Chapter Eight.
The rescue.
For a few seconds after the close of the man’s harrowing account there was a dead silence among us. Then the general, wiping the perspiration from his face, turned to me and said:
“Grenvile, my friend, this is a situation for you to grapple with, and a very difficult situation it is, I confess. For, on the one hand, those unhappy men must be rescued at all hazards, while, on the other, it is equally imperative that the ship and those in her should be protected from a possible, not to say very probable, attack by the savages. Now, what is to be done? Of course you will understand that I am ready to play any part that you may assign to me, but I may be permitted to suggest that I should probably be more useful in leading the shore expedition than in any other way.”
“Thank you, general. Yes, no doubt you are right, but it is a very difficult situation, as you say, and I must have a moment or two to think it out.”
Then, turning to the five horrified seamen who had returned in the longboat, I ordered them to go forward and get the cook to give them something to eat and drink, for I should be in need of the services of all of them sooner or later, while one of them would have to come with me in the boat as a guide.
The five men whom I addressed—all thoughts of mutiny having by this time been most effectually frightened out of their heads—turned and slouched away forward as meekly as lambs; and the moment that they were gone I was surrounded by an excited crowd of passengers, all of whom had come down from the poop to listen to the story of the five returned seamen, and every one of them had some more or less unpractical suggestion to make. It was rather unfortunate that they had all heard what had passed, for the very graphic narrative, told by an eye-witness, of the gruesome happenings of the past night, and the powerful suggestion of what was probably taking place at that moment away yonder in the woods, had so acted upon the vivid imaginations of the women that one or two of them were visibly upon the very verge of hysterics, while all were more or less in a state of mortal terror as to what might be their fate should the natives take it into their heads to attack the ship. For, that the presence of so many white men as they had encountered would suggest to the astute native mind the idea that a ship was somewhere near at hand was so exceedingly likely that it might almost be accepted as a foregone conclusion. But, terrified though the women were, they behaved marvellously well, and quietly retired when I requested them to do so in order that we men might be left free to discuss details together. But, even while the chatter was raging round me at its most excited pitch, my mind was busy upon the details of the only plan that was at all feasible. Our entire available fighting force, counting in the whole of the male passengers, the surgeon, Briggs and his three assistants, Jenkins the steerage passenger, the cook, and the five men who had escaped from the savages, amounted to thirty. It was, of course, quite impossible to form, from the account of the five escaped seamen, anything like an accurate estimate of the numbers of the savages, but I believed I should be quite safe in setting them down at not less than three hundred. There were also the four prisoners; but I reflected that as they had not suffered the harrowing experience of the five escaped men, they would probably be still in much too insubordinate a frame of mind to be of any use, and I therefore determined to leave them where they were for the present. I reckoned, however, that not a man would leave the village, either to attack the ship or for any other purpose, until the gruesome sport upon which they were at that moment engaged had been played out to an end; and I therefore came to the conclusion that I should be quite justified in throwing the balance of strength into the land expedition. I accordingly divided my force into two equal parts, placing Simpson in charge of the ship and entrusting him with her defence, with a small crew composed of the surgeon, the four stewards, the cook, Jenkins the steerage passenger, Messrs Morton, Fielder, Acutt, Boyne, Pearson, and Taylor, and one of my own men named Sharland, whose wounds rendered him useless for arduous land service, although he might be made very useful at a pinch aboard the ship. This left, for the landing expedition, the general, Carter, myself, and seven Sharks, and the five men who had escaped in the longboat. Thus each force consisted of fifteen men. But I considered that the landing force was far the more formidable of the two, since we numbered among us nine trained fighting men; while, in the improbable event of an attack upon the ship, the party left on board her would have the advantage of the deck as a fighting platform, and, if hard pressed, the saloon and deckhouses to which to retreat. I also left them all the muskets and boarding pikes, as well, of course, as their own personal firearms, and the two brass carronades. As for us, the general and I each had a sword, the Sharks carried a cutlass apiece, and every man of us also had a brace of pistols in his belt, and a pocketful of cartridges. But what I most trusted to for the creation of a good, wholesome panic among the savages was a dozen signal rockets which I had found in the ship’s magazine.
