The King's Own

by Frederick Marryat

“One of the cutters has winded, sir; she’s stretching out for the shore,” cried the master.

“Bravo—that’s decided—and without waiting for orders. Who commands that boat?” inquired Captain M—.

“It’s the first cutter—Mr Stewart, sir.”

The cutter was on shore before the gun could be reloaded and fired a second time. The crew, with the officer at their head, were seen to clamber up the rock! In a minute they returned, and jumping into the boat, pulled off to give their aid to the capture of the vessel.

“He has spiked the gun, I am certain,” observed Captain M—.

Before the cutter could regain her station, the other boats, were summoned by the bugle in the launch, and, with loud cheering, pulled up together to the attack. The booms, which had been rigged out to prevent them from coming alongside, already shot through by the grape from the launch, offered but little resistance to the impetus with which the boats were forced against them; they either broke in two, or sank under water.

“There’s board—Hurrah!” cried all the men who remained in the Aspasia, cheering those who heard them not.

But I must transport the reader to the scene of slaughter; for if he remains on board of the Aspasia, he will distinguish nothing but fire and smoke. Don’t be afraid, ladies, if I take you on board of the schooner—“these our actors are all air, thin air,” raised by the magic pen for your amusement. Come, then, fearlessly, with me, and view the scene of mortal strife. The launch has boarded on the starboard gangway, and it is against her that the crew of the privateer have directed their main efforts.

The boarding nettings cannot be divided, and the men are thrown back wounded or dead, into the boat. The crew of the pinnace are attempting the bows with indifferent success. Some have already fallen a sacrifice to their valour—none have yet succeeded in gaining a footing on deck, while the marines are resisting, with their bayonets, the thrusts of the boarding pikes which are protruded through the ports. Courtenay has not yet boarded in the barge, for, on pulling up on the quarter, he perceived that, on the larboard side of the vessel, the boarding nettings had either been neglected to be properly triced up, or had been cut away by the fire from the boats. He has pushed alongside, to take advantage of the opening, and the two cutters have followed him. They board with little resistance—the enemy are too busy repelling the attacks on the other side—and as his men pour upon the privateer’s deck, the crews of the launch and pinnace, tired with their vain endeavours to divide the nettings, and rendered desperate by their loss, have run up the fore and main rigging above the nettings, and thrown themselves down, cutlass in hand into the mêlée below, careless of the points of the weapons which may meet them in their descent. Now is the struggle for life or death!

Courtenay, who was daring as man could be, but not of a very athletic frame, reclimbed from the main chains of the vessel, into which he had already once fallen, from one of his own seamen having inadvertently made use of his shoulder as a step to assist his own ascent. He was overtaken by Robinson, the coxswain of the cutter, who sprang up with all the ardour and activity of an English sailor who “meant mischief,” and, pleased with the energy of his officer (forgetting, at the moment, the respect due to his rank), called out to him, by the sobriquet with which he had been christened by the men,—“Bravo, Little Bilious! that’s your sort!”