How to make a day’s work easy—Ralph avoideth trouble by anticipating land, but is anticipated by the enemy—A chapter altogether of chasing, which it is hoped will pleasantly chase away the reader’s ennui.
We had now the usual indications of approaching the land. In fact, I had made it, by my reckoning, a fortnight before. The non-nautical reader must understand, that the young gentlemen are required to send into the captain daily, a day’s work, that is, an abstract of the course of the ship for the last twenty-four hours, the distance run, and her whereabouts exactly.
Now, with that failing that never left me through life, of feeling no interest where there was no difficulty to overcome, after I had fully conquered all the various methods of making this calculation, to make it all became a great bore. So I clapped on more steam, and giving the ship more way, and allowing every day for forty or fifty miles, of westerly currents, I, by my account, ran the Eos high and dry upon the Island of Barbadoes, three good weeks before we made the land. Thus, I had the satisfaction of looking on with placid indolence, whilst my messmates were furiously handling their Gunter’s scales, and straining their eyes over the small printed figures in the distance and departure columns of John Hamilton Moore, of blessed (cursed?) memory, in a cabin over 90 degrees Fahrenheit, that was melting at the same time the youthful navigator, and the one miserable purser’s dip that tormented rather than enlightened him with its flickering yellow flame.
As we neared the island, greater precautions were taken to preserve the convoy. We sailed in more compact order, and scarcely progressed at all during the night. The whippers-in were on the alert, for it was well known that this part of the Atlantic was infested with numerous small French men-of-war, and some privateer schooners.
That morning at length arrived, when it was debated strongly whether the faint discoloration that broke the line of the western horizon as seen from the mast-head, were land or not. As daylight became more decided, so did the state of our convoy. The wolves were hovering round the sheep. Well down to the southward there was a large square-rigged, three-masted vessel, fraternising with one of our finest West Indiamen. The stranger looked tall, grim, and dark, with his courses up, but his top-gallant sails and royals set. The white sails of the merchant vessel, and she was under a press of sail, were flying in all directions; she was hove-to, with her studding-sails set, and many of her tacks and sheets were flapping to the wind. Both vessels were hull down from the deck, and we well understood what was going forward. Right astern, and directly in the wind’s eye of us, was a flat, broad schooner running before the wind, with nothing set but her fore stay-sail. As she lifted to the sea, at the edge of the horizon, her strength of beam was so great, and her bulwarks so little above the water, that she seemed to make way broadside on, rather than to sail in the usual position. There was no vessel particularly near her. Those of the mercantile navy that most enjoyed her propinquity did not seem, by the press of sail that they were carrying, to think the situation very enviable. However, the Falcon, one of our men-of-war brigs, was between this schooner and all the convoy, with the signal flying, “May I chase?”
But this was not all; a whitish haze cleared up; to the northward there was a spanking felucca, with her long lanteen sails brailed up, and sweeping about in the very centre of a knot of dull sailing merchant vessels, four of which, by their altered courses, had evidently been taken possession of. Reversing the good old adage, first come first served, we turned our attention to the last appearance. We made the signal to the other man-of-war brig, the Curlew, to chase and capture the felucca, she not being more than two miles distant from her.
No sooner did the convoy generally begin to find out how matters stood, than like a parcel of fussy and frightened old women, they began to pop, pop, pop, firing away their one and two-pounders in all directions, and those farthest from the scene of action serving their guns the quickest, and firing the oftenest. It seemed to them of but little consequence, so long as the guns were fired, where the shot fell. Now this was a great nuisance, as it prevented, by the smoke it raised, our signals from being distinguished, even if these belligerents in a a small way, had not been so occupied by these demonstrations of their valour from attending to them. Indeed, the volumes of smoke the popping created, became very considerable. I do not now know if there be any convoy signal in the merchant code equivalent to “cease firing.” If there were at that time, I am sure it was displayed, but displayed or not, the hubbub was on the increase. We were at last compelled to fire shot over these pugnacious tubs to quiet them, and there was thus acted the singular spectacle of three vessels capturing the convoy, whilst the artillery of its principal protector appeared to be incessantly playing upon it.
Having our attention so much divided, there was a great deal of activity and bustle, though no confusion on our decks. We were hoisting out the boats to make the recaptures, and dividing the marines into parties to go in each. In the midst of all this hurry, when Mr Farmer, our gallant first-lieutenant, was much heated, a droll circumstance occurred, the consequence of the indiscriminate firing of the convoy. A boat pulled alongside, and a little swab-man, with his face all fire, and in an awfully sinful passion, jumped on the quarter-deck, with something rolled up in a silk handkerchief. He was so irritated that whilst he followed the first-lieutenant about for two or three minutes, he could not articulate.
“Out of my way, man. Mr Burn, see that all the small arms are ready, and handed down into the boat in good order. Out of my way, man—what the devil do you want? Muster the pinnace’s crew on the starboard gangway—move all these lubberly marines, Mr Silva, if that stupid fool don’t cease firing, send a shot right into him. Man, man, what do you want—why don’t you speak?”
“There, sir,” at last stammered out the little angry master of a brig, unfolding his handkerchief, and exhibiting a two-pound shot in a most filthy condition, “What—what do you think of that, sir. Slap on board of me, from the Lady Jane, sir—through, clean through my bulwarks into the cook’s slush-tub. There’s murder and piracy for you on the high seas—my slush-tub, sir—my bulwarks, sir.”