Our arrangements being now complete, the general bade a hasty good-bye to his wife and daughter, who bore themselves very bravely upon the occasion, and we all tumbled down over the side into the longboat—into which Briggs had already, with commendable forethought, passed a large basket of provisions for the sustenance of ourselves and such of the mutineers as we might be fortunate enough to rescue. It was nearly two o’clock in the afternoon when we shoved off.
It took us but a few minutes to reach the river entrance, passing through which we presently found ourselves in a broad, lagoon-like expanse of water, some two miles long by about a mile wide, dotted here and there with small, tree-clad islands, some of which might have been as much as ten or twelve acres in extent, while others were mere heaps of mud just large enough to support a clump of half a dozen or so of coconut trees and a tiny thicket of bamboo. The greater part of this lagoon was evidently very shallow, for dotted about here and there were to be seen partially submerged trunks of trees and other débris that appeared to have been swept down into their present position by some bygone flood, and had ultimately grounded on the mud; but there was just sufficient current and wind to reveal a deep-water channel of about two hundred yards wide, running in a fairly straight line through the lagoon toward its most distant extremity. There were numerous objects dotted about the surface of the lagoon, which, at a distance, had all the appearance of floating logs, but which, when we drew near to them, proved to be, in almost every instance, the heads of basking alligators. And before we had been in the river ten minutes we were startled by a huge black bulk breaking water close alongside the boat, which turned out to be a hippopotamus.
“Now, Higgins,” said I, “whereabout is this creek of yours? I see no sign of it thus far.”
“Oh, it’s some way on ahead yet, sir!” answered the man. “Keep her straight up through the deep-water, sir, please. I’ll tell you when we comes in sight of it.”
That the unfortunate mutineers had penetrated some distance into the country soon became evident, for we traversed the entire length of the lagoon and fully a mile of the river after it had narrowed down to about a quarter of a mile in width ere we sighted a break of any kind in the thick entanglement of mangrove trees that lined the margin of the stream. But even this, so Higgins informed us, was not the creek of which we were in search, and which he believed lay nearly a mile farther up the stream. Of the one actually in sight he denied any knowledge, and I soon became convinced that it had escaped the notice of the mutineers.
The break in question was on the northern bank of the river—that is to say, on the same side as the creek of which we were in quest; and when first sighted it was about a quarter of a mile distant. As we drew nearer to it I saw that a deep-water channel led straight to it from the main deep-water channel, at a point about half a cable’s-length distant; and I kept my eye upon the spot, as the creek gradually opened out, for I could not help thinking that it presented an almost ideal spot wherein a slaver might conceal herself. And, as I watched, I suddenly saw a column of thick smoke shoot up above the tree tops at a point that I estimated to be not much more than two hundred yards from the mouth of the creek, and in the direction toward which the latter seemed to be trending, while at the same moment the blare of horns and the dub-a-dub-dub of tom-toms was borne faintly to our ears by the fitful breeze.
“Oars!” cried I sharply. “Silence, fore and aft, and listen all of you!”
The men instantly laid upon their oars, and as the boat went surging along with the “way” that she had on her, we all distinctly heard, above the quiet lap and gurgle of the water against her planking, the sounds of which I have spoken, with an occasional swelling of the sound which conveyed the idea of many human voices raised in a monotonous kind of chant.
“How much farther do you say this creek of yours is, Higgins?” I demanded.
“Why, sir,” answered the man, “I should say as it’s the best part of a mile higher up. Ain’t it, Mike?”
“Ay, about that, I should think,” answered Mike, swinging round on his thwart and shading his eyes with his hand as his gaze searchingly swept the river bank. And the other three escaped mutineers expressed a like opinion.
“And what was the general trend of the direction which you took when you followed the savages?” asked I.
“Why,” answered Higgins, instantly catching my meaning, “it was westerly, sir; wasn’t it, Mike? Don’t ye remember that the run of the creek itself was some’at down-stream? And when we went a’ter the savages we kept on bearin’ away towards the left, didn’t we? Depend on’t, sir, that there smoke is where the village lies, and that row that we hears is made by the savages doorin’ the tormentin’ of one of our pore unfort’nit shipmates!”
