Chapter Twenty.
I perform an important service.
The task with which I had been intrusted was one of the very greatest responsibility; for the descent of a combined French and Spanish fleet upon West Indian waters could only be assumed to point to an intention, on the part of our enemies, to wrest at least some of our West Indian possessions from us; an intention which our available resources on the spot would be utterly inadequate to frustrate, in view of the formidable force possessed by the enemy. It was therefore of the last importance that any British reinforcements which might be hastening to the support of the colonies should be quickly found and communicated with; and it was equally important that they should be furnished with the latest possible intelligence with regard to the movements of the enemy. The duty, therefore, that I was asked to perform, single-handed, was such as actually called for the employment of several vessels. Unfortunately, however, there were absolutely none available for the Admiral at this juncture, the only ship in port at the moment of my arrival in Jamaica being the schooner Firefly, which vessel had immediately been despatched to the several islands belonging to the British Crown with a warning that a formidable force was approaching; for the reception of which the best possible dispositions were to be made. It thus came about that I, a young, untried hand, found myself called upon to perform a service of almost national importance with only my own discretion to guide me. My instructions, however, were simple and explicit enough, and I resolved to carry them out to the letter.
After giving the subject the best consideration of which I was capable, I came to the conclusion that if Monsieur Villeneuve really intended to attack the islands in our possession, he would probably begin with the Windward Islands. Instead, therefore, of working my way out into the Atlantic, through the Windward Passage between Cuba and Saint Domingo, I stretched across the Caribbean Sea on a taut larboard bowline, and noon on the fourth day after sailing from Port Royal found us some ninety miles west-north-west of the French island of Martinique, and while I was at dinner the mate stuck his head through the skylight to report land right ahead. I went up on deck to get a look at it, and soon identified it as the summit of Mont Pelée, the highest point in the island. We stood on, keeping a sharp look-out for vessels, but saw nothing; and about two bells in the first watch that night we found ourselves within the influence of the land breeze which was blowing off the island. Half an hour later saw us off the mouth of the bay of Fort Royal, and as the night was dark I came to the conclusion that it might be worth my while to stand inshore a little closer, upon the chance of being able to pick up some information. Accordingly, we worked in against the land breeze, and had arrived within half a mile of Pigeon Island, when we encountered a small trading felucca coming out. We allowed her to get to seaward of us, when we bore up in chase, and a few minutes later we were alongside the craft, and had secured quiet possession of her. The felucca carried five hands, whom I caused to be transferred to the schooner; and my first business was to get the master of the craft down into the cabin, where I informed him that all I wanted from him was some information, and that if he would answer my questions truly, I would at once release him and return his vessel to him; but if I found that he was attempting to deceive me, I would burn his felucca, and retain him and his crew as prisoners. The man was eager in his protestations that he would tell me everything that I wanted to know, and begged me not to destroy his vessel, as she represented his entire possessions, and was his sole means of earning a livelihood; a piece of information that led me to hope he would not attempt to deceive me; so I went to work to question him forthwith, jotting his answers down upon a piece of paper.
The information I obtained from the fellow was important enough to have justified me in running a far greater risk than I had actually incurred to procure it, and was to the effect that the combined fleets had been off the island that very day, with some forty prizes, comprising the Antigua convoy, in company; that it had captured Diamond Rock; and that, in consequence of certain information supposed to have been received from a schooner that had that day arrived from Europe, it had made all sail to the eastward. As to the character of the information, however, that had caused so powerful a force to take so unexpected a step, the man professed to know nothing. Having obtained this information from him, I sent the skipper on deck and had him conveyed forward, where he was placed in charge of two men, while I had his crew down into the cabin, one by one, and questioned them. Their answers bore out what the skipper had already told me. I therefore concluded that the news was true, and accordingly released the felucca, with a strict caution that he was to proceed forthwith on his voyage to Mariegalante—the island to which he was bound—and on no account to attempt to re-enter the harbour of Fort Royal, under penalty of instant recapture. The fellow was evidently only too glad to get out of our hands upon such easy terms; and no sooner found himself once more safely on the deck of his little hooker than he made all sail to the northward, and was soon lost in the darkness. Dumaresq, who had remained with me thus far, thought this a good opportunity to rejoin his countrymen, and, with my cordial permission, took a passage in the felucca.
