the

storehouse, too, he obtained plenty of provisions to supply their wants,

and old sails and rope he found in abundance. Babette's collection of

worldly wealth provided them with linen and clothing, together with

utensils for eating and drinking; and he had made their dwelling in the

little chapel clean and habitable. Here they slept by night on an old

sail, and soundly too, the sleep of repentance and innocence. With the

early morning the man and the boy arose, and took their way to the cove.

The little fellow was clean and tidy now, dressed in a little loose

calico frock, and a queer contrivance of an old bonnet fashioned out of

Babette's gear, and on his feet were a pair of little canvas slippers,

stitched for him by his protector. After a bath in the basin of the

inlet the fire was kindled, and the simple breakfast prepared. Then,

while the strong man hewed, and sawed, and hammered beneath a temporary

awning which covered the open workshop, the boy would pick up shells

along the cove, or with a little rod and line, seated on a flat rock

near by, jerk out fish from the basin to serve for dinner. Sometimes he

would wander about in search of nails and spikes for the boat, or gather

sticks for the fire, but never out of hail, and never beyond the

watchful eyes of his friend. Yes, those watchful, kind eyes followed his

slightest movements; and while the hammer was going in vigorous blows on

the planks, or the axe chipping away a timber, his pleasant voice sang

Creole songs to the child, or encouraged his innocent prattle. A loaded

musket, which, with some ammunition, he had dug out from the wreck of

his old quarters, stood leaning against an upright post under the shade,

and woe to the man or beast that might have dared to approach the boy!

In the burning heat of the tropical day the labor ceased, and the child

either lay on his back on the soft sand beneath the awning, kicking up

his little legs, watching the small gulls as they skimmed across the

basin, or, with his brown curly head resting on the doctor's knees,

slept sweetly. Happy and contented he was, too, with the return of

health and strength; and if his budding memory looked back to her he had

lost, and the recollection of his faithful Banou, it was only for a

moment, and, like a childish dream, it passed away.

[Illustration: BUILDING THE BOAT.]

Every evening at sunset, when the work was done for the day, the doctor,

with Henri in his arms and the musket on his shoulder, would climb the

crag, and peer all around the island; but never a sail did he see from

the hour the "Centipede" spread her canvas, while he lay helplessly

bound on the trestle with the green noose around his neck. As the

twilight faded, the sole human occupants of the island returned to the

chapel, and when they had said a simple prayer, kneeling before the

Virgin, they laid themselves down on their canvas bed to rest till the

dawn. Many a silent hour in the watches of the tedious night did the

doctor lie awake, while the cool sweet breath of the child fanned his

cheek as he lay nestling beside him, pondering and wondering on the fate

of his charge. He knew absolutely nothing about his history save that he

had been pitched overboard from the brig the pirates were robbing; but

what was the name or nation of the vessel, where from, or whither bound,

he was in utter ignorance. He had questioned the leader Gibbs on that

occasion after the chase by the corvette, when he had lopped off the

brute's leg; but, what with suffering and drink, the ruffian had either

forgotten the brig's name, or feigned to, and all he could impart was

the belief that she was an English trader. Even from the boy, too, the

doctor could elicit nothing of importance, though day by day he tried

every means of leading the child's mind back to the past, but always

with the same result.

"_Oui, ma chere mama! Bon Banou!_" and "_Ma petite cousine, Rosalie!_"

These were the only words the little fellow had to link his fate with

the future, and even they became fainter and fainter on his mind and

tongue as the time passed on. With this delicate web around the destiny

of the child, and that he spoke French, and had evidently been tenderly

nurtured, the doctor was forced to be content.

Well, so the days and nights went by, and so the work went on, and the

little ark began to assume a wholesome look, and to be capable of

plowing the distant main. Then, when she was planked up, with a gunwale

on, and half-decked over forward, she was calked, and the seams payed

with pitch. When all ready for launching, early one morning the doctor

and the boy went gayly down to the cove. There, as the first golden rays

of the rising sun shot athwart the inlet, Henri stood up in the bows,

and with a large pearl-shell of pure spring water, he waved his tattered

bonnet round his curly locks, and with childish delight, as the vessel

began to move, he emptied the shell of its sparkling treasure, shouting,

as she slid off the ways into the basin, "_Ma petite cousine Rosalie!_"

The builder, too, took off his hat and shouted, in his deep bass, till

the rocks gave back the echo of "_Rosalie! Rosalie!_"

Thus was the ark launched and christened by her captain and crew,

and there she rode on the basin, a little pinnace of about ten tons,

which had been once used to carry anchors, chains, and stores about the

harbor. A week or two more, and she was fitted with a single mast,

stepped well in the bows, for a jib and one square lug-sail. Then

ballast in bags of sand was laid along her keelson, and a couple of

breakers of fresh water got on board, together with a quantity of

cooked salt meat and hard biscuit stowed away under the half-deck

forward--where, too, was a cozy little nest of spare canvas, with an

oakum pillow, for the boy! Yes, there lay the good ship "Rosalie,"

outward bound, with sails bent and gear rove, cargo on board, and

waiting for a wind.

Meanwhile the doctor had tried her under sail, and satisfied himself

that every thing worked well, and that she was in proper trim. Then he

moored her within a fathom from the shore, and waited for a moon to

light him on his voyage. Whither?

Carefully, too--like one who had passed a lifetime on the ocean, from

the China Seas to the broad Atlantic, under the suns of the tropics as

well as in the dim gloom of high latitudes--the doctor studied the

clouds and watched their course, noting the flight of the birds in the

air and the track of fish in the sea. At last the trade breezes began to

blow regularly and steadily; the land winds, too, in the gray of the

morning, fluttered timidly away out to sea, and the round pearly moon

shone bright and mellow over rock and water.

"To-morrow, my brave boy, we shall sail away from the island. Ah! you

clap your hands, eh? Yes, we shall go to find mamma!" This was said as

man and child stood for the last time on the lofty crag, while the

former ranged his dark eyes scrutinizingly around the horizon. Nothing

in sight!

Once more to their chapel of refuge, where, for the first time in all

their association, putting the child to sleep by himself, the doctor sat

down on the trestle by the entrance, and, lighted by the brilliant moon,

he caught up the tangled mazes of the hide net which had bound him, and

sedulously applied himself to a task before him.

Any one who has seen the effect produced by a violent gale upon the

tattered shreds of a shivered main-top-sail, bound up into the most

tortuous knots that it is possible to conceive of, and so hard and solid

that you might saw the canvas balls in slices like boards, may form some

idea of the task the doctor had imposed upon himself to loosen the hide

strands tied together by the furious fingers of the hurricane. Patiently

and quietly, with no sign of temper, he applied himself to the work, and

with nothing but a sharp-pointed spike to aid his hands, he began to

unravel, bit by bit, the laced knots and bunches of raw-hide, without

ever cutting a strand, until, as the moon sank glimmering down, the

tangled mass lay in clear coils beside him--though in several pieces,

where it had been severed by the teeth of that little mouse purring

behind the altar--and the task was done. Then raising the trestle, he

bore it within the altar, and with the now unraveled coil of hide, and

the softer silk rope for a pillow, he again stretched himself upon what

once had been his bed of torture.

For what possible object all this labor had been undertaken, or for what

future purpose--vague they must have been--no one but the persevering

man who did it can tell; and there he lay, no sound coming from his

compressed lips till the day dawned. Then he arose, and, kneeling over

the sleeping child, he again solemnly repeated the oath he had before

taken in his hut--

"Sleeping or waking, on land or sea, I devote the remainder of my

wretched life to returning this lost child to his mother. So help me

God!"

The little boy stirred, as if the angels and the sweet Virgin were

whispering their protecting power over him, and, with a smile dawning

upon his rosy, dimpled cheeks, he raised the lids from his bright hazel

eyes, and put his fat round arms around the doctor's neck. If two great

drops fell upon that upturned innocent little face from the dark full

eyes bending over him, they were not tears of sorrow! Oh, no! It was the

dew of hope and trustfulness falling from the soul of a repentant sinner

relying upon an all-wise Providence.

"Come, my Henri, say your little prayer of the morning, and we will go."

The man had taught the child that little prayer which he himself had

learned at his mother's knee.

Up again to the crag, and down to the shelly margin of the shore; and a

long look the man gave at the ruin of shed and den, as he gently placed

the child on a sand-bag in the stern-sheets of the ark. Then he cast

off the rope which held the vessel to the hated strand, hoisted the

sail, and, as she bubbled along the inlet with the first sigh of the

land wind, he stood at the helm with his bare head lighted up by the

beams of the rising sun, and his lips moved in prayer.

On, noiselessly through the Tiger's Trap sailed the little pinnace till

she bowed her rugged cutwater in the yielding waves, and with her square

lug-sail swelling gently to the freshening breeze, she held her course

to sea. I question much if the stanch brigantine, named the "Centipede,"

which had preceded her through this tiger's gorge, with all the

ruffianly crew that manned her, and their villainous captain on her

quarter-deck, stood half the chance of a prosperous voyage as the tiny

ark, called the "Rosalie," which followed, with her noble, brave

commander, and his weak and boyish mate. Who can tell?

END OF PART I.

PART II.

CHAPTER XXIX.

LAYING UP THE STRANDS.

"Ever drifting, drifting, drifting

On the shifting

Currents of the restless main,

Till in sheltered coves and reaches

Of sandy beaches,

All have found repose again."

It was in the year of our Lord eighteen hundred and twenty-two, and in

the broad and commodious harbor of Kingston, a great mercantile haven,

crowded with shipping from all parts of the commercial globe; landlocked

by reef and ridge, with the rocks and heights crowned by frowning

batteries of heavy cannon; while beyond were spread the lower and upper

town, in masses of low two-story buildings, with piazzas, bright green

jalousies, stately palm, tamarind, and cocoa-nut-trees waving above

them. At the mouth of the harbor strait, where stands Fort Augusta, lay

a magnificent double-banked American frigate, with a broad blue

swallow-tailed pennant at her main, standing out stiff, like a dog-vane,

from the lofty mast, as the ship rode to the strong sea-breeze.

The stays and rigging came down from trucks, cross-trees, and tops in

straight black lines, from the great length of lower masts and

enormously square yards fore and aft; and from side to side, till they

met the long majestic hull and taper head-booms; while below were two

rows of ports, with the guns run out and the brass tompions gleaming in

their muzzles. The awnings were spread in one flat extended sheet of

white cotton canvas from bowsprit to taffrail, and from the wide-spread

lower booms at the fore-chains boats were riding by their painters.

