With Wellington in Spain: A Story of the Peninsula

by F. S. Brereton

Tom scrambled into the boat with the crew, and watched as it was lowered away. He was filled with amazement, first that a boat of such proportions as the cutter could support so many men when hung to her davits, and then that she could be safely lowered with such a load to the water. Meanwhile he noticed the high sides of the frigate, the officer up on the quarterdeck, and the men of the watch away aloft in the rigging. The frigate lay inert, her sails flapping, while, almost a quarter of a mile away now, the French ship lay in the water, slowly heaving up and down, with a peculiar and significant twist in one of her masts.

"Struck by our broadsides as we passed and repassed," Mr. Riley told him as they were lowered away, for the officer happened to be close to our hero. "She had bad luck. It's rare that one brings down a mast at the first discharge, and that of course proved her undoing; the loss of the second makes her useless for fighting purposes. This has been a gallant action and will give us no end of credit. Ah, there goes a recall gun!"

A spout of flame and smoke belched from the frigate a little above the heads of the men in the cutter, for the latter had now reached the water, and turning his head Tom watched the ball discharged strike the sea some two hundred yards ahead of the small sloop that had been sailing in company of the battleship, and which had now changed her course.

"She'll not disobey the order," reflected Mr. Riley. "Once we are aboard the enemy the frigate could sink that vessel within ten minutes. There go her sails aback; she'll swing round and come in like a docile dog. Now, lad, clamber aboard when we reach the ship; you come as one of my escort."

"You're wounded, sir," said Tom. "Let me fasten that sling for you again; it's too long, and doesn't support the arm."

He undid the knot with the help of fingers and teeth and then rearranged the sling. By the time he had finished they were under the counter of the French battleship, to which a man at the stern and bows of the cutter clung with a boathook. At once a midshipman sprang at a dangling rope ladder and went swarming up with the agility of a monkey, two of the crew following. Tom picked up a coil of rope and without a question made a noose fast round the waist of the officer who had already befriended him.

"I'll get aboard and help to haul you up, sir," he said. "You'd never manage to clamber up that ladder with one arm wounded."

He waited for no orders, but, springing at the ladder, went scrambling up, the end of the rope secured between his teeth. A minute later Mr. Riley was being hoisted to the deck of the French battleship. Then the commander followed, and after him more of the crew, with two officers.

Tom found himself looking down upon a scene which was almost indescribable; for the ship had been cruelly mauled by the broadsides of the frigate. There were a dozen holes in her deck, where shot had penetrated, while in many places the rails were driven in. A dismounted gun lay in one of the scuppers, with part of her crew crushed beneath it; and from end to end of the ship there were signs of the awful havoc the iron tempest had created. Men lay in all directions and in all postures. The damaged mast swung by the starboard halyards and threatened to fall inboard at any moment, while a huge stretch of crumpled and shot-holed canvas covered one portion of the deck. To add to the scene of ruin, smoke and flames were belching from a hatch towards the stern of the quarterdeck, and some fifty sailors were endeavouring to quench the conflagration with water cast from buckets. Almost opposite the spot where the ladder dangled, and where the victors had come aboard, was a group of officers, and in their centre one seated on a chair, pallid to the lips and obviously wounded. The commander went towards him instantly and took him by the hand.