Chapter Twenty.
The Privateer and the Indiaman.
Having satisfied ourselves that the French frigate had actually struck, we filled on the schooner and ran down under the lee of the brig, where we once more hove to; our gig was lowered and manned, and I proceeded on board to see if my services were further required.
On reaching the deck I was met by a man of some five-and-thirty years of age, evidently the skipper of the craft, who held out his hand to me most cordially, and exclaimed:
“Welcome, young gentleman, on board his Britannic majesty’s brig Dido. You hove in sight just in the nick of time this morning, for, but for your very effective help, we should have been the captured instead of the captors by this time. What is the name of your schooner?”
“The Dolphin,” I replied, “cruising; sixteen days out from Port Royal.”
“The Dolphin, eh?” said he. “Well, she is a remarkably fine and powerful craft; carries heavy metal too; and your skipper evidently knows how to handle her. What is his name, by the bye?”
I modestly explained that I was in command of the craft; an announcement which created quite a sensation among the officers who had gathered round.
“You!” exclaimed the skipper incredulously. “Well, then, I can only say, young gentleman, that you are shaping well—very well indeed. There is not a man in the service who could have fought that vessel more gallantly, or with better judgment than you did; and I shall take care to say so to the admiral when we get in. You have rendered a very important service, my lad, let me tell you; for you have not only saved the old Dido from being taken, and helped in the capture of a fine frigate, but you have also saved some most urgent and important despatches which we have on board. Have you lost many men in the action?”
“Not one,” said I; “nor have we, so far as I know, a single man with a wound worth mentioning.”
“Ah, you are lucky!” he remarked. “But for that you may thank your heavy metal and the way in which it was served; you were able to cripple the frigate before she could touch you. Well, come down into the cabin and take a glass of wine with me whilst we talk over what is next to be done. Mr Thompson, let Mr Rogers come down to me with his report when he returns from the frigate. Now then, Mr—a—ah—this way, please. By the way, I did not catch your name just now.”
There was a very good reason for that, as I had never mentioned it to him; however, I did so then; he informed me that his name was Venn, and that he held the rank of commander, and by the time that we had come to this understanding we found ourselves in the cabin, a much smaller and plainer apartment than that of the Dolphin, by the bye.
Wine was produced, we drank a glass together, and then my new friend proceeded to explain to me that, as the brig had suffered rather severely, and had had a great many men wounded in her running fight with the frigate, he would be obliged to draw rather heavily upon the Dolphin to make up a crew for the prize, and that, under the circumstances, he considered it would be advisable for us to accompany the Dido and her prize into Port Royal.
This arrangement suited me very well indeed, as I thought it just possible there might be letters for me, if not from my father at least from Inez; and I was just about to return on board the schooner to give the necessary orders, when a midshipman, who had accompanied the first lieutenant of the Dido on board the prize to take possession, returned with the information that the frigate was named the Cythère, mounting thirty-two twelve-pounders, with a crew originally of three hundred and twenty-eight all told; her loss during the action amounting to thirty two killed and sixty-eight wounded, her captain being among the former.
By eight bells in the afternoon watch we had managed to make up between us and transfer to the frigate a very respectable prize-crew, after which hawsers were passed on board the prize from the Dido and the Dolphin, the brig taking up a position upon the frigate’s larboard bow whilst we stationed ourselves on the starboard, when sail was made upon both the towing vessels and we shaped a course for Jamaica, the prize-crew busying themselves meanwhile in getting up new spars and repairing damages in the standing and running rigging. By daylight next morning this was so far accomplished that we were able to cast off the towing hawsers, when the three craft proceeded in company, arriving without mishap or adventure in Port Royal harbour on the morning of the sixth day succeeding the action.
Commander Venn was as good as his word in framing his report of the capture, in consequence of which I rose higher than ever in the favour of the admiral, who showed his appreciation of our services by filling up our provisions and water with all possible speed and hurrying us off to sea again.
