The Voyage of the Aurora

by Harry Collingwood

Having made a thorough search of the various state-rooms, the strangers—who were evidently Spaniards—hurried their prisoners on deck. Here a single glance sufficed to show Captain Leicester that his ship had been taken from him by a clever surprise, aided—or rather rendered possible—by terrible carelessness on the part of those left in charge of the deck. The crew, as he found on rapidly counting heads, were all present—with one exception—securely bound hand and foot, and huddled together under the bulwarks. The exception—the missing man—was Ritson; and the overturned and broken chair, the blood-spattered deck in its immediate vicinity, and the heavy splash into the water alongside, which George had heard, rendered the whole story as plain and clear as the moon which rode so serenely in the heavens above. Poor Ritson! he had paid with his life the penalty of his disastrous lapse of duty. And the drowsy helmsman—who had obviously awakened in time to spring to the assistance of his superior—was lying near the skylight, white and ghastly in the moonlight, with his skull cloven, and a great black pool of blood slowly spreading on the planking beneath his head. The brig ahead, now hove-to and evidently awaiting the approach of the Aurora, told George from whence his enemies had sprung; and—now that it was all too late—he bitterly reproached himself for his lack of caution with regard to her.

The individuals who had thus cleverly gained possession of the barque were as ruffianly a set of scoundrels as could well be met with on the high seas. Their leader, a brawny, thick-set Spaniard, with a skin tanned to the hue of well-seasoned mahogany, his ragged black locks bound round with a filthy red silk handkerchief, and surmounted by a broad-brimmed straw hat, his body clad in a red and yellow striped worsted shirt, confined at the waist by a cutlass-belt, into which a long-barrelled pistol was thrust, and his legs encased in sea-boots reaching nearly to the thigh, was a particularly truculent-looking ruffian; and a powerful negro, somewhat similarly clad, who seemed to be his chief aide, was little if anything better.

That they were pirates there could be no possible doubt, and poor George Leicester expected nothing less than that he and his ship’s company would all have their throats cut, and then be unceremoniously pitched overboard, to keep poor Ritson company. It soon appeared, however, that his career was not to be thus summarily brought to an end, for after a few words between the leader and the negro, George and his crew were, after their bonds had been looked to and made more secure, distributed about the deck, and chained to the ring-bolts in the bulwarks and elsewhere.

The Aurora, under the influence of a slightly freshening breeze, soon joined company with the brig, from which a boat then put off, bringing on board the barque a tall handsome man, whose features were, however, spoiled by the expression of cunning and cruelty legibly imprinted on them. He said a few words to the Spaniard in charge, glanced round the deck at the helpless prisoners, made a jesting remark or two, at which of course everybody dutifully laughed, gave George—who unfortunately happened to be nearest him—a playful kick in the mouth with his heavy boot, and then sauntered leisurely down into the cabin, where, from the repeated loud bursts of laughter, and the singing which soon arose, a carouse seemed to have been promptly entered upon.

The sky to the eastward was brightening with the approach of dawn, when the revellers at last staggered once more on deck. Here the handsome man—who seemed to be the chief of the pirate crew—paused for a moment, apparently to reiterate and emphasise certain commands already laid upon his subordinate, after which he went down the side into his boat, and some five minutes afterwards the two craft filled away once more upon their former course.

It would be impossible to convey to the reader, without going into the most shocking and disgusting details, any clear idea of the sufferings and indignities to which the unfortunate captain and crew of the Aurora were subjected during the next three weeks. Suffice it to say that during the whole of that time they were never released from the ring-bolts to which they were chained; that they lay there on the hard planking day and night, alternately scorched by the fierce rays of the noonday sun, and chilled by the heavy dews of night; that they were sparingly and irregularly fed—and then only upon the coarsest and most loathsome of food—and still more sparingly and irregularly supplied with water; that they were the recipients of incessant abuse and brutality from the wretches who were in possession of the ship; and some slight conception can be formed of their dreadful state of body and mind during that interminable three weeks.

At the end of that time the land was made, and late at night both ships glided into an anchorage, where they brought-up, the canvas was furled in a slovenly fashion which drove poor Bowen—in spite of all that he had suffered—half-distracted, the boats were lowered, and preparations were at once made for the transport of the prisoners to the shore.

This operation, under the direction of the truculent-looking and ruffianly Spaniard already mentioned as the head of the gang in possession of the Aurora, was speedily effected. The prisoners, handcuffed with their hands behind them, were sent down into one of the boats lowered for their reception, and there secured to a length of heavy chain, so that where one went, the rest were compelled to go also; and, thus yoked together, they were transferred to the shore. A glance at the star-lit sky, in which the pole-star hung, only some twenty to twenty-five degrees above the horizon, told poor Leicester that they were landing upon a shore open to the northward, and that, from the position of Polaris in the sky, they were somewhere within about twenty-five degrees of the equator; but, beyond that, he was just then unable to learn anything further concerning their whereabouts.

As the boat’s keel grated upon the beach, the prisoners were ordered by sufficiently significant gestures—none of them understanding a single word of Spanish—to climb over the side and make their way up the beach.

The Spaniard in charge pointed significantly with a long whip which he carried to a break in the dense growth of trees which clustered close to the water’s edge and then, with an ominous flourish of the lash, gave the word for the miserable band to move forward. A toilsome march of some four or five miles along a track of heavy sand then commenced; a march which, fatiguing enough in itself, after the long period of close confinement to which they had been subjected, was rendered trebly so by the constraint of the heavy chain to which they were secured. Staggering, reeling, and stumbling forward, conscious of nothing beyond their dreadful state of misery and suffering, it took them over three hours to perform that horrible journey, urged on though they were by the incessant application of the cruel whip; and then they found themselves outside an enclosure formed of heavy slabs of planking some nine feet in height. A narrow door gave admittance to the place, and, this being unlocked, the prisoners were driven in, and after the door had been again securely fastened, they were released from the chain, and, still with their hands secured behind them, allowed to stretch their exhausted bodies upon the ground, and take such repose as was possible under the circumstances.