A Middy in Command: A Tale of the Slave Squadron

by Harry Collingwood

Stranded!

What were Williams’s ultimate intentions toward me I found it quite impossible to guess, for, beyond the fact that he kept me carefully locked up in the cabin that he had assigned to me, I suffered no further violence at his hands, a steward bringing me an ample supply of food when the meal hours came round. I tried to ascertain from this fellow how my men were faring in the forecastle; but my attempt to question him caused him so much distress and terror that, at his earnest request, I forebore to press my enquiries. And as soon as the man had taken away the empty plates and dishes that had contained my dinner, I stretched myself out on the very inviting-looking bed that had been made up in the bunk, and, being exceedingly tired, soon fell asleep. I slept all night, and did not awake until the steward entered next morning with my breakfast.

I rather expected that, after a night’s calm consideration of his exploit, Williams would have come to the conclusion that discretion was the better part of valour, and would have taken some steps toward the patching up of a truce; but he did not, and I spent the whole of that day also locked up in the cabin, and seeing no soul but the steward who brought my meals to me.

It was somewhat late that night when I turned in, as I had slept well all through the previous night and did not feel tired; and even when I had bestowed myself for the night I did not get to sleep for some time, for I felt that we must by this time be drawing close in to the coast; and supposing we should fall in with a man-o’-war, how was I to communicate with her if this man was going to keep me cooped up down below? True, I might succeed in attracting the attention of those on board such a ship by waving my handkerchief out of my cabin port if we happened to pass her closely enough for such a signal to be seen, and if she happened also to be on the starboard side, which was the side on which my berth was situated; but I was very strongly of opinion that, after what had happened, Williams would take especial care to give an exceedingly wide berth to any men-o’-war that he might happen to sight.

At length, however, I fell into a somewhat restless sleep, from which I was awakened some time later by sounds of confusion on deck—the shouting of orders, the trampling of feet, the violent casting of ropes upon the deck, the flapping of loose canvas in the wind, the creaking of yards, and the various other sounds that usually follow upon the happening of anything amiss on board a ship; and at the same time I became conscious of something unusual in the “feel” of the ship. For a moment I was puzzled to decide what it was; but by the time that I had jumped out of my berth and was broad awake I knew what had happened. The ship was ashore! Yet she must have taken the ground very easily, for I had been conscious of no shock; and even as I stood there I was unable to detect the least motion of the hull. She was as firmly fixed, apparently, and as steady, as though she had been lying in a dry dock.

I went to the side and put my face to the open porthole. I saw that the night was clear, and that the sky overhead was brilliant with stars; and by twisting myself in such a way as to get a raking view forward I fancied I could see in the distance something having the appearance of a low, tree-clad shore. I also heard the heavy thunder of distant surf; but alongside the ship the water was quite still and silent, save for a soft, seething sound as of water gently swelling and receding upon a sheltered beach.

I seated myself upon the sofa locker, and strove to recall mentally the features of the several rivers that we had visited, but could fit none of them to the dimly-seen surroundings that were visible from the port out of which I had looked. The one thing which was certain was that we were in perfectly smooth water, and the entire absence of shock with which the ship had taken the ground was an indication that she was certainly in no immediate danger; but beyond that the situation was puzzling in the extreme. The snug and sheltered position of the ship pointed strongly to the assumption that we had blundered into some river in the darkness; yet when I again looked out through the port the little that I was able to see was suggestive of beach rather than river, and that we were not very far from a beach was evidenced by the loud, unbroken roar of the surf. Then there was the puzzling question: How did we get where we were? What were the look-outs doing? What was everybody doing that no one saw the land or heard the roar of the surf in time to avoid running the ship ashore?

As I continued to stare abstractedly out through the port it struck me that the various objects within sight were growing more clearly visible, and presently I felt convinced that the dawn was approaching. And at the same moment I became aware that a broad dark shadow that lay some fifty yards from the ship’s starboard side, and which had been puzzling me greatly, was a sandbank of very considerable extent, so considerable, indeed, that, for the moment, I could not make out where it terminated. Meanwhile the hubbub on deck gradually ceased, and I surmised that the canvas had been taken in.

The transition from the first pallor of dawn to full daylight is very rapid in those low latitudes, and within ten minutes of the first faint heralding of day a level shaft of sunlight shot athwart the scene, which became in a moment transfigured, and all that had before been vague and illusory stood frankly revealed to the eye. The sandbank now showed as an isolated patch about two hundred yards wide and perhaps half a mile long, with what looked like a by-wash channel of about one hundred yards wide flowing between it and the mainland, the latter being a sandy beach backed by sand dunes clothed with a rank creeper-like vegetation, and a few stunted tree tops showing behind them. As the ship then lay with her head pointing toward the south-east, I was able, with some effort, to get a glimpse of a mile or two of the shore; and now that daylight had come I could see the surf breaking heavily all along it, and also upon the seaward side of the sandbank upon which we appeared to have grounded.

Feeling quite reassured as to the safety of the ship, I sat down on the sofa locker and endeavoured, by recalling the courses steered and the distances run since we had been picked up, to identify the particular spot on the coast where we now were. But it was no use; my memory of the charts was not clear enough, and I had to give up the task. But I felt convinced that we were somewhere in the Gulf of Guinea.