The Castaways - Harry Collingwood

The breakfast was a very good one—just the substantial, appetising kind that one would wish to sit down to upon such an occasion; and I did ample justice to it. At length, at what I judged to be the right moment, I signed to Miss Onslow to go on deck, and then rose to my feet as though to follow her; but instead of springing up the companion ladder I turned to the steward, seized him by the throat, and flung him violently to the deck. The shock stunned him; and before he recovered consciousness I had got him lashed arms and legs together, like a trussed fowl, with a gag in his mouth that I had already prepared for the purpose. Making sure that he was quite secure, and could not possibly release himself, or cry out, I dashed up the companion ladder, and drew over the slide, securing it and the doors with wedges. Harry was sitting on the windlass barrel, taking his breakfast al fresco, and acting as lookout generally while the others breakfasted below; and directly he saw me throw up my hand as a signal to him, he slid off the windlass, crept softly to the fore-scuttle, and swiftly closed the hatch, securing it by thrusting a wooden pin through the staple. There was an immediate outcry from below, quickly followed by savage bangs upon the underside of the hatch; but, taking no notice of these manifestations, the fellow rushed aft and at once assisted me to place Miss Onslow in the gig. Then, springing to the tackle falls, we lowered the boat smartly the short remaining distance to the water, and, springing into her, unhooked the tackles and shoved clear of the brig. Then, still working for our lives, we stepped the mast, set the sails, and headed the boat to the northward. Nor were we much too quick; for we had scarcely placed a cable’s length between us and the brig when we heard a crash aboard her, and the next instant we saw the fellows rising out of the forecastle and rushing aft. Of course they at once caught sight of us, and promptly blazed away with their pistols at us; but none of the bullets came anywhere near. Then they began to shout imprecations at us, and prayers to us to return; but we remained equally deaf to both, and in a few minutes—the boat slipping nimbly along through the water—we were out of hearing of them, and congratulating ourselves and each other upon our good luck in having succeeded in so neatly effecting our escape without being obliged to fight for the possession of the boat.

I headed north, with the intention of making Staten Island if possible; but we had scarcely been under way two hours when Harry, who was forward, keeping a lookout, sighted a sail dead to windward, heading our way, and we at once so manoeuvred the boat as to intercept her. She came bowling down toward us, hand over hand, and when she was within about three miles of us I made her out to be a frigate. She was coming so directly for us that it was impossible for us to miss each other, and within half an hour of the moment when we first discovered her I had the supreme satisfaction of assisting Florence up the side of Her Britannic Majesty’s ship Ariadne, commanded by my former shipmate and very good friend Harry Curtis; while half an hour later the five men whom I had left aboard the brig were taken off her, and safely lodged in irons on the Ariadne’s lower deck. Of the excitement that ensued upon our rescue I have no space to dwell; suffice it to say that the Marie Renaud had duly arrived in Table Bay, and had there reported the act of piracy of which she had been the victim, my letter being at the same time placed in the hands of the authorities, who, after a proper amount of deliberation, had despatched the Ariadne in search of the piratical brig.

Is there anything else to tell? I think not, except it be to mention that Miss Onslow was the heroine of the ship, and every man, fore and aft, her devoted slave during our passage to the Cape, where the six survivors of O’Gorman’s gang were duly put upon their trial for piracy upon the high seas. The man Harry, acting upon my advice, offered to turn Queen’s Evidence; and the favourable report that I was able to make of his conduct caused his offer to be accepted, with the result that he received a free pardon, while Dirk the Dutchman was sentenced to death, and the other four to penal servitude for life; the Dutchman, however, cheated the gallows by dying in prison of his wounds, after lingering for so long a time that it seemed as though he would after all recover.

“And the gems that were the prime cause of so much of your trouble—what became of them?” I fancy I hear some fair reader exclaim.

Well, there proved to be such insuperable difficulties in the way of establishing their rightful ownership that the Home Government very kindly undertook the charge of them until the man who could satisfactorily prove his right to them should put in an appearance. It was a marvellously curious circumstance, however, that I should have happened to anticipate this precise difficulty and its probable solution, almost at the moment when I first identified the distant Ariadne as a man-o’-war; with the result that—well, there is no need to be too explicit, is there? it will perhaps suffice if I say that the seaman Harry is to-day living very comfortably indeed as an independent gentleman of considerable means; while the four magnificent suites of jewellery—rubies, diamonds, emeralds, and pearls—that Mrs Charles Conyers, née Florence Onslow, sports from time to time are the eternal envy and admiration of all who get the opportunity to see them.

The End.