Within a cable's length of the frigate's black quarter lay a low rakish

schooner, like a minnow alongside a whale, with a thin little coach-whip

streaming from her main-mast head, a long brass gun amidships, and

looking as trig and tidy as a French maid beside her portly mistress.

The bell struck in twin notes _eight_ on board the frigate, echoed back

from the pigmy schooner in a faint, double succession of tinkles; the

whistles resounded from deck to deck in ear-splitting notes, surging and

chirruping all together, and then suddenly ceasing with a rattling beat

of a drum and a short bellow of "Grog, ho!"

Between the guns of the main deck, and about the spar-deck battery

forward of the main-mast, sat five hundred lusty sailors on the white

decks around their mess-cloths, bolting hot pea soup after their grog,

and chatting and laughing in a devil-may-care sort of a strain, as if

the grub was good and the timbers sound, as they were, of the stanch

frigate beneath them. No noise, no confusion, but just as polite and

courteous, in their honest, seamanlike way, as half a legion of French

dancing-masters, they whacked off the salt pork before them with their

sheath-knives, munching the flinty biscuit, and all as happy and

careless of the past and future as clams at high water. Ay, there they

clustered, those five hundred sailors, in their snowy duck trowsers and

white, coarse linen frocks, with the blue collars laid square back over

their broad shoulders, exposing their bronzed and hairy throats, wagging

their jaws, and ready at any moment, at the tap of the drum, day or

night, to spring to the guns, and make the battery dance a jig as the

solid iron food went amid sheets of flame toward a foe. Yes, and ready,

too, in the gentle breeze or the howling tempest, to leap at the shrill

pipe of the whistle from the busy deck or their snug hammocks, and, like

so many monkeys, jump up the shrouds, lie out on the enormous yards

while the frigate was plunging bows under in the tumultuous seas, grasp

the writhing canvas in their sinewy paws, and wrap it up close and tight

in the hempen gaskets. Man-of-war sailors, for battle, or gale, or

spree, every one of them.

On board that little consort near were about forty more of the same

sort, only older, more bronzed, and more deliberate and methodical in

manner, sipping their pea pottage after blowing away the steam, cutting

their pork after much reflection, and cracking their biscuit tranquilly.

Their conversation, too, was slow and dignified, each word well

considered before it came out, and never interrupting one another in a

yarn, as did the younger harum-scarum chaps in the big ship near. But

yet those weather-beaten old sons of Neptune, who had each one of them

seen sights that would make your hair stand on end to think of, could

handle that schooner when her low deck was buried waist-deep to the

combings of the main hatch in angry water, and make that Long Tom

amidships there spin round on its pivot, and never threw away idly one

of its solid globular messengers. Ay, trust them for that.

Then honor to them all, those gallant tars who have fought the battles

of our country by sea and lake, and upheld those Stars and Stripes

until they are respected to the uttermost ends of the earth! Glory to

them, ye wise legislators, who sit in council upon the nation's wealth

and grandeur! Think of the fearless arms that have shielded your

otherwise unprotected shores when circled in a ring of dreadful fire

from the guns of a haughty foe.

[Illustration: THE UNITED STATES FRIGATE "MONONGAHELA."]

And you, too, ye rich traders! whose valuable cargoes roll hither and

thither over the trackless deep, cared for by those toiling tars who

fight and bleed for the flag that waves o'er your treasure--in stinging

gale, with frozen fingers, or under burning suns, with panting

breasts--think of them when your noble ships come gallantly into your

superb ports, and unlade their floating mines of wealth into your

spacious warehouses, while you in your lordly mansions sip your wine!

Think of those arms grasping the shivering sail in the mighty tempest,

in the black night, and the coarse fare they eat, the sometimes putrid

water they drink, and the hard beds they lie upon, while you are

reposing on downy pillows with your wives and little ones beside you!

Ah! take pity on the sailor, and scatter your shining gold over him in

his distress.

When the time comes, as come it may, when the cannon of a hostile fleet

are thundering at your ports; when your lumbering craft are flying

before the rapacious grasp of quick-heeled cruisers, and fiery bombs are

hissing through the pure air, bursting in your marble palaces and

blasting your stores of wealth to dust, _then_ you will turn with

blanched faces to the sea, and wonder why you have so long forgotten the

noble hearts and stalwart arms that once were thrown around you. But not

before.

On the flush quarter-deck of the frigate, by the raised signal lockers

abaft, stood a bronzed old quarter-master, a spy-glass resting on his

arm, through which every minute he peered around the harbor, giving an

eye, too, occasionally to the half-hour glass, whose sands dribbled

steadily into the lower bulb on the locker beside him.

What cared he--no wife or child to cheer him! No cares save but to see

that the ensign did not roll foul of the halyards, that the broad

pennant blew out straight, that the half-hour glass did not need

turning, and that no boat approached the frigate without his reporting

it to the officer of the watch. Naught else save, perhaps, whether the

other old quarter-master, Charley Holmes, down below there on the

gun-deck, had wiped from his lips the moisture of the midday grog, and

would be up in time to take the relief while the pea soup was warm.

Nothing else.

The lieutenant of the watch briskly paced the solid deck, scrubbed white

as milk with lime-juice and molasses, the even seams between the planks

glistening like the strands of a girl's raven tresses as his profane and

rapid feet pressed upon them. What thought he in his careless walk, with

the gleaming bunch of bullion on his right shoulder, sword by his side,

white trowsers, and gilt eagle buttons on his navy-blue coat?

He was thinking how his pittance of pay would support, in a scrimpy way,

his poor mother and sister, who looked unto him as their only hope and

refuge. And he thought, too, as he tramped that noble deck, made

glorious by many a battle and victory in which he had borne a humble

part, that his rich and powerful country would eventually reward him

with increased pay and promotion. Were the single dollar which lay alone

in his trowsers pocket, and the light mist which arose off there beyond

the Apostles' Battery, opposite Port Royal Harbor, an evidence of one or

a sign of the last aspiration? We hope not; but we shall see.[*]

Three or four midshipmen, too, pranced over that frigate's white

quarter-deck, on the port side, in their blue jackets and duck trowsers.

Little gay madcaps they were, scarcely well into their teens, with

little glittering toasting-forks of dirks dangling at their sides, and

ready for any lark or mischief.

And what thought those boyish imps of reefers? Did they trace the flight

of that tropic man-of-war bird, sailing high up in the heavens, heading

seaward, away into the distant future, through clouds and sunshine, rain

and storm? And did they think, as they fluttered along the deck, that

their own career might lead them in that direction, toward the star of

promotion which shone so brightly near at hand, and was never reached;

or else, by a chance shot, to come tumbling down with a crippled pinion,

and hobble out their lives on shore? No. Those gay young blades, whose

mothers were dreaming and sighing for them, had no reflections of that

kind. They were chattering about the little frolic they had on their

last liberty day, when the captain ordered them off to the frigate at

sunset, and planning another for the week to come. Happy little scamps,

let them dance their careless thoughts away!

"Two bells, sir," said the quarter-master to the officer of the watch.

"Very good! Young gentlemen, tell the boatswain to turn the hands to,

and have the barge manned. Let the first lieutenant and the marine

officer know that the commodore is going to leave the ship. There, no

larking on the quarter-deck, Mr. Mouse!"

This last command was addressed to a tiny youngster who was hardly big

enough to go without pantalettes, much less to wear a jacket and order

half a hundred huge sailors about, any one of whom was old enough to be

his great-grandfather. But yet that small lad did it, and could steer a

boat, too, or fly about like a ribbon in a high wind up there in the

mizzen-top, while the men on the yard were taking the last reef in the

top-sail.

"Go down to the cabin, sir, and let the commodore and his friend know

the boat is ready."

Down the ladder skipped Mr. Mouse, and while he was gone, the guard, in

their white summer uniform and cross-belts, stood at ease, resting on

their muskets on the quarter-deck, eight side-boys and the boatswain at

the starboard gangway, with the first lieutenant and the officer of the

watch standing near.

Presently there came up from the after cabin hatchway a fine, handsome

man, in the very prime of life, in cocked hat, full-dress coat, a pair

of gleaming epaulets, sword by his hip, and his nether limbs cased in

white knee-breeches, silk stockings, and pumps. The one who followed him

was apparently a much older man, with grizzled locks, a dark, stern

face, and without epaulets. The first raised his hat as he stepped on

the quarter-deck--not a thread of silver was seen in his dark hair--and

then both bowed to the officers, who saluted them as they moved toward

the gangway. The boatswain piped, the marines presented arms, the drum

gave three quick rolls, and the commodore went over the gangway,

preceded by his companion.

-----

[*] This was written before the "Pay Bill" was passed.

CHAPTER XXX.

OLD FRIENDS.

"What though when storms our bark assail,

The needle trembling veers,

When night adds horror to the gale,

And not a star appears?

True to the pole as I to thee,

It faithful still will prove--

An emblem dear of constancy,

And of a sailor's love."

The barge left the side of the frigate, a broad blue pennant with white

stars on a staff at her bow, with fourteen handsome sailors to man her,

all in clean white frocks and trowsers, with straw hats and flowing

black ribbons around them, on which was stamped in gold letters,

"Monongahela."

The double bank of white ash oars flashed in the rippling waves of the

harbor as the barge was urged over the water, the current seething and

buzzing under her bows, and bubbling into her wake as she flew on toward

the town. In a mahogany box at the stern sat a bushy-whiskered coxswain,

whose body swayed to the stroke of the oars, while his hand grasped the

brass tiller as he steered amid the shipping. The commodore had settled

himself down under the boat's awning on the snow-white covered cushions

in the stern-sheets, and, with one foot resting on the elegant ash

grating beneath, he began to talk to the grave gentleman who sat

opposite to him.

"It is many a long year since I last visited this superb harbor, but I

remember it as if it were yesterday. You never were here before, I

think? No? Well, if any of the old set I once knew, when I was first

lieutenant of the old 'Scourge,' are yet alive, we shall have a pleasant

time!"

"One fine fellow," went on the commodore, "I know is. His name is Piron.

I had a note from him as soon as the frigate anchored yesterday, and I

shall ask him to dine sociably with me on board this evening. I hope you

will join us."

The grave gentleman said that he had business which would detain him on

shore all night.

