Prince Rupert, the Buccaneer

by Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne

So it was finally decided by a council of all hands to cruise back towards Tortuga, taking of course any gleanings in the shape of laden ships that they might be lucky enough to find on the way, and the poor Secretary's heart sank at the thought. She knew how unpleasant would be the attentions of the nasty hussies of that town to her revered patron, Prince Rupert.

The meeting, however, with another ship of the buccaneers, sailing plunder-wards, put an end to this wretched plan with a pleasant suddenness. She was under the command of a Captain named Watkin, a rude, strong fellow whom the Prince had met before in a humbler capacity. Imprimis, Watkin and his company had themselves just sailed out from Tortuga, and left the place absolutely barren of liquor. This was enough to check Wick's silly fellows at once in their voyage. The newcomers' second argument was even stronger to bring about a conference. They had with them seven casks of rum, the last remainder of the Tortuga merchants' stock, and they invited all the ship's company to come across for a carouse there in mid sea.

A gale was blowing at the time which would have made more cautious seamen snug down their canvas and get preventer tackles rove. But these reckless fellows argued that if they would have put their ship up alongside an enemy, never mind what weather prevailed, why then there was all the more reason why they should not be timid at rasping bulwarks with a friend when politely invited to despoil him of his liquor. So when due salutes had been fired by both sides, and noise enough made to scare the very fishes, the vessels were forced together, and lay there grinding and splintering and in imminent danger of causing one another to founder incontinently.

With shouts and songs Wick's buccaneers scrambled over the leaping bulwarks, making passes with their sheathed hangers, which the others warded off with black-jacks and drinking horns. And indeed so fierce was their preliminary horseplay, and so shrewd their jesting blows, that two or three pairs drew and laid into one another in hard bloody earnest before the rum casks were set abroad and gave them other matters to think about.

At first it seemed that the ships were to be left to their cuddle, and with the sea running as it was, and the heavy wind now filling the canvas and now setting it aback, the pair would not have been very long in knocking one another into their primitive staves. But Wick had some shreds of prudence left, and when the Secretary, desperately fearful for her dear patron's life, implored him to take some steps so that they should not all be uselessly drowned there together, the fellow with his own knife cut the grapples that held the ships to their deadly embrace, and made some of the buccaneers pass his own vessel astern at the end of a stout hawser. She rode there dizzily enough and with much jolting and creaking of fabric, but for the time she was beyond doing further damage, and moderately safe from receiving it; and meanwhile the crowd of buccaneers on the deck swigged at the rum, and roared their songs, and laughed and swore at the water which came swilling about their knees when the vessel in her rollings shipped a sea.

It says something for the recklessness of these rude men and their love for carousal that they could have taken part in such a scene. They were in the midst of hostile seas, with no resources but their own for reliance; a gale was blowing that might well have sent timid folk to their prayers; neither crew had (as it turned out) above four days' food between them and starvation, and yet they held as little dread of the consequences, and put as much heart into the rum-drinking, the dicing, the bawling of choruses, the firing of salutes, and the other ridiculous pranks of a debauch, as though they had been reeling about the wine-shops of Tortuga, or toping in the dinner-chamber of Monsieur D'Ogeron. Night fell, and the wind grew noisier (as is its custom with the dark) and the run of the sea became more dreadful; but none of these things taught them sobriety. Indeed when they had lit the ship with her battle-lanterns, they swore the deck was as good as a ballroom, and set to dancing and capering about, whilst the water which she took over her sides swirled and eddied about their waists.

Only one item in the whole of that horrid night's array of terrors quelled these buccaneers even into a moment's sobriety. A cry, a startled cry, went up that there was a mermaid swimming close abeam, and the song snapped off in the middle of a bar, and the rum cup halted in mid-air. Some crossed themselves, some dropped on their knees and fumbled at a prayer, and a few pious spirits, less drunk than the rest, trolled out a quavering psalm as the best safeguard which occurred to them. There is no doubt but what the courage of all of them was woefully shook, and the secretary, though indeed she could see no mermaid, owing to the blackness of the night, will ingeniously confess to being at one with them in their tremours.

But Prince Rupert, with his accustomed bravery, rallied the ships' companies into steadiness again. He urged them to pass up powder from the magazine, and get shot from the racks round the hatches, and stand by the guns. And when Captain Wick and the other buccaneer commander chided him, he admitted plainly that he had never heard of a mermaid being shot, but at the same time professed his personal willingness to loose off a culverin or a saker at one if she should come within range. "It's my poor opinion, gentlemen," said he, "that the creatures have never been killed because no one as yet had the impudence to shoot at them. There must be a beginning to all things, and I am quite ready to take the risk of this matter on my own proper shoulders, if indeed I could see the mark. But to tell the truth I have seen no mermaid, and it's my belief there is none."

"They sighted her out yonder, abeam," said Wick.

"So I heard. But my eyes seem of but indifferent quality, messieurs. I've looked, but be split if I can see her. Mind, I offer no cause for quarrel: I do not say she has not been sighted: I merely say that my own eyes—and I've searched with some scientific curiosity—have not been fortunate enough to make her out. And what's more, I'm looking now and still can see nothing but shadows and water."