A STORY OF THE WAR OF 1812 BETWEEN AMERICA AND ENGLAND.
BY JAMES BARNES.
CHAPTER XII.
A PRISONER OF WAR.
I suppose that a man who has been almost drowned—to the limit that all sense leaves him, at least—has drunk as deep of death as a person can and talk of it afterwards. With a shifting light before my eyes, a throbbing pain in my temples, and a sickness all through me, I found myself knowing that I was breathing once more; but I was water-logged, and when I attempted to move, I could feel that I was filled to the throat with some gallons of brine. All at once I doubled up with a spasm of choking, and in a minute I felt better.
I was lying in the bow of a boat, whose motion I could feel distinctly, but owing to the thwart being immediately over my head, I could see nothing but a succession of sturdy legs and bare feet pushing against the stretchers as the men rowed.
Such an attack of hiccoughs racked me that it called attention to my having regained my senses.
"'Ullo, Bill, 'ere's another one come back from Davy Jones," said a black-whiskered man, leaning over with his face close to mine. "He's swallowed a bloomin' volcano, from the looks of him."
"Where am I?" I murmured.
"Wot a question!" was the answer. "This is the same old world, and full of trouble. Did ye take us for angels and me for St. Peter?"
"Help me up," I answered.
The man bent down and hauled me out by the shoulders to a sitting position; then I saw how it was. Prisonnier! I was captured, and here was a fine ending to the glorious life that I had been anticipating.
I suppose now that if I had spoken all my thoughts since I had left Belair, and asked even only a few of the many questions that my common-sense prompted me to keep to myself, I should have been considered stark, staring mad, let alone being a simpleton. It is almost ridiculous to look back at it and think that I did not know certainly who was the President of the United States, or anything about the history of the last two years. If any one had told me that the British killed their prisoners, I should not have doubted it, and what was to become of me I had not the least idea, but I saw that I was not alone in the strait. Out of the crew of nineteen men that were in the long-boat, ten, including the wounded seaman, were sitting dejectedly in the bow and stern-sheets. Together with the Englishmen, we crowded the barge uncomfortably, but not dangerously.
The British sailors appeared to be rather a beefy set, and they were in high spirits over their capture. An officer, with his hair standing up in tall curls over his forehead, sat in the stern-sheets bareheaded. He was nursing a wounded hip carefully, and half leaning against a little midshipman, who had his arm thrown about his shoulder.
Raising my eyes from the boat, I perceived that the frigate was drifting with her topsail against the mast only a few hundred yards from us. I began to feel a bitter hatred of her, and it gave me pleasure to see the long white gashes in her sides, and to notice the effect of the gunnery of the Young Eagle plainly apparent.
"Halloa, Johnny Bull!" said some one behind me with a laugh, "I guess you run against something, didn't you, a short while ago? Ship looks kind of unhealthy, like a man's face with the small-pox."
I turned. It was Sutton, the foretopman, speaking. He did not appear to be very much depressed by his surroundings, nor did he fear the result of his impudence, to judge of his expression.
"Stow your jaw," answered one of the Englishmen. "There are worse things than small-pox."
I noticed that the man's face was pitted deeply.
"That's so," Sutton replied; "there's the cat, for instance. I beg your pardon for not thinking of it; I shouldn't slight an acquaintance of yours for anything."
There was some more coarse badinage, not worth recording, and we were under the shadow of the ship. Many faces lined her bulwarks, and a rope being thrown to us, soon we were fending the boat off from the side. Then a rope-ladder rattled down, and not without some difficulty those in the bow began to clamber up.
Soon it was my turn. It was not until I reached the deck that I had any idea of the effect of shot and splinter, but the dark stains, hastily mopped up, had a reddish tinge that was suggestive, and the loose running-gear that had fallen from aloft showed that Captain Temple must have used some of the missiles condemned by the English—and here, let me state, afterwards used by them, to which I can make oath.
As we were being hastened below many were the looks of hatred thrown at us, and cutting taunts also in plenty. To all of these Sutton kept a running fire of replying, in which he was ably seconded by one or two others.
"Why, my old boiled lobster," he replied to a marine who thrust his great face over the hatch-combing as we descended, "if I hadn't ketched a crab, I believe we'd 'a' took you with the long-boat!"