As I had hoped, there were two letters for me, one from my father and one from Inez; but as the former was written in the same unsatisfactory strain as those which had preceded it, and as the latter contained nothing of interest to anyone but myself, I shall not trouble the reader with even so much as an extract from either, but pass on to incidents which were destined to very materially affect the happiness of my whole future life, and that of others as well. Having filled up our provisions and water, as already stated, and having received on board again the hands who had helped to take the Cythère into port, we sailed once more on the second day following our arrival, and proceeded again over the ground we had already beaten so successfully. We were even more fortunate on this occasion than we had been before, though we found that it was no longer possible to take our enemies by surprise as we had done at first; they had learned wisdom from experience and had become aware of our tactics, notwithstanding which we took four privateers, one of which we cut out from under a battery, and made several recaptures, two of which proved to be very valuable. But as these incidents happened to be mere interludes, as it were, in my story, having no special significance, I shall leave them without further mention and pass on. The reader will therefore please understand that I had been in command of the Dolphin rather more than six months when the incident occurred to which I am about to refer.
The time was about half an hour, or thereabouts, after midnight, and our position was about sixty miles south-east of Beata Point, the southernmost point on the mainland of Saint Domingo. The day had been fine, with a very nice pleasant working breeze, but as the sun had declined toward the horizon the wind had shown signs of dropping, gradually dying away after sunset, until toward the end of the first watch it had fallen so completely calm that we had furled all our canvas to save wear and tear, and were, at the time mentioned, lying under bare poles, slowly drifting with the current to the westward. The night was pitch-dark, for there was no moon, and with the dying away of the wind a great bank of heavy thunderous-looking cloud had gradually worked up from the westward, imperceptibly expanding until it had at length obscured the entire firmament, promising a thunder-storm which would doubtless be all the heavier when it broke from the length of time which it took in the brewing. I had remained on deck until midnight; but observing, when the middle watch was called, that the barometer had dropped only the merest trifle, had gone below upon the deck being relieved, and, leaving orders with young Boyne to call me in the event of any change in the weather, had flung myself, half undressed, into my cot, hoping to get a nap before the storm broke, and feeling pretty confident that when it did nothing very serious could happen, the schooner being under bare poles.
But somehow I could not get to sleep, probably on account of the oppressive closeness of the atmosphere, for it was stiflingly hot, although the skylights and companion were wide open; and there I lay, tossing restlessly from side to side in a state of preternatural wakefulness, listening to the lap and gurgle of the water against the ship’s side, the creaking of the bulk-heads, the rattling of the hooks which held the cabin doors wide open, the yerking of the main-sheet blocks, the jerk-jerk of the rudder and of the lashed wheel above it, with the swish of the water under the counter and about the stern-post as the vessel rolled lazily upon the long sluggish swell which came creeping slowly up from the eastward. And if by chance a momentary feeling of drowsiness happened to steal over me, which, carefully fostered, might have eventually led to my falling asleep, it was sure to be put to flight by some ill-timed movement or speech by those on the deck above me, although I will do them the justice to say that, so far as speech was concerned, they spoke but seldom, and then in subdued tones. At length, however, I was going off, the varied sounds I have mentioned had lost their distinctness, had changed their character, and were beginning to merge themselves into the accompaniments of what, a few minutes later, would have been a dream, when I heard Pottle’s voice exclaim with startling suddenness:
“Hillo! what was that?”
To which young Boyne replied, in unmistakably sleepy tones:
“What was what, Mr Pottle?”
“Why,” replied Pottle, “I thought I saw—Ha! look, there it is again! Did you not see something like a flash away off there on our starboard beam?”
“No, sir,” said Boyne, evidently a little more wide-awake, “I cannot say I did. Probably it was lightning; we must have it before long.”
“Lightning!” exclaimed Pottle contemptuously; “d’ye think I don’t know lightning when I see it? No, it looked more like—by George, there it is again!”
At the same moment one of the men forward hailed, but I could not catch what he said for the creaking of the bulk-heads.
“Ay, ay, I saw it,” answered Pottle. “What did it look like to you, Martin?”
“I thought it looked like the flash of firearms,” was the reply, which I this time heard distinctly.
