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

by G. A. Henty

"Yes, sir, I sent Lieutenant Boldero and fourteen marines on board; he had lost six either killed or seriously wounded in the attack here. I own that I had hardly calculated upon the brigantine getting alongside the schooner. I thought that when we had smashed up her boats, which I made certain we should do, she would be so completely at our mercy that, being becalmed, she would haul down her flag; but she had sufficient way on her to take her alongside the schooner, and her captain put her there so cleverly that I could not fire at her except through the schooner. I saw at once that the whole position was changed, for if he had captured the schooner he might have put all his men into the boats and made a dash for shore; and as I had so few men fit for work it would have been awkward, though with the aid of the blacks I have no doubt I should have driven them off."

"Then I suppose your discharge of grape did not do him very much harm?"

"Not so much as it ought to have done, sir. You see the first two guns we fired destroyed his boats. The other guns were all too weakly handled to be trained on the pirate as he forged ahead, and as far as I could see not one of them did any serious execution among his crew. Yesterday I told off four negroes to each gun, and kept them at work all day learning how to train them under the direction of the sailors. If I had thought of that before we should have swept his decks with such effect that when she got alongside the schooner Mr. Glover's party would have had easy work of it."

"You could hardly think of everything, Mr. Playford, and you certainly did right in sending the marines off to the schooner directly you had news that this brigantine was entering the inlet. No doubt if you had wished to sink her it would have been better to have kept them on shore to help work the guns, but as she is a valuable prize, and we wanted her badly to help carry away the slaves, you were quite right not to try to damage her. You say she is half full of plunder?"

"Yes, sir, and there were nearly eight hundred pounds in money and thirty-four watches and some jewellery found in the captain's cabin."

"She is a valuable capture, and I should think the admiral would buy her into the service. She is just the sort of craft that we want. The schooner would be too small to tackle one of these heavily-armed pirates with their crowds of men. So your slaves fought well?"

"That they did, sir. If it had been daylight I doubt whether any of the whites who led the attack would have escaped. Of course they had no particular animosity against the negroes, but I believe that they would have followed the whites and mulattoes half across the island."

"Well, do you think that the two craft will carry all the slaves?"

"Hardly, sir; the schooner can stow a hundred and fifty. Of course it will be close work, but there will be room for that number to lie down, and with the hatches both open they will be all right. By rearranging the cargo a bit, two hundred could sleep in the hold of the brigantine. That would still leave rather over one hundred and fifty."

"Well, we must give up part of the hold of the frigate to them," the captain said, "there is no help for it. There are about that number of women and children, are there not?"