A young officer was directing our guards where to stow us, and under his orders we were huddled together in the fore-hold, near the cable tier, where the only light and air that reached us came down through the chain-hatch.
I looked about and saw that there were in our party six sailormen and four landsmen who had been enrolled in our marine force. We presented a sorry appearance sitting there in the dim light on a lot of spare cable, the most uncomfortable thing to rest on that one can imagine.
What had become of the rest of us in the long-boat I did not know then, but as I found out afterwards, I might as well tell of it here. There had been nineteen in all when we started; seven reached the shore safely, two were drowned—one of them, alas! the brave cockswain who had been wounded, as I have stated. Now as there is no report of this action to be found in the naval chronicles of Great Britain—at least I do not know of any—it may be of interest to put down what we heard of it, although it cannot be vouched for. From the talk we heard, I make out that there were nine killed on board the Acastra (for this was the name of the vessel), and upwards of twenty wounded. There were two killed on board the Young Eagle, and two wounded. In this, I think, I am correct.
The groaning of the poor lad with the bloody head caused me to wonder whether this was going to be our prison cell, or whether we were placed there temporarily before moving to a better or a worse one. Sutton took off his jacket, and we made Mackie, the man I had saved from drowning, the wounded one, as comfortable as we possibly could; but it was not long before he was wandering in his mind, and this depressed us all, for there is nothing so apt to cut one's spirits as the watching of suffering beyond the power of alievement.
We were sitting in silence when a voice broke upon us.
"Is there an officer down there?" it questioned. "I hear that one of you is an officer."
"Yes," said Sutton, "there is."
Then he whispered to me, placing one hand on my shoulder, "Speak up, lad; it will do no harm to play it so, and you may get a chance to speak to some one higher than these hulk-scuttlers. Make a plea for Mackie, if you can, or the boy will die down here in this rat-hole."
So I stood up on my feet, and gazing up at the circle of light through which came the cable, I said, loudly, "What do you want of me?"
For an instant I thought that I was going to be made the victim of a joke, as the man did not reply, but talked to some one evidently standing over him.
"Yes, sir," he said, "there's an officer, a midshipman, I dare say, down there with them."
In a few minutes we heard the drawing of the heavy bolts that held the door through the bulkhead into the mid-hold, and some one said, "Let that young man who spoke come here."
I stepped out. The door was closed behind me, and I saw it was guarded by two marines with muskets. Stumbling over barrels and boxes, I followed the three figures ahead of me up the ladder at an order from one of them, and soon I found myself on the berth-deck. We were evidently crowding on all sail, for the frigate heeled over to such an angle that the half-ports had been closed for comfort, but the water dashed in through several rents in her top sides. A shiver passed over me, for the idea suddenly came that I was going to be hanged or thrown overboard, and this was emphasized by the sight I caught of four sailors carrying a limp dead Englishman up from the cockpit—that he had died under the surgeon's knife was evident.
From the deck above came the sound of shouting and hurrying. The frigate came up into the wind, that must have freshened, and swung off on the other tack. As soon as this had occurred, I noticed that some one was coming down the ladder near where I stood. As he stooped under a beam and approached us, I perceived that the man was in a handsome uniform, with great epaulets and much gilt braid.
"One of the Yankee pirates, eh?" he said, but despite the import of the words his voice had a fine ring to it, and at one glance into his face I saw here was a man who would stoop to no mean revenge. His light blue eyes were almost kindly were it not for the bent brows above them; his face was extremely handsome and well moulded.
"Are you an officer of that brig?" questioned the tall man, who I now made out must be the Captain of the frigate.
"I am," I replied, drawing myself up, and making a salute with my elbow at right angles and my fingers at my forehead.
With a quick glance at my position the Captain made this statement:
"An officer, eh? But you are no sailor; you may be a soldier, though."
I almost faltered in my reply.
"I am instructor in cutlass drill and small arms," I said.
The Englishman half smiled at this.
"A nautical maitre d'armes?" he asked.
"Oui, monsieur," I returned.
"And speaks French in the bargain, by St. George! Well, well! What is the name of that vessel you belonged to?"
"The Young Eagle."
"Privateer, eh? I thought as much."
At this he called up the ladder to the spar-deck.
"Oh, Mr. Vyse!" he said. "It was a Yankee privateer, and not the Wasp or the Hornet, or any of their navy."
I was tempted to reply something about stinging, nevertheless, but I held my tongue.