So far I had done very well; the combined fleet was only a few hours distant; and I had no doubt that, with so nimble-heeled a craft as the Sword Fish, I should have very little difficulty in overtaking them in the course of a day or two. The question now was whether I should proceed forthwith in pursuit of Monsieur Villeneuve, or whether I should devote an hour or two to an endeavour to ascertain the precise nature of the information said to have been brought from Europe by the schooner. This information might be of value, or it might not; but after giving the matter brief but careful consideration I came to the conclusion that it was hardly worth while troubling about; as, if the vessel had brought out despatches, they would have been delivered long since; and in any case, the captain and crew would know nothing of their contents. I therefore filled away forthwith, and by midnight had brought the island over our larboard quarter.
There was now another question that bothered me somewhat, and it was this: I could not understand why the combined fleet should be steering east, or why they should have gone off in such a hurry as had been represented to me. I racked my brains for a long time in search of a satisfactory solution of this problem, as I felt that until I had found such I should be quite in the dark as to the course which I ought to steer in order to overtake them. For although I had been informed that, when last seen, the fleet was steering to the southward and eastward, close-hauled, I had no data upon which to base an opinion as to the length of time during which they would continue to steer in that direction, for the simple reason that there was no apparent object in their steering in that direction at all. We had no possessions in that quarter to tempt them, unless it might be Barbados; and even that island lay considerably to leeward of the course that Monsieur Villeneuve was said to be steering. At length, however, a possible explanation suggested itself. It occurred to me that the schooner, which was supposed to have brought the information leading to the precipitate departure of Monsieur Villeneuve, might have fallen in with and succeeded in eluding the British pursuing fleet, of the existence of which the admiral at Jamaica had felt so certain; and if she had, and had brought news to Martinique of the approach of such a fleet, I could understand Monsieur Villeneuve’s anxiety to be off; for we were all fully persuaded that there was nothing the French admiral desired so little as to encounter Nelson. And, upon considering the matter further, the conviction forced itself irresistibly upon me that, if Monsieur Villeneuve had been given good reason to believe that he was pursued, his chief anxiety would be to get back to Europe as quickly as possible. Such a desire would fully account for everything in his movements that I had found difficult to understand, and it would also account for the course that he was said to be steering; that course being the only one that would at once lead him homeward and at the same time enable him to avoid a meeting with the suppositious British fleet. So thoroughly at length did I convince myself that this represented the actual state of the case that I unhesitatingly set the Sword Fish’s head in the same direction that I believed the combined fleet to be steering; and then, having issued orders that the schooner was to be driven at the highest speed consistent with safety to her spars, I went below and turned in.
During the remainder of that night and the whole of the next day we carried on, without sighting anything in the shape of a sail; but at dawn of the second day my persistence was rewarded by the sight of a large fleet of ships strung out along the horizon, and by mid-day we had approached them near enough to enable us to identify them as the fleet of which we were in search. There was a big fleet of merchantmen in company, which I assumed to be the captured Antigua convoy; and by and by one of these—a fine full-rigged ship—wore round, in response to a signal, and headed for us. I allowed her to approach within a couple of miles of us, when we in turn shifted our helm and going round upon the starboard tack, assumed all the appearance of being in precipitate flight. But I was particular to flatten in all sheets and braces to such an extent that, by careful and persistent wind-jamming, the schooner became as sluggish as a log; and in this way we played with the ship until we had decoyed her a good twenty miles away from the rest of the fleet, sometimes allowing her to gain upon us a trifle, and then drawing away from her again, my object, of course, being to capture her if I could. And of my ability to do this—provided that I could decoy her far enough away from all possible support—I had very little doubt; for I did not consider it in the least likely that she would have more than sixty Frenchmen on board her as a prize crew, while I had an equal number of Englishmen.
