The adventures of Captain O'Shea

by Ralph Delahaye Paine

III

The patriots were unable to adjust themselves to the sudden shift of events. One moment they were about to land, rejoicing and valorous, to be welcomed by