"What's your Captain's name?" was the next question.
I gave it, and the names of the three other officers, but I was interrupted.
"Well, you can tell Captain Temple, with Captain Hilton's compliments, that he is the most impudent and most reckless scamp unhanged," said the tall man, quietly.
"When shall I see him, sir?" I asked.
"Lord knows. Not for some time, I judge," was the answer. Then Captain Hilton turned. "Take him below again," he ordered to my guards.
They stepped forward, and each laid a hand on my shoulders. I pushed them off.
"One moment, sir," I began. "There is a member of our crew badly wounded below with us. He will surely die unless something is done for him."
As I was speaking an officer had descended the ladder from above. I had seen the heels of his boots as he stood on the top step for some time. He was short and thick-set, with a mottled reddish face.
"Mr. Vyse, you heard what this lad said. Pray see that this wounded man is attended to in accordance with his hurt, and his place of confinement changed if necessary."
"Very good, sir," the short man answered, but he had such a mean look on his face that I took a distrust against him.
When I reached the hold again and was thrust in once more among my companions, there was a deal of questioning.
"You should have said you were a Lieutenant," said Sutton.
"It would have made no difference with a privateer officer," put in another seaman, Edward Brown, a Long-Islander. "They'd hang us all if they dared; and, mark me, they won't pamper us."
I did not tell of my military salute, that was so involuntary, having betrayed me, but of course I can see it was the reason of the Captain's quick statement.
It was pitch-dark down in our dank, bilge-smelling hole, and long after we stopped talking I could not fall asleep. The ridges of the cable worked into my flesh, and the muttered complaints of the others as they tried to make themselves comfortable and found they could not, mingled with the light-headed ramblings of poor Mackie, and a sound suspiciously like weeping from the corner in which lay one of the young landsmen, all combined to add to the misery.
Mr. Vyse had failed to carry out his superior's instructions, and there had been no one to look after the wounded man, nor had we been given so much as a pannikin of water, and we were all suffering from thirst.
Morning came slowly down to us after an apparent year of night, and with it some relief, for we were given something to eat and drink. Weevilly bread, greenish salt-horse, and water that smelt unhealthy do not make a meal that is inviting, but we ate it. After it had been passed in to us through the entrance we heard a banging and clattering, and found they were nailing up this mode of ingress. Our next meal was lowered to us through the circular opening overhead. It was but a foot or so in diameter, and thus we were bottled up, as it were, like flies in a jug. On this day Mackie was very low, and we all thought like to die. I doubt very much if any of us could have lived many days in that foul, close place, but we had to stand it some time longer, and the way out of it was like this: The third day, at about noon, we heard the stirring and trampling of feet and the confused muttering of voices. I swarmed up the cable until my head was close to the opening, and there I listened. They were casting loose a gun and dealing out powder and shot—I could make that clearly out. But now I heard the sounds of conversation close to me.
"It's the Constitution," said a voice; "at least they say so up on deck."
"Then we're in for it," was the reply. "I've heard tell, messmate, that she's a sixty-gun ship in disguise."
"How far off is she?" was the question.
"About six miles off the larboard bow. Here, you can see her from the port."
"What's going on up there?" asked Sutton from below.
"They say we have sighted a ship, the Constitution; and they're clearing decks for action," I answered.
"The Constitution!" exclaimed Brown. "Then we're free men. Cheer up, my hearties!"
Sutton's reply to this startled me so that I almost slid down the cable. Three roaring huzzas broke from him, in which the others joined. Soon I felt the swaying of my support, and I saw that the quarter gunner was climbing up to me. It was a crawl of some ten feet.
"It's a good thing, Debrin, that we are below water if we get to bandying shot, I tell you. See how she raked the Guerrière." Sutton chuckled.
But we could understand nothing from the confusion of sounds, until all at once I heard a voice I recognized speaking close to me. I knew the tones before I caught the words. It was Captain Hilton. In whatever he was saying I interrupted him.
"OH, CAPTAIN HILTON," I CRIED. "WE'VE A DYING MAN DOWN HERE."
"Oh, Captain Hilton," I cried, "for Heaven's sake, help us! We've a dying man down here."
"Who's that speaking?" questioned the Captain.
"The prisoners in the chain-hold, sir." I heard the answer given in a gruff tone, but most politely.
