The two ships of war were manœuvring that June afternoon in awful
silence, on the blue waters of Massachusetts Bay. Each crew stood at
quarters ready to send the deadly broadsides at the rival frigate
when the word was given. No land was in sight, Boston Light being six
leagues away, and the two ships in the centre of the circle of rippling
water were watched only by the sea-gulls and the broad eye of the sun.
The _Chesapeake_ was coming down very fast on the _Shannon_, under
top-sails and jib, and the British ship was lying to under top-sail,
top-gallant sails, jib, and spanker. Cheever and James, high perched
in the mizzen-top, clutched their muskets tightly as they watched the
great white ensign of the ship float on the breeze, bearing the legend
“Free Trade and Sailors’ Rights.”
The ill-assorted crew of the _Chesapeake_ had taken their stations and
every man was ready for the fight, which must be sharp and murderous,
whether the meteor flag of England or the starry banner was to be
struck. It was late in the afternoon now, and the hours which had
passed since the _Chesapeake_ weighed anchor at noon, seemed like ages
to the boy in the mizzen-top.
Midshipman Randolph, in command, was cheery enough, and had told James,
as they sailed down Boston Bay, of his service on the _Constitution_,
of her victory over the _Guerrière_, and her marvellous escape from the
British fleet in the Sound.
“The _Shannon_ is keeping a close luff,” cried Randolph. “See her
maintop-sail shiver. We can get the weather-gauge on her easy enough.
Look, now we are getting up our foresail and going straight for her
starboard quarter; Lawrence will go under her stern, rake her, and
engage her in the quarter. In a quarter of an hour you’ll see the
splinters fly, my boys.”
On the Yankee ship tore before the fresh breeze, with the great ensign
flying, while the _Shannon_ waited doggedly the attack. Even the
midshipman stopped his chatter as the moment of the first broadside
approached.
The _Chesapeake_, when within fifty yards of her opponent’s starboard
quarter, luffed up and squared her main-yard, and now the two rivals
were almost alongside. A few minutes more of awful silence, while the
two ships forged ahead together, and then James saw a flame shoot out
from the starboard side of the _Shannon_, and at once the broadsides of
both ships roared at each other. The boy felt every nerve in his body
tingle, as the storm broke the awful calm.
Below him was a cloud of smoke and splinters, and as the smoke cleared
away he saw the men working their guns, and dark forms lying by the
wheel in ghastly pools of blood. And so the cannons thundered at each
other gloriously for five minutes, “hot gun-lip kissing gun,” when the
damage to the _Chesapeake’s_ rigging caused her to come up into the
wind somewhat, so as to expose her quarter to a terrible broadside,
which beat in her stern posts and swept the men away like flies from
the after guns. Then came a loud explosion on the American ship’s
quarter-deck, and the flames swept along the deck from the foremast to
the mizzen-mast. The dense smoke blinded and choked the men in the
tops.
Meanwhile the crippled ship had stern-way on and began to pay off, and
the two frigates fell aboard of each other, the _Chesapeake’s_ quarter
pressing on the _Shannon’s_ side just forward the starboard main
chains, and the ships were kept in this position by the _Shannon’s_
anchor catching in the _Chesapeake’s_ quarter-post.
“We are going to board them,” cried Randolph.
“Most likely they will us,” said a surly seaman; “we have had the worst
of it so far.”
“Silence!” shouted Randolph.
The seaman was right; Captain Broke, when the _Shannon_ exposed
her quarter, ran forward, and seeing his foes flinching from the
quarter-deck guns, ordered the ships to be linked together, the firing
to cease, and the boarders to be called.
His boatswain set about fastening the vessels together, though his
right arm was hacked off by a blow from a Yankee cutlass.
Just then Lieutenant Ludlow fell mortally wounded on the _Chesapeake_,
and Lawrence himself on the quarter-deck, fatally conspicuous in his
full-dress uniform and commanding stature, was shot down. He fell down
and was carried below, exclaiming, “Don’t give up the ship!”
Now from the tops of both vessels the fire became hot, and as the
smoke blew away from the two linked ships, James saw the British
Captain Broke at the head of his men, stepping from the _Shannon’s_
gangway rail on to the muzzle of the _Chesapeake’s_ after carronade.
The boy aimed at the British captain and fired; but missed. In a
second Captain Broke, followed by about twenty men, jumped on the
_Chesapeake’s_ quarter-deck, and some of the crew of the American
vessel, the foreign mercenaries and some of the raw natives, deserted
their quarters. The Portuguese boatswain’s mate removed the gratings of
the berth-deck and ran below, followed by many of the crew.
The loss of Lawrence and Ludlow deprived the deck of leaders at the
critical moment of the fight, and the mixed elements in the crew could
not stand up without a leader, against the _élan_ of the enemy’s
boarders.
At this despairing juncture, the church militant came to the front.
The chaplain, Mr. Livermore, stood alone on the quarter-deck, in front
of the boarders, and advancing, the parson fired his pistol into
the boarding crew and in return nearly had his arm hewed off by a
sword-stroke.
“My God, look at Livermore!” cried Berry. “Lawrence and Ludlow must be
dead. Where’s the bugler, the coward? Is there no one to rally the men?”
The boarders, after the chaplain’s noble resistance, stopped for a
moment until they were joined by the rest of the _Shannon’s_ boarders.
“Now, let them have it,” cried Berry, “a volley!--are you ready,--fire!”
The volley told on the huddled mass of boarders and two officers fell.
“That’s right,” cried the midshipman, “but it will be our turn next.
Load your guns, my men, and give it to them before we are blown to
bits. They are pointing a Long Tom at us from the _Shannon_. Pick off
all you can before they fire it.”
