Chapter Twelve.
A Narrow Escape.
At daybreak next morning we were awakened by a terrific hubbub overhead, and going on deck to ascertain what was the matter we found that the felucca, having been allowed to draw in too close with the land during the night, was becalmed off Guajaba Island, whilst a sail, some nine miles distant in the offing—evidently a British man-of-war from the cut of her canvas, and apparently a frigate from her size—was heading straight for us, close-hauled on the larboard tack, with a rattling breeze, as we could see by the way she was laying over to it and the rapidity with which her sails rose above the horizon. There could be no doubt that they had seen us with the first approach of daylight and were determined to give us an overhaul, hence the confusion which had aroused us from our peaceful slumbers. It was laughable to witness the agonised dismay with which the Spaniards viewed the approach of this craft, and to listen to the prayers, vows, and maledictions which issued indiscriminately from their lips as she swept relentlessly down toward us. They anticipated nothing less than the capture and destruction of the felucca, and the detention of themselves as prisoners, which catastrophe, bad enough in itself as it must have appeared to them, was doubtless rendered infinitely more disagreeable by the reflection that to this mishap must be added the total collapse of their pretty little plan for the betrayal of their friends the pirates, and the subsequent division of the spoil. And even to us the prospect was by no means inviting. It was true that here was a chance for us to rejoin our own countrymen, and so escape from the dilemma in which we foresaw that we should be placed after leaving the Conconil lagoons; but we were not altogether without hopes that we might in any case be able to escape from that dilemma; and having resolved to go through with the adventure we were now by no means disposed to have it nipped in the bud. We were consequently quite as averse to a visit from the frigate as was Carera himself, and we at once set our wits to work to see if it might not be possible to devise some means of escape. The breeze was blowing fresh to within a mile of where we lay, and I felt convinced that the frigate, with the way she had on her, would shoot far enough ahead, even after she had entered the calm belt, to reach us with her guns; it was therefore evident that whatever was to be done would have to be done quickly, if it was to be of any use at all. I looked around and saw, by the colour of the water, that there was a shoal at no great distance inshore of us. I called Carera aft and said to him:
“Look here, Carera, do you happen to know this coast pretty well?”
“Every inch of it, señor,” was the reply.
“I see there is shoal water over there,” said I, indicating the direction with a nod of the head. “Now, what is to hinder you from rigging out your sweeps and sweeping the felucca into such shallow water as will prevent the frigate yonder from approaching you near enough to reach you with her guns? The Pinta is in light trim, and with all hands at the sweeps you ought to be able to move her pretty smartly through the water. And even should the frigate send her boats after us, we might be able to keep out of their way until the breeze comes.”
“Excellent, señor!” he exclaimed rapturously. “I had never thought of that. Ah, it is you gentlemen of the navy who, after all, have the ideas! Out sweeps, forward there!” he continued; “we will escape that accursed Englishman yet.”
The crew, aroused by the hopeful tone in which Carera spoke, scrambled up off their knees, and rigging out the sweeps soon had the little craft heading direct for the shore and moving through the water at the rate of some four knots. The frigate seeing this hoisted her ensign and fired a gun as a signal for us to heave to, of which we took not the slightest notice. I placed myself at the tiller, Carera took up a position on the stem-head, conning the felucca, and Courtenay devoted all his energies to the encouragement of the men as they laboured at the sweeps. Meanwhile, the breeze was gradually creeping nearer to us every minute, which, whilst an advantage in so far as it lessened the time during which the men would have to toil at the sweeps, was more than counterbalanced by the disagreeable fact that it would enable the frigate to approach so much the nearer to us before she in her turn became becalmed.
At length the noble craft shot across the outer boundary of the calm belt, and the instant that her canvas flapped to the masts her helm was gently ported until she headed straight for us, when another gun was fired; and before the smoke had cleared away she had swept round until her whole broadside—numbering eighteen guns—was bearing upon us.
“Now,” shouted Courtenay, “look out for squalls!”