The barge swept up to the mole, the oars were thrown up at a wave of the

coxswain's hand, and came into the boat on either side like shutting up

a pair of fans, while the boat-hooks checked her way, and she remained

stationary at the steps of the landing. The awning was canted, the

commodore and his friend got out and mounted the stairway, while the

boat's crew stood up with their hats off. On the mole were four or five

people in light West India rig of brown and white, and broad Guayaquil

sombreros.

"Cleveland!" exclaimed a tall, handsome man, as he seized the

commodore by both hands, "how glad we are to see you! Here is Tom

Stewart, and Paddy Burns, and little Don Stingo, attorneys, factors, and

sugar-boilers, all of us delighted to welcome you back once more to

Jamaica!"

Crowding about the commodore, shaking hands and slapping one another on

the back, standing off a step or two to see the effect of time on each

other's appearance, laughing heartily with many a happy allusion to days

gone by, those old friends and former companions, unmindful of the hot

sun, stood there with their faces lighted up and talking all together.

"And you are a commodore, eh! Cleveland, with a broad pennant and a

squadron? Ah! we have kept the run of you, though. Read all about that

action you were in with the 'President,' and that bloody battle in the

'Essex' and 'Phebe' at Valparaiso, with Porter. And here you are again,

safe and sound, and hearty!"

"And you too, Piron! The same as ever! Not tired of cane-planting yet?

But how is madame?"

"Lovely a girl as ever, Cleveland, but never entirely got over that sad

loss of the little boy, you know. However, she will be overjoyed to see

you. She's been talking of you ever since we saw your appointment to the

station fifteen months ago. Apropos, we have her widowed sister with us,

whose husband was killed at Waterloo, and our little niece who came from

France--all out there at the old place of Escondido, where you must come

and pass a week with us. Nay, man, no excuse! The thing is arranged, and

it would be the death of Stingo, Tom Stewart, and Paddy Burns if you

disappoint us."

"Well, Piron, I am your man, but not for a day or two, until I have made

some official calls here on the authorities. Meanwhile, gentlemen, you

all dine with me this evening on board the frigate, every mother's soul

of you! Coxswain, go on board and tell my steward to have dinner for

six. Stop at the schooner as you go off, and say to Mr. Darcantel that I

shall expect him to join us. Now, my friends, that matter is arranged,

and we will all go off in the barge at sunset."

"Dry talking, isn't it, Stingo?" said Piron; "so, commodore, come, and

we'll have a sip of sangaree and a deviled biscuit to keep our mouths in

order. But, halloo! where is your friend, Cleveland? that tall man in

black? Parson or chaplain, eh?"

"No," replied the officer; "an old friend of mine, my brother-in-law,

who takes a cruise with me occasionally; but he never goes in society,

and has taken himself off, as he always does when we get in port. He is

a glorious fellow, though, and I hope to present him to you yet. Never

mind him now."

Arm in arm went the blue coat and bullion, locked in white grass

sleeves, along the busy quays, crowded with mule-carts and drays for

stores or shipping. Spanish dons, dapper Frenchmen, burly John Bulls,

standing at warehouse and posadas, all with cigars in their teeth, which

they puffed so lazily that the smoke scarcely found its way beyond the

brims of their wide sombreros. Negroes, too, with scanty leg gear, and

still scantier gingham shirts, having bales, or boxes, or baskets of

fruit on their heads, never any thing in their hands, chattering and

laughing one with another as they danced and jostled along the busy

mart; then through the hot, sandy ruts of streets, pausing now and then

to shake hands with some old acquaintance beneath the overhanging

piazzas; sedan-chairs moving about, with a negro in a glazed hat and red

cockade at either end of the poles, in a long easy trot, as they bore

their burdens of Spanish matron, or English damsel, or maybe a portly

old judge, or gouty admiral, on a shopping or business excursion to the

port; so on to the upper town, where the dwellings stand in detachments

by themselves--single or in pairs--with spacious balconies and bright

green Venetian blinds, all surrounded by gardens and vines; with noble

tamarind-trees, and cocoa-nuts swaying their lofty trunks, and rattling

their branches and leaves over the negro huts and offices below. Here

the party stopped, and, entering a house, were ushered into a cool,

lofty room, where there were a lot of mahogany desks, and a single old

clerk, who resembled a last year's dried lemon, with some few drops of

acid juice for blood, perched up on a hard stem of a high stool, with

four or five quill pens, like so many thorns, sticking out above his

yellow leafy ears.

"All by myself here, Cleveland, as I told you. All my people are living

out there at Escondido. Very little business doing just now, and Paddy

Burns and Tom Stewart haven't had a suit or a fight for the last six

months. Inkstands dry, and my old clerk, Clinker, there, has forgotten

how to write English.

"However," went on Piron, as the party threw themselves back on the

wicker arm-chairs, and enjoyed the breeze which fluttered merrily

through the blinds, "the cellar isn't quite dry yet; and I say, Clinker,

suppose you tell Nimble Jack, or Ring Finger Bill, to spread a little

luncheon here, with a bottle or two of Bordeaux, or something of that

sort!" The dried, fruity old gentleman dropped off his branch at the

desk like a withered nut, and then, with a husky kind of shuffle, betook

himself off.

[Illustration: "QUEER OLD STICK, THAT!" SAID THE COMMODORE.]

"Queer old stick, that!" said the commodore, as he unbuckled his

sword and laid it on the table.

"Ah! he grew here, and will blow away one of these days. My father used

to tell me that he looked just the same when he first sprouted as he

does now. But he is a dear faithful old stump; and you must remember

hearing, Cleveland, of that frightful earthquake here in seventeen

hundred and eighty-three, which killed so many people? Yes? Well, it was

old Clinker who saved my sweet wife that is now--and her sister; though

he was nearly squeezed--drier, if any thing, than he is now--in doing

it. He lay, you know, Stingo, supporting the whole second story of the

house for seven hours, pressed as flat as a tamarind-leaf, while they

were getting those twin babies out of their cradle. Yes, God bless him!"

Starting up, while a flush of feeling darkened his face--"but, what is

more, he threw himself precisely where he did, as he saw the walls

giving way, so that not a hair of those children should be injured when

the beams came down. My father has told me since, that when they got a

lever under the timber and wedged old Clinker out, he gave a kind of

cackle; but, in my opinion, he has not drawn a breath from that day to

this. And, generally, he is a very taciturn old root, and rarely opens

his rind; but latterly he talks a good deal about the earthquake; says

he's sure there'll be another awful one before an interval of forty

years has passed, and wants us to go away. No objection, however, to

coming back when the thing is over, and then waiting forty years for

another. Don't laugh, you Paddy Burns, for if ever the '_Tremblor_'

gives you one little shake, you'll jump higher than you did when that

ugly Frenchman ran you through your waistcoat pocket, and you thought it

was your midriff. Now, Tom Stewart and Don Stingo, what are you grinning

about? Your teeth will chatter so fast at the next quake that you won't,

either of you, be able to deliver a charge to the jury over a false

invoice, or suck another drop of old Antigua rum."

"But really, Piron," broke in the commodore upon this voluble harangue,

"do you give heed to these barkings of that old clerk?"

"Why, yes, Cleveland," replied Piron, with rather a grave manner, "I do;

and, moreover, my sweet wife Rosalie out yonder, who has never got over

her grief for the loss of our boy, regards every word old Clinker says

as so much prophecy; and the upshot of the business is, I have made up

my mind to leave the island."

"For where, my friend--back to France?"

"No. Since the war and the peace, with Bonaparte at St. Helena, France

is no place for an Englishman, even with a French father, and I am going

to try America."

"Truly, Piron, I am charmed to hear it. But what part of America?"

"Why, I've bought a fine sugar estate at a bargain in Louisiana, and

there we shall pass the remainder of our days."

"He! he!" sniggled Tom Stewart, while Don Stingo and Paddy Burns

cackled incredulously; but, at the same moment, Ring Finger Bill and

Nimble Jack, two jet-black persons, in loose striped gingham shirts

and bare feet, with an attempt at a grave expression of thick-lipped

coffee-coolers, the whites of their eyes turned up with becoming

decorum, and preceded by the old twig of a clerk, who seemed to

crackle in the sea-breeze as he again hung himself, stern on, to his

stool of a trunk, entered the cool counting-house, bearing trays,

fruits, and bottles, which they methodically arranged on the large

table.

"Massa! him want small, red, plump snapper, make mizzible brile?" said

Nimble Jack. "S'pose Massa Ossifa him pick shell of land-crab, wid crisp

pepper for salad?"

"No, no! Put those cool water-monkeys on the table and be gone! Come,

Clinker, take a bite with us!"

Leaving this pleasant party to sip their claret and water, and nibble

their midday food, while they rambled back to the past or schemed into

the future, we will return to the frigate.

CHAPTER XXXI.

THE COMMANDER OF THE "ROSALIE."

"The handsomest fellow, Heaven bless him!

Setting the girls all wild to possess him,

With his dark mustache and his hazel eyes,

And cigars in those pretty lips--"

"That girl who fain would choose a mate,

Should ne'er in fondness fail her,

May thank her lucky stars if Fate

Should splice her to a sailor."

"The 'Rosalie's' gig coming alongside, sir," reported the quarter-master

to the officer of the watch.

"Very well. A boatswain's mate and two side-boys. Mr. Rat, have the

barge manned, and send her on shore for the commodore. Mr. Martin, tell

the boatswain to call all hands to furl awnings."

While these orders were being executed, the whistles ringing through the

ship, the sailors lining the white hammocks, stowed in a double line,

fore and aft, around the nettings of the frigate, in readiness to cast

off the stops and lacings and let fall the awnings, the officer on deck

stood near the gangway. At the same time there tripped up the

accommodation-ladder, lightly touching the snowy man-ropes, a young

fellow of about one-and-twenty, dressed in undress frock-coat, one

epaulet, smooth white trowsers, and shoes. Catching up his sword in his

left hand as he reached the upper grating of the ladder, he took off his

blue, gold-banded cap, and half bounded, with a springy step, on to the

frigate's deck.