“So did I,” gruffly remarked Pottle. “Depend on’t, Mr Boyne, there’s something going on down there to the south’ard which ought to be looked into. Just step down below and give Mr Lascelles a call, will ye?”
I sprang out of my cot, slipped my stockingless feet into my shoes, drew on my jacket, and met young Boyne at the cabin door.
“Well, Mr Boyne,” said I, “what is the news? I heard Mr Pottle ask you to call me.”
“Yes, sir,” said the lad. “He says he has seen something like the flash of firearms down in the southern quarter, and the lookout also has reported it.”
“All right,” said I. “I will be up in a moment.”
And turning up the cabin lamp for an instant to take a look at the barometer, which I found to be steady, I stumbled up the companion-ladder, and, blinking like an owl in daylight, made my way out on deck.
“Whew!” I exclaimed, “this is darkness, indeed. Where are you, Mr Pottle?”
“Here I am, sir,” answered the quarter-master; and turning in the direction of his voice I saw a tiny glowing spark which proved to be the ignited end of a cigar which he had between his teeth.
“Now,” said I, as I groped my way to his side, “whereaway was this flashing appearance which you say you saw?”
“Just about in that direction, sir,” was the reply; “or stay—we may have swung a bit since I saw it,” and he walked aft and carefully raised a jacket which he had thrown over the lighted binnacle. “No,” he continued, “that’s where it was, just sou’-sou’-west, for I took the bearing of it when I saw it the third time; and I thought that, in case of anything being wrong, it wouldn’t be amiss to mask the binnacle light.”
“Quite right,” said I, peering first at the compass card and then away into the opaque darkness which prevented our seeing even the surface of the water alongside. It was manifestly hopeless to think of seeing anything through such impenetrable obscurity as that which surrounded us; and I was just wondering what steps to take, under the circumstances, peering meanwhile in the direction indicated by Pottle, when I caught a momentary glimpse of a tiny spark-like flash—which the ejaculations of my comrades told me they also had observed—and in another instant a glare of ghastly blue-white radiance streamed out over the sea and revealed to us two vessels alongside each other, the canvas of the one—a large lumbering full-rigged ship, gleaming spectrally in the light of the port-fire, whilst the sails of the other—a brigantine, which happened to be on the side next us—stood out black as ebony against the light. They were about two miles off; and even at that distance we could see with the naked eye that a struggle of some sort was going forward on the decks of the larger of the two craft. The nature of the affair was apparent in a moment to every one of us. The big ship was unmistakably an Indiaman, probably a fellow-countryman; at least so we judged by the imperfect view of his canvas which the flickering light of the port-fire afforded us; whilst, if appearances were to go for anything, the brigantine could be nothing else than a French picaroon. At all events our duty was now plain enough, we ought to investigate the affair without a moment’s unnecessary delay; and I accordingly gave orders for all hands to be immediately called, and for the pinnace and the two gigs to be lowered and manned. This was done with an alacrity which I venture to believe would have gratified even my old friend the admiral himself; and in less than a quarter of an hour from the moment of giving the order we were in the boats and well away from the schooner. The pinnace was in charge of the boatswain; Pottle had the command of one of the gigs; and, as there seemed to be no prospect of any worse outcome, in the shape of weather, than a thunder-storm, I did not hesitate to take charge of the other gig myself, leaving Woodford in temporary command of the schooner with instructions how to proceed in the event of a breeze springing up before we were able to rejoin him.
