Seeing me on the ridge, the rogues in the latter stopped, and faced about—"Heaven and earth, what is that?" I was cast down sprawling on my back.
"What dat is—what dat is, do massa say?" quoth honest Quacco's voice at this juncture; "Massa no was shee one whole platoon fire at him? If massa will keep walloping his arms about like one breezemill, and make grimace, and twist him body dis side and dat side, like one monkey—baboon you call—and do all sort of foolis ting for make dem notice him, massa most not be sorprise if dey soot at him." And true enough, in the intensity of my excitement, the strong working of my spirit had moved my outward man as violently as that of a Johnny Raw witnessing his first prize-fight. If my contortions were of any kindred to those the sable Serjeant illustrated his speech by, I must have made rather an amusing exhibition. "Look, if two of dem bullet no tell in de tree here, just where massa was stand up, when I was take de liberty of pull him down on him battam; beg pardon for name soch unpoliteful place before massa."
"Thanks, trusty armourer," cried I Benjie. But the gale, that now "aside the shroud of battle cast," blowing almost a hurricane, again veered round a little, and the Midge was under weigh, near the mouth of the creek, standing out to sea.
The weather was, indeed, getting rapidly worse—the screaming sea-birds flew in, like drifts of snow; scarcely distinguishable from the driving foamflakes. The scud came past in soaking wreaths, like flashes of white vapour from the safety-valve of a steam boiler. Suddenly the wind fell to a dead calm; not a breath fanned us; not a leaf stirred; the rain-drops glittered on the pale-green velvet of the ragged, and ever-twittering, but now motionless leaves of the plantain, like silver globules frozen there; the reports of the guns grew sharper in the lull, the cries shriller, and the general tumult and uproar of the conflict swelled fearfully; while the white smoke rose up, shrouding the vessels and entire cove from my sight.
The clouds above us, surcharged with fire and water, formed a leaden coloured arch over the entrance to the cove, that spanned the uproar of dark white-crested waves, boiling and rolling in smoky wreaths, and lancing out ragged shreds from their lower edges, that shot down and shortened like a fringe of streamers, from which the forked lightning crankled out every now and then clear and bright.
To the right hand, directly over the cocoa-nut trees, these fibres, or shreds of clouds, were in the most active motion, and began to twirl and whisk round into a spinning black tube, shaped like the trunk of an elephant; the widest end blending into the thickest of the arch above, while the lower swayed about, with an irregular but ponderous oscillation; lengthening and stretching towards the trees, one moment in a dense column, as if they had attracted it, and the next contracting with the speed of light, as if it had as suddenly been repelled by them, leaving only a transparent phantom-like track of dark shreds in the air, to show where it had shrunk from. There, it lengthens again, as if it once more felt an affinity for the sharp spiculæ of the leaves, that seem to erect themselves to meet it. It almost touched them—flash—the electric fluid sparked out and up, either from the cocoa-nut trees themselves, or through them as conductors from the sandy spit on which they grew. I saw it distinctly; but the next moment the pent gale, as if it had burst some invisible barrier that confined it, gushed down as suddenly as it had taken off, and stronger than before. I was blinded and almost suffocated by the heaviest shower ever dashed by wind in the face of mortal man—the debris, so to speak, of the vanished waterspout; I can compare it to nothing but being exposed to the jet of a fire-engine.
A column of dense black smoke, thickly starred with red sparks, now boiled up past the edge of the cliff under me—presently it became streaked with tongues of bright hissing flame, which ran up the rigging, diverging along every rope, as if it had been a galvanic wire, twisting, serpent-like, round the Mosca's masts and higher spars, and licking the wet furled sails like boa-constrictors fitting their prey to be devoured. See how the fire insinuates itself into the dry creases of the canvass, driving out the moisture from the massive folds in white steam; now the sails catch in earnest—they drop in glowing flakes of tinder from the yards—there the blue and white pennant and ensign are scorched away, and blow off in tiny flashes; while in the lulls of the gale we distinctly hear the roaring and crackling of the fire, as it rages in the hull of the doomed vessel below. "I say, Quacco, mind we don't get a hoist, my man—see we be not too near—there, don't you hear how the guns go off as the metal gets heated, for there is not a soul on board?"
"Oh dear! oh dear—see that poor little fellow, sir—ho! ho! ho!" rumbled Tobias Tooraloo, who all this time was lying flat on his stomach beside me, with his head a little raised, turtle-fashion. A poor boy belonging to the pirate schooner had been caught and cut off by the fire when aloft, and was now standing on the head of the mainmast with one arm round the topmast, and waving his cap in the most beseeching manner at us with the other hand—the rising smoke seemed to be stifling him, at least we could not hear his cries; at length the fire reached him, when after several abortive attempts to climb higher up, he became confused, and slung himself by a rope to the masthead, without seeming to know what he was about—he then gradually drooped, and drooped, the convulsive action of his head and limbs becoming more and more feeble; merciful Providence! the flames reach him—his hair is on fire, and his clothes; a last, strong, and sudden struggle for an instant, and then he hung motionless across the rope like a smirched and half-burned fleece.
It never rains but it pours. "Hark! an earthquake!" and, as if a volcano had burst forth beneath our feet, at this instant of time the pirate schooner under the cliff blew up with an explosion that shook earth, air, and water—shooting the pieces of burning wreck in every direction, that hissed like meteors through the storm, and fell thickly all around us.
The Midge, the Midge—she slides out of the smoke! See! she gains the offing.