Idonia: A Romance of Old London

by Arthur Frederick Wallis

"They had best have left it," said my uncle with a sneering laugh, when he saw how things had gone. "A greedy boastful knave as Spurrier is, none will be matched with. I know this Governor well, if this place we be come to be, as I think, Puerto Real. 'Twas his brother I slew, Don Florida. He would inquire after him, like enough, and wherefore he had not returned into Spain, to which Spurrier would answer him astray and then lie to mend it; a paltry bungler as he is! I might have played this hand through, Denis, had I chosen. But being no traitor I would not. Well, let them look to their stakes!"

It may appear a strange thing, but 'tis true, that our old animosity had quite sunk between us and although we used no particular courtesy in our scanted speech, yet my uncle and I nevertheless found (I believe) an equal pleasure in our enforced companionship. In the presence of almost certain death, whether men fear or contemn it, there is in the mere thought of it a compelling quality that directs the mind to it only; and where two minds be thus constrained to the same point, along whatever paths they may have moved, there is of necessity a kind of sympathy betwixt them, and a resolution of their differences in that common attent.

Succeeding upon that firing of the great gun there was an immediate confusion wherein we in our dungeon were wholly forgot. A cannon from the fort answered our challenge a while after, but by its faintness 'twas easy to suppose we had got a good way out of the harbour and thus were free from any present danger from a land attack. But whether there were in the roads gathered any vessels of war that might do us harm upon the sea we could not conjecture, though it appeared not altogether likely, or at the least that they were not at all points prepared upon the sudden to give chase. Our main fear lay in the probability that, the alarm being given, messengers would be dispatched to all points of the coast, with particulars given of the rank and appearance of our ship, in order that, attempting to sail through the Straits into the Mediterranean or to slip away again northward, we should be made to answer for our gunnery salute in such sort as would hardly please us.

But however these considerations affected his two censors in the hold, Captain Spurrier was evidently nothing moved thereby, who warped his ship as it were along the very shore with a most insensate impudency until he had her within the narrow waters about Gibraltar, where a man could have slung a stone upon our decks, so nearly did we venture ourselves into the enemy's power. Nay, a general madness seemed to have grown to possess the whole crew, so disappointed were they of the outcome of their late negotiations and proffers of treachery; and no folly that presented itself to them, but they took it as a drunken man takes water, feverishly. Thus our cannon were continually being shot off, not of offence but for the mere show of bravery it put upon us; and so likewise of defence, there was no order taken nor was any especial guard kept, so far as we could tell who knew not the watches, but yet could distinguish well enough the sounds of cups clinking and of quarrelling and curses. Indeed I doubt whether, at any hour of this our frenzied voyage, had a cock-boat of resolute men put out to intercept us, we should not have been made prize of, before we were aware that opposition was so much as offered.

In the meanwhile we in our chains were, as I say, left undisturbed; and as hour after hour went by the hunger we suffered increased so that I think another day of such absolute privation, and of the burning thirst that went with it, would have ended our business altogether. Yet it was to this incredible affliction we owed our resolution to get free, come what would thereafter.

I must have fallen into some raving speech, that served to make manifest to my uncle the abject condition I was in, for before I knew of it, he had dragged himself over to me, and with his skeleton fingers had loosened the band at my throat and chafed my hands together between his own.

"Oh, let me die," I cried fiercely.

"You are like to," said he, without the least resentment; "but if you will take the advice I shall give, you will either notably increase your chances of it, or else will get what is hardly less to be desired, I mean food."

Too faint to demand what he intended by that, I lay still, careless whether he made his purpose clear or not.

"Seeing that we cannot get off our irons," he went on, "we must eat or die, bound. Now I believe that it is night and most of the crew drunk. If it be so, we shall get food enough and perhaps our freedom too. If it be not so, you shall have your will presently and die; for it is you who must go above, Denis, seeing I cannot do so, that have my ankle broke with this cursed chain."