Chapter Sixteen.
The Capture and Plundering of the ‘Bangalore,’ Indiaman.
It was just six bells in the afternoon watch when we at length arrived within a distance of about half-a-mile of the stranger, which had by this time been unmistakably made out to be a British passenger ship of one of the crack lines; first by her having hoisted British colours some time before, and secondly by the crowd of well-dressed ladies and gentlemen that, with the aid of the telescope, we could see congregated on her poop. Mendouca also had hoisted the British ensign, and, to my supreme indignation, a man-o’-war’s pennant, his object in doing so being, of course, to disarm suspicion as long as possible, and thus leave the ship only a very brief length of time to prepare for defence when our intention to attack her became no longer possible of concealment. I remonstrated with him upon this desecration of the colours that he had once fought and hoped to win fame under; but of course my remonstrance was quite useless, the rascal only laughed at me.
Having arrived within the above-named distance of the ship, Mendouca ordered the sweeps to be laid in, and the slaves to be driven below and secured. This done, to my disgust his next order was to hoist out the boats—of which the Francesca, unlike most slavers, carried three; and as soon as they were in the water, the entire crew were armed, and the whole of them, except my especial enemy, José, and an Englishman—a very quiet, inoffensive fellow, whom I was surprised to find among a crew of such ruffians—were ordered down over the side. This completely upset my plans, for, of course, the only way now of reaching the stranger was by means of the boats, or by swimming; and while I would gladly have gone in one of the boats, and taken my chance of reaching the stranger’s deck alive, I was not quite prepared to throw away my life in an unsuccessful effort to swim to the ship—for that is what it would have meant, the water being alive with sharks that had followed us, day after day, with alarming persistency, ever since we had taken to the use of the sweeps. Besides which, I should of course not have been permitted to make the attempt. Of course, had I chosen to tell a deliberate falsehood, and declared my readiness to throw in my lot with Mendouca and his crew, it is possible that I might have been given the command of one of the boats; but not even for the purpose of effecting my escape did I consider that such a course would be justifiable. So I had perforce to remain where I was, under the jealously watchful eye of José, if not of the Englishman also; Mendouca asking me ironically, as he went down the side last of all, whether I had no letters for home or elsewhere that I would like to forward by means of the stranger.
Now that the sweeps were laid in, and their everlasting grind and roll and splash were no longer heard, the silence of nature seemed so profound as to be almost awe-inspiring; there was literally not a sound to be heard save such as were caused by human agency, such as the movements and voices of the men in the boats, or the gasping sighs of the unhappy negroes cooped up below in the stifling hold. Occasionally a slight murmur of sound reached us from the distant ship; the call of an officer uttering a command, the “Yo-heave-oh” of the crew, or a gang of them, engaged upon some heavy job, and an occasional rumbling that to my ear sounded very much like that of carronade slides in process of being trained to bear upon some object. But if the ship was armed there was no sign of it, her sides being decorated with painted ports only, so far as I could see. When, however, the boats had traversed about half the distance between the brigantine and the ship, a man appeared in the mizen rigging of the latter, and, hailing them in English in a voice which rendered his words perfectly audible to us on board the Francesca, demanded to know what they wanted. I saw Mendouca rise in the stern-sheets of his boat, and heard him make some reply, but I could not distinguish what it was, perhaps because he had intentionally made it unintelligible. Whatever the words may have been, they were clearly unsatisfactory; for the figure in the rigging waved its hand warningly, and shouted—
“Keep off, whoever you are; you are far too strong a party to be allowed to come alongside us; and I warn you that if you attempt to do so we shall fire upon you! If you have any legitimate business with us let one boat, with a crew of not more than five, come alongside, and welcome; but we will not have the whole of you if we can help it, and I think we can!”
The boats had, up to this time, been paddling quietly and composedly along, the men evidently husbanding their strength for a final effort; but now, in response to a shout from Mendouca, they bent to their work, and sent the boats foaming along in a style for which I certainly should never have given them credit; they could scarcely have done better had they been the British man-o’-war’s men that they had pretended to be; the oars bent, the water was churned into foam, and a miniature surge gathered under each boat’s bow as the little craft was suddenly urged to racing speed. Then the figure in the ship’s mizen rigging waved an arm, and stepped quietly down on to the poop, which by this time was occupied only by a band of men—evidently passengers—who, under the leadership of a military-looking man, were handling their muskets and making ready to open fire. At the signal given by the individual who had just stepped out of the ship’s rigging—and who was no doubt her captain—eight hitherto closed ports in the stranger’s bulwarks were suddenly thrown open, as many dark, threatening, iron muzzles appeared, and, at a second command, the whole eight blazed forth, and their contents, consisting of round-shot with a charge of grape on top of each, went hurtling through the air in the direction of the boats. The aim was excellent, the shot flashing up the water all round the boats; but, so far as I could see, not a man among either of their crews was touched. I heard Mendouca cheer his men on, urging them to stretch out, and get so close to the ship, that by the time that the guns were again loaded, it would be impossible to depress the muzzles sufficiently to hit the boats; and the men responded with the nearest approach to a cheer that, I suppose, a Spaniard can give, pulling manfully the while. The ship’s crew were, however, too quick for them, and managed to give them another broadside just before the boats got within the critical limit where it would have been impossible to touch them; and this time the discharge was very much more effective, a round-shot striking Mendouca’s own boat square on the stem just at the water-line, destroying
her bows and tearing several feet of her keel away, while the accompanying charge of grape bowled over three of her men and shattered Mendouca’s left arm at the elbow. The crews of the other two boats suffered nearly as badly, one of them losing three men, while the other lost one man killed and five more or less severely wounded, besides having to stop and pick up Mendouca and his crew, his boat sinking almost immediately.