The words had scarcely left his lips when bang! went another gun, and we saw the shot come skipping and ricochetting across the glassy surface of the water straight toward us, ploughing up long steamy jets of spray at every bound, and finally, with a skurrying splash, disappearing about a dozen yards astern of us. After this there was a pause of about half a minute, apparently to see whether we were really foolhardy enough to persist in attempting our escape—and also, probably, to give the muzzles of their guns a little more elevation—when, seeing that the sweeps were still kept steadily going, she let fly her whole broadside at us with a rattling crash, which caused the Spaniards with one accord to let go their hold upon the sweeps and drop flat on their faces on the deck. Another moment and the shot came hurtling about us, some overhead and a very fair dose on each side of the little craft, so close too that the spray flashed in over the deck in a regular shower, whilst one shot came crashing in through the taffrail, flying close past me where I was standing at the tiller, smashing through the head of the companion and then flying out over the bows, passing through the sail on its way and missing Carera’s head by a hair’s-breadth.
“Eighteen-pounders, by the powers!” ejaculated Courtenay, turning to me. “A narrow squeak that for you, old boy? Now, then, my hearties,” to the Spaniards, “tail on to those sweeps again, and look sharp about it. Remember, if we are caught away goes your chance of making a fortune out of friend Giuseppe yonder.”
This suggestion aroused anew their courage, or their cupidity, and with a shout they sprang once more to their feet and to the sweeps.
Meanwhile, the breeze had crept in until it had overtaken the frigate, which at once filled on the starboard tack, keeping her luff until she had gathered good way, when she squared away and once more came booming into the calm belt, nearing us almost half a mile by this manoeuvre.
“It is no good, excellencies; we shall have to give up!” exclaimed Carera, coming aft. “We are now as close in as we dare go; and if that diabolical frigate fires another broadside at us she will blow us out of the water. Port your helm, señor—hard a-port! the coral is close under our keel.”
“Hard a-port!” I responded. “But why give up, my good fellow? The frigate is as close now as she dare come to us. You may take my word for it that her captain will not run the risk of plumping his ship ashore for the sake of such an insignificant craft as the Pinta. Ha, look out! here comes another broadside.”
How we escaped that second storm of shot I am sure I cannot tell, for we were now almost within point-blank range; but escape we did, although for a single instant the whole air around us seemed filled with iron, so thick and close did the shot fly about us. The sail was pierced in three places, but beyond that no harm was done.
“He is after us with the boats! He will waste no more powder and shot upon us,” exclaimed Courtenay; and sure enough on looking astern I saw two boats just dropping into the water.
“We must give up—we must give up,” cried our crew as they saw this; and leaving their sweeps they came aft in a body with the request that Carera would hoist the Spanish ensign and haul it down again in token of our surrender.
“No, no,” I exclaimed; “see how the breeze is creeping down to us; it will be here as soon as the boats—or sooner, if you stick to the sweeps—and then I will engage that we scrape clear somehow. Is there no place, Carera, that we can run into, and so dodge the frigate! We can laugh at the boats if we once get the breeze.”
“Place! of course there is!” exclaimed the skipper, his courage again reviving; “there is the Boca de Guajaba, not half a mile from us on our larboard bow. Once in there we can run up at the back of Romano—I know the channel—and so effectually give the frigate the slip. Back to your sweeps, children! we will never yield until we are obliged.”
Again the crew manned the sweeps, and again—animated by another judicious reminder from Courtenay of the treasure awaiting them in the Conconil lagoons—they bent their backs and lashed the water into foam as they gathered way upon the felucca; and once more Carera went forward to con the craft through the dangerous channel we were now fast approaching. Meanwhile the two boats—a gig and a cutter—were tearing after us, going two feet to our one, and evidently quite alive to the fact that, unless they kept ahead of the breeze and reached us before it, we still stood a fair chance of escape.
Presently a narrow opening revealed itself in the shore about a quarter of a mile away, among the trees which clustered close to the water’s edge; and Carera, directing my attention to it, informed me that was the channel. The surf was breaking heavily all along the shore, and to attempt a passage through it seemed, from the point of observation we then occupied, to be simply courting destruction. I said nothing, however, trusting in Carera’s assertion that he knew the place, and presently a narrow band of unbroken water appeared in the midst of the foam, toward which a minute later the felucca was headed.
