CHAPTER LVI.
KNUCKLEDUSTER'S STORY.
"I was first in the smuggling line, and many are the good cargoes of Nantz and Geneva I have run ashore all along the coast between Hartlepool and the Spurnhead, in the bights and bays, clefts and creeks, known only to ourselves and our friends on shore; till once, after a hard chase, our sloop was sunk by a twelve-pound shot that took her between wind and water, from a king's cutter, commanded by old Cranky, who was then in the Preventive Service. This was in Brellington Bay, off the coast of Yorkshire, and down she went, with all her brandy-kegs, and what was worse, all her hands aboard, at least, all except me; so I was taken and condemned to serve seven years in a man-of-war.
"I deserted in the West Indies, and joined some lads of the knife and pistol, who manned a long, low, sharply-prowed polacca, that carried by turns at her gaff-peak the flag of every nation on earth, and had a long brass eighteen pounder amidships, that did some mischief, I can tell you, along the shore of the Spanish Main.
"Tiring of that, I sewed a thousand doubloons, the general stock of the crew, who were all drunk at the time, in the waistband of my trowsers, and shoved off in a whale-boat, on a dark night, when the polacca was creeping under easy sail near the high headlands of Dominica, and worked my way home on board of an old sugar-ship. In England, between Jews and girls about Portsmouth, my doubloons melted like snow on the sea, and I was glad to take the keepership of Sandridge Light, to save me from the press-gang.
"We had some rare doings in that lighthouse, for a night seldom passed without stupid craft being lost; for, d'ye see, the machinery of the lamps often went wrong—at least, so we said—and the devilish lights went out, at the very time they were most wanted. Well, we were burned out of that, as you know; and though I escaped to Compton Rennel, Broken-nosed Bill and Mother Snatchblock, an old girl who was very fond of me, were shrivelled up like a couple of castanas on the hob of the galley fire.
"One night I found myself at Hull, entered as a foremast man aboard of a Quebec timber-ship, when there rose an outcry in the docks that press-gangs of the West-India fleet were out, and that the gates were all guarded by lobsters from the barracks. You know all about that too, for by you I was taken; and I may tell you plainly that for many a day after that I vowed to be revenged for the trick, though I suppose you only did your duty, my young cockerel. You know, also, how I was taken prisoner and employed by that false devil of a French colonel at Martinique, and all about his pretty little wife.
"Well, within a week after the storming of La Fleur d'Epée, a smart French sloop that lay in the carenage of Los Santos was taken by Sir George Grey, of the Boyne, to use as a despatch-boat, and on board of her he sent the gunner's mate, with four hands—of whom I was one—to convey letters back to Martinique.
"The devil, who has always taken the greatest interest in me, had surely the entire arrangement of this affair; for the gunner's mate was the man, of all on board the fleet, whom I hated most, for three times he had caught me borrowing his rumbo, and had me triced up to the gangway for a dozen—three dozen for three glasses of grog! Once he missed a purse, and as its alleged contents were found in my hammock by the three fellows who were now shipped with me, I received four dozen, well laid on with a pickled cat, and fainted; but was well soused by buckets of salt water to bring me round again; then I forfeited all pay and prize-money for six months. No sooner did the sloop put to sea, than all these things came crowding into my memory, and my mind was soon made up to skewer the gunner's mate and his three men, to plunder the sloop, run her ashore on the first land I came to, and then trust to Fortune and old Davy for whatever might turn up next.
"Catch me under a commodore's broad pennant again, thought I, if I can get this craft into my own hands, and make a clean run for it!
"We bent new canvass on the sloop in the carenage, and passed through the Rade des Saintes just as the morning gun was fired from La Fleur d'Epée and the union-jack went up where the tricolour had come down a week before. While bending the canvass we had a carpenter's gang aboard from the frigate, and from one of their chests I took the loan of a fine sharp axe, made like an Indian tomahawk. This I hid in my belt, and buttoned my jacket over the blade. We had a fine run all day after leaving Los Santos; the wind was not quite aft; but this all the better suited the trim of a fore-and-aft rig like that of the cutter.