At length, about an hour before sunset, we allowed the ship to approach us within gun-shot, and shortly afterwards she opened fire upon us with a six-pounder. The shot flew wide; but all the same I caused our helm to be put down, and as the schooner slowly luffed into the wind I gave orders for all our sheets to be let fly, presenting an appearance of terrible confusion. The ruse was successful; the ship ceased firing, and came booming along toward us under every inch of canvas that she could spread. Meanwhile our lads, hugely delighted at the fun in prospect, armed themselves, got the grappling-irons ready, and prepared for boarding the stranger. The weather was quite fine enough to admit of our running alongside in the schooner, there being very little swell on; so as soon as we were ready the men stationed themselves at the sheets and braces, and by a little judicious manipulation of these and the helm we contrived to get sternway upon the schooner just as the ship came booming down upon our weather quarter. Nobody on board her seemed to think of shortening sail until she was fairly abreast of us, and then a terrific hullabaloo broke out as her crew endeavoured to clew up and haul down everything at once—they even let run their topsail-halliards in their excitement. Then, in the midst of it all, just as the ship went surging past us, with a great rustling of canvas and lashing of loose cordage in the wind, a man sprang into her mizzen-rigging and hailed us in French, ordering us to follow until he could heave-to, when he would send a boat on board us. This suited my plans to a nicety; so we filled upon the schooner and followed the ship closely, luffing up for her lee quarter as we did so; and so well had everything worked with us that I believe none of the Frenchmen had the slightest suspicion that anything was wrong until we had actually run them aboard and thrown our grappling-irons. Then the excitement was even more distracting than before, everybody crying out at once; officers and men vying with each other in giving the most contradictory orders, and nobody dreaming of obeying any single one of them. The surprise was complete; and when our lads followed me over the ship’s bulwarks, with drawn cutlasses, we found as our opponents only a shouting, shrieking, gesticulating mob, who reviled us for our perfidious mode of fighting in one breath, and in the next passionately conjured us not to overlook the fact that they surrendered. It was as amusing a bit of business as I had been engaged in for many a day.
We lost no time in securing our prisoners—who were only some forty in number—and then I turned my attention to the ship, which I ascertained to be the Caribbean, of London, of twelve hundred and forty-three tons register, laden with sugar and rum. She was therefore a valuable recapture. She carried thirty-two passengers, and by great good luck her own British crew was also on board. It was not necessary, therefore, for me to weaken my own force by putting a prize crew on board her; my chief mate being quite sufficient to represent and watch over the interests of the Sword Fish and her owners. The individual who had been put on board her as prize-master, when she was captured by Monsieur Villeneuve’s fleet, happened to be a very talkative fellow, and accordingly I had not much difficulty in extracting from him the information that it had been rumoured through the fleet that the suddenness of Monsieur Villeneuve’s departure from the West Indies was due to intelligence that Lord Nelson was in pursuit. This statement, if true, exactly bore out my theory; and a little more judicious questioning enabled me to ascertain that it had further been stated that, at the time of departure from Martinique, the British fleet was believed to be not more than four days’ sail distant. I thus obtained something in the shape of a clue as to the direction in which my further search ought to be prosecuted; and accordingly hauled up to the southward, close-hauled on the starboard tack, with our recapture in company.
It was more than a week, however, before we contrived to obtain any definite information as to the whereabouts of the British fleet, and even then I was four days longer in finding it; but when at length this was achieved, I had the satisfaction of learning that my information was the very latest of an authentic character that had been furnished to Nelson; and it had the effect of causing him instantly to determine to retrace his steps to Europe. This was good news to me, for it enabled me to send my recapture across the Atlantic with the British fleet as a protector, instead of taking her into Kingston, in Jamaica, where the necessary formalities connected with the capture would have involved us in a vast amount of trouble and expense. I accordingly wrote a brief letter or two home, which I forwarded by the Caribbean, and parted company with her and the fleet within an hour of having fallen in with the latter. And thus terminated, successfully and profitably, the service which I had undertaken at the instigation of the Admiral stationed at Jamaica.
I was now my own master once more, free to go wherever my whim prompted me, and I determined that I would put into effect a plan that had long commended itself to me; namely, to cruise along the Spanish Main in the hope of picking up one of the galleons or plate-ships that were still despatched from time to time from Cartagena. Upon parting company, therefore, with the British fleet, I cruised along the whole line of the Windward Islands as far south as Tobago and Trinidad, and then bore up for the Main. In leisurely fashion and under easy canvas we coasted along the shore, taking a look into the Cariaco Gulf without finding anything worth picking up, and thence across to Cape Codera, off which the wind came out from the westward, compelling us to make a stretch off the land. This occurred about midnight. I secured an observation for my longitude at nine o’clock the next morning, and another for my latitude at noon, about which time I became aware that the barometer was falling, although not rapidly enough to give cause for any uneasiness. As the afternoon wore on, however, there were indications that a change of weather was impending. The sky lost the pure brilliancy of its blue, and by insensible degrees assumed an ashen pallor, which the sun vainly struggled to pierce until he merged from a palpitating, rayless ball of light to a shapeless blotch of dim, watery radiance, and then disappeared. At the same time the wind died away until we were left becalmed and rolling rail-under upon a swell that gathered strength every hour as it came creeping up from the westward. In a short time it became a fine example of what the Spaniards call a “furious calm”, the schooner rolling so heavily that I deemed it prudent to send the yards and topmasts down on deck to relieve the lower-masts. And I did this the more readily because the steady, continuous decline of the mercury in the tube assured me that we were booked for a stiff blow. Yet hour succeeded hour until the darkness closed down upon us, and still, beyond the portents already mentioned, there was no sign of the coming breeze. The night fell as dark as a wolf’s mouth; the air was so close and hot that the mere act of breathing was performed with difficulty; and the quick, jerky roll of the schooner at length became positively distressing in its persistent monotony. Of course, under the circumstances, turning in was not to be thought of, so far as I was concerned. I therefore made myself as comfortable as I could upon the wheel-grating, and awaited developments.