The boats were now closing with us fast, the gig, which was leading, being within about three cables’ length of us, whilst the cutter was not more than fifty feet astern of her. Three or four minutes at most would suffice to bring them alongside of us, fast as we were moving through the water, unless the breeze came to our aid. The sea was ruffled all astern of them, and a cat’s-paw now and then would come stealing along the glassy surface between us and them, but so far they had managed to keep ahead of the breeze. The measured roll of the oars in their rowlocks could now be distinctly heard and the sound reaching the ears of the Spaniards made them strain and tug at the sweeps more desperately than ever, Courtenay not only cheering them on but now actually tailing on to a sweep which the lad Francisco was manfully tugging away at with the best of them. The perspiration was pouring off the poor fellows’ faces and bare arms in streams, but they still worked away, looking eagerly at me every time I shot a hasty glance astern, as if anxious to gather from my expressive countenance what hopes of escape still remained.
At length we reached the mouth of the channel, and I dared no longer withdraw my eyes for a single instant from Carera. The passage was exceedingly narrow, so confined, indeed, that a man might have leaped from either rail into the seething breakers on each side of us. The little craft bobbed and pitched as she glided into the troubled water, the huge sail rattled and flapped, and we seemed to visibly lose way. At this juncture a voice hailed us in execrably bad Spanish from the gig astern, peremptorily exclaiming:
“Heave to, you rascally pack of piratical cut-throats, or I will fire into you!”
“Pull, men, pull!” I urged. “Here is the breeze close aboard of us.”
At the same instant our great lateen sail swelled heavily out, wavered, jerked the sheet taut, and collapsed again. The Spaniards greeted the sight with a joyous shout, and, whereas they had hitherto been toiling in grimmest silence, they now burst out with mutual cries of encouragement and a jabber of congratulatory remarks which were almost instantly cut short by the crack of a musket, the ball of which clipped very neatly through the brim of my straw hat. Again the sail flapped, collapsed, flapped again, and then filled steadily out.
“Hurrah, lads!” I exclaimed. “Half a dozen more strokes with the sweeps and the breeze will fairly have got hold of us. See how the sheet tautens out!”
“In bow-oar, and stand by to heave your grapnel!” I heard a voice say in English close underneath our counter; and the next instant came the rattle of the oar as it was laid in upon the thwart. Courtenay too heard the words, and knowing well what they meant left his sweep and sprang aft.
“Give way, men, give way!” now came up from the boat. “Spring her, you sodjers, spring her, and take us within heaving distance, or they will get away from us yet. See how the witch is gathering way! Bend your backs, now; lift her! well pulled! another stroke—and another—that’s your sort; now we travel—hang it, men, pull, can’t ye! heave there, for’ard, and see if you can reach her.”
Courtenay was crouching low behind the bulwarks on the watch for the grapnel, and in another second it came plump in over the taffrail. Before it had time to catch anywhere, however, my chum had pounced upon it, and, tossing it into the air just as the bowman in the boat was bringing a strain upon the chain, the instrument dropped overboard again.
“You lubberly rascal!” exclaimed the officer in charge of the gig, addressing the unfortunate bowman, “you shall get a couple of dozen at the gangway as soon as we get back to the ship for that. And if you miss next time I’ll make it five dozen. We’ve lost a good fathom of distance through your confounded stupidity. Pull, men! D’ye mean to let the hooker slip through your fingers after all?”
Then a thought seemed suddenly to strike this exasperated individual; his boat was too close under our counter to enable him to use his own muskets, so he hailed the cutter and inquired if there was “no one in her clever enough to pick off that rascally Spaniard at the felucca’s tiller?”
“Come,” thought I, “this is pleasant! A pretty pass the service is coming to when a man is coolly fired upon by his own countrymen. However, let us hope the ‘cutters’ are as bad shots with the musket as the average of our blue-jackets!”
Just then crack! went a musket from the cutter, and I heard the thud of the bullet in the planking somewhere behind me.
