A Middy in Command: A Tale of the Slave Squadron

by Harry Collingwood

For a few seconds after the close of the man’s harrowing account there was a dead silence among us. Then the general, wiping the perspiration from his face, turned to me and said:

“Grenvile, my friend, this is a situation for you to grapple with, and a very difficult situation it is, I confess. For, on the one hand, those unhappy men must be rescued at all hazards, while, on the other, it is equally imperative that the ship and those in her should be protected from a possible, not to say very probable, attack by the savages. Now, what is to be done? Of course you will understand that I am ready to play any part that you may assign to me, but I may be permitted to suggest that I should probably be more useful in leading the shore expedition than in any other way.”

“Thank you, general. Yes, no doubt you are right, but it is a very difficult situation, as you say, and I must have a moment or two to think it out.”

Then, turning to the five horrified seamen who had returned in the longboat, I ordered them to go forward and get the cook to give them something to eat and drink, for I should be in need of the services of all of them sooner or later, while one of them would have to come with me in the boat as a guide.

The five men whom I addressed—all thoughts of mutiny having by this time been most effectually frightened out of their heads—turned and slouched away forward as meekly as lambs; and the moment that they were gone I was surrounded by an excited crowd of passengers, all of whom had come down from the poop to listen to the story of the five returned seamen, and every one of them had some more or less unpractical suggestion to make. It was rather unfortunate that they had all heard what had passed, for the very graphic narrative, told by an eye-witness, of the gruesome happenings of the past night, and the powerful suggestion of what was probably taking place at that moment away yonder in the woods, had so acted upon the vivid imaginations of the women that one or two of them were visibly upon the very verge of hysterics, while all were more or less in a state of mortal terror as to what might be their fate should the natives take it into their heads to attack the ship. For, that the presence of so many white men as they had encountered would suggest to the astute native mind the idea that a ship was somewhere near at hand was so exceedingly likely that it might almost be accepted as a foregone conclusion. But, terrified though the women were, they behaved marvellously well, and quietly retired when I requested them to do so in order that we men might be left free to discuss details together. But, even while the chatter was raging round me at its most excited pitch, my mind was busy upon the details of the only plan that was at all feasible. Our entire available fighting force, counting in the whole of the male passengers, the surgeon, Briggs and his three assistants, Jenkins the steerage passenger, the cook, and the five men who had escaped from the savages, amounted to thirty. It was, of course, quite impossible to form, from the account of the five escaped seamen, anything like an accurate estimate of the numbers of the savages, but I believed I should be quite safe in setting them down at not less than three hundred. There were also the four prisoners; but I reflected that as they had not suffered the harrowing experience of the five escaped men, they would probably be still in much too insubordinate a frame of mind to be of any use, and I therefore determined to leave them where they were for the present. I reckoned, however, that not a man would leave the village, either to attack the ship or for any other purpose, until the gruesome sport upon which they were at that moment engaged had been played out to an end; and I therefore came to the conclusion that I should be quite justified in throwing the balance of strength into the land expedition. I accordingly divided my force into two equal parts, placing Simpson in charge of the ship and entrusting him with her defence, with a small crew composed of the surgeon, the four stewards, the cook, Jenkins the steerage passenger, Messrs Morton, Fielder, Acutt, Boyne, Pearson, and Taylor, and one of my own men named Sharland, whose wounds rendered him useless for arduous land service, although he might be made very useful at a pinch aboard the ship. This left, for the landing expedition, the general, Carter, myself, and seven Sharks, and the five men who had escaped in the longboat. Thus each force consisted of fifteen men. But I considered that the landing force was far the more formidable of the two, since we numbered among us nine trained fighting men; while, in the improbable event of an attack upon the ship, the party left on board her would have the advantage of the deck as a fighting platform, and, if hard pressed, the saloon and deckhouses to which to retreat. I also left them all the muskets and boarding pikes, as well, of course, as their own personal firearms, and the two brass carronades. As for us, the general and I each had a sword, the Sharks carried a cutlass apiece, and every man of us also had a brace of pistols in his belt, and a pocketful of cartridges. But what I most trusted to for the creation of a good, wholesome panic among the savages was a dozen signal rockets which I had found in the ship’s magazine.

Our arrangements being now complete, the general bade a hasty good-bye to his wife and daughter, who bore themselves very bravely upon the occasion, and we all tumbled down over the side into the longboat—into which Briggs had already, with commendable forethought, passed a large basket of provisions for the sustenance of ourselves and such of the mutineers as we might be fortunate enough to rescue. It was nearly two o’clock in the afternoon when we shoved off.

It took us but a few minutes to reach the river entrance, passing through which we presently found ourselves in a broad, lagoon-like expanse of water, some two miles long by about a mile wide, dotted here and there with small, tree-clad islands, some of which might have been as much as ten or twelve acres in extent, while others were mere heaps of mud just large enough to support a clump of half a dozen or so of coconut trees and a tiny thicket of bamboo. The greater part of this lagoon was evidently very shallow, for dotted about here and there were to be seen partially submerged trunks of trees and other débris that appeared to have been swept down into their present position by some bygone flood, and had ultimately grounded on the mud; but there was just sufficient current and wind to reveal a deep-water channel of about two hundred yards wide, running in a fairly straight line through the lagoon toward its most distant extremity. There were numerous objects dotted about the surface of the lagoon, which, at a distance, had all the appearance of floating logs, but which, when we drew near to them, proved to be, in almost every instance, the heads of basking alligators. And before we had been in the river ten minutes we were startled by a huge black bulk breaking water close alongside the boat, which turned out to be a hippopotamus.

“Now, Higgins,” said I, “whereabout is this creek of yours? I see no sign of it thus far.”

“Oh, it’s some way on ahead yet, sir!” answered the man. “Keep her straight up through the deep-water, sir, please. I’ll tell you when we comes in sight of it.”

That the unfortunate mutineers had penetrated some distance into the country soon became evident, for we traversed the entire length of the lagoon and fully a mile of the river after it had narrowed down to about a quarter of a mile in width ere we sighted a break of any kind in the thick entanglement of mangrove trees that lined the margin of the stream. But even this, so Higgins informed us, was not the creek of which we were in search, and which he believed lay nearly a mile farther up the stream. Of the one actually in sight he denied any knowledge, and I soon became convinced that it had escaped the notice of the mutineers.