As he spoke, the gallant officer, pierced by a bullet from the
_Shannon’s_ maintop, plunged from the top and fell heavily over on the
deck below. James instinctively assumed the command of the top. “Now,
boys,” he cried, “the marines are making a stand in the upper deck.”
The next instant a shot from the _Shannon’s_ Long Tom crashed through
the mizzen-top, and James and the survivors made for the shrouds, to
descend to the upper deck. As they descended, several muskets were
discharged at them, but without effect.
Below, Lieutenant Budd now for the first time learned that the English
had boarded; from the upper deck men came crowding down.
“_Chesapeake’s_ men, follow me!” cried the gallant officer.
But, shame to say, the foreigners and the green hands held back, though
a dozen brave fellows jumped to follow him. Up they rushed after the
Lieutenant to the spar-deck, and fell, with the fury of brave men who
break away from coward associates, upon the British as they came along
the gangway.
This brave handful, reinforced by Cheever, James, and other mizzen-top
men, held in check the victorious _Shannons_, killing two of them; and
Cheever saw the Lieutenant pierced by a boarding-pike and thrown down
the main hatchway. As the _Chesapeake’s_ survivors stood battling for
their lives with the desperation of animals at bay, Lieutenant Ludlow,
stricken to death, struggled upon deck, followed by three seamen.
“We shall not give up the ship,” cried the dying man.
A sabre descended upon his head and he spoke no more.
Hardly fifteen minutes had elapsed since the two gallant frigates
had begun action, and the _Chesapeake_ was almost in the complete
possession of the enemy. In the forecastle, a few seamen and marines
stood fighting on the upper deck; the few survivors stood together,
firm in their determination not to give up the ship before their lives.
In this desperate struggle, Tom Cheever, brandishing a pike, stood
shoulder to shoulder with James. Next him, a marine with a clubbed
musket in air, and on the other side James, with his midshipman’s
cutlass, while behind stood eight seamen armed with pikes and
cutlasses. After their slight repulse of the _Shannon’s_ boarding crew
they fell back, and for a moment the fighting ceased as the determined
little body of Americans stood closer together. Men there were among
them who had helped to doff the _Guerrière’s_ royal ensign, and they
were desperate at this awful disaster to their flag.
“Better to die with the ‘old man,’” they thought.
“It’s good-by, James, my boy,” hoarsely whispered Cheever. “I’ve
dragged you down with me.”
Through the boy’s head the hot blood jumped bearing the joy of the
fight. He grasped his dirk the firmer. “We shall die for our country’s
honor,” he cried.
Then the overpowering force of the boarding crew, led by Broke, closed
in about the devoted remnant of the Americans. With brilliant personal
courage the Captain led his men; and James rushed to meet him. Behind
Cheever followed close, thrusting himself in front of the boy to shield
him as best he might.
“Surrender!” cried Broke.
“Never!” cried Cheever, thrusting at him with his pike.
Captain Broke parried the blow with his sword and cut at his opponent,
laying open his head. James, seeing that his uncle was blinded by the
blood, rushed in to save him, but Cheever thrust the boy back of him
and stood in front of him as a lioness might do to save her whelp.
The little group of Americans were resisting stubbornly the attack;
a tall marine crashed his musket’s butt upon a burly seaman who had
rushed to Broke’s side, and at the same moment Cheever cut down the
British captain, and would have killed him had not another cutlass
pierced the American’s breast. He fell heavily backwards, and as he did
so a heavy stroke of a British cutlass felled James to the deck.
The assailing party fell back for an instant before the wild courage of
the Americans, and then closed in upon them. The twelve men lay in each
other’s blood on the spot where they had rallied. A couple of shots
were fired up from below, and the British fired a volley or two down
the hatchway. All resistance was then at an end and the colors of the
_Chesapeake_ were struck.
When James came to his senses, he found himself crowded with a dozen
prisoners in a small dark hole between decks. They were lying on an old
sail, and outside the door a sentry was pacing. The boy’s head ached
wofully from the cutlass wound, but fortunately the blow had been a
glancing one. The great flow of blood had saved the boy’s life; for in
the mad rush of the British, he would have certainly been despatched
had not his wound been so severe that he passed for dead. He was,
though he did not then know it, the only survivor of the gallant little
band who, driven to bay, had held the _Shannon’s_ boarding party.
His companions in this dismal captivity were perfectly quiet, depressed
by defeat, and some of them seemed to be asleep.
[Illustration: “ANOTHER CUTLASS PIERCED THE AMERICAN’S BREAST.”]
“The ship is taken?” asked James, to whom the brief quarter of an hour
of carnage seemed like a nightmare.
“Ay, it is,” replied the midshipman next him, “and we are bound on her
to Halifax, prisoners of war.”
“Is Lawrence dead?”
“No; but fatally wounded; and so is Lieutenant Ludlow, and poor Bullard
and White. The decks are like shambles.”
“And my uncle?”
“I don’t know your uncle, my lad.”
“He was in the mizzen-top’s crew. We made the last stand.”
“Then he has passed in the number of his mess. You are the only one
left of those brave men. I saw them pull you out from under the bodies,
and they chucked you in here when we were put in. I did not know that
you were alive till you spoke just then. I thought that you might be so
lucky as to be dead. Oh, if our fore-rigging had not been shot away, we
should have given a better account of ourselves. Poor Lawrence!”
Then there was silence again in the strait, dark hole; but the creaking
of the ship and the hurrying feet on deck told that the proud frigate
was on her way to the enemy’s strong-hold at Halifax.
And James lay, with confused thoughts of the strange man, his uncle,
dying like a hero for his country’s honor,--the weak, perverse man who
had so ill guarded his own.