“A miss is as good as a mile,” thought I; whilst the lieutenant in the gig astern relieved his feelings by alternately anathematising the poor marksmanship of the ‘cutters,’ and urging his own crew to increased exertions. By this time, however, the breeze had fairly caught us; we were in smooth water, and slipping so rapidly through it that it was evident the sweeps were no longer rendering us the slightest effective service; whilst, from the more subdued sounds issuing from the pursuing gig, I could tell that we were distinctly drawing away from her; I therefore took it upon me to order the sweeps to be laid in, an order which was obeyed with the utmost alacrity. This action of ours seemed to inspire the gigs with renewed hope and they put on such a determined spurt that for the next ten minutes it was an even chance whether after all they would no catch us. They did gain upon us decidedly for the first five minutes of the spurt; but their desperate and long-continued exertions were now beginning to tell pretty severely upon the oarsmen, and by the end of that time it became evident that they were completely pumped out, for we rapidly ran away from them. The cutter, meanwhile, had been manfully following her lighter consort all this while, the midshipman in charge of her amusing himself by blazing away at me as fast as he could load and fire even after we had run out of range. Fortunately he was an outrageously poor shot, his first attempt being his best, so I escaped unhurt; but I inwardly vowed that if ever I happened to meet him in the future I would have my revenge by telling him pretty plainly what I thought of him as a marksman. At length, the felucca having distanced the gig about a mile, we saw both boats give up the chase and lay upon their oars; and a few minutes later they turned tail, and made their way slowly back toward the channel. We had escapee—so far.
Meanwhile, having passed safely through the narrow channel we found ourselves in an extensive lagoon, some ten miles wide, and so long that we had a clear horizon to the southward and eastward, whilst on our starboard hand was a cluster of perhaps a dozen islands, large and small, some almost awash, whilst others rose to a height of from fifty to sixty feet above the water’s edge at their highest points, all of them being wooded right down to the water. To the northward and westward of us the lagoon narrowed down to about a mile in width, forming a sort of strait between the largest of the islands above-mentioned and a bold projecting promontory; and beyond this strait the horizon was again clear save for certain faint grey blots which our experienced eyes told us were the foliage crowning another group of islands. It was an enchanting prospect for a man to gaze upon; the broad sheet of water upon which we were sailing was perfectly smooth save for the slight ruffle of the breeze upon it; every spot of dry land, large or small, within sight of us, was completely hidden by the luxuriant tropical vegetation which flourished upon it, the foliage being of every conceivable shade of green, from the lightest to the darkest, and thickly besprinkled with flowers and blossoms of all the hues of the rainbow. Nor was animate life wanting to add its charm to the scene; for aquatic birds of various kinds were to be seen stalking solemnly about the shallows busily fishing, or skimming with slowly-flapping pinions close along the surface of the water; whilst, as we shot between two of the contiguous islands, butterflies of immense size and gorgeous colouring were distinctly visible flitting to and fro among the blossoms of the plants and trees; a flock of gaily painted parroquets, startled by our sudden appearance, took to flight with discordant screams; humming-birds hovered and darted here and there, their brilliant metallic-like plumage flashing in the sun so that they resembled animated gems; and lizards of various kinds, including an immense iguana, could be seen lying stretched out at full length on some far-reaching branch, basking in the broiling sun. It was all very beautiful; and I should have liked nothing better than to spend a week with my gun and sketch-book in so charming a spot, but this was of course impossible; and it was also impossible for me, posted as I still was at the tiller, to take more than a hasty glance now and then, for the water was extremely shallow everywhere but in the channel, which was so intricate that, with the fresh breeze then blowing, it taxed me to the full extent of my ability to follow Carera’s quick motions and keep the little hooker from running bodily ashore with us.
This novel species of inland navigation lasted until four bells in the forenoon watch, by which time we had cleared the second group of islands. The channel then became wider, deeper, and less difficult to follow; the land receding on either hand so far that all details were lost; the trip consequently began to grow somewhat monotonous; so I resigned the tiller to Manuel, the mate, and joined Courtenay below for a quiet chat. At one o’clock Carera called down through the sky-light that we were about to make for the open sea again, whereupon we proceeded on deck to watch the passage of the felucca out through the northern channel. This was simply a pleasant repetition of our morning’s experience for a run of about three miles; after which we found ourselves at sea again, indeed, but with still a very awkward passage of some nine miles to make over an extensive shoal before we could reach deep water. We had a most disagreeable time of it for the first half-hour, for, though we were under the lee of a couple of islands, a heavy swell was setting in from seaward, the white water was all round us in every direction, and a very sharp eye was needed at the con, and an equally quick hand at the tiller, to prevent the little craft from beating her bottom in on the coral. After that, however, the water gradually deepened; and about two o’clock, to everybody’s intense relief, we found ourselves once more in open water, with no sign of the frigate, or indeed of a sail of any kind, anywhere within sight.