The port-fire on board the Indiaman having long before burnt-out, we had taken the precaution to provide each boat with a compass, the light of which was most carefully-masked; but this precaution soon proved to be unnecessary, the boats having traversed less than half the distance between the schooner and the other two vessels when vivid sheet lightning began to play along the south-western horizon, lighting up the scene with its weird radiance frequently enough to enable us to steer a perfectly straight course. The fight was still going on when we left the schooner; but it appeared to cease soon afterwards, and we came to the conclusion that the crew of the Indiaman had been overpowered and the ship taken. Our chief anxiety now was lest our approach should be discovered in time to enable the Frenchman to make preparations for resisting our attempts to board them when we should arrive alongside; but, fortunately for us, the chief play of the lightning was in the quarter almost opposite that from which we were approaching, and I was in hopes that they would be too busy just then plundering the prize to keep a very strict lookout. In this, however, I was doomed to be disappointed; for when we had arrived within a quarter of a mile of the brigantine a sudden flashing of lights appeared on board her, and before we could get alongside a broadside of four guns, loaded with grape, was hastily discharged at us. Luckily, beyond revealing the fact that we had been discovered, the broadside did us no harm; and, with a cheer, our tars bent to their oars and, with a few lusty strokes, sent us alongside with a rush.
The brigantine, a long and exceedingly rakish-looking craft, sat very low in the water, so that it appeared to be one of the easiest things in the world to scramble in over her bulwarks from the boats; but we found those bulwarks lined from stem to stern with as resolute-looking a set of fellows as one need wish to see, and their reception of us, as regards warmth, left absolutely nothing to be desired. They evidently knew and fully appreciated the advantage they possessed over us in having a good roomy deck to fight upon, and they seemed fully resolved to retain that advantage as long as possible. Three separate and distinct attempts did we make to surmount the low barrier; and as many times were we forced back into the boats, each occasion being marked by the accession of some three or four to the number of our wounded. On the fourth occasion, however, I determined that gain the deck of that brigantine I would, by hook or by crook; so calling Collins, the coxswain of my boat, and another man to my aid, I ordered them each to seize me by a leg and fling me on board, which they did with a regular man-of-war’s-man’s “one—two—three—heave!” and away I went in over the bulwarks like a rocket, alighting fairly on the shoulders of a great burly fellow who had already lodged a pistol bullet in the fleshy part of my left arm—and to whom I consequently owed a grudge—beating him down to the deck, only to find myself in the very thickest of the crowd, every man of which seemed more anxious than the others to get a fair blow at me. I was, however, by this time no mere novice in the use of the sword, and I no sooner felt myself fairly on my feet than I made the weapon spin about my adversaries’ heads in such good earnest that they were compelled to recoil. Meanwhile my lads had no sooner launched me into space than they sprang after me, and, pressing forward to my side with their cutlasses advanced, we soon made room enough for the rest of our party to follow. But though we had gained the deck we had by no means won the ship, our antagonists rallying time after time as we drove them back, and stubbornly contesting with us the possession of every inch of plank. Meanwhile the storm which had so long been brewing had at length burst almost immediately overhead, the lightning flashing and playing about the mast-heads of the ships with a dazzling vividness which was almost blinding, whilst the thunder crashed and roared and rolled along the heavens absolutely without intermission. The general effect was impressive and appalling in the extreme—or would have been had we been in a mood to properly appreciate it; but just then our only thought—or mine, at least—with regard to it was that it afforded us light enough to fight by and to distinguish friends from foes. And it was by the friendly aid of the lightning that I was, in the midst of the mêlée, enabled to identify an object, which I had once or twice kicked from under my feet, as a flannel cartridge. I had already noticed several charges of grape ranged along the shot-racks; and it now occurred to me that one of these discharged into the thick of our enemies might help very materially to mitigate their ardour. So, turning to some of the lads behind, I directed them to run in one of the guns, load it, and slue it fore and aft, with its muzzle pointing toward the taffrail, in which direction we were slowly pressing the crew of the brigantine. This was soon done; when, taking advantage of a momentary lull in the confusion of sound which raged about us, I shouted:
“Back, Dolphins, into the waist, for your lives; we are about to treat them to a dose of grape!”
Our lads luckily heard and understood me; we pressed forward with increased energy for a moment, huddling the Frenchmen all up in a heap together just about the companion-way, and then suddenly retired forward, leaving the gun, a nine-pounder, grinning open-mouthed fair at them. The moment that the last of our men was fairly out of danger the topman who had taken charge of the gun discharged it; we immediately rushed aft again, charging through the smoke, found the foe, as we had expected, quite confused and demoralised from the effect of the fire, and, pressing upon them more fiercely than ever, compelled them to throw down their arms and cry for quarter, though not until I had been compelled in self-defence to run their leader through with my sword.
