The Pirate Slaver: A Story of the West African Coast

by Harry Collingwood

The Governor’s Communication.

At the distance which now separated us from the barque all the movements of her crew were distinctly visible to us with the aid of our glasses—which of course were scarcely off her for a moment—and we accordingly witnessed the launching of the first slave overboard. The unhappy creature was placed in a cask, and, as I have said before, headed up therein, an aperture being cut in the two halves of the head just sufficient to admit his neck; and the cask was then slung by a whip from the main-yard-arm, and secured by a toggle, the withdrawal of which at the right moment, by means of a lanyard, enabled the cask to be dropped gently, right end up, in the water, where it floated, with its inmate a helpless prisoner, to be picked up or not as the case might be. To render this ruse of real service, a smart breeze should be blowing, because under these conditions the pursuer has not only to lower a boat to pick up the floating black, but she has also to heave-to and wait for her boat; and however smartly the operations of lowering, picking up, and hooking on again may be performed, they still absorb quite an appreciable amount of time, during which the fugitive craft increases her lead more or less according to her speed. In the present case, however, the conditions were by no means favourable to the pursued craft; for, since we were only moving through the water at a speed of about three knots, it was an easy matter for us to drop a boat into the water and send her on ahead to pick up the man, and pull alongside again without detaining the schooner for an instant. The slaver tried the trick four times in succession, and then, finding that it did not answer, gave it up.

The sun was just dipping beneath the horizon in a magnificent array of light cirrus clouds, painted by his last rays in tinctures of the most brilliant purple and rose and gold, and the wind had died away to the merest zephyr when we arrived within gun-shot of the chase; and Ryan at once ordered the long eighteen between the masts to be cleared away and a shot fired as close to the barque as possible without hitting her, just by way of a gentle hint that we were disposed to stand no more nonsense, and that the time had now arrived for her to surrender without giving us any further trouble. But evidently the last thought in the mind of her skipper was to yield, for instead of hauling down his colours like a good sensible man, he blazed away at us in return with a couple of twelve-pounders that he had run out through his stern-ports. The shots were well aimed, but did not quite reach us, striking the water twice fair in line with us, and then making their final scurry, and sinking within about thirty yards of our bows.

“By the piper, I believe the fellow intends to fight us!” exclaimed Ryan. “As a rule these gentlemen are particularly careful of their skins, and have no fancy for hard knocks, giving in when they find that their only choice lies between a fight and surrendering, but there are occasional exceptions to this rule, and I fancy that this fellow will prove to be one of them. Now, Harry, me bhoy, we must be careful what we are after when it comes to boarding and carrying yonder gintleman; for if he happen to be one of the reckless desperado kind he may play us a scurvy trick. I have heard of men who blew their ship and everybody in her into the air rather than allow her to be captured; and, for aught that we can tell to the contrary, the fellow who commands the barque may be one of that stamp. Now, if he is, we may rest assured that he will do nothing desperate until the capture of the ship is certain; until then he will be the foremost man in the fray; so we must both keep a sharp look-out for him and put him hors de combat before he has the chance to do any harm. I hope this breeze will hold long enough to enable us to get alongside; should we be becalmed and have to attack him with the boats, it will give him an important advantage, and perhaps result in the loss of some of our men.”

This hope of Ryan’s was destined to disappointment; for the wind continued to dwindle after sunset until it finally died away altogether, and left both craft without steerage-way. By this time, however, we had drifted within range of the barque’s guns, and she had opened a rather desultory but well-directed fire upon us whenever any of her guns could be brought to bear, the result of which was that one of our men had already been hurt by a splinter, while the schooner’s rigging was beginning to be a good deal cut up. Meanwhile we were precluded from returning the barque’s fire lest we should injure or kill any of the unhappy wretches pent up in her hold. At length a round-shot entered the schooner’s bows, traversed the decks, and passed out over the taffrail, glancing hither and thither as it went, and, although it did no material damage, affording several of the men a very narrow escape.

“Why, this will never do!” exclaimed Ryan, as the shot made its exit after passing between the legs of the man who was standing at the now idle tiller. “A few of those fellows, as well aimed as that one was, would make a very pretty general average among us. We shall have to get out the boats—or, stop!—yes, I think that will be better; we will arm the men and make all ready for boarding; load the guns with a double charge of grape; and then man the sweeps, and sweep the schooner alongside, firing our guns as we heave the grappling-irons, and boarding in the smoke. We shall thus have all hands available when we get alongside, and our bulwarks will meanwhile afford the men a certain amount of protection.”

The necessary orders were accordingly given, and a few minutes later the men, stripped to the waist, had rigged out the heavy sweeps and were toiling away at them. And now the advantages of the schooner’s light scantling, light draught, and fine lines made themselves fully apparent, for, having once overcome the inertia of the hull and put it in motion, the men found the little craft very easy on her sweeps, and capable of being moved at quite a respectable pace through the water.

The barque was of course much too large and unwieldy a craft to be moved by the same means, and nothing of the kind was even attempted; her crew, however, maintained a smart fire upon us as we approached; but as we were careful to keep her end-on so that only her two stern-chasers could be brought to bear upon us, and as we kept up a hot musketry fire upon that particular part of her, we did not suffer very severely; and without any further casualties we at length arrived near enough, with good way on, to permit of the sweeps being laid in, preparatory to our ranging up alongside. Ryan now divided the boarders into two parties, one to be led by himself from aft, while I was instructed to head the other party from our forecastle, the idea being to pin the slaver’s crew between the two parties, thus attacking them simultaneously in front and rear as it might be.

Ryan himself conned the schooner alongside; and when we were within some ten yards of the barque, our guns having previously been trained well forward, the whole of our small broadside was poured in upon her deck, with terribly destructive effect it would seem from the outburst of shrieks and groans and curses that immediately arose on board her. Our fire was instantly returned, but in such a partial irregular way as only tended to confirm the impression that the slaver’s crew had suffered severely, yet it gave us a tolerably clear idea of what would have been the result to us had we withheld our fire for just a second or two longer. Then, while both craft were still enveloped in the motionless smoke-wreaths, we felt the schooner’s sides rasping against those of the barque; and, with a shout to my little party to follow, I sprang upon our own bulwarks, from thence to those of the barque, and so down on the slaver’s deck—for a slaver she was, as our olfactory nerves now assured us beyond dispute.

It was by this time quite dark, or at least as dark as it was likely to be at all that night; but the sky was cloudless, the atmosphere was clear, and the stars were shining with a lustre quite unknown in our more temperate clime; we therefore had but little difficulty in seeing what we were about, or in distinguishing friend from foe; still, I must confess that I felt a little awkward, and, having commenced by discharging both my pistols into the thickest of the crowd that I found opposed to me, confined myself pretty much to a random system of slashing right and left with my cutlass, my principle—if I had one—being to strike the blows, leaving to others the task of warding them if they could. The fight that now ensued was brief, but sharp; the slavers disputing every inch of their deck with us; but our fellows were not to be resisted; there was a brief space of time during which the air seemed full of the sound of clashing steel, popping pistols, shouts, shrieks, groans, and execrations, and the barque was ours, her crew throwing away their weapons and crying loudly for quarter, which of course was granted to them.