Observe him well, young ladies, as he stands there; for of all the

scarlet or blue jackets on whose arm you have leaned and looked up at

with your soft violet, blue, or dark eyes, you never saw a young fellow

that you would sooner give those eyes, or those warm hearts too,

throbbing under your bodices, or who would drive you wilder to possess

him, than that gallant young sailor standing on the "Monongahela's"

deck. Ay, observe him well, that tall, graceful youth, with a waist you

might span with one of your short plump arms; those slim patrician feet,

that might wear your own little satin slippers; then that swelling chest

and those elegantly turned shoulders, which will take both of your arms,

one of these days, to entwine and clasp around them! Ah! but the round

throat and chin, the smiling mouth, half hiding a double row of even

teeth, with the merest moonshine of a mustache darkening the short upper

lip, and then those large, fearless hazel eyes, sparkling with health

and fun, shaded by a mass of chestnut curls, which cluster about his

clear open forehead! Ay, there he stands, "a king and a kingdom" for the

girl who wins him!

"Well, Harry, give us your fist, my boy! How do you get on aboard your

prize? Not so roomy as the old frigate, eh? And a little more work than

when you were playing flag-lieutenant, eh? Well, glad to see you, but

can't stop to talk. So jump down below there in the wardroom; the mess

are just through dinner, and yours won't be ready for an hour yet. Come,

bear a hand, or I'll let these awnings fall on your new gold epaulet."

The new-comer tripped as lightly down the ladder to the gun-deck

as Mr. Mouse, and making another dive down to the berth-deck,

exchanging a rapid volley of pleasantry with the midshipmen in

the steerage, he opened the wardroom door and entered. There, in

a large open space, transversely dividing the stern of the ship,

with rows of latticed-doored staterooms on either side, lighted by

open skylights from above, with a barrel of a wind-sail coming

down between the sashes, and every thing, from beams to bulkheads,

painted a glistening white, and the deck so clean that you might

have rubbed your handkerchief on it without leaving a stain on

the cambric, around a large extension mahogany table stretching

from side to side, the cloth removed, decanters and wine-glasses

here and there, and water-monkeys in flannel jackets hanging like

criminals from a gallows from the beams above, sat the wardroom

mess of the frigate.

"By all that's handsome, here's Darcantel! Why, Harry, we are delighted

to see you!" exclaimed half a dozen voices; "come, sit down here and

take a glass of wine with us!"

As the handsome young fellow entered the wardroom, all faces lighted up

as they saw him. The old sailing-master, who seldom indulged in more

than a scowl since he lost his right ear by the stroke of a cutlass in

capturing the tender to the "Plantagenet" seventy-four off the Hills of

Navesink; the rigid old major of marines, who pipe-clayed his very

knuckles, and wore a stiff sheet-iron padding to his stock to encourage

discipline in the guard; the dear, kind old surgeon, who swallowed

calomel pills by the pint, out of pure principle, and who lopped off

limbs and felt yellow fever pulses all through the still watches of the

hot nights with never a sign or look of encouragement; and the staid old

chaplain, who had often assisted the surgeon and helped to fill

cartridges, contributing his own cotton hose for the purpose when those

government stores gave out in battle, and who never smiled, even when

committing a marine to the briny deep; the purser, too, prim and

business-like, looking as if he were a complicated key with an iron

lock of his own strong chest, calculating perpetually the amount of

dollars deposited in his charge, the total of pay to be deducted

therefrom, and never making a mistake save when he overcharged the dead

men for chewing tobacco; and the gay, young, roistering lieutenants, who

never did any thing else but laugh, unmindful of navigation, pipe-clay,

pills, parsons, or pursers, though standing somewhat in awe of the

sharpish, exacting executive officer at the head of the table--all

welcomed, each in his peculiar way, the bright, graceful young blade who

dawned upon them. And not only the mess were cheered by his presence,

but also a troop of clean-dressed sable attendants, whose wide jaws

stretched wider, while the whites of their eyes seemed painfully like

splashes of whitewash on the outside of the galley coppers, as they

nudged one another and yaw-yaw'd quietly away aft there in the region of

the pantry.

"Here, my salt-water pet, come and sit down by me, where all those old

fellows can see you! Steward, a wine-glass for Mr. Darcantel! What? you

won't take a sip of Tinta, and you can only stop a minute because you

are to dine with your uncle the commodore, eh? Well, I'll drink your

uncle's health even if you don't!" said the first lieutenant, as he

familiarly laid his hand on the young fellow's shoulder and drained his

glass.

"Why, Harry, what the deuce did you come down here for?" squeaked out

the purser, as he unscrewed his lips into a pleasant smile. "You've put

an end to that interesting account the master was giving us of how he

lay inside Sandy Hook for six months with a glass to his--"

"Mouth," broke in the surgeon.

"It was Sam Jones the fisherman,

Who was bound to Sandy Hook;

But first upon the Almanac

A solemn oath he took--

That he would catch a load of clams!"

"Silence there, you roarer!" said the surgeon, as he popped a filbert

into the wide mouth of the rollicking fourth lieutenant, which cut his

song short off. "Yes, Harry, that's what you have done in coming here

for a minute. But stay a week with us, and the master will tell it you

again. We've heard it once or twice before."

The old grizzled sea veteran scratched the remains of his ear, and

growled jocosely while nodding to young Darcantel.

"Ah! my dear boy, and I'll tell you how the surgeon and nipcheese there

were entertained by a one-eyed old Spaniard at St. Jago."

"Let's hear it!" roared every body except the medico and purser. "Out

with it, master!"

"Well, messmates, when we were in the old 'Scourge,' a long time ago,

one day we anchored in St. Jago de Cuba."

Here the surgeon and purser smiled horribly, and implored the grizzled

old navigator not to go on; every body had heard that old story; he

might fall ill with the _vomito pietro_, and would require pills; or

else there might be found a mistake in his pay account, and he would

like, perhaps, to draw for the imaginary balance not due to him, and to

drink his grog and scratch the remains of his old ear, or turn his

attention to the load of clams waiting for him at Sandy Hook! But, for

mercy's sake, don't repeat that silly, long-forgotten yarn!

"Well, messmates, in less than an hour after we had anchored in St. Jago

they went on shore, and made the acquaintance of a little thin, sharp

old villain, with one eye, who invited them to make him a visit, and

pass the evening on a fine estate he owned near the base of the Copper

Hills, some distance--about four leagues, I believe--from the town. He

was a most respectable person, very rich, and commanded a Cuban guarda

costa to boot. The _capitano_, Don Ignacio Sanchez--wasn't that his

name, doctor? Oh! you forget--all right! Off they started with a guide,

on hired mules; but when they pulled up at their destination they found

the Don wasn't there, though they were handsomely entertained by the

senora--a comely, fat, and waspish body, with very few clothes on--who

cursed her Don for sending people to see her, and the visitors too for

coming. However, as her guests had not dined, she fed them bountifully

on a supper of the nastiest jerked beef and garlic they had ever

smelled. You told me so, purser."

Both Pills and Purser had forgotten all about it, and thought it would

be better to talk of something else; that there was plenty of good wine

to drink in place of drying his lips on such dusty old rubbish.

"Well, messmates, after the supper the old lady demanded a little game

of monte, and she insisted, too, on making herself banker, though she

had no money on the table to pay with in case she lost--which she had no

intention of doing. So she won every ounce, dollar, real, and centavo

they had in their pockets! The doctor and purser told me they saw her

cheat boldly; but yet she not only bagged all the money, but she won

their mules into the bargain!"

Here those individuals confessed roundly--standing on the defensive--that

the fat old senora had a false pack of cards always ready in her ample

bosom, and had cheated them in the barest manner conceivable; but yet

they had no appeal, and were inclined, out of gallantry for the sex, to

behave like gentlemen, though she did drink aguardiente.

"Well, messmates, toward midnight that hospitable wife of the Don began

to abuse our friends for not bringing more cash with them when they

visited ladies, and then fairly kicked them out of the house! Yes, you

both told me so when I lent you the money to pay the boatmen, after

being obliged to tramp all the way back to the port on foot, nearly

missing their billets in the old 'Scourge.'"

"Go on, master! Tell us all about it; don't stop!"

"Well, messmates, I was on deck while beating out of the channel, and

just abreast the Star Castle I saw a boat with two gentlemen in the

stern, stripped to a girt-line, and howling at rather than hailing the

ship. Bear in mind, doctor, the men refused to take either of you unless

you gave them your coats and trowsers before shoving off. And don't you

remember, Hardy, how they yelled at us, and we thought they were

deserters from that English gun-boat in St. Jago? And how the captain

arrested the pair of them when they got on board for going out of signal

distance? This is the first time _I_ ever told this yarn," concluded the

old navigator, tugging away at the lobe of his lost ear.

The young lieutenants shouted, and the old major of marines, forgetful

of his iron-stuffed stock, laughed till he nearly sawed his chin off,

rubbing his chalky knuckles into his eyes the while.

"But first upon the Almanac

A solemn oath he took--

That he would catch a load of clams--"

"The barge is coming off, Mr. Hardy, with the pennant flying, sir!"

reported a reefer, in the midst of the conversation, to the first

lieutenant, as he shoved his bright face through the wardroom door.

"Very good, Mr. Beaver; but hark ye, sir! the next time you go ashore in

the market-boat, look sharp that the men don't suck the monkey. Three of

them came off drunk this morning. And inform Mr. Rat and Mr. Mouse that

if I see their heels on the cutter's cushions again, I'll take a better

look at them from the main-top-mast cross-trees. You understand, sir?

Steward, a glass of wine for Mr. Beaver!" Saying this, the executive

officer, with Harry Darcantel, arose and went on deck to receive the

commodore.

CHAPTER XXXII.

A SPLICE PARTED.

"Oh! for thy voice, that happy voice,

To breathe its loving welcome now!

Fame, wealth, and all that bids rejoice,

To me are vain! For where art thou?"

"What is glory--what is fame?

That a shadow--this a name,

Restless mortal to deceive.

Are they renown'd--can they be great,

Who hurl their fellow-creature's fate,

That mothers, children, wives may grieve?"

The drum rolled, the marines presented arms, the boatswain piped, the

side-boys and officers took off their caps; and as the colors dropped

with the last ray of sunset from the peak, and the broad blue

day-pennant came fluttering down from the lofty main truck, Commodore

Cleveland and his friends stood on the splendid deck of the flag-ship

"Monongahela."

It must have been with conscious pride that the brave and loyal

commander gazed around him on the noble frigate and her gallant crew.