I was of the same opinion myself. That creek away on our port bow appeared to lead so nearly in a direct line toward the point from which the smoke was rising, and seemed to offer such a temptingly short cut to the village where the diabolical work was undoubtedly going forward, that I determined to take the slight risk of being mistaken, and make for it forthwith. I therefore gave the coxswain orders to starboard his helm a bit and feel his way cautiously in over the mud, and the oarsmen to give way and keep strict silence.
In another minute, or less, we had passed out of the main deep-water channel, and were gliding through the shallow water that covered the flat mud-banks on either side of the stream, the men dipping their oars deep at every stroke to get timely warning of our approach to water not deep enough to float the boat.
“No bottom yet, sir,” reported the stroke-oar at frequent intervals; and at each report the coxswain starboarded an extra half-point or so, until at length the boat’s nose was pointing straight for the mouth of the creek, and at every stroke of the oars the fiendish uproar of horns, tom-toms, and shouting—or chanting, whichever it was—seemed to come to our ears more distinctly, and with more ominous import.
At length the boat entered the creek, or canal, and I at once gave orders for all hands who had cutlasses to draw them, and for every man to look carefully to the priming of his pistols. This having been done, we pulled ahead once more, and now the rapidity with which the mingled sounds that were guiding us increased in volume told us that we were quickly approaching the scene of action. And presently, as though to dissipate any doubt that might still be lurking in our minds, we distinctly heard, at frequent intervals, the piercing scream of a man in mortal agony!
“Do you hear that, Grenvile?” whispered the general through his set teeth. “Why, man, those cries make one’s blood run cold to listen to them! How much farther do you mean to go before landing?”
“I shall go on until we bring the sounds abeam of us,” I whispered back. “We are moving very much faster here than we should ashore, especially when it comes to creeping through those mangrove tree roots; so I will get as close to the place as I can before landing. Oars!”
For at that moment we swept round a rather sharp bend in the stream, and I caught a glimpse, at no great distance ahead, of what I thought looked very much like the stern of a canoe projecting from among the trees on our port. I held up my hand for silence. We were so near to the scene of action now, that, had we raised a shout, we should instantly have attracted attention and, maybe, have temporarily suspended whatever operations might be proceeding. But my party was altogether too weak to justify me in incurring any risks; there appeared to be but one life in immediate jeopardy ashore there, whereas any premature alarm might result in the loss of several of the rescuing party, and possibly the complete failure of the expedition. No, my strongest hope lay in the possibility of effecting a complete surprise; so I hardened my heart, held up my hand to enjoin the most perfect silence, and whispered the coxswain to sheer the boat a little closer to the port bank. Then, as the boat seemed to have plenty of “way” on her, I ordered the “stroke” to pass the word to lay in the oars noiselessly, and for those in the bows to stand by with the boat-hook and the painter.
These orders had just been obeyed, and we were gliding along in absolute silence, when, a short distance ahead, I caught sight of a break in the mangroves that looked wide enough to admit the boat, and I signed to the coxswain to point our stem for it. A few seconds later we slid into a kind of cavern, formed of the overarching branches of a belt of mangroves, and, gliding along a narrow canal of about sixty feet in length, we finally brought up alongside a good firm bank of soil, on which there was room enough for us all to land. Our movements were effectually masked by a thin belt of scrub, which appeared to be all that intervened between us and the three or four hundred yelling and chanting natives who were now making the air ring and vibrate within a short hundred yards of us. At the same time I became aware that the agonising shrieks, as of one in mortal agony, had ceased.
The din of discordant sounds was now so tremendous that there was no very especial need for the observance of any great amount of caution on our part, yet we disembarked with scarcely a sound, and I drew our little party up in two lines, the Sharks being placed in the front rank, and the others immediately behind them.
“Now, men,” said I, “I have just one last word of caution to give you before we attack. Remember that we have not come here for the express purpose of fighting the natives, but to rescue our fellow-countrymen; therefore my orders are that as soon as this is accomplished a retreat is to be at once made to the boat, no man pausing except to support a comrade who may be in difficulties. I propose to begin the attack by discharging the whole of these rockets as rapidly as possible into the thick of the crowd of natives, and then to charge upon them with sword and cutlass, reserving our pistol fire for emergencies. I hope by this plan to scatter the savages and cause their retirement for at least a few brief minutes, during which we must dash in, cut loose the prisoners, and retire with them to the boat. There must be no more fighting than is actually necessary to enable us to accomplish our purpose.”
