Prince Rupert, the Buccaneer

by Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne

Word had been given, and they were careful to drop no sound—treading with niceness, and never speaking even in a whisper—since the success of their endeavour depended all upon their presence being unknown till the time came. And so the whole train of them wound through the tree aisles of the forests like some monstrous bristling serpent, whereof every joint was a different hue and shape.

Their march was not a long one, though exhausting by reason of the heat, and the quags they had to traverse, and thickets of barbed thorn which lay in the path and warred most unkindly with the fripperies of their clothes. Still, when they came to the crown of the bay where the fishery was carried on, they were none of them sorry (as even the hardened Watkin owned) to lie for a while in the rim of the undergrowth, and there await fitting season for the attack.

The bay before them was busy with life. Lying each at her anchor were two-and-thirty brigantines, from whose sides the blackamoor divers were constantly beat down into the water, to be drawn up again half-burst a quarter of an hour later with a netful of the rare oysters slung around their gleaming bodies. In the middle of the flock of brigantines were the two great armed carracks, bristling with men at practice on their weapons; but of the two fifty-oared galleys there was no sign, for (as was learned afterwards) they had been sent away, and their soldier crews retained to strengthen the fighting forces of the carracks.

There were two thousand men in these vessels in the bay, all trained to arms, and with every advantage of position; and surely nothing was heard more preposterous than this idea of attacking them with such a trifling handful. But no trace of anything else but pleasure showed on the faces of the buccaneers; the Prince was smiling, as, indeed, was always his habit before an onfall; and Master Laughan, though inwardly a prey to the most horrid fears, strove bravely to keep a good colour, and to seem pleased like the rest.

Presently, too, the tedium of the waiting was relieved. From round the farther horn of the bay the pink came sailing in under a cloud of canvas, and began discharging her cannon at the outermost of the brigantines. Instantly the whole scene bubbled with disorder. Drums beat to quarters, and trumpets rang out defiances. The guardship vaingloriously made a discharge of her great pieces on both broadsides (though the pink was far out of any range), and then sent her top-slaves aloft to set canvas. From their lair those on shore could hear the clacking of her capstan as she heaved in cable to get her anchor. And then, after some men had run out on her towering bowsprit to loose the sprit-sail, they canted her head with that, and sent her clumsily surging off to seaward, pluming her as she ran, and never ceasing the useless cannonade.

But the handful of buccaneers in the pink, recking little of the noise and bustle, sailed gallantly in, and ran aboard the outermost of the brigantines. This was going beyond their orders, for Prince Rupert had commanded that they were only to show themselves in the offing so as to draw pursuit, and then sail out again. But it was easy to see what was compelling them. They drove the crew over-side, and then threw of food and water all the brigantine contained on to their own decks, and, casting off their grapples, sailed away again. They were half mad with starvation and thirst, and they risked capture and the wrecking of the enterprise to satisfy their intolerable cravings.

By this time the great war-carrack had drawn near, and her shot was falling merrily about the fabric of the pink, though the aim for the most part was ill enough. But once the pink was in charge of her canvas again, the handful of buccaneers left the Spanish prisoners to attend to her sailing, and after a drink and a bite apiece, took up their hand guns, and with deliberate aim brought down a man on the carrack for every shot, so continuing till they drew out of range.

The carrack was a dull sailer, much time having passed since her last careen, and her bottom being in consequence a very garden of trailing weeds and barnacles. The pink, thanks to recent attention, had, in sea phrase, the heels of her. But the carrack did not desist from the chase, lumbering along in the wake of the smaller vessel, blazing off her futile artillery, wallowing with helpless wrath. And so the pair of them passed out of sight round the western horn of the bay. The sun was just upon its setting, and they sailed as coal-black ships with coal-black spars and cordage, through a sea and an air of blood—fit emblems, as it seemed to Master Laughan, of the desperate work which was shortly to befall.

Night came suddenly, like the shutting down of a box, there being no such thing as twilight known in these latitudes; and amongst the forest trees of the shore there arose a thin blue film of mist, which thickened as the night grew, and spread out over the bay, and swallowed the shipping away from sight. But the ambush lay still in its lair, for no attack was to be made till midnight passed, and those on the shipping were locked in their deepest slumber.

Prince Rupert and the buccaneers were in high feather. Their scheme had succeeded with exactness. The pink had drawn away the war-carrack, and there remained only a bare fifteen hundred Spaniards to oppose to their lusty score and a half. To hear them, one might have supposed they were going to a wedding, where all was frolic and gaiety; and yet in all the annals of men it would be hard to find any scheme more desperate than that which lay before them. For their proposal was this: to swim out and seize the nearest brigantine; with her to capture the store-carrack; and then to take the great ship to sea, and so to their rendezvous with the pink. Heard any man ever such harebrained recklessness?