A Roving Commission; Or, Through the Black Insurrection at Hayti

by G. A. Henty

Mr. Turnbull returned in twenty minutes.

"It is an awful sight," he said. "The captain and the two senior lieutenants are killed, and it was the third lieutenant who ordered the flag to be lowered. Her name is the Spartane. She carried a crew of three hundred men, of whom fifty were on board her prizes. She has lost ninety killed, and there are nearly as many more wounded, of whom at least half are hit with grape, and I fancy few of them will recover; the others are splinter wounds, some of them very bad. There are two surgeons at work. I told them that ours would come to their assistance as soon as he had done with our own wounded."

The third lieutenant and three midshipmen, who were the sole survivors of the officers of the Spartane, soon came on board.

"Gentlemen," Nat said, "I am sorry for your misfortune, but assuredly you have nothing to reproach yourselves with. You did all that brave men could do, and did not lower your flag until further resistance would have been a crime against humanity."

The officers bowed; they were too much depressed to reply. Their mortification was great at being overpowered by a vessel so much inferior in strength to their own, and the feeling was increased now by seeing that their conqueror was a lad no older than the senior of the midshipmen. Turnbull's cabin was at once allotted to the lieutenant, and a large spare cabin to the midshipmen. Leaving Lippincott in charge, with ten men, Nat went with Turnbull and the doctor on board the frigate, and the boat went back to fetch the rest of the crew. The merchantmen had been signalled to send as many men as they could spare on board the frigate, and not until these arrived did Nat feel comfortable. Of his own crew three had been killed and ten wounded; three of these were fit for duty, and formed part of Lippincott's party, and the twenty he had with him seemed lost on board the frigate. Although Turnbull had had hawsers coiled over the hatches, the thought that there were nearly a hundred prisoners there, and that there were enough comparatively slightly wounded to overpower the two men placed as sentries over each hatchway, was a very unpleasant one. The arrival, however, of thirty of the merchant sailors, armed to the teeth, altered the position of affairs.

The first duty was to clear the decks of the dead. These were hastily sewn up in their own hammocks, with a couple of round shot at their feet, and then launched overboard. Those of the wounded able to walk were then mustered, and one of the French surgeons bandaged all the less serious wounds. After being supplied with a drink of wine and water, they were taken below, and placed with their companions in the hold. Then the wreck of the mizzen was cut away, and the frigate was taken in tow by the Agile, her own sails being left standing to relieve the strain on the hawsers. The two merchantmen were signalled to reduce sail, and to follow, and on no account to lose sight of the stern light of the frigate after it became dusk. Nat returned, with four of his crew, to the Agile, and four days later towed the Spartane into the anchorage off Bridgetown, the chief port of Barbados, the two West Indiamen following. The Isis, a fine fifty-gun frigate, was lying there. She had arrived on the previous day, having been despatched with the news of the outbreak of war. As her captain was evidently the senior officer on the station, Nat was rowed on board.

"Are you the officer in command of that brigantine?" the captain asked in surprise.

"Yes, sir; my name is Glover."

"Well, Lieutenant Glover, what part did your ship bear in the fight with that Frenchman? I see by her sails that she was engaged. Whom had you with you?"

"We were alone, sir."