As I walked the deck that evening chatting gaily with Woodford and Sanderson I felt, it must be confessed, intensely proud of my position. And was not the feeling pardonable? There was I, a lad who had still to see his eighteenth birthday, intrusted with the absolute command of a vessel so powerful and with so numerous a crew that many a poor hard-working third lieutenant would have looked upon it as promotion had he been placed in my shoes, and with the destinies of nearly a hundred of my fellow-beings in my hands. And to this responsible position I had attained not through the influence of powerful friends—for of such I had none—but solely, as I could not help feeling, through good conduct and my own unaided exertions, with, of course, the blessing of God, about which, I am ashamed to say, I thought far too little in those days. And yet I could not see that I had done anything very extraordinary; I had simply striven with all my might to do my duty faithfully and to the best of my ability, keeping my new motto, “For Love and Honour,” ever before my eyes, and lo! my reward had already come to me, as come it must and will to all who are diligent and faithful. And if I had succeeded so well in the past, with the limited advantages which I then possessed, “what,” I asked myself, “may I not achieve with my present means?” I felt that there was scarcely anything I might not dare and do; and my pulses throbbed and the blood coursed in a quicker tide through my veins as I told myself that I was now indeed fairly on the highway toward the achievement of that twofold object to which I had dedicated my life.
Shortly after taking our departure from Morant Point, as already recorded, the wind headed us, and the schooner “broke off” until she was heading about north-east, close-hauled. Notwithstanding this, and the fact that we had run into a very nasty choppy sea, the log showed that the Dolphin was going through the water at the rate of eleven knots. We stood on in the same direction until midnight, when, having brought the high rocky islet of Navaza far enough on our weather quarter to go to windward of it on the other tack, we hove about, standing to the southward and eastward for the remainder of the night. Daylight next morning found us with Point a Gravois broad on our weather bow and distant about twenty miles. This was most gratifying, as it showed us that we had beaten clear across the Windward Channel against a fresh head-wind in about fourteen hours—a passage almost if not quite unexampled in point of celerity.
It was my intention to work close along the whole of the southern coast of Saint Domingo on our eastward passage; and this we did, looking in first behind the island of a-Vache, where we were lucky enough to descry a French privateer brigantine snugly anchored under the shelter of a small battery. As there is nothing like making hay whilst the sun shines, we at once headed straight for the anchorage, and, trusting to the extreme roguishness of our own appearance to put our enemies off their guard, began to shorten sail in a somewhat slovenly fashion, as though we were about to bring up. Then, passing under the stern of our quarry we luffed up into the wind, shot alongside the craft, hove our grappling-irons into her rigging, and, whilst our boarders were still busy driving her astonished crew below, cut her cable and dragged her a quarter of a mile to sea before the people in the battery woke up and fully realised what we were about. By that time, however, we were in full possession of our prize, and were able to make sail upon her; and although the shot from the battery flew about our ears pretty thickly for the next ten minutes, we actually succeeded in getting out of range without once being struck; and so completely had we surprised the French crew that not one of our men received so much as a scratch.
The Julie, for such proved to be the name of our prize, though small, turned out to be of considerable value; for she was pretty nearly full of a rich but heterogeneous assortment of goods which I shrewdly suspected had been taken out of ships which were subsequently scuttled or burnt; we therefore put one of the mids with half a dozen hands on board her, and sent her into Port Royal, where, as we afterwards learned, she safely arrived next morning.
This little slice of good fortune, coming as it did at the very outset of our cruise, was peculiarly gratifying to me, not so much on account of either the honour or the profit likely to accrue to me personally from the transaction, but because it put the crew into good spirits, and infused into them, especially the strangers among them, an amount of confidence in me which my extremely youthful appearance would perhaps have otherwise failed to command.
We devoted an entire week to our projected examination of the Saint Domingo coast, making four more captures during that time; but they all proved to be of so little value that they were set on fire and destroyed. Then, having worked our way as far east as Saona, we stretched across the Mona Passage; looked into the various bays and creeks on the south coast of Porto Rico without success, and finally found ourselves, on our sixteenth day out, with the island of Virgin Gorda and the Herman reefs under our lee as we stood to the northward and eastward to weather the Virgin group.
It was about noon when—having stretched off the land some twenty miles or so, we were about to bear up and take a look at the northern shores of those islands whose southern coastline we had just so rigorously overhauled—the lookout aloft hailed to say that he thought he heard firing somewhere to windward. I was walking the deck at the time chatting with young Marchmont, one of the two mids sent on board by the admiral, and, upon this report being made, the lad volunteered to go aloft and investigate. A couple of minutes later the active youngster was on the royal-yard, peering out eagerly ahead and to windward, with one hand shading his eyes to ward off the glare of the sun. He remained thus for perhaps three or four minutes, when I saw him assume a more eager look, and presently he turned round and hailed:
“On deck there! there certainly is firing going on somewhere in our neighbourhood, sir, for I have just heard it most distinctly; and a moment before I spoke I thought I caught sight of something like a smoke-wreath gleaming in the sun away yonder, broad on our weather bow. Ha! there it goes again! Did you not hear it, sir?”
“No,” I replied; “the wash of the water under our bows and alongside makes too much noise down here. But that will do; you can come down again, Mr Marchmont. If, as you believe, there is firing going on to windward of us we shall soon know more about it, for, of course, I shall not now bear up until I have satisfied myself as to the matter.”
The men forward became at once upon the qui vive, as I could see by the animated countenances of the messmen, and the eagerness with which they exchanged remarks as they went to the galley for the dinner which the cook was then serving out; as also by the nimble manner in which the relief lookout aloft shinned up the ratlines. He was one of the keenest-sighted men we had on board; and instead of seating himself, as usual, on the topsail-yard, he continued his upward progress until he reached the royal-yard, upon which he perched himself as easily as if he had been in an arm-chair, steadying his body by bracing his back against the few inches of the slender royal-mast which rose above the yard. He had not been settled more than ten minutes before he hailed to report that he heard the firing distinctly, and had also caught sight of a light wreath of smoke about four points on the weather bow. This was so far satisfactory, inasmuch as there could now be no longer any doubt as to the firing; the next thing was to find out its nature, whether it was in broadsides or by single guns, and how often it occurred. So I hailed him to report every time he heard anything. Presently he hailed again: