"If the tide will let us," said I; "but the boats as yet are high and dry in the creek, and we have lost the only opportunity that offered for burning the polacre; had we confined ourselves to that object, and kept the boats afloat, we might have accomplished it where she lies at low water."
"Better as it is," rejoined Sprawl—"better as it is; we found no slaves on board, and might have got into a scrape had we set fire to her in cold blood.—No, no! let us be off, and try and launch the boats. Here, men, secure your prisoners; shall we carry the black Broker—this respectable resetter of human beings—with us, Brail—eh?"
"Why, we had better," said I; "we may get some information out of the vagabond; so kick him up, Moses;"—he was at this moment lying on his back, again shamming a trance—"up with him, pique him with your boarding pike, my man."
The seaman I had addressed did as he was desired; but the fellow was now either dead-drunk, or had sufficient nerve to control any expression of pain, for the deuced hard thumps and sharp progues he received, produced no apparent effect. He lay like a log through them all; even the pain of the wound in his arm seemed insufficient to keep him awake.
"Why, what is that—do you hear that?" said Lanyard, in great alarm; for several dropping shots now rattled in the direction of the boats. All was still for a minute, and every ear was turned to catch the sound, during which time we distinctly heard in the distance a loud voice hail,—
"Come out from beneath the bushes there, you villains, or we shall fire a volley."
Again there was a long pause—a horn was sounded—then another—then a wild confused yell, mingled with which the musketry again breezed up, and we could hear, from the shouts of our people, that the covering party at the boats had been assailed. When the first shot was fired, the black resetter lifted his head, anxiously, as if to listen; but seeing my eyes were fixed on him, he instantly dropped it again. But the instant he heard the negro horns, the noise of their onset, and the renewal of the firing, he started to his legs, as active as a lynx; and before any of us could gather our senses about us, he was on the verge of the wood; when all at once a thought seemed to come across him; he stopped, and hung in the wind for a moment, as if irresolute whether to bolt or turn back. At this moment one of our people let drive at him, but missed him, although the ball nipped off a dry branch close above his head. He instantly ran and laid hold of one of the pillars of the frame that supported the abominable little idol. Another shot was fired, when down tumbled his godship on the head of his worshipper, who caught the image by the legs, and seeing some of our people rushing to seize him, he let go his hold of the upright, and whirling the figure round, holding on by its legs, he let drive with it at the man nearest him, and dropped him like a shot. He then bolted out of sight, through one of the several muddy paths that opened into the mangrove thicket landward.
"No time to be lost, my lads," whistled old Davie; "keep together;"—then, in his thorough bass, "Don't throw away a shot; so now bring along your prisoners, and let us fall back on the boats——that's it—march the Dons to the front—shove on, my fine fellows—shove on."
The firing at the boats had by this time slackened, but the cries increased, and were now rising higher and fiercer as we approached. We reached the fort, the place of our former conflict. Heavens! what a scene presented itself! It makes one's blood run cold to reflect on it, even after the lapse of years. On the platform lay two Spaniards, and close to them three of our crew, stark and stiff, and already stripped naked as the day they were born, by whom Heaven only knows; while half a dozen native dogs were tearing and riving the yet scarcely cold carcasses, and dragging the dead arms hither and thither, until our near approach frightened them away, with a loud unearthly scream, of no kindred to a common bark.
One fierce brute, with his forepaws planted, straight and stiff, before him, on a dead body, was tugging with his front teeth at the large pectoral muscle; occasionally letting go his hold to look at us, and utter a short angry bark, and again tearing at the bleeding flesh, as if it had been a carcass thrown to him for food. Another dog had lain down, with a hold of one of the same poor fellow's cold hands. Every now and then he would clap his head sideways on the ground, so as to get the back grinders to bear on his prey; and there the creature was, with the dead blue fingers across his teeth, crunching and crunching, and gasping, with his mouth full of froth and blood, and marrow, and white splinters of the crushed bones, the sinews and nerves of the dead limb hanging like bloody cords and threads from——Bah!—you have given us a little de trop of this, Master Benjie.