"That is no place for them," said Hilton, angrily, "and I thought I gave orders—"
The rest of his speech I did not catch, for a roller hand-spike rumbled on deck in such a way as to drown it, but I thought I detected some expostulation from the other voice.
We slid down, Sutton and I, to the others. Mackie was conscious, but so weak from his fever and suffering that he could not lift his head. When we told him the news he drew a long breath.
"It's too late, messmates," he whispered. "I'm done for, I fear me."
We sat there now with courage growing, waiting to cheer at the first gun-shot; but all was silence from above. This continued for full ten minutes; then we heard the sound of laughter, and caught the words:
"The signal of the day, eh? I know her; it's the Pique."
Sutton, who had understood, struck out with both feet and arms, muttering to himself.
"It's one of their own vessels," he cried. "Did you ever see such luck?"
But my cry for succor, heard by the English Captain, had done us good, and that afternoon the barriers were broken down from the entrance, and we were transferred to a more comfortable place of confinement under the steerage bulkhead, where at least we could sleep on hard boards, and we were given a blanket apiece.
Poor Mackie was taken to the sick-bay. It was evident that he was not long for this world—and alas! and alas! in four days the news was brought to us that our messmate had died; his skull had been fractured, and the doctor wondered at his having held to life so long. He was buried at sea, and I must say this, that Captain Hilton proved himself to be a magnanimous, big-hearted gentleman, for we were allowed on deck, and a passage of Scripture was read before they dropped the closed hammock overboard into the great graveyard of the sailor.
As we went below to our cell, which was a partition of the after-hold, as I have said, Sutton observed to me:
"We're steering to the eastward. Yes, and we'll see the inside of a prison where men rot, if tales are true. We're bound for England, lad."
Now the time went by, and even the count of days was lost. We sang songs, told stories, and played at draughts and other games that we could manage in our limited room. I wish I had here space to record all that passed. Some of the yarns spun would be worth the reading, and I learned a great deal about the condition of affairs between America and England, and that, as my friend Plummer said, "we had given the lion's tail a twist, and a good one."
One of the songs that was most popular was "Hull's Victory," and a rattling good sea song it was. I used to take the tenor, Sutton the bass, in a way that would make the beams shake, and were it not that we were on short allowance in the eating line we would have been quite comfortable. Every day two of us at a time were allowed to take the air, in charge of a marine. Sometimes it was Sutton and I who walked together, and sometimes it was Brown or Craig, the landsman, who was my companion. Poor Craig! His spirit appeared entirely broken. He had behaved bravely in the long-boat, but now his lack of heart was pitiful. He contributed little to our enjoyment, and the only person who ever gave him a kindly word, I really think, was myself. He spoke to me often of his home and of the sorrow it had given his mother to part with him. I can vouch for this, that if he ever got back there, he would stay; for all desire toward adventure and roaming was killed within him.
I have not mentioned the other seamen by name purposely, for, with the exception of Brown and Sutton, they were an ordinary set of good and bad who would have done well under competent leadership perhaps, but who displayed no individuality; but they were all loyal to their flag, and did not appear much cowed by their confinement. When I walked the deck with Sutton I enjoyed it most. He was an old man-of-war's man, and criticised the handling of the Acastra in rather a superior manner.
Some of the foremast hands amongst the Englishmen were rather kindly disposed toward us, and many bits of tobacco they gave out of sheer kindheartedness to our forlorn little hand, some of whom had suffered actually from being deprived of the stimulant.
It happened that Brown and I were walking the deck when the sound of "land, ho!" came down from the mast-head. During the last day or so we had sighted a number of sail, all English, but now this created some excitement. There must have been a mist on the water that had hidden the land as we approached it, for by the time our recreation was almost ended we could spy it from the deck as we passed the gangway—tall white cliffs showing above the horizon.
"That's Land's End," observed Brown, jumping up to look over the bulwarks, for of course we were not allowed to approach near a port. "Johnny Cutlass, my son, this voyage is over. In three hours we'll be in the English Channel, and then for a little sojourn on board the hulks, or maybe we'll be shipped direct to one of their land prisons, where we'll find plenty of company, if I don't miss my reckoning; but keep up courage—things might be worse."
We were the last to go on deck this day, but the news we brought down with us started a great lot of talking. All showed interest but Craig, who sat there in his usual position, with his forehead on his knees. But a great change in our life was destined for the morrow.