“That will do,” interrupted Courtenay enthusiastically. “By George, Lascelles, you are a trump! a genius! a—a—in fact I don’t know what you are not, in the line of ‘superior attainments,’ as my schoolmaster used to say. And I—what a consummate idiot I must have been not to think of it too! I say, old fellow, would you be so kind and obliging as to kick me hard once or twice. No? Well, never mind; I daresay somebody else will, sooner or later, so I will excuse you. But, I say, Lascelles,” he continued, as serious now as myself, “it is an awful risky thing to do; do you think we have nerve and—and—impudence enough to carry it through without being found out? We are only two against ten, you know, on board here; and if we are detected it will be a sure case of,”—and he drew his hand suggestively across his throat—“eh?”
“No doubt of that, I think,” said I. “But why should we be found out? I feel as though my nerve would prove quite equal to the task; and as for impudence, you have enough and to spare for both of us.”
“All right, then,” said he, “we’ll chance it; and there’s my hand upon it, Lascelles. You make whatever plans you may consider necessary, and I’ll back you up through thick and thin. A man can but die once; and if we fail in this we shall at least have the consolation of feeling that we fell whilst doing our duty—for there can be no mistake about its being our duty to bring about the destruction of that gang of pirates who, I now feel convinced, are lurking among those lagoons inside the Barcos Channel.”
“Yes,” said I, “I think there can be no doubt about that. And now, having arrived at a clear understanding as to what we are about to do, I think it is all plain sailing up to the time of our arrival in those lagoons. We must carefully note every particular which Carera may point out to us, and make a sort of chart, if possible, wherewith to refresh our memories; after which it only remains for us to find our way to Port Royal; and that, it seems to me, is the only item in our programme which is likely to give us any very serious difficulty.”
This closed the discussion for the time being, and we went on deck, where Carera once more obsequiously joined us, much to our disgust; for it seemed probable that, if this sort of thing was to continue, we should find the fellow far too attentive to suit our ulterior plans. We, however, made the best of the matter, and, finding that his thoughts were wholly occupied with the trip and its object, we simply let him talk about it to his heart’s content, merely interjecting a remark here and there with the object of directing his conversation into such channels as would afford us the information in which we still happened to be deficient. In this way we gradually—and with some little skill, we flattered ourselves—acquired full particulars of the plot in the carrying out of which we were supposed to be important agents, and which turned out to be very much the sort of thing we had already pictured to ourselves. The man Giuseppe was, we found, an Italian, who had made his appearance in West Indian waters some five or six years previously, first in the character of a slaver, and afterwards as an avowed pirate. He was, according to Carera’s account, a man of exceptional daring, as wily as a fox, and a thorough seaman; and these excellent qualities had not only raised him to the position of head or chief of the powerful gang with whose fortunes he had identified himself, but had also enabled him to carry on his nefarious business so successfully that he had gradually acquired an almost fabulous amount of booty, and had at the same time gained for himself—at all events among the Spaniards—the somewhat sensational title of “The Terror of the Caribbean Sea.” He had established a sort of head-quarters for himself in a snug spot at the head of the Conconil lagoons, where he had erected buildings for the accommodation of his entire gang—part of which always remained on shore to look after the place—and where he had gradually surrounded himself with every convenience for repairing and refitting his craft. It was to this secluded, and indeed almost unknown spot, that he was in the habit of running for shelter when hard pressed by the cruisers who were always on the lookout for him; and, from Carera’s description of the difficulties of the navigation, it would seem almost impossible to devise or hit upon a place better suited for such a purpose. It was here, also, that he first stored his plunder, and afterwards bartered it for gold or such necessaries as he might happen to require, with the three or four favoured individuals who, with the most extreme precaution, he had invited to trade with him. And it was the key to the navigation of these lagoons and their approaches which Carera had undertaken to sell to the Spanish authorities in consideration of his receiving, as the price of his treachery, one-half the amount of the captured spoil.
For the remainder of that day our minds were chiefly occupied with the question of how, after our visit to the Conconil lagoons, we were to make our way to Port Royal; and the more carefully we considered the question the more numerous and insurmountable appeared to be the difficulties in our way. It was not as though we were going to touch at a civilised port; in that case, if it came to the worst, we might have run away from our craft and taken our chance of getting another to suit us. But this, under the circumstances, was out of the question. Moreover, directly we began to consider the matter, it seemed imperative that the Pinta and her entire crew should be detained at least until our expedition should have sailed, otherwise Carera, finding himself duped, might endeavour to make the best of a bad matter by hurrying off to warn Giuseppe of the possibility of our beating up his quarters. The situation eventually resolved itself into this: that whereas, on the completion of our ostensible trading errand, the Pinta would, in the ordinary course of events, return to La Guayra, taking us with her—when on her arrival the whole fiasco would come to light and the least misfortune we might expect would be a return to our loathsome prison quarters—it was necessary for the success of our plan that the craft and her crew should, by some means or other, find their way to Royal Port. How was the affair to be managed? The outlines of a scheme at length arranged themselves in my mind; and, although it was of so desperate a character that we agreed it was almost impossible that we should be able to carry it through, we nevertheless took immediate steps to further its accomplishment. It was not much that we could do just then; all that was possible for us was to assume extreme pleasure at being allowed to steer the little craft; and we so managed affairs that in the course of a few days it came to be an understood thing among the hands that whenever either of them happened to be too lazy to take his “trick” at the tiller he could always get relief by appealing to one or the other of us—if we happened to be on deck at the time.
