Leonard Lindsay ;

by Angus B. Reach

But just as the yard swung round, the captain of the sloop made but one leap down into his cabin, the sky-light of which was open, and directly re-appeared, carrying in his hand a small metal box or casket. He had not taken a step upon the deck, when I heard the report of a carabine from our ship, and the Spaniard leaped three feet into the air, and fell in a heap upon the deck, above his burden.

‘That is the despatch box,’ quoth old Ward. ‘He meant to fling it into the sea, but Tommy Nixon was too sharp for him.’

Just then Le Chiffon Rouge hailed in good Spanish that if any one of the crew of the sloop dared to meddle with the box, he would hang every one of them up to the peak of their own vessel. At that the Spanish sailors hastily retired in a body to the bows of the sloop, and our stern boat being manned, was lowered dexterously into the sea, a man standing at bow and stern to unhook the tackles as she touched the water. Nixon had the command of the boat, and pulled right aboard the sloop, the crew offering no resistance. The first thing he did when he got on deck was to wrench the despatch box from the grasp of the Spanish captain, who had been shot through the body, and was dying fast. The poor fellow lay in his blood upon the deck, coughing from time to time, and sputtering the thick gore from his mouth. Meantime, Nixon had two of the Spanish sailors brought aft to him, and after examining them, by means of one of his boat’s crew, who spoke a little bad Spanish, he hailed that the despatch box was all safe, and contained advices from St. Juan, in Porto Rico, to Truxillo, under Cape Honduras, and that he would presently search the cabin for further information. Meantime another boat had been got into the water, and I was ordered to form one of the crew. Jerry himself was in the stern-sheets, and presently we all leaped on board the Spaniard. The first thing the mate asked for was the despatch box. It was a very stout casket of lead and iron, but by means of a heavy hammer and a marline-spike, which he brought with him, Jerry very soon wrenched open the lid, and we, who were crowding about him, soon saw a good packet of letters, and despatches of different lengths, tied for the most part carefully with silk, and bearing huge seals with manifold devices.

Jerry straightway sat him down upon the deck, and while the rest looked anxiously on, began with great coolness to peruse the documents one by one. They seemed to be but of little interest, for as he read, his brows darkened, and he crumpled up letter after letter, and flung them overboard, where they were soon floating, like so many white birds between the sloop and the ship. At length he opened a paper, sealed with black and red wax, which he had no sooner seen than he started up, crying, ‘Ha, this will do, even though there be no other!’ And then stuffing the letters he had not read back into the box, which he gave me to carry, he asked, in a sudden fierce tone, of one of the captured Spaniards, whether there was an axe in the ship? The man shrunk back from the question.

‘Why, you fool,’ continued the mate, in broken Spanish, ‘I am not going to chop off thy head with it; but I tell thee what, if the axe be not forthcoming speedily, I may find means of making thee a head shorter without it.’

So the weapon was duly produced.

‘Now, Benjamin Mackett,’ says Jerry, addressing one of the first boat’s crew, ‘I heard you boast the other night how speedily you could fell a tree in Virginia. Take the axe, and prove thy words on the mast of this sloop.’

At this the Spaniards, who guessed by the gestures which passed what was to be done, set up very dismal lamentations, and began to conjure us, by all the saints, to leave them the means of getting to land.

‘You may get to land,’ replied Jerry, ‘very well under a jury-mast, but I intend that you shall be some time about it, or we shall have a score of pestilent armadilloes out swarming about our ears.’

In the meantime Mackett, who was a sturdy fellow as might be, first applied the axe to the standing rigging, and in a very short space the shrouds and stays, cut away from their fastenings at the bulwarks, collapsed, as it were, round the mast, which, being thus deprived of its supports, began to sway and work with the rolling of the ship, creaking and cracking in its step. Then Mackett, flinging aside his doublet, laid the broad bright axe to the wood with good will. The white chips glanced about the deck, and in a few moments a gash was cut so deeply into the mast that I expected to see it snap short at every roll.