The white decks, the tiers of cannon polished like varnished leather,

with the breechings and tackles laid fair and even over and around them;

the bright belaying-pins, holding their never-ending coils of running

gear--the burnished brass capstan--the great boom--board to the boats

amidships with a gleaming star of cutlasses, reflecting a glitter on the

ring of long pikes stuck around the main-mast near, all inclosed by the

high and solid bulwarks; while towering above, like mighty leafless

columns of forest pines, stood the lofty masts, running up almost out of

sight to the trucks in the fading light, supported by stays and shrouds,

singly and in pairs, and braided mazes--black, and straight, and

taut--never a thread loose on rigging or ratlin--and spreading out as

they came down in a heavy hempen net, till they disappeared over the

rail, and were clenched and spliced, or seized and clamped to the bolts

and dead-eyes of the chain-plates outside. Holding up too, in

mid-heaven, on those giant trunks--like a child its toys--the great

square yards of timber branches, laying without a quiver, in their black

lifts and trusses, with their white leaves of sails crumpled and packed

in smooth bunts in the middle, and running away to nothing on either

hand at the tapering yard-arms.

Grand and imposing is the sight. And well may you wonder, ye land

lubbers, why all that mass of timber, sails, and cordage, with its

enormous weight, does not crush with the giant heels of the masts

through the bottom of the ship like unto an egg-shell, and tear the

stanch live-oak frame to splinters!

The commander of the frigate saw all this, and he beheld at the same

time the clusters of happy sailors, sauntering with light step and

pleasant faces up and down the waist and gangways; and he heard, too,

the scraping of a fiddle on the forecastle, the shuffling, dancing feet,

and the least notion of a jovial sea-song coming up from the gun-deck.

Yes, it must have been a glorious pride with which that gallant officer

gazed around him from the quarter-deck of the magnificent frigate.

Did he say to himself, "I am monarch of this floating kingdom; my will

is law; I say but the word, and those sails are spread and the ship

moves to wherever I command. My subjects, too, who watch my slightest

look and whisper, with that flag above, will pour broadside upon

broadside--ay, they have!--from those terrible guns upon whoever dares

to cross my track. Yes. They will fight for me so long as there is a

plank left in this huge ship to stand upon, and while there is a

rope-yarn left to hold the ensign--ay! even until my pennant, nailed to

the truck, sinks beneath the bloodstained waves?" Did the commander

think of all this? Perhaps he did.

And yet, in all the pride of rank and power, bravely won and maintained

in many a scene of strife and deadly conflict, with visions of honest

patriotism and ambition for the future, did his thoughts go back long

years ago into the shadowy past, and was his spirit in the silent

church-yard, where the magnolia was drooping over a grass-green grave?

The sweet mother and her baby boy--the girl who had so fondly loved him,

and the child who played about his knees--oh that they could have lived

to share the wreaths of victory which were hung around his brow; that

they could have lived to see the sword his country gave him, to twine

but for one little moment their loving arms around his neck! No, the

magnolia waves its white flowers over mother and boy, and they sleep on

in their heavenly and eternal rest.

Did Commodore Cleveland, as a saddened flash of thought swept over his

handsome face, while he stood on his quarter-deck, dwell on those

scenes? Yes, we know he did. By day and night, in war and peace, in gale

or calm, on deck or at banquet, in dream and action, the girl and mother

he so dearly loved was close clasped to his heart, and the child still

playing at his knee.

"Gentlemen, let me make you acquainted with the first lieutenant, Mr.

Hardy; and permit me also to present my nephew, Mr. Darcantel, captain,

if you please, my friends, of the one-gun schooner 'Rosalie,' formerly

the slaver 'Perdita,' cut out of a river on the Gold Coast by the young

gentleman who stands before you."

"Rosalie! why that's the name of my niece," exclaimed Piron; "and she is

prettier and whiter than your trim little craft, sir. But you must come

with the commodore to Escondido, and judge for yourself. But, bless my

soul! _you_ resemble our Rosalie, even if your schooner don't. Why, look

at him, Paddy Burns!"

Don Stingo, and Tom Stewart, and the Paddy did look at him, and all

shook hands with him, laughing the while at Piron, and asking when old

Clinker looked for another earthquake.

"Come, Piron, come, gentlemen, don't let us keep the soup waiting! By

the way, Mr. Hardy, will you do me the favor to take a glass of wine

with us after gun-fire?"

"Thank you."

"Suppose you bring little Mouse with you; I like children; and perhaps

you will excuse the younker from keeping his watch to-night? A little

extra sleep in hammock won't hurt him, you know."

And so Commodore Cleveland raised his hat, followed by the eyes of

respect and devotion from officer and sailor, as he passed down the

ladder and entered his spacious cabin.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

THE BLUE PENNANT IN THE CABIN.

"To Bachelors' hall we good fellows invite

To partake of the chase that makes up our delight."

"Ask smiling honor to proclaim

What is glory, what is fame?

Hark! the glad mandate strikes the list'ning ear!

'The truest glory to the bosom dear,

Is when the soul starts soft compassion's tear.'"

"Now, gentlemen, let me get off this heavy coat and epaulets. There! all

right, Domino! put the sword in its case, and give me a white jacket.

Choose your own places, my friends. Piron, sit here on my right; Henri,

take the foot of the table."

These last words were said in French; whereupon Piron started and

whispered to the commodore, "By George, Cleveland, is that youth's name

Henry, and does he speak French?"

"Hush, Piron, he may hear you. His mother was French, and he speaks the

language like a native. She died when he was a baby, and he doesn't like

to allude to it. Come, steward, we are all ready. Serve the gumbo!"

The cabin of the frigate was divided by a light lattice-work bulkhead in

two parts, running from quarter to quarter of the vessel. The after part

had a large sleeping stateroom on either side, resting on the quarter

galleries, and opening on to another gallery which hung over the stern

of the frigate. Inside, in the open space, was a round table, cushioned

lounges, a few chairs, with a bronze lamp pendent from a beam above,

while taking the curve of the stern over the after windows was a range

of bookcases, half hidden by the gilt cornice and curtains of the

windows. The entire fittings and furniture of cabin and staterooms,

including the neat Brussels carpet on the deck, were elegant and useful,

though by no means luxurious. The forward cabin, where no carpet graced

the floor, was much more spacious. It took in the two after ports of the

gun-deck; and the carriages and cannon within the sills of the ports

were painted a marble white, as were the ropes, in covered canvas, that

held them. In a recess forward was a large mahogany sideboard, or

buffet, the top fitted with a framework for glasses and decanters, which

were reflected from a large mirror let into the bulkhead. In the middle

of this space was the dining-table, lighted by a pair of globe lamps

hanging from above, while neat racks for bottles and water-jugs, moving

on sliding brass rods, were also suspended from the paneled beams and

carlines of the upper deck ceiling. On the right--the starboard

side--was a door leading into a roomy pantry, where the steward and

Domino, and the servants of the commodore, bestirred themselves at

dinner-time.

"So, my friends," exclaimed the commodore, "you wish to hear what became

of me after I last parted with you?"

"By all means, Cleveland! we are all dying to hear, and--" Here Piron's

appeal was interrupted by the heavy report of a bow gun, which gave a

slight, though almost imperceptible jar to the frigate.

"Smithereens! Stingo! what noise is that?" exclaimed Burns.

"Only the nine o'clock gun, sir," replied Darcantel.

"Hech, mon!" said Stewart, "ye needna upset ma glass of auld Madeira in

yer mickle fright, for I've seen the time when ye ha' laughed at the

music in the report of a peestol and the ping of a bullet! But your

nervous seestem seems to be unstrung ever since the sma' French dancing

count untied the string o' your waistcoat with his rapeer."

"You don't think, Paddy, the commodore here is going to bang a forty-two

pound shot into our stomachs after all the good prog he's filled them

with?" added Stingo, _sotto voce_, while the rotund Milesian threw his

head back and twinkled careless defiance at them all.

Just then the orderly swung the port-cabin door open, and standing up as

rigid as a pump-bolt, with a finger to the visor of his stovepipe hat,

in cross-belts and bayonet, he announced "Lieutenant Hardy and

Midshipman Mouse!"

"Ah! Hardy, glad to see you!" rising as he spoke; "squeeze in there

between Stewart and Burns, or Darcantel! Here, gentlemen, let me exhibit

to you Mr. Tiny Mouse! Don't move, Piron; I'll make a place for him near

me."

Saying this, the commodore took the lad affectionately by the hand, and

as he sat him down on a chair at his elbow, and while the conversation

went on with his guests, he said, in a kindly tone,

"Tiny, my dear, the first lieutenant tells me you are a good boy and

attend to your duty. I hope you pay attention to your studies also, and

write often to your dear mother. Ah! you do? That is right; for you know

you are her only hope since your brave father was killed. There, sir,

you may swig a little claret, but don't touch those cigars."

"Come, Cleveland! Cleveland! you are forgetting your adventures, my

boy!"

"Well, my friends, you shall hear them."

CHAPTER XXXIV.

THE DEVIL TO PAY.

"And how then was the devil dressed?

Oh! he was dressed in his Sunday's best;

His jacket was red and his breeches were blue,

And there was a hole where the tail came through."

"Hairy-faced Dick understands his trade,

He stands by the breech of a short carronade,

The linstock glows in his bony hand,

Waiting that grim old skipper's command!"

"The last dinner I had in Jamaica, and a very jolly one it was, as you

all know, was out at Escondido, where we kept it up so late that I only

got on board the 'Scourge' at daylight, in time to get her under way

with the land wind. Well, we were bound to windward, and for a week

afterward we rolled about in a calm off Morant Bay, maybe twenty leagues

off the island, and one morning we discovered a sail. She was a large

merchant brig, heading any way, and bobbing about, as we were, in the

calm. Toward noon, however, a light air sprang up, and we got within

hail, and I went on board to say a word or two to the skipper, for we

had news before leaving Kingston that that infamous pirate Brand, in his

long-legged schooner 'Centipede,' had been seen off Guadaloupe; and, in

fact, we had actually chased him off Matanzas three months before; so I

was ordered to give the brig a warning, particularly as she had reported

a suspicious craft in sight that same morning at sunrise. When I got on

board of her I saw--"

Here Piron placed both hands to his face as he leaned his elbows on the

table, and the commodore, checking himself, hurried on:

"Ah! well, we kept the brig in sight all day, and ran round her once or

twice in the evening, but toward midnight the trade wind freshened, and,

as the coast seemed clear, and we were anxious to make up for lost time

in the calm, we gradually came up to our course, and went bowling away

to windward.