The fact is that I was puzzled. I did not know what to make of the weather. Had it not been for the steady, continuous fall of the mercury I should have expected nothing worse than a fresh breeze from the westward, preceded perhaps by a thunder-squall; but the barometer indicated something more serious than that, yet the sky gave no verifying sign of the approach of anything like a heavy blow. But I had long ago taken in everything except the boom-foresail, to save the sails from beating themselves to pieces, so I was pretty well prepared for any eventuality.
It was close upon midnight when the change came, and then it was nothing at all alarming, being merely a sudden but by no means violent squall out from about due west, followed by a heavy downpour of rain. The rain lasted about a quarter of an hour, and when it ceased we were again becalmed. Suddenly I became conscious of a faint luminousness somewhere in the atmosphere, and looking about me to discover the cause, I observed what looked like a ball of lambent, greenish flame clinging to the foremast-head, where it swayed about, elongating and contracting with the roll of the ship, exactly as a gigantic soap-bubble might have done. It clung there, swaying, for some moments, and then glided slowly down the mast until it reached the jib-stay, down which it slid to the bowsprit, whence, after wavering for a few seconds, it travelled along the bowsprit, inboard, and vanished, not, however, until it had revealed by its corpse-like light the horror-stricken features of some half a dozen of the watch huddled together on the forecastle, in attitudes every curve and bend of which were eloquent of consternation.
“That’s a bad sign, sir; so they say,” remarked Saunders, my chief mate, whose watch it was.
“What? The appearance of that light?” demanded I.
“Not so much the appearance of it, sir, but the way that it travelled. They say that if a corposant appears aboard a vessel and stays aloft, or travels upwards, it’s all right; but if it comes down from aloft, it means a heavy gale of wind at the very least,” answered Saunders.
“Pooh!” said I; “mere superstition. Everybody knows nowadays that a corposant is nothing whatever but an electrical phenomenon, and therefore merely an indication that the atmosphere is surcharged with electricity. As to whether it travels up or down, that, in my opinion, is mere chance or accident, call it which you will.”
“Have you ever seen any of those things before, sir?” inquired the mate.
“No,” said I; “this is the first time that I have ever been shipmates with one.”
“Ah!” remarked the mate, with a distinct accent of superior experience in his tone; “I’ve seen ’em often enough; too often, I may say. Why, there was one time when I was aboard the little Fox, bound from Jamaica to New Providence. We were lying becalmed, just as we are to-night, close to the Diamond Bank, and with pretty much the same sort of weather, too, when one of them things boarded us, making its appearance on the spindle of the vane at our main-topmast head. It wavered about for a minute or two, exactly like that thing just now, and then rolled, as it might be, down the spar until it met the topmast-stay, down which it travelled to the foremast-head, and from thence it came down the topsail sheet to the deck, where it bursted. Ten minutes after that happened, sir, we were struck by a squall that hove us over on our beam-ends. We had to cut both masts away before she would right with us, and when at length she rose to an even keel, there was five feet of water in the hold. Of course we could do nothing but scud before it, and, the squall hardening into a furious gale of wind, we went ashore about two hours afterwards on South Point, Yuma Island, and out of a crew of thirty-four men only seven of us was saved! Now, what d’ye think of that, sir?”
“Why, I think it was a terribly unfortunate affair; but I don’t believe that the corposant had anything to do with it,” answered I.
“Well, sir,” answered the mate, “I only hope that it hadn’t; because, d’ye see, if your view is the correct one, we needn’t fear anything happening in consequence of—Why, bust me, but there’s another of ’em!”