The general patted me approvingly on the back. “Excellent, my lad, excellent,” he whispered. “There spoke the prudent commander. I foresee that you will do well in your profession. And now, let us get on.”
“One moment, general, if you please,” said I. “I want to reconnoitre before advancing into the open.”
“Right,” he answered. “And I’ll go with you.”
I nodded consent, and at once led the way toward the screen of bush that interposed between ourselves and the village. The distance to be traversed was merely some sixty or seventy yards, and to cover this we were obliged to make our way through some sparsely-scattered mangroves. It took us less than a minute to accomplish the journey, and then we found that the bush was much less dense than it had appeared to be, since we were enabled without the least difficulty to penetrate it to a spot where our whole party could comfortably stand, and where the intervening screen was so tenuous that, ourselves unseen, we could see everything that was happening in the village. This was so obviously the proper spot from which to make our attack that the general at once went back to bring up the men, while I remained to make such few observations as the brief time at my disposal would permit.
I found that we were on what might be termed the right front of the village, which was a tolerably important place, consisting of some two hundred roomy huts, constructed of wattles and sun-baked clay, and thatched with palm leaves. The huts, however, had no interest for me now; it was the scene that was being enacted in the wide, open space in front of the village that riveted my attention. This space was occupied by a crowd of fully a thousand blacks—men, women, and children—most of whom were practically naked, and all of whom were slowly circling in a weird kind of dance round a small area, in the midst of which were planted eleven stout stakes at distances of about fifty feet apart. These stakes were, of course, upright, and stood about ten feet high. It was therefore easy enough to count the stakes, but owing to the dense crowd which surrounded them it was exceedingly difficult to distinguish whether or not anything, or anybody, was attached to them. But I found no difficulty in arriving at a tolerably accurate surmise as to the purpose of these stakes, for four of them were charred quite black, as though by the action of fire, while a thin wreath of pale brownish-blue smoke still eddied and circled about one of the four. The tone of the chant now being sung by the savages was very different from that which had reached our ears while in the open river; it was more subdued, and did not convey that suggestion of savage exultation that had been the dominant note of the other, and I also now noticed that the deafening clamour of horns and thumping of tom-toms had ceased. The idea conveyed to my mind was that one act in a drama of absorbing interest had closed and that another was about to open. But I had no time for further observation, as the general now came up with the men, and we at once proceeded to make our final arrangements for an instant attack.
“Now, lads,” said I, “you see those hundreds of dancing savages. I want you to plant your rockets in such a manner that they will rake through the whole crowd; and if they should finish up by setting fire to the huts, so much the better. Fire the rockets, one after another, as rapidly as possible, and the moment that the last rocket has been fired we will spring out into the open and make a dash for those posts, to which I believe we shall find the missing men secured. Use your cutlasses as freely as may be needful, but reserve your pistols for an emergency. Then, having cut our men loose, we must all retire in a body to the boat, and get out of the creek as quickly as possible. Now, are you all ready? Then begin to fire the rockets.”
With a preliminary sizzle, and a strong odour of burning powder, the twelve rockets tore, weirdly screaming, in rapid succession, out of the clump of bush into the thick of the crowd of dancing savages, ricochetting hither and thither as they encountered some obstacle, scattering showers of fire in every direction, and finally exploding with a loud report many of them having previously embedded themselves in the dry thatch of the huts. The effect of the discharge was tremendous and cumulative! As the first rocket plunged into the throng a sudden silence ensued, and every savage stood death-still, gazing with eyes of horror upon the hissing fiery thing as it darted hither and thither inflicting painful burns and bruises wherever it went. Then, long before the first had run its course, the second was also among them, playing similar antics, and working havoc like the first; and then out swooped the third at them, driving the whole party crazy with terror, and producing a state of utterly indescribable confusion. As the fourth rocket tore out of the midst of the belt of bush a general yell of dismay arose, and then ensued a regular stampede, the natives knocking down and falling over each other in their frenzied efforts to escape from the onslaught of the fiery monsters. Before the last rocket had sped there was not a savage to be seen, the whole swarm of them, down to the children even, having somehow managed to make their escape into the adjacent bush, from which their cries of terror could still be heard proceeding, while several of the huts were already bursting into flame. In the midst of the deserted open space the eleven upright stakes were now plainly visible; four of them, alas! black and half-consumed with fire, with great heaps of still smouldering and faintly smoking ashes—in the midst of which were discernible the calcined fragments of human skeletons—around their bases, while to each of the other seven was bound the naked body of a white man!