The breeze continued to hold from the eastward; but as we drew over toward the coast of Saint Domingo it softened down a trifle; so that, on our arrival off Cape Irois, we found ourselves just about twelve hours behind the time reckoned on by Carera. That, however, was a matter of no very great moment, being rather an advantage than otherwise, since it enabled us to slip across the Windward Channel with less risk of being sighted and overhauled by a British cruiser, an incident which—now that Courtenay and I had quite made up our minds to go through with the adventure—we were folly as anxious as any of the Pinta’s regular crew to avoid. We were fortunate enough to make the passage without molestation, though not wholly without an alarm, for a large ship was made out, about the end of the middle watch, coming down before the wind and heading right for us, with a whole cloud of flying kites aloft and studding-sails set on both sides. She proved, however, to be a merchantman, apparently British; and, from the course she was steering, we judged her to be bound to Kingston. She swept magnificently across our stern at a distance of about a couple of miles; and in little more than an hour from the time of our first sighting her she was hull-down again upon our larboard quarter.
With sunrise we found ourselves hauling in under the high land about Cape Maysi; and here we ran into the calm belt dividing the land and sea-breezes, and lay for an hour rolling gunwale under, our great sail flapping noisily and sending the dew pattering down on deck in regular showers with every roll of the little vessel, whilst the huge yard swayed and creaked aloft, tugging at the stumpy mast and tautening out the standing rigging alternately to port and starboard with such violence that I momentarily expected to see the whole affair go toppling over the side. “Hold on, good rope-yarns!” was now the cry; and they did hold on, fortunately, though, during that hour of calm, there was more noise aloft than I had ever before heard on board a vessel. At length the sea-breeze came creeping down to us; a cat’s-paw filled the lofty tapering sail, and passed, causing the canvas to flap heavily ere it filled to the next. Another flap; then the sail swelled out gently and “went to sleep,” the nimble little hooker turned her saucy nose into the wind’s eye; a few bubbles drifted past her side as she gathered way, a long smooth ripple trailed out on each side of her sharp bows, then she heeled gracefully over to larboard as the languid breeze freshened upon us, and presently down it came, half a gale of wind, burying us half bulwark deep and making everything crack again as the boat gathered way and darted off like a startled dolphin. And here Carera was within an ace of making a mess of the whole business; for whilst we had been tumbling about becalmed a current had got hold of us and had set us so close in with the land that whilst rounding the point we actually passed through the breakers beating on the reef; and I am convinced that had we been a couple of fathoms further to leeward the hooker would have laid her bones there. However, the danger was come and gone in less than a minute; it was the extreme point of the reef we had grazed so very closely, and, once past it, we had a clear sea ahead and were out of the reach of all further danger. It was Courtenay, however, who actually saved the felucca; for at the supreme moment when the little craft plunged into the breakers, and when, if ever, there was the utmost need for coolness and self-possession, what must all hands do but plump down upon their knees, calling upon Saint Antonio and Heaven knows how many other saints to come and help them, Carera himself being one of the foremost to do so, abandoning the tiller meanwhile, and leaving the vessel to take care of herself, at the very moment of all others when she most needed looking after. She of course shot into the wind’s eye in an instant, and in another minute the craft would have been on the rocks, stern-foremost, and beating her bottom in, had not Courtenay—who happened to be standing close by—sprung to the tiller and jammed it hard a-weather, thus causing her to pay off and forge ahead before losing steerage-way altogether.
Once fairly clear of the point, Carera put his helm up, and away we went, with a flowing sheet, upon a north-west by west course; arriving off Mangle Point about noon. From thence we began to haul somewhat off from the land, the wind drawing further aft and freshening somewhat as we did so; so that by sunset the lively little craft had brought Lucrecia Point fairly on her larboard beam. As the sun went down the wind manifested a disposition to drop; and for a couple of hours we crept along at a speed of scarcely five knots; but it breezed up again just after the first watch came on deck; and by two bells we were smoking through it faster than I had ever before seen the craft travel. In accordance with the plan which Courtenay and I had arranged, we took the tiller between us during the whole of the first watch, the two hands whose places we had taken coolly going below and turning in. When the watch was called at midnight we felt that we had done enough for our purpose, so we retired below and spent the remainder of the night in our bunks.