With the King at Oxford: A Tale of the Great Rebellion

by Alfred John Church

"We had, you must know," he said, "but one boat, and that would contain but two parts of the crew. Well, when it appeared this morning that the ship could hardly swim much longer, and there seemed no sign of the weather abating, the captain contrived that the carpenter and I and three more of us should go below, if we might chance to find any of the leaks. And while we were gone, he and the others lowered the boat, which was already fitted and provisioned, and so departed. A villain I knew him to be, but had not thought him capable of such wickedness. But I reckon that he has made a mistake, for all his cunning. I had ten times sooner be here, things being as they are, than in the boat with him."

And indeed the mate was right, for the captain and the rest of the crew were never heard of more.

The next day the sea was as calm as though it were a pond, and the sky without a cloud. I asked the mate whereabouts, in his judgment, we were. "God only knows," he said. "The Captain took the reckoning, and he has the instruments with him, for I cannot find them. But I remember him to have said the day before the storm that we were about four hundred miles from our journey's end. But I reckon that we must now be more than that, the wind for the last day having blown very strongly from the west."

"What then," said I, "would you have us do?"

"I think that we had best sail westward, for, even if we have been driven back two hundred miles or more, the nearest land must still lie in that quarter. We will rig up a jury mast" (for both the ship's masts had been lost in the storm), "and sail as best we may; but I must confess that my great hope is in falling in with some ship that may help us."

But we were not yet past all our troubles. That rascal, whom I have called the "captain," and some of his fellows, having found where the spirits were kept, brake open the place, and helped themselves to the liquor. Inflamed by drinking, they conceived the plan (first hatched, I believe, in the brain of the fellow with whom I had the passage of arms before described) of making themselves masters of the ship and taking to the trade of buccaneers or pirates, between whom, I take it, there is no great distinction. Accordingly they seize the mate in his bed, to which, after I know not how many days' toil and watching, he had betaken himself for a few hours' rest, bring over the remainder of the crew to their side by threats and promises, and clap those of the company whom they had no hope of persuading into the hold again.

I must confess that at this ill turn of fortune I began to despair, but found comfort where I had least expected it. For now the poor parson, of whose doleful countenance I have before written, plays the part of a St. Paul.

"Be of good cheer," says he, "for I am persuaded that He who has helped us so far will not now desert us. I was as downcast as you now are; and God sent you to cheer me up. Let me do the same office now for you, for I have learnt that to despair is nothing less than a sin against God."

And sure enough the good man was in the right. We had not been in our prison more than three or four hours when we overheard a loud noise as of talking and tramping of feet overhead, and not long after, to our great joy, saw the hatches thrown open, and were released from our duress. What had happened may be briefly told.

The mutineers had scarce made themselves masters of the ship when there hove in sight a strange sail, which, by great good fortune, or, I should rather say, by God's kind providence, was a Dutch man-of-war. She was heading right for us, and the villains, having but a poor pretence of mast and sail, had no chance of escape. The Dutchman seeing a vessel in distress, as was evident from our appearance, sends one of his officers on board. The villains speak him fair, and tell a plausible tale, which, but for the carpenter, might have deceived him. But the carpenter, who had given in to the mutineers only for fear of his life, whispers in the officer's ear that he had best inquire further. And so the whole truth comes out.