It was true. While Saunders was in the very act of speaking, another of the strange, weird lights had suddenly become visible, this time on the mainmast-head, where it hung for a few minutes, finally sliding down the mast to the deck, where it rolled to and fro for perhaps half a minute, presenting the appearance of a sphere of luminous mist, the most brilliant part of which was its centre. I am by no means a superstitious person, but I am free to admit that the sight of this weird, uncanny thing gliding about the deck and emitting its ghostly light, almost at my feet, produced a sufficiently creepy feeling to make me unfeignedly glad when it presently disappeared.
“Now, you mark my words, sir, if we don’t have some very ugly weather after this,” observed Saunders, producing his tinder-box and lighting his pipe.
I walked to the skylight and took a squint at the barometer. It was still falling, and by this time the depression had assumed such proportions as to fully justify such an expectation as that entertained by the mate. I thought, therefore, that it might be only prudent to make some further preparation, and I accordingly gave orders to reef the foresail and fore-staysail. All this time it continued as dark as pitch, and so breathlessly calm that the helmsman, wishing to prick up the wicks of the binnacle-lamps, was able to do so in the open air, the only wind affecting the naked flame being the draught occasioned by the heavy roll of the schooner.
But this was not destined to last very long. Some ten minutes or a quarter of an hour after the second corposant had vanished we felt a faint movement in the atmosphere which caused our small spread of canvas to flap heavily once or twice; then came a puff of hot, damp air that lasted long enough to give the schooner steerage-way; and when this was on the point of dying, a scuffle of wind swept over us that careened the schooner to her bearings, and before she had recovered herself the true breeze was upon us, with a deep, weird, moaning sound that was inexpressibly dismal, and that somehow seemed to impart a feeling of dire foreboding to the listener. Not that there was anything in the least terrifying in the strength of the wind—far from it, indeed,—for it was no heavier than a double-reefed topsail breeze, to which the schooner stood up as stiff as a church, but there was a certain indescribable hollowness in the sound of it—that is the only fitting term I can find to apply—that was quite unlike anything that I had heard before, and that somehow seemed, in its weirdness, to indisputably forebode disaster.
The schooner was now forging through the water at a speed of some four knots, and looking well up into the wind, which had come out from the westward. As I have said, there was already a very heavy swell running, and upon the top of this a very steep, awkward sea soon began to make, so that within half an hour of the breeze striking us we were pitching bows under, and the decks to leeward were all afloat. By this time, too, it had become perfectly apparent that the wind was rapidly gaining strength; so rapidly, indeed, that about an hour after the first puff it came down upon us with all the fury of a squall, laying the schooner down to her rail, and causing her to plunge with fearful violence into the fast-rising sea. Within the next half-hour the wind had increased so greatly in strength that I began to think there really might be something in Saunders’s theory after all, and I was inwardly debating whether I should haul the fore-sheet to windward and heave the schooner to, or whether it would be better to up helm and run before it until the weather should moderate a bit, when a third corposant suddenly appeared, this time on the boom-foresail gaff-end.
“Now, sir,” remarked Saunders, “we shall soon know whether we’ve got the worst of the blow yet or not. If we have, that thing’ll shift higher up; but if we haven’t, it’ll come down like the others.”
I did not answer him, for I was at the moment straining my eyes into the blackness on the weather-bow, where I fancied I had caught, a second or two before, a deeper shadow. There were moments when I thought I saw it again, but so profound was the darkness that it really seemed absurd to suppose it possible to discern anything in it; to make sure, however, I sang out to the look-out men on the forecastle to keep their eyes wide open, and their answer came so sharp and prompt as to convince me that they were fully on the alert, and that I had allowed my imagination to deceive me. I therefore turned to Saunders with some remark upon my lips in reply to his, when I saw the corposant suddenly leave the gaff-end and go driving away to leeward on the wings of the gale. I naturally expected that it would almost immediately vanish, but it did not; on the contrary, it had all the appearance of having been arrested in its flight, for I saw it elongating and collapsing again, as it had done with the motion of the schooner, and it also appeared to me to be describing long arcs across the sky. For a moment I was puzzled to account for so strange a phenomenon, and then the explanation came to me in a flash. I had not been deceived when I believed I caught sight of a shadowy something sweeping athwart our bows. I had seen a ship, and there she was to leeward of us, with the corposant clinging to one of her spars. I had just time to give the order to bear up in pursuit, and to get the schooner before the wind, when the corposant seemed to settle down nearer to the water, and in another instant it had vanished.