For the remainder of that day and during the ensuing night our course led us to the northward and westward close along the northern edge of the great shoal, dotted with its multitudinous cayos and cays, which commences some thirty miles to the eastward of the Boca de Guajaba, through which we had run to escape the frigate’s boats, and extends right along the north-eastern coast of Cuba to its most northerly point, terminating at Maya Point at the entrance to Matanzas Bay. These cays lie so thickly scattered along the coast, and are so close to each other, that they afford innumerable places of shelter with snug anchorage for small craft; whilst, from the fact that they are all situated well within the outer limit of the shoal, they are unapproachable except by vessels of exceedingly light draught; I was therefore not at all surprised to learn from Carera that they were infested by a perfect nest of pirates, who, in feluccas and schooners of great speed and shallow draught of water, were wont to sally forth for a few days’ cruise in the Gulf of Florida, or among the Bahamas, to prey upon the shipping bound into and out of the Gulf of Mexico; returning to their dépôts after every successful raid, and landing their booty there, so that, in the event of their encountering a man-of-war, nothing of an incriminating character might be found on board them. I asked Carera whether he was never afraid that some of these free-and-easy gentlemen might some time or another take it into their heads to overhaul the Pinta, on the chance of her happening to have on board something worth taking; to which he replied, with a laugh, that he had no fear whatever of any such thing; the pirates always respected such traders as happened to be engaged in dealing with any of the fraternity, these traders having a means of making their characters known to any suspicious-looking craft which might happen to manifest a too curious interest in their movements. And, indeed, we had a verification of this statement that same evening, whilst we were lying becalmed off the Cristo cays; for a noble felucca, which we had sighted an hour or so before, came foaming down toward us, with sails furled and ten sweeps of a side lashing the glassy surface of the water into foam, evidently determined to know the why and the wherefore of our being there. Carera, seeing there was a chance of his being boarded, dived below and routed out a small square red flag, with a black diamond in the centre, which he hoisted at the end of the yard; whereupon the felucca swerved slightly from her course, and, passing close under our stern, inquired whither we were bound; to which Carera replied: “The Conconil lagoons,” an answer which appeared to be perfectly satisfactory. This felucca was quite a formidable craft of her class, measuring, I should say, close upon two hundred tons. She was very low and very broad on the water—due, as I could distinctly see when she swept so closely past us, to the extreme shallowness of her hull; there was no scale on her stern-post to show her draught of water; but it could not have been more than eight feet, if as much; her water-lines were the finest I had ever seen, and she must have been a wonderfully smart vessel under canvas, judging from the ease and the speed with which her crew swept her through the water. There were fully sixty men on her roomy decks as she passed us—and possibly others below—as ruffianly-looking a set of wretches as I ever wish to see; and her armament consisted of eight long brass nines—four in each battery—with a long eighteen between her fore and main mast. She was rigged with three masts; and, from the great length of her graceful tapering yards, she must have been capable of showing an enormous spread of canvas to the breeze. With an eye to future business, I not only noted the direction in which she was steering, but also questioned Carera about her; but that individual was—or professed to be—totally unacquainted with her.
Next morning at daybreak we were aroused by Carera, who requested us to put in an appearance on deck as soon as possible, as we were off the mouth of the Barcos Channel and he wished to run in with the first of the sea-breeze. We accordingly dressed with all expedition and hurried on deck, to find ourselves becalmed off a cluster of low mangrove-covered islets, so numerous that the whole sea inshore of us seemed to be completely covered with them. A single glance sufficed to convince us that no more suitable spot than this for a pirate’s head-quarters could well be found, for any attempt on the part of the uninitiated to penetrate the intricacies of these multitudinous cays must inevitably have resulted in failure. Channel there was none—so far as we could see—or rather, there were hundreds of them, each more hopelessly impracticable than the other, for there appeared to be only a very few feet of water in any of them. Had we been able to ascend to any such elevation as, say, a frigate’s mast-head, it might indeed have been possible to pick out the true channel; but, viewed from the low deck of the felucca, they all appeared pretty much alike. That there was a channel, however, and that a fairly good one, Carera assured us, pointing out at the same time an island fully a mile in length, and lying about due east and west, which he informed us marked the western boundary of the entrance.
