“D’ye think they’ll be such fools as to let us do that, sir?” caustically demanded the gunner, chewing hard upon his quid, in his evident perplexity.
“N–o,” I returned dubiously; “I don’t suppose they will—if they can help it. But that is our only chance, all the same, and we must bend all our energies to accomplish it. And there is no particular reason why we should not, so far as I can see, unless of course we are unfortunate enough to have a spar or two knocked away. Good shooting is what is going to decide this fight, Henderson; and we must hope that ours will be better than theirs.”
“Ay,” agreed the gunner, “there’s no harm in hopin’ that; but—” He shook his head, and spat vigorously over the side by way of expressing the doubts that were worrying him.
As it turned out, his doubts and apprehensions were by no means without foundation, for when our antagonist arrived within range of her long 32—I was not mistaken as to that matter—she hauled her wind, and opened fire upon us with it, making very excellent practice, too; although it was not until she had fired six shots at us that any of them actually came near enough to do us any damage, and then the shot only passed through our foresail, making a neat hole in the canvas, but doing no further mischief. Her previous attempts, however, had come close enough to us to prove that she had at least one excellent gunner on board her, for every one of the shot fell within two or three fathoms of us at the utmost; and when a man shoots so well at long range he is bound to score a few hits, sooner or later. And this was precisely what Henderson and I most feared; for so long as the pirates chose to play the game of long bowls they might blaze away at us at their leisure, and in perfect safety, their 32-pound shot flying over and over us at a distance far beyond the range of our 9-pounders.
What we now had to do was to shorten the distance between ourselves and our antagonist as quickly as possible, and bring her within reach of our guns before we sustained any very serious damage from her long gun, if fortune would so far favour us; and I thought that possibly I might here be able to make one of the Wasp’s peculiarities very useful. This peculiarity consisted in the fact—which we had by this time had many opportunities of observing—that, in smooth water, such as then prevailed, the little vessel would, if properly handled, shoot quite an extraordinary distance to windward while in stays; and I had it in my mind to utilise this peculiarity now by making a series of very short boards, getting good way upon her, and then easing her helm very gently down, allowing her to shoot the maximum possible distance to windward every time that we hove about. I mentioned the idea to Henderson, but he had not very much faith in it; his idea being that of most old salts, that the best way to work to windward was to break tacks as seldom as possible; he agreed, however, that it might perhaps be worth while to make the experiment and see what the result would be. We accordingly put my plan into practice, with such good effect that half-an-hour later we had actually succeeded in working up near enough to the pirate to bring her within range of our own guns. But meanwhile she had been most assiduously pegging away at us, in the first instance with her long gun only, but latterly with her 12-pounders—of which she mounted seven in each battery—as well, and we had by no means come off scathless, having been hulled three times, and losing two men killed and five wounded before a single shot of ours had reached her, though our spars had thus far escaped, and our rigging had not suffered to any very serious extent.
With our arrival within range of our own guns, however, matters began to be a little more lively; we were fortunate enough to have some half-a-dozen very excellent shots among us, and these men now began to make play, each man being evidently anxious to win for himself the proud distinction of being the champion shot of the ship, with the result that daylight began to show here and there through the pirate schooner’s canvas, severed ropes streamed out from the spars, and the splinters began to fly on board her. Then a particularly lucky shot struck her main-masthead fair, just above the nip of her lower rigging, and the next moment down came her main-topmast, with its huge gaff-topsail, while the peak of her mainsail drooped until the gaff hung almost up and down.
“Hurrah, lads!” I cried exultantly; “now we have her. See how she pays off! She is bound to come to leeward now; she cannot help herself. Down helm, Mr Willoughby, and let her go round. Stand by to give her our starboard broadside as we cross her bows. Slap it right into the eyes of her— Phew! that’s a nasty one,” as a shot from her 32-pounder came along, smashing right through both our quarter-boats, cutting their keels clean in half, tearing a great gap in the bottom planking of each, filling the air in the immediate neighbourhood with splinters, and whizzing so close past my head that the wind of it whipped my hat off and overboard.
The two craft were now not more than a short half-mile distant, and fast approaching each other, the pirate’s loss of after-sail causing her to fall broad off and come foaming down toward us, despite obvious efforts to keep her to the wind, while we on our side were making the most desperate efforts to get to windward and thus secure the advantage of the weather-gage, which, in a sea-fight, often means so much. Conned by Willoughby, who was acting master, the lively little Wasp swept round into the wind, fore-reaching magnificently in stays, and then paying smartly off on the starboard tack; and as she did so our three starboard pop-guns barked out, one after the other, and I saw the splinters fly white as the shot struck, close together, about half-way between her starboard hawse-pipe and her cathead, just at the precise moment when she was dead end-on to us. The shot must have raked her from end to end, and quite a small uproar of yells and shrieks that came floating down from her to us on the wings of the freshening breeze told us that they had wrought a very fair amount of execution on board her. But it was evident that her captain knew his business, for the next moment several hands sprang into her fore-rigging; her topsail, topgallantsail and royal were clewed up and furled with exemplary celerity; her jib was hauled down and stowed, and she was again brought to the wind, while half-a-dozen hands swarmed aloft to her mainmast-head to clear away the wreck of her topmast and to pass strops round the shattered stump, to hook the peak-halliard blocks to, and enable them to sway away the peak of the mainsail again. And all the while that this was doing they maintained their fire upon us with the most ferocious energy, and alas! with very deplorable results to the little Wasp and her crew, for we were by this time so close to each other that it was practically impossible for either side to miss; and now it was that her superior weight of metal began to tell.
Our casualties were by this time becoming serious, for we had already lost nine men killed outright, while every moment more wounded were being taken down into my cabin, where Saunders, the surgeon, was working like a nigger, affording temporary relief—he could do no more just then—to the injured. We were still devoting all our energies to the task of getting to windward of our antagonist, and firing at her as fast as our leaping guns could be loaded, in the endeavour to disable her, when they succeeded in bringing her again to the wind, and as she rounded-to they gave us their whole broadside of seven 12-pounders, with a shot from their long 32-pounder by way of make-weight. The result was absolutely disastrous, for as the iron shower hurtled about our ears there was a crashing, tearing sound aloft, and away went both our masts over the side, the foremast shot away close to the deck, while the mainmast went about half-way up its length. Nor, bad as this was, was it all, for poor Willoughby, who was standing by my side, had the top of his skull literally shot away, and fell dead into my arms. The next moment the carpenter came to me with the report that we had been hit between wind and water by a 32-pound shot, and that the schooner was making water fast.
The pirates cheered with ferocious glee as they saw the plight to which they had reduced us, and their captain—a tall, handsome scoundrel, with a very Spanish-looking cast of countenance—had the impudence to leap up on the rail of his vessel and hail us, demanding to know whether we had struck!