A Middy of the King: A Romance of the Old British Navy

by Harry Collingwood

Here Fernandez, still unwounded, exhibited the only bit of sound generalship that had distinguished the attack; for instead of allowing his men to charge up the slope promiscuously as they landed, to be cut down or bowled over by our pistols, in detail, he ordered them to form up, in single file and open order, until the last boat had arrived, probably guessing that we were without muskets, and knowing that he and his men were for the moment beyond pistol-shot. Then, after allowing them time to recharge their muskets, and a minute or two additional in which to recover their breath and prepare for the desperate up-hill rush at the battery, he gave the word to advance, himself leading the way, while we, with naked cutlass in one hand and pistol in the other, crouched behind our low breastwork, watching the toiling figures scrambling and struggling up the steep, almost precipitous slope.

They had advanced about half-way, and Fernandez, still leading, was just about within pistol range, when I rose to my feet, sprang up on the low earth parapet which we had constructed, raised my sword above my head, and, in as loud and authoritative a voice as I could command, shouted, in Spanish:

“Halt!”

Then, as the advancing pirates wavered and hesitated, in astonishment at my unexpected action, I continued:

“Fernandez, and you others, I call upon you to throw down your arms and surrender, in order to prevent the further sacrifice of life. You can do no good by persevering further in this futile attack, for we are the masters of the situation, and we can shoot down every man of you before it will be possible for you to reach the spot where I stand. To push on will simply mean—”

Crack! One of the pirates, crouching behind another, had coolly levelled his musket and taken a pot shot at me, the bullet passing through my hat and searing my skull like a white-hot wire, so that I toppled over with the shock and fell back into the arms of one of my men. The yell of savage joy raised by the pirates at the sight of my fall was echoed by my own men as they sprang to their feet, intending to leap over the low parapet and charge down upon the advancing foe to avenge me. But I was not really hurt, and, shaking off the grip of the man who held me, I cried out in time to stay them, adjuring them, by all that they held dear, to stand fast where they were, and finish the fight in the battery itself. And splendidly they obeyed me, although they might well have been excused had they ignored my command; for the firing of that musket-shot served as the signal for a general fusillade on both sides, in the course of which four of our men fell. But ours was the commanding position, and by the time that the pirates had emptied their muskets and pistols at us we had brought them to a standstill, with more than half their number down. After that there was no possibility of further restraining our lads, nor, indeed, was there any need. We, therefore, poured out over the low earthwork and down the few yards of slope that still intervened between us and the enemy, and the next moment were engaged in a hand-to-hand, life-and-death conflict, neither side expecting or giving quarter. For the few seconds that it lasted it was warm work, the pirates fighting desperately—since they knew that, if taken alive, the halter awaited them—and then, in the space of a minute it was all over. The last of our foes was down—as well as a few more men on our own side—and we who remained unhurt stood gasping for breath, and mopping our perspiring brows as we glared hungrily about us for more foes to conquer. But there were none; and presently pulling ourselves together, we gathered up our own wounded and carried them to such shade as could be found, where the surgeon’s mate, who formed one of our company, at once got to work upon them, attending to their hurts. Meanwhile the ensign was hoisted as a signal to the felucca to return to the harbour; and then such of us as could be spared went out to disarm the wounded pirates and afterwards afford them such relief as lay in our power, while others again gleaned the weapons and ammunition of the fallen, recognising that they might possibly be useful in our fight with the crew of the Tiburon later on.

Then, having made all arrangements for the conduct of the work on the islet during the next few hours, I took the two largest boats that had survived the passage across the waters of the Cove, and with a dozen men, armed to the teeth, under the leadership of myself and the boatswain, pulled away to the settlement, to see how matters stood in that direction. As I had anticipated, there was not a man left in the place—not even a boy above fourteen years of age; every male above that age had been detailed to take part in the attempt to capture the islet, which Fernandez had fully recognised to be the key of the entire position. And now, of the hundred and fifty who had taken part in the disastrous attempt, every one was either slain, or lay wounded in our hands.

While I was taking stock generally of the situation, so to speak, and making my further plans, the boatswain, assisted by the seamen whom we had brought ashore with us, made a careful and systematic search of every building in the place, removing every weapon, everything that could be used as such, and all ammunition, and transferring them to the two boats prior to our return to the islet. There were not many weapons, and not a very great quantity of ammunition; but there was more than we could conveniently stow in the boats. We, therefore, took a portion of it out to about the middle of the bay and there threw it overboard, returning for the remainder and conveying it to the islet. The most important result of our visit to the shore, however, consisted in the information, freely given me by one of the women, that, so far as she had been able to gather from the conversation of the men, the Tiburon and her crew might be expected to arrive in the Cove at any moment.

By the time that I and my party got back to the islet the day was well advanced, the felucca had returned to the Cove and was now anchored inside the islet, close to its southern shore, and the surgeon, although still busy among the wounded pirates, had doctored up the whole of our own wounded and made them comfortable. As might have been expected from the peculiar character of the engagement and the enormous advantage of position which we enjoyed, our casualties were singularly light, consisting only of five killed and nine wounded. But in the case of the pirates there was a very different story to tell. I had ascertained, while ashore, that they left the settlement one hundred and fifty strong; and now all that remained of them amounted to just thirty-seven wounded, of whom at least one quarter would probably succumb to their hurts. Those thirty-seven I caused to be put into the boats, as soon as they had, been attended to, and conveyed to the settlement, where I turned them over to the care of the women folk, who, I thought, would probably be able to give them more attention and better nursing than we could hope to afford. The next day, at the urgent request of several of the women, I also caused our own wounded to be taken ashore, where, under the supervision of the surgeon, they were taken in hand and most tenderly cared for. The dead—both our own and as many as we could find belonging to the pirates—were hastily sewn up in canvas, weighted, and launched overboard from the felucca, which was taken well out to sea for the purpose.

It was about three bells in the forenoon watch, on the fifth day after the attack upon the islet, that two sail were sighted by the lookout, standing in toward the Cove; and half-an-hour later I was able to identify one of them as the infamous Tiburon, while the other was a large craft, apparently British, judging by her build and the cut of her canvas; doubtless a capture.