The brigantine was now our own, so leaving Pottle and the boatswain to secure the prisoners, which task they set about without a moment’s delay, I rallied my own boat’s crew about me and led them on board the Indiaman to take possession of her. We met with no opposition whilst climbing the ship’s lofty sides; but on gaining the deck a group of some half a dozen figures were discovered mounting guard over the fore-scuttle. Despatching the coxswain and three hands to secure these, and the remainder of the crew to hunt up any stray Frenchmen who might happen to be lurking about the decks, I turned my steps in the direction of the poop cabin, and calling one hand to attend me, at once made my way thither.
One of the doors was standing wide open, with a brilliant stream of light pouring through it, lighting up the massive mainmast and the gear attached to it for a height of some twelve feet above the deck, and revealing the fact that the quarter-deck guns at least of the vessel had never been cast loose, thus confirming me in the suspicion I had before entertained that the vessel had been taken by surprise. Entering the cabin, a strange scene presented itself. The apartment itself was very spacious, being of the full width of the ship, and extending right aft (the sleeping cabins and the captain’s private quarters, I subsequently discovered, were situated below, on the main-deck); and it was very handsomely fitted up with rosewood and maple panels, a great deal of gilt moulding, several mirrors, and some half a dozen very decently executed pictures; whilst a handsome five-light chandelier—with one of the lamps recently broken—swung from the beams overhead. Against the forward bulkhead and between the two doors giving admission to the cabin there stood a very massive and handsomely carved buffet, on which stood a quantity of finely cut crystal, several decanters containing wine and spirits, and some fruit dishes loaded with fruit. A long table stood fore and aft in the centre of the saloon with, perhaps, a couple of dozen luxurious-looking chairs ranged round it; and along each side of the cabin ran a range of wide handsomely upholstered sofa lockers. The floor was covered with a thick Turkey carpet of handsome design. But it was not so much the rich furnishing of the saloon which made it remarkable; it was the aspect and grouping of the people I found there. A dozen or more gentlemen, clad only in their shirts and trousers, and several of them bleeding from wounds, were seated on the lockers, with their feet lashed together and their arms tied behind them. At the far end of the cabin, abaft the table, and crouching on the floor, huddled a number of ladies and children in their night-dresses, all of them pale as death and looking dreadfully frightened, whilst one of the ladies was weeping hysterically over a little chubby, fair, and curly-headed boy of some six or seven years old, who was moaning piteously the while the blood trickled from a wound in his head, matting his golden curls together into a gory mass and slowly spreading out in a great ensanguined stain on the sleeve of his mother’s night-dress. Near the door by which I entered lay the apparently dead bodies of two men, who I took, from their dress, to be the captain and chief mate of the ship; and close to them stood a tall, handsome, dark-skinned Frenchman, with gold rings in his ears, a naval cap with a gold band on his head, a crimson silk sash round his waist, fairly bristling with pistols, a drawn sword in his right hand and a pistol in his left, evidently mounting guard over the prisoners. As I entered the cabin this fellow turned to meet me. The moment he saw me to be a stranger up went his pistol, and, before I had time to realise what he was about, there was a flash, a blow followed by a sharp stinging sensation along the left side of my head, a thud, a groan, and a fall behind me; then came a lunging thrust from his sword, which I had the good luck to parry; this parry I followed up with a lightning-like thrust; my sword passed through his heart, and he fell dead on the carpet close to the two bodies I have already mentioned. All this passed as it were in a moment, with such startling suddenness, indeed, that it left me quite dazed, so that for a few seconds I could scarcely realise exactly what had happened. On recovering my self-possession, my first thought was for the man who had been following me into the cabin. I turned round to ascertain whether the groan had proceeded from him, and there, prone in the passage-way behind me, lay the poor fellow on his back, stone dead, the bullet having crashed into his brain through his right eye.