Soon afterwards the sea-breeze set in, and, squaring away before it, we ran straight for a tiny islet with a single tree upon it, which lay some distance within the mouth of the channel, and which had been brought exactly midway between the long island above-mentioned and a much smaller one about a quarter of a mile to the eastward of it. Courtenay now set to work to take soundings throughout the whole length of the channel, whilst I noted down upon a piece of paper the particulars and bearings of the numerous marks. The Barcos Channel itself was some two miles in length, as nearly as I could guess at it, curving slightly to the eastward from its entrance, and by no means difficult to navigate when once one had fairly hit off its mouth, but so narrow that a passage through it in either direction could only be accomplished with a leading wind. Once through this passage we found ourselves in an extensive sheet of water—an immense lagoon, in fact—which Carera informed me was known as Santa Clara Bay; and it is at the bottom of this bay that the Conconil lagoons, to which we were bound, is situated.
And here our difficulties may be said to have fairly commenced. The wide expanse of water upon which we were now sailing is exceedingly shallow, a fathom and a quarter of water being its average depth everywhere, except at its south-eastern extremity, where it dwindles down to one fathom only. The Pinta, from her exceedingly light draught, might, with careful management, have made a tolerably straight run of it from the inner extremity of the Barcos Channel to the entrance to the lagoons; but this of course would not do for us; a deeper, though very intricate passage to the last-named point existed, and it was of the utmost importance to us to have it pointed out to us; it was, in fact, supposed to be the chief object of our journey with Carera. Accordingly, away we went for it, stretching across the lagoon, now to one side, now to another; bearing away for a few yards, then hauling close to the wind; twisting and doubling like a hunted hare, and changing our course so rapidly that it was all I could do to jot down the various marks as they were pointed out to me. The distance to be traversed was, in a straight line, about ten miles, so Carera told me; but we must have passed over fully forty miles of ground in following the windings of this exasperating channel, for it was two o’clock in the afternoon when we reached the entrance to the Conconil lagoons. These lagoons extend about six miles in length, and vary in breadth from perhaps half a mile in their widest part, to less than a hundred feet at their narrowest. They run pretty nearly east and west and are formed by a remarkable spit, shaped like an inverted L, jutting out from the mainland, and some eight or nine islands of various sizes. Some of these islands stand fair in the middle of the lagoon, as regards its width, and where these occur the channel is exceedingly narrow, and consequently can be very easily defended. The lagoons, in fact, constitute a stronghold within a stronghold; and as we wound our way slowly along, the breeze coming to us only light and fitfully through the dense and lofty vegetation crowning the islands outside of us, my admiration for Signor Giuseppe’s sagacity in selecting such a place of refuge grew momentarily more profound. At the same time I could not but think, as my gaze rested for a moment upon the black turbid water upon which we floated, whilst my offended nostrils sniffed the very unfragrant odours which it exhaled, that the possible unhealthiness of the place more than compensated for its exceeding safety in other respects. However, when we reached the head of the lagoon, I found, contrary to my expectations, that a very capital and apparently healthy site had been pitched upon for the depôt at the higher extremity of the last lagoon—an irregular triangular-shaped piece of water about a mile long by half a mile wide, with four small islands pretty evenly distributed over its surface. The largest of these rose somewhat precipitously from the water’s edge to a height of about fifty or sixty feet—quite high enough, at all events, to be above the level of the miasmatic fogs which gather on the surface of the water toward evening—and on the very summit of this island, deliciously embowered with noble trees, were placed the various buildings appertaining to the piratical community. A narrow strip of firm sandy beach fringed the island on its eastern side; and as we opened it out from behind a projecting point of land, we saw a fine smart-looking schooner hauled close in to it and hove down for repairs. We anchored about a quarter of a mile distant from her, in four fathoms of water; and as Courtenay joined me he made the gratifying announcement that he had never met with less than two and a half fathoms of water in all the soundings he had taken.