The bags, and hammocks, and officers’ kits, were handed into the boats; the men were told off over the side, as quietly by watches as if at muster, the officers last. At length the first lieutenant came down. By this time she was settling perceptibly in the water; but the old captain still stood on the gangway, holding by the iron stanchion, where, taking off his hat, he remained uncovered for a moment, with the tears standing in his eyes. He then replaced it, descended, and took his place in the ship’s launch—the last man to leave the ship; and there was little time to spare, for we had scarcely shoved off a few yards, to clear the spars of the wreck, when she sended forward, heavily and sickly, on the long swell.—She never rose to the opposite heave of the sea again, but gradually sank by the head. The hull disappeared slowly and dignifiedly, the ensign fluttered and vanished beneath the dark ocean—I could have fancied reluctantly as if it had been drawn down through a trap-door. The topsails next disappeared, the fore-topsail sinking fastest; and last of all, the white pennant at the main-topgallant-mast head, after flickering and struggling in the wind, flew up in the setting sun as if imbued with—life, like a stream of white fire, or as if it had been the spirit leaving the body, and was then drawn down into the abyss, and the last vestige of the Rayo vanished for ever. The crew, as if moved by one common impulse, gave three cheers.
The captain now stood up in his boat—“Men, the Rayo is no more, but it is my duty to tell you, that although you are now to be distributed amongst the transports, you are still amenable to martial law; I am aware, men, this hint may not be necessary, still it is right you should know it.”
When the old hooker clipped out of sight, there was not a dry eye in the whole fleet. “There she goes, the dear old beauty,” said one of her crew. “There goes the blessed old black b——h,” quoth another. “Ah, many a merry night have we had in the clever little craft,” quoth a third; and there was really a tolerable shedding of tears and squirting of tobacco juice. But the blue ripple had scarcely blown over the glasslike surface of the sea where she had sunk, when the buoyancy of young hearts, with the prospect of a good furlough amongst the lobster boxes for a time, seemed to be uppermost amongst the men. The officers, I saw and knew, felt very differently.
“My eye!” sung out an old quartermaster incur boat, perched well forward with his back against the ring in the stem, and his arms crossed, after having been busily employed rummaging in his bag, “my eye, what a pity—oh, what a pity!”
Come, there is some feeling, genuine, at all events, thought I.
“My,” said Bill Chestree, the captain of the foretop, “what is can’t be helped, old Fizgig; old Rayo has gone down, and”—“Old Rayo be d——d, Master Bill,” said the man; “but may I be flogged, if I han’t forgotten half a pound of negro head baccy in Dick Catgut’s bag.”
“Launch ahoy!” hailed a half drunken voice from one of the boats astern of us. “Hillo,” responded the coxswain. The poor skipper even pricked up his ears. “Have you got Dick Catgut’s fiddle among ye?” This said Dick Catgut was the corporal of marines, and the prime instigator of all the fun amongst the men. “No, no,” said several voices, “no fiddle here.” The hail passed round among the other boats, “No fiddle.” “I would rather lose three days grog than have his fiddle mislaid,” quoth the man who pulled the bow oar.
“Why don’t you ask Dick himself?” said our coxswain.
“Aye—true enough—Dick, Dick Catgut!” but no one answered. Alas! poor Dick was nowhere to be found; he had been mislaid as well as his fiddle. He had broken into the spirit room, as it turned out, and having got drunk, did not come to time when the frigate sunk.
Our ship, immediately after the frigate’s crew had been bestowed, and the boats got in, hoisted the Commodore’s light, and the following morning we fell in with the Torch, off the east end of Jamaica, which, after seeing the transports safe into Kingston, and taking out me and my people, bore up through the Gulf, and resumed her cruising ground on the edge of the Gulf stream, between 25 degrees and 30 degrees north latitude.