"I remember going below at the time, and just as I was about to turn in,

I heard a quarter-master sing out to Hardy there, who was junior

lieutenant of the ship, and who had the middle watch, that he saw a

light going up to the brig's gaff. In five seconds I was on the poop,

where I met the captain.

"This is his only son, gentlemen, and a braver or more skillful seaman

never trod a ship's deck," said the commodore, as he passed his hand

affectionately over the boy's head, who was sitting beside him.

But he forgot, perhaps, to say that he, Cleveland, had stood by the

father when he was struck dead by a cannon-shot, and that afterward he

had the boy appointed a reefer, and, out of his own means, helped the

widow to eke out her pittance of a pension. Yes, Cleveland forgot all

that as he smoothed the youngster's soft hair, while, with the men

around him, he drained his glass in silence to the memory of his

departed friend and chief. Then resuming, he went on:

"In less than no time after the light was seen--for you must know,

gentlemen, that it was an understood signal between us--the 'Scourge'

was flying off with a stiff breeze abaft the beam, the crew at quarters,

and the boats ready to be lowered from the davits. When we ranged up

alongside the brig, and even before, we felt certain that our misgivings

would prove true, and so they did; and merely slamming a shot over her,

and dropping a couple of armed boats into the water, we luffed round her

bows, and there we saw that cursed schooner--venomous snake as she

was--just hoisting her sails, and creeping away to windward.

"We let her have two or three divisions of grape, and followed the dose

up with round shot. I am sure we hit her, and that pretty hard, for we

knocked away her fore-top-mast, and we saw the splinters fly in showers

from her hull. However, she was well handled, and lying nearer the wind

than the 'Scourge,' when day dawned she was clear out of range, and

leaving us every minute. So we up helm and ran down again to the brig,

to see what mischief had been done and to pick up our boats.

"Ah! yes, you all know what had taken place, so I won't go over the

details; but the same afternoon, after seeing the brig pointed straight

for Port Royal, and while we were once more on our course, we fell in

with a water-logged boat, in which were half a dozen dead and dying men.

One, a mongrel Indian from Yucatan, who was frightfully torn by two or

three grape-shot, before he died on board--as did all the others--gave

us, in his confused dialect, some account of the pirate he had served

under, and the haunt he frequented. As near as we could learn, the haunt

was situated somewhere on the south side of Cuba, on a rocky island

having a safe and secure inlet; but as he did not know the latitude or

longitude, we were left somewhat in the dark. The last words, however,

the mangled wretch uttered, as the gasping breath was leaving his body,

were, that the spot could be distinguished by a tall cocoa-nut-tree

which grew from a craggy eminence in the middle of the island. We buried

them all, pirates as they were, decently, and then we clapped on all

sail on our course.

"Steward, another bottle of the old Southside that Mr. March sent me

from Madeira! Here, Domino, take Mr. Mouse up gently, and lay him down

on my cot in the after cabin. Dear little fellow, he is sound asleep;

and mind you draw the curtains around him, lest he take cold from the

draught of the stern windows!"

Rather a striking contrast this to the way Captain Brand, the pirate,

treated the little Henri in the den there in the Doce Leguas.

"Well, gentlemen, for some weeks after these occurrences we sailed about

the islands, touching here and there, until at last we arrived at the

Havana, took in stores and water, and then continued the cruise. The

orders were to beat up the south side of Cuba, where we expected to fall

in with the Musquito fleet and some English vessels, especially detailed

to destroy two or three nests of pirates who had for some years swarmed

in those seas and infested that coast. In the course of time we beat all

around the south side of Cuba, and at last dropped anchor in St. Jago,

where we learned from the English consular agent that five or six

fellows, who had been wrecked on the Carvalo reef, were identified as

having been part of a piratical crew who had plundered an English vessel

with a free passport bound to Havana, and had been sent there in irons

for trial.

"The truth was, that the Spanish colonial authorities had so long

connived, winked at, or been indifferent to what was going on during the

wars of the Continent, that they allowed these piratical hordes to exist

and thrive at their very doors. The matter had already been brought to

the notice of the administrador of the port, and all other ports as far

along the coast as Cienfuegos, and in such a threatening manner, too,

that the governor at St. Jago, fearful of having his town blown down,

exerted himself in the arrest of the rascals I have alluded to, and

likewise in procuring information by dispatching guarda costas along the

south side of the island.

"Accordingly, the very morning we anchored I went ashore with the

captain of the custom-house, where we met the deputy administrador and a

little withered, one-eyed old rascal, who was in the colonial service,

and who professed to know the haunt, or at least he said he thought he

did, of that notorious villain Brand.

"I remember distinctly spreading a chart before him, and while he traced

with the end of his cigarette a course for the captain to steer by, I

stood near, watching him narrowly. But the fact was, that he had the

very sharpest spark of an eye set, or rather standing out, beside his

nose that any body ever saw in a human being's head; and instead of me

watching him, he seemed to be looking straight through me, and divining

my thoughts and suspicions. However, the spot he pointed out, and the

way he described it, with a cocoa-nut-tree on top of a rock, and the

passage through the reef, so nearly corresponded with the confused

account the Yucatanese gave us before he died, that the captain was

entirely convinced we were on the scent, though I myself was not more

than half satisfied. The place indicated was near the Isle of Pines,

three hundred miles off; but, to make the thing more plausible, that

one-eyed old scoundrel was detailed to run along the Doce Leguas Cays,

see what information he could pick up there, and then follow down after

us.

"That night, or early the next morning, we were off again, and ran down

the coast, with a good offing to keep the wind, until we got to the

ground, and passed in by Cape St. Francis, and doubled round into the

Bight of Pines. There we fell in with a whole fleet of English and

American cruisers and schooner craft, who informed us that they had

searched every accessible spot where a man could walk dry-shod upon,

from Guayabos to the Isle of Mangles; that they had destroyed several

old and deserted piratical nests, and hung two or three ostensible

fishermen by way of wholesome warning to their allies the pirates; but

that was all; and from what they had learned, there did not seem to have

been an established retreat in that maze of cays and reefs for four or

five years.

"So you see we had our cruise for nothing, and then the captain agreed

with me that we had both been most egregiously deceived by the Spanish

commander of the guarda costa. Well, we hauled our wind once more,

standing well out to sea, and after a tedious beat of some days we again

edged in toward the coast, somewhere near the Boca Grande of the Twelve

League Cays on the westernmost side. It was in the morning when we made

the land, and, steering close in, we got a good slant off the shore, and

kept the glasses going from the topmost cross-trees down all through the

day. For my part, as Hardy may perhaps remember, I scarcely took the

glass from my eye for eight hours, and from the mizzen-top I feel quite

sure that there were not many objects, from the size of a blade of grass

to a mangrove bush, that I did not examine, from the coral reefs up to

the rocky heights, let alone the cocoa-nut-tree that we were in search

of.

"Toward afternoon, however, the weather came up hazy, the wind began to

fall off, and the barometer began to exhibit very queer spasms indeed,

rising with a sort of jerk at first, and then dropping down the tenth of

an inch at a clip, with the atmosphere becoming close and sultry, and

the men gasping about the decks as if we were about to choke at the next

breath. It was during the hurricane months, and the indications

certainly should have led us as far as our legs could carry us to open

water, instead of being caught embayed perhaps with half a thousand

reefs around us on what might prove a lee-shore; but, nevertheless, the

captain decided to hold on till sunset, and then make an offing. The

breeze still held in the upper sails, and so we slipped on in smooth

water till about five o'clock, when I heard a fellow sing out from the

main royal yard,

"'On deck there! I can see a tall cocoa-nut-tree on an island here on

the port bow!'

"Before the words were well out of his mouth I too caught the object,

and I knew at the first glance that it was the spot we were looking for.

At the same time the haze lighted up a bit, and we saw the ridge of

rocks and every thing as the haunt of that pirate Brand had been

described to us. So, my friends, we were all alive once more on board

the 'Scourge,' and the captain resolved to dash in upon the scoundrel's

nest before he could have time to leave it.

"The engine was rigged and water spirted over the sails from the trucks

down, to make the canvas hold the wind, and in an hour after we were

within two leagues of the island, and just as the sun fell below the

horizon we caught sight of the mast-heads of a large vessel sticking up

over some bluff rocks near the bold shore. Not five minutes later the

hull of the craft came slowly out from the gap, under all sail, and we

discovered her to be a long and rather lumbering-looking brigantine,

painted lead-color, and bearing no resemblance to the schooner we had

twice chased before. Simultaneously, however, with her coming out into

full view, as she rounded in her head-yards and got a pull of the

main-sheet, with the breeze abeam and heading to the eastward, we beheld

a great volume of white smoke spout up over the rock near the

cocoa-nut-tree, with a vivid sheet of flame at the base, and before the

vast column turned, like the crown of a palm-tree, in its descent, we

were greeted by a dull, heavy roar, the concussion of which fairly made

the 'Scourge' tremble. Then, as the white smoke partially broke away, an

avalanche of rocks and timbers was scattered far and near, and nothing

visible but a veil of dust and masses of heavy smoke. Nearly at the same

moment of this explosion wreaths of heavy black smoke arose from another

spot nearer to the gap, lit up in the fading, hazy twilight with forked

red fires, and soon after a great conflagration burst forth, swirling

flakes of burning cinders all over the island, and casting a lurid glare

upon the water around us."

CHAPTER XXXV.

AND THE PITCH HOT.

"He is born for all weathers;

Let the winds blow high or blow low,

His duty keeps him to his tethers,

And where the gale drives he must go.

"The wind blew hard, the sea ran high,

The dingy scud drove 'cross the sky,

All was safe lashed, the bowl was slung,

When careless thus Ned Halyard sung."

Said the commodore, with a knowing shake of his head, "Ah! gentlemen, if

the fellow, whoever he was, who was creeping away so nimbly in that

lazy-looking brigantine, with English colors at the peak, had written

down in detail what he had been doing on that secluded nook of an

island, and sent the information off to us in a letter, we could have

read it without breaking the seal. We could have told him that that

little scoundrel with one eye had purposely misled us, and had given him

warning to quit his strong-hold; and that he had hastily got his plunder

and people on board his vessel, blown up and set fire to his nest, and

that the brigantine he was now on board of was once upon a time the

notorious schooner 'Centipede!' Yes, we knew all that by instinct."

Piron sat with his eyes fixed upon the speaker, taking in every word as

it fell from his lips, the teeth set close together and the hand

clenched which supported his head on the table. Paddy Burns and Tom

Stewart, too, looked eagerly that way, as did Harry Darcantel, while

Hardy sipped his wine and puffed his cigar leisurely, as if he knew the

tale by heart.