“Now, forward, lads!” cried I, dashing into the open with drawn sword in my hand. “Cut loose those seven men, and then form up ready for a retreat to the boat. If we are quick we may do all that we came to do before the savages return.”
It was but a run of a few hundred yards from the bush to the posts, and in another minute we were around them, cutting and hacking at the multitudinous coils of tough creeper which bound the prisoners to the posts; and in another couple of minutes the last man had been released. Dazed and speechless at the suddenness of their deliverance from a lingering death of frightful torment, such as they had beheld inflicted upon four of their unfortunate companions, the rescued mutineers were being hurried down to the boat. To bundle them in pell-mell, scramble in ourselves, and shove off was the work of but a few brief minutes; and presently we found ourselves once more in the creek, with our bows pointed river-ward, and eight men straining at the oars as we swept foaming past the interminable array of mangroves, with their gaunt roots, like the legs of gigantic spiders sprawling out into the black, foul-smelling water.
“Well,” exclaimed the general, taking off his Panama hat and mopping his perspiring head and face with a huge red-silk handkerchief, “that is a good job well done, and without the loss of a man, too—except, of course, the unfortunate four that we were too late to save. You have managed the affair exceedingly well, young sir, as I shall be happy to bear witness at another time and place. I have somehow—I don’t quite know why—had a sort of prejudice against the navy; but a service which trains youngsters like yourself to do such work as I have seen done to-day can’t be wholly bad.”
“Bad, sir!” I exclaimed. “The navy bad? Why, on the contrary, although perhaps it is not absolutely perfect, it is the most glorious service that a man can possibly enter, and I am proud to belong to it. (See note.) But we must not crow yet over our success. Those savages will probably be rallying by this time, since they find that they are not being pursued, and if they should choose to follow us along the banks of the creek they may yet make us smart for our boldness.”
“Ay,” agreed the general, “they may; but somehow I don’t fancy that they will. Those rockets seemed to frighten them pretty well out of their skins, and I don’t believe that they will get over their terror in a hurry. By Jove, sir, that was a brilliant idea of yours—those rockets!”
Meanwhile the rescued men were crouching in the bottom of the boat, silent, some of them with their faces buried in their hands, some lying back as though dazed, with their eyes closed. And one of these last, I noticed, had the fingers of his two hands locked together, and his lips were moving, as though he prayed, or were returning thanks to God for his deliverance. Presently he opened his eyes, and his gaze met mine full. I noticed that he flushed slightly, as though ashamed at having been detected, so I nodded to him and said:
“No need to be ashamed, my good fellow, if you were thanking God for His mercy. We have, every one of us, abundant reason to be thankful to-day.”
“Yes, sir,” said he, “and I even more, perhaps, than the rest. They was makin’ ready to begin upon me when you broke in upon ’em.” And therewith he burst into a violently hysterical passion of tears, the result, doubtless, of the reaction arising from his sudden and unexpected rescue from the horrors of a death from protracted torment, such as he had witnessed in the case of the other four. For it now appeared that—without harrowing the reader’s feelings by entering into unnecessary details—the sufferings of one or two of the unfortunate men must have been prolonged to the extent of quite three hours. The ringleader, Tonkin, had been, singularly enough, the man who had been subjected to certain peculiar refinements of torture which, while inflicting what one could readily conceive would be the most excruciating agony, were not of a nature to produce death save by the long-drawn-out process of physical exhaustion. We spoke such comforting words to the poor creatures as we could think of, at the same time not forgetting to administer a little much-needed stimulant and food. The production of the latter reminded us all that we felt atrociously hungry and thirsty, and as soon as we were safely clear of the creek and once more in the main channel of the river, we fell to upon the basket of provisions that Briggs had so thoughtfully provided for our refreshment.
Note: What would Grenvile have thought of the much more perfect service of the present day, I wonder?—H.C.