A Pirate of the Caribbees

by Harry Collingwood

Chapter Eleven.

Cariacou—and afterward.

As soon as the darkness had closed down sufficiently to conceal our movements, I filled away again upon the schooner, and stood in until we were within two miles of the southern extremity of the island,—which also forms the southern headland of the harbour mentioned by Garcia,—when, having run well in behind the head, I again hove-to and, launching the dinghy, proceeded toward the harbour’s mouth; my crew being two men who, like myself, were armed to the teeth.

We pulled in with muffled oars, and in due time arrived within a stone’s throw of the shore. The coast here proved to be precipitous and rocky, the swell which set round the southern extremity of the island breaking with great violence upon the shore and rendering landing absolutely impossible; moreover, the night was so dark that—although in every other respect admirably suited for my purpose—it was impossible to clearly see where we were going, and two or three times we inadvertently got so close to the rocks that we narrowly and with the utmost difficulty avoided being dashed upon them. At length, however, we rounded the southernmost head and entered the harbour, and almost immediately afterwards made out a narrow strip of sandy beach, upon which I landed without difficulty, leaving the two men to look after the dinghy and lay off a few yards from the shore, ready to pull in again and take me aboard at a moment’s notice if necessary.

Having landed, I ascended a rather steep, grassy slope, some seventy or eighty feet high, and stood to look about me. The harbour was quite a spacious affair, the entrance being about half a mile wide, while the harbour itself seemed—so far as I could make out in the darkness—to be quite two miles long. The general shape of this inlet immediately suggested to me the conviction that if, as Garcia had informed me, Morillo really had established his headquarters here, he would be almost certain to have constructed a couple of batteries—one on each headland—to defend the place; and I at once set about the task of ascertaining how far my conjecture might happen to be correct. Toward the eastward from where I had halted the land continued to rise in a sort of ridge, culminating in what had the appearance of a knoll, and it struck me that, if a battery really existed on that side of the harbour, I ought to find it not far from this spot. I accordingly wended my way toward it as best I could, forcing a passage for myself through the grass and scrub, with a most unpleasant conviction that I might at any moment place my hand or foot upon a venomous snake or reptile of some sort; and finally, after about twenty minutes of most unpleasant scrambling, found myself alongside the “knoll,” which, as I had more than half suspected, now proved to be nothing less than a rough earthwork, mounting four thirty-two pounders.

My devious path had brought me to the face of the battery, so I had to clamber up the steep face of the slope before I could get a view of the interior. This I did, entering the battery through one of the embrasures, when I found myself standing upon a level platform constituting the floor of the battery. Keeping carefully within the deep shadow of the gun, and crouching down upon my hands and knees, I at once proceeded to reconnoitre the place, and presently made out a couple of huts, the smaller of which I concluded must be the magazine, while the larger probably accommodated the garrison. Both were in utter darkness, however, and my first impression was that they were untenanted; but, to make quite certain, I crept very softly up to the larger building, and, finding a closed door, listened intently at it. For a few seconds I heard nothing save the sough of the night breeze through the branches of some cotton-wood trees that grew close at hand, but presently I detected a sound of snoring in the interior, which, as I listened, grew momentarily more distinct and unmistakable. The sounds certainly emanated from more than one sleeper; I thought that there were probably at least three or four of them at work, but my hearing was not quite keen enough to enable me to accurately differentiate the sounds and thus arrive at the correct number of those who emitted them. They were, however, sound asleep, and therefore not likely to be disturbed by a slight noise. Moreover, the hut was well to windward, and the sough and swish of the wind through the cotton-woods seemed powerful enough to drown such slight sounds as I might be likely to make; so I stole softly across the open area to the nearest gun, which I at once proceeded to carefully spike with the aid of some nails and a leather-covered hammer with which I had provided myself. Despite the deadening effect of the leather the hammer still made a distinct “clink,” which to my ears sounded loud enough to wake the dead; but a few seconds’ anxious work sufficed to effectually spike the first gun, and as nobody appeared to have heard me, I then proceeded to spike the next, and the next, until I had rendered all four of them harmless. This done, I slipped out of the same embrasure by which I had entered, and successfully made my way back to the beach and to the spot off which the dinghy lay awaiting me.

The presence of a battery on the south head of the harbour entrance convinced me that there must also be a similar structure on the north head. As soon, therefore, as I found myself once more aboard the dinghy, I headed her straight across the mouth, reaching the northern side in about twenty minutes. Half an hour’s search enabled me to find the battery which I was looking for,—which proved to be a pretty exact counterpart of the one I had already visited,—and here again I succeeded in spiking all four of the guns without discovery. This I regarded as a fairly successful night’s work; so, as we should have to be stirring pretty early in the morning, I now returned to the schooner, and, having hove her to with her head off shore, turned in and had a good night’s rest.

At daybreak on the following morning I was called by Black Peter, and within ten minutes I was on deck. We were then some eight miles off the land, with the schooner heading to the eastward; but we at once wore round and bore straight away for the harbour’s mouth, clearing for action and making all our arrangements as we went.

An hour’s run, with the wind well over our starboard quarter, brought us off the mouth of the harbour, which we at once entered; and as soon as we were fairly inside, the schooner was hove-to, and two boats were lowered, each carrying eleven men armed to the teeth, in addition to the officer in command. One of the boats was commanded by Christie and the other by Lindsay; and their mission was to capture the two batteries commanding the harbour’s mouth, and blow them up before the spiked cannon could be again rendered serviceable. I brought the telescope to bear upon the batteries as soon as we were far enough inside the harbour to get a sight of them, and was amused to observe that there was a terrible commotion going on in both. Our presence had been promptly discovered, and the first attempt to open fire upon us had resulted in the discovery that their guns were all spiked. Of course it was by no means an easy matter to estimate the strength of the garrisons of these batteries, but I calculated that it would probably total up to about thirty men to each battery; and as they would be nearly or quite all Spaniards, I felt that the boats’ crews which I had sent away would be quite strong enough to satisfactorily account for them. Nor was I disappointed; for although the pirates opened a brisk musketry fire upon our lads the moment that they were fairly within range, the latter simply swarmed up the hill and carried the two batteries with a rush, the pirates retreating by the rear as the Terns clambered in through the embrasures. The moment that the boats shoved off from the schooner’s side I saw that the spirit of emulation had seized upon the two crews, for they both went away at a racing pace, and their actions throughout were evidently inspired by this same spirit; the result of which was that the two batteries were destroyed within five minutes of each other, while the whole affair, from the moment when the boats shoved off to the moment when they arrived alongside again, was accomplished within an hour and a quarter, and that, too, without any loss whatever on our side, or even a wound severe enough to disable the recipient. The pirates were less fortunate, their loss in the two batteries amounting to five killed, and at least seven wounded severely enough to render them incapable of escaping. These seven were brought on board by our lads, and secured below immediately upon their arrival.