"It had fallen nearly calm. A light air perhaps in the royals, though

nothing down below. But as we hauled down our colors at sunset, which

had been hoisted to let the fellow know who we were, down came his also.

Then there we both lay looking at each other. He knew by instinctive

experience that we were the American corvette 'Scourge,' mounting

eighteen twenty-four-pounder carronades and two long eighteens in the

bow ports; for the brigantine had once or twice determined their exact

calibres, and that we were the fastest cruiser, with the wind a point or

two free, that had been seen in the West Indies for twenty years.

[Illustration]

"Yes, he knew all about us, but he was still a little in doubt

whether we knew all about _him_. He lay--unfortunately, perhaps, for

him--a little beyond the range of our long guns, or else he might have

been spared a good deal of time and uneasiness, and we a long chase and

considerable risk. Ah! as the night came, the very fires he had kindled

in his den on shore prevented his escape; for while the calm lasted the

bright flames shone upon him with the glare of hell! There we lay all

that night without moving a muscle or a mile until day dawned--and such

a day as did dawn!

"Meanwhile the barometer had fallen an inch and a half, until the master

began to believe the bulb leaked, and the mercury was dropping into the

case. Then, through the murky gloom of daylight, with the sea one flat

greasy surface, with never the splash of a fish to disturb it, while the

lowest whisper of the topmen aloft could be distinctly heard on deck, as

if we were hung in the vacuum of an exhausted receiver where a feather

would drop like a bullet, suddenly there came a sound from the direction

of the cays. Suppose, Burns, you saw a forty-two pound shot coming

toward you, and without you dodged quick, your head would be flying off

with it in the same direction?"

"Whist, mon!" said Stewart, with a groan, "dinna be calling up sic

peectures of the brain, Cleveland. Paddy, there, ne'er thinks of ony

meesals bigger than a peestol bullet."

"Well, my friends, we ran precisely a similar risk, though the

cloudy embrasures over the island had not quite enough thunder to

reach us. However, the brigantine knew what would follow as well as we

did--better, perhaps--and before you could swallow that glass of wine

she was stripped as bare as a bone, and down came her yards too, but

keeping the sticks up, and spreading a patch of a storm staysail

forward that you might apparently have put in your pocket. Her decks

and rigging were crowded with men while she was doing all this, but

the moment it was done, and well done too, they ran into their holes

below like so many rats, and we could only see a man or two left on

deck near the helm.

"All hands had been called on board the 'Scourge' at four o'clock, and,

with the exception of securing the battery, every thing was ready to

make a skeleton of the ship the moment we saw the brigantine begin; for

she was a wary fish, and we had no idea of letting her give us the slip

the third time. I had the trumpet, however, and with the captain at my

elbow, the instant he saw that the brigantine was once more rigged

nearly in her old way, he gave me the word, 'Now, Cleveland, work

sharp!'

"With a hundred and twenty men aloft, jumping about like cats, the light

sails, studding-sail booms, royal and top-gallant yards came down, the

top-gallant masts after them, and the flying jib-boom rigged in. Then

the top-sails close reefed and furled with extra gaskets, and so with

the courses; preventer braces clapped on, rolling tackles hooked, and

the spare purchases set up by the lower pennants. Meanwhile the

divisions on deck had got hawsers over the launch amidships, the chains

unbent, the anchors lashed down on the forecastle, and the quarter boats

triced well inboard and secured with the davits. At the same time the

light stuff from aloft was got below, the hammocks piped down, and the

carpenters slapped the gratings on the hatches, and stood ready with the

tarpaulins to batten them down. I never beheld a smarter piece of work

done afloat--not even, Hardy, in the 'Monongahela.'

"As I turned round an instant a hoarse, howling bellow struck my ear

from the island, and I just caught a glimpse of the tall cocoa-nut-tree

flying round and round in the air like an inverted umbrella with a

broken stick; while at the same time the men from aloft had reached the

deck, and, jumping to the battery, the guns were run in and housed,

spare breechings and extra lashings passed, and life-lines rove fore and

aft. After that, gentlemen, there was no farther need of a trumpet.

"You all know pretty well what sort of a thing a hurricane is, and the

one I speak of must, I think, have given you a touch of its quality here

in Jamaica."

"Ay, by the holy Moses! we remember it well, bad luck to it; and so does

Tom Stewart and Piron there, for it didn't lave a stick of sugar-cane

standing from Montego Bay to Cape Antonio."

"Yes," said Stewart; "and to show ye what a piff of wind can do, the

whirl of it caught up an eighteen-foot Honduras plank, and laid it

crosswise, like an axe, full seven inches into an old tamarind trunk

standing in my garden, and then twisted off the ends like a heather

broom! Hech, mon, ye may see it there now any day!"

Piron was thinking of the barks that were driving before that hurricane,

with no thought of the damage done to his own plantations.

"Well, then, I shall spare you all prolix description of it; and you

need only fancy a ship blown every where and every how except out of

water--now with the lower yard-arms cutting deep into the sea like

rakes, the lee hammock-nettings under water, the stern boat torn away

into splinters, the main-top-sail picked, bolt by bolt, from the yard

until there was not a thread left, and the lee anchor twisted bodily out

of its lashings and swept overboard!

"Then a lull, while the sea got up and the ship dashed down on the other

side on her bow; then staggering back and making a stern-board till the

water was plunged up in a deluge over the poop. Recovering herself

again, and almost quivering on her beam-ends, the guns groaning and

creaking as the terrible strain came upon the breechings, with the shot

from the racks bounding about the decks, dinting holes in the solid oak

waterways big enough to wash your face in, and then hopping out of the

smashed half-ports to leeward. The spar-deck up to your armpits in

water, and every man of us holding on to the life-lines or standing

rigging like grim death, while all the time the roaring, thundering yell

of the hurricane taught us how powerless we were, by hand or voice, to

cope with the winds when they were let loose in all their might and

fury!

"Nor need I relate to you the scene presented below--mess-chests, bags,

tables, crockery, flying from deck and beam to stanchion, smashing about

in the most dangerous way, pell-mell, while the worst of the tempest

lasted. But, gentlemen, the 'Scourge' had a frame of live-oak, to say

nothing of two or three acres of tough yellow-pine timber in her, a good

deal of fibrous hemp to hold the masts up; and, moreover, she was well

manned, and, though I say it myself, she had a skillful captain and

thorough-bred officers, in whose sagacity the crew could rely, to manage

that old 'Scourge.'"

"That she had," exclaimed Hardy; "and the most skillful and the coolest

of them all was the first lieutenant!" The "Monongahela's" executive

officer here bounced off his chair as if he was prepared to fight any

man breathing who did not subscribe to that opinion.

"Well, my friends, that awful hurricane continued for about twenty

hours, from late one morning till the beginning of the next. As for day,

there was none; for the sea and black clouds made one long night of it.

Fortunately, too, we had been driven off shore, and when the murky gloom

broke away, and we were able to look around, our first anxiety was to

see what had become of the brigantine.

"Yes, and I truly believe, in all that turmoil of the elements, while we

were on the brink of foundering and going down to old Davy's locker,

that there was not an officer or man, from the captain to the cook, who

was not thinking of that pirate, and hoping that he might go down first.

I myself, however, felt a sort of confidence, as I was held lashed on

the poop to the mizzen rigging, that the brigantine might be caught and

whirled about--so long as she was above water--by the same blows of the

hurricane that beat upon the 'Scourge;' and when the tornado broke, and

some one sang out 'Sail ho!' I knew by instinct it must be the

'Centipede.'"

CHAPTER XXXVI.

THE CHASE.

"With sloping masts and dipping prow,

As who pursued with yell and blow

Still treads the shadow of his foe,

And forward bends his head,

The ship drove past, loud roared the blast,

And southward aye we fled."

"Clap on more sail, pursue, give fire--

She is my prize, or ocean whelms them all."

"So many slain--so many drowned!

I like not of that fight to tell.

Come, let the cheerful grog go round!

Messmates, I've done. A spell, ho, spell!"

"It was all hands again, gentlemen. The hurricane had settled

down into a moderate gale from northeast, though it was some time

before the awfully confused sea got to roll regularly. Then we

judged ourselves--for reckoning and observation had been out of

the question--to be a long way south of Jamaica, and even to the

southward of the great Pedro Bank. We did not wait this time for

the pirate to lead us in getting ready for a race, but we got up

a bran-new suit of top-sails and courses out of the sail-room,

and, so soon as the men could go aloft with safety, they were

ordered not to unbend the few tattered rags still clinging to the

yards, but to cut away at once. Up went the top-sails and courses,

and they were soon brought to the yards and set close-reefed, with

a storm-jib to steady the ship forward. Presently we gave her the

whole fore-sail and main-sail, and I think that even then, for

some hours, but one half the corvette's upper works could have been

visible as she plunged through the angry heaving seas.

"It left us dry enough, however, to pay some heed to the brigantine

ahead of us. She was about four miles off, a little on our weather bow,

and as she rode up--splendid sea-boat that she was--like a gull on the

back of a mighty roller, we could see that her bulwarks--mere boards and

canvas, probably--had been washed away, the house between her masts gone

too, and, no doubt, her long gun, or whatever else had been lying hid

under it. And now she was once more the schooner 'Centipede,' long

and sharp, and without any rail to speak of, so that we could see her

deck from the stem to her taffrail at every lurch she made. The only

difference in her appearance was a short fore-mast with cross-trees, and

a top-mast for square sails. Almost as soon as our top-sail sheets were

hauled home, her own yards went up and the sail was spread, while with

the bonnet off her fore-sail, the whole jib and a close-reefed

main-sail, she went flying to the southward with the gale a point abaft

the beam.

[Illustration: THE STERN CHASE.]

"Thus we went on, the sea getting more regular every hour, so that we

could send up the top-gallant masts, get the yards across, shake a reef

or two out, and put the 'Scourge' in order. The schooner needed no

encouragement from us, but cracked on more sail until her long main-mast

reeled and bent over, as she came up on the breaking ridge of a wave,

like a whip-stalk. By noon the clouds had gone, and left us a clear sky,

with the gale going down into a full top-gallant breeze, sending the

corvette along good eleven knots. We got an observation for latitude,

and five hours later we determined the longitude and our position to be

a few leagues to leeward of the Sarrana Keys, with that bird of a

schooner before us heading for the Musquito coast.

"If _we_ had caught a cataract of water as it rolled over our bows in

the morning, the schooner was taking _her_ bath in the afternoon, for

occasionally, for five minutes at a time, there was nothing seen of her

deck, and only the masts and broad white canvas above, like jury-sticks

out of a raft. But when she did slide up with her low, long hull

shooting clean out of water, till nearly half her keel, with the copper

sheathing flashing in the sun, was visible, she looked like a dolphin

making a spring after a shoal of flying-fish. And then on her narrow

deck we could see a few fellows lashed about the fore-mast, and a couple

more abaft steering her like a thread through a needle.

"We began to gain upon her now, and whenever she kept a little away

before the wind the gap between us closed more rapidly; for the ship

could evidently outcarry the schooner, and, had the breeze freshened and

the sea kept up, we could have run her under if her masts didn't go out

of her, as we hoped and expected every minute they would. Gradually,

however, she watched her chance and hauled up till she brought the wind

barely abeam, and steered true for the Musketeers--a bad cluster of low

keys nearly surrounded by as terrible ledges and reefs as any to be

found in the Caribbean Sea.

"Her captain was evidently bent upon playing a desperate game, but, if

he thought he would not find another ready to lay down the same stake,

he was greatly mistaken! It was about sunset when we made the keys, and

there we went--the schooner leading us about a mile--at a rate which

would have made both vessels leap clear over the first ledge they

struck, and perhaps have thrown summersaults of us into the bargain. I

asked the captain, who had never left my side on the poop, if we should

keep on.

"'Yes, sir,' he replied, 'so long as we have a gun and a plank to float

it!'

"And, by Saint Paul! we kept on. And there was not a soul on board the

'Scourge,' from the drummer-boy up, who did not agree with the captain.

How those villains on board the pirate relished this decision we could

only surmise; but, at all risks, he held his course with a nerve that

might have made the devil himself shudder.

"By this time the sun was well down, and a brilliant moon was riding

high in the heavens; but, as bright as it was, the fellow who commanded

that schooner required an eye as keen as an albatross and a hand as

steady as an iron bar to guide his craft in the direction he was

going--too late for either of us to think of hauling off.

"He must, too, have had a thorough knowledge of the reefs and keys, and

trusted, perhaps, if he got clear himself, that the corvette, drawing

eighteen feet water and ignorant of the channel, might touch something

which would throw the game in his hands. Our men had the ropes stretched

along the decks and the battery clear on both sides, so as to be ready

to wear, or tack, or fire, as our pilot ahead might require.

"The reefs were to leeward of the string of low keys, which made the

water comparatively smooth, though the wind still swept strongly over us

and sang through the rigging; and it was here the 'Centipede' entered,

going like wild pigeons the pair of us. The outer reef had a fair, deep

passage, and so had the next; but the inner one presented but one narrow

gateway, scarcely wide enough for a ship to scrape through, with the

whole reef one uninterrupted fringe of black pointed rocks and roaring

white breakers, which toppled over, and boiled and eddied like a

thousand whirlpools into the smoother water inshore.

"As the 'Centipede's' stern gave a sharp pitching jerk when she entered

this boiling gorge, we saw, in the moonlight, her head-yards laid

square, the fore and aft sails flowing in the sheets as she fell off

with wide wings and the wind on her quarter, and flew down inside the

reef.

"Five minutes after we too entered this maelstrom chasm, and, though the

helm was hove hard up, and the after-sails shivered, yet, before the

'Scourge's' bows, going at the rate she was, could turn the sharp angle

of that water-gate, her port bilge grated against a coral ledge, and

grooved and broomed the planks and copper away like so much sea-weed!

But yet that slight graze never stopped us a hair's weight, and, with

additional sail, we rushed after our pilot, mile after mile, through

reef, ledge, breakers, inlets, and keys, now braced sharp up, and again

going free, until at last the fellow, having run us a dance of full ten

miles, once more emerged into the open water, close jammed on the wind,

steering nearly due east.

"There, Hardy!" exclaimed the commodore, "I am tired of talking; suppose

you take up the thread of the yarn. Domino, another bottle of tinta!"

CHAPTER XXXVII.

THE WRECK OF THE "CENTIPEDE."

"Gun bellows forth to gun, and pain

Rings out her wild, delirious scream;

Redoubling thunders shake the main,

Loud crashing falls the shot-rent beam.

The timbers with the broadsides strain;

The slippery decks send up a steam

From hot and living blood; and high

And shrill is heard the death-pang cry!"

"She struck where the white and fleecy waves

Looked soft as carded wool;

But the cruel rocks they gored her side

Like the horns of an angry bull."

Piron turned his gaze toward the first lieutenant, moved away the full

glasses of wine, which he had never raised to his lips since the

commodore began, and, resting his bloodless cheek on his other hand,

listened.

"It's vera interesting indeed." "Tear an' ages, boy! Fire away!" quoth

the Scotchman and his Milesian crony in a breath.

Hardy threw his arm over the shoulder of Harry Darcantel as if it was a

pleasant Corinthian column to lean upon, and breaking off the ashes of

his cigar on the rim of a wine-glass which he had specially devoted to

that purpose, he forthwith began:

"I am quite confident, gentlemen, that I can not describe what afterward

took place so well as Commodore Cleveland, but, at all events, I'll do

my best. Nor do I remember very distinctly the events of the night after

we got out of the Musketeers Keys; for I was pretty well fagged out

myself, and all of us who had the watch below turned in to take the

first wink of sleep we could catch for forty hours.

"The next morning, however, when I took the deck, I found the corvette

under royals and flying-jib, with a fresh trade wind blowing from about

east-northeast, and a smooth sea; though close hauled as we were, and

going ten knots, the spray was flying well up the weather leech of the

fore-sail. The 'Centipede' was about a mile and a half ahead, jammed on

the wind, and trying all she could to eat the wind out of us; but, as

the commodore there said at the time, he had thrown that trick away when

he cut off eight or ten feet of his fore-mast, and made a brigantine of

the craft, so that he could not brace his head-yards sharper, or lie

nearer the wind than we did.

"I remember, also, that two or three of the officers and half a hundred

of the sailors were very anxious to pitch shot at the chase from the

long eighteen in the weather bridle port; but the captain refused, and

said we might lose a cable's length or two in yawing off to fire, and it

would be better to save the powder until we could slam a broadside into

him. But all the while that 'Centipede' was handled and steered in such

a thorough seamanlike manner, and proved herself such a beautiful

sea-boat, that I doubt if there was a man on board the 'Scourge' who

would not have given a year's pay to have taken her whole, and only

expended a spare top-mast studding-sail halliards for the necks of her

crew.

"From the top-gallant forecastle we could see every thing that took

place on the schooner's deck: sometimes a lot of fellows forward reeving

some fresh gear, peering about the low bowsprit, or putting on a seizing

to a traveler on the jib-stay; with a chap or two aloft stitching a

chafing-mat on the lee backstays; and then aft a man shinning up the

main shrouds with a tin pot hung around his neck, greasing the jaws of

the main gaff, and twitching a wrinkle out of the gaff-top-sail, so that

it would lie as flat as this dining-room table set on end.

"But always, from the very first moment we descried her--before the

hurricane and afterward--there were two fellows abaft by the taffrail.

One a large fat man, in a long dark dress, who appeared at times to be

leaning over the rail as if he were sea-sick; and the other a spare,

tall-built fellow, who sat there with a quadrant in his hands and

smoking cigars, measuring the distance between the two vessels as if he

were a government surveyor, and especially appointed to make a

hydrographical chart of the Caribbean Sea. Occasionally, too, we could

see him approach the binnacle, spread a chart on the deck at his feet,

examine it closely with a pair of dividers in his hands, and then he

would return to his seat on the taffrail, cigar in his mouth and

quadrant to his eye as before.

"Nor were we idle on board the 'Scourge;' for when the breeze lulled we

slacked up the lower rigging and stays, got down all extra weight and

hamper from the tops, sent the watch below to the berth-deck with a

round shot apiece in their hammocks, moved a couple of carronades about

the spar-deck till we got the ship in the best sailing trim, and then we

went skipping and springing through the water with the elasticity of an

India-rubber ball.

"At noon the sailing-master reported the position of the ship to be two

hundred and eighty miles from the nearest land, which was the Darien

Coast. So all that day and all that night, with a moon to make a lover

weep to see, we went bowling after our waspish consort in hopes before

long of taking the sting out of her. No kite ever pursued its quarry

with a keener eye than we did. No hound ever leaped after a wolf with

the froth streaming from his jaws and blood-red thirsty eyes, than did

the 'Scourge' chase that infamous pirate. The delay only made our eyes

sparkle and our teeth sharper in expectation; for we knew we would have

our prey sooner or later, and it was only a bite and a pleasure

deferred.

"The next morning and all the day there was no change to speak of in our

respective positions. The 'Centipede' went skimming on over the water

with every thread of canvas she could spread, reeling over on her side

at times when the breeze freshened, while the spray flashed up joyously

and sparkled in the sun, leaving a bubbling current of foam in her wake,

which, before it had been entirely lost in the regular waves of the sea,

the corvette's sharp bows would plunge into, and again make it flash

high up to her fore-yard, and then go seething, and hissing, and kissing

her black sides until it rippled around her rudder and was lost again in

the wake astern.

"And all the time that man sat with a cigar in his mouth on the pirate's

taffrail, while Commodore Cleveland there stood with a spy-glass to his

eye on the poop of the 'Scourge.'

"You may imagine, gentlemen," continued Hardy, as he again knocked the

ashes off his cigar, "that going to sea is attended with some few

discomforts, such as battening down the hatches in a sirocco in the

Mediterranean off Tripoli; a simoom in the China Seas; a bitter

northwest gale off Barnegat, with the rigging and sails frozen as hard

as an iceberg; but if a man can catch forty winks of sleep once in a

while, whether in a hammock, or on an oak carronade slide with the

breech of a gun for a pillow, he may manage to weather through it. But

from the moment we first saw that pirate till we saw the last of him,

neither the first lieutenant of the 'Scourge' nor the commander of the

'Centipede' once closed their eyes, unless--well, I won't anticipate."

Piron reached over his hand and shook that of his friend Cleveland

convulsively.

"Vera weel, mon! vera weel!" "He's the very man to do it!" said Stewart

and Burns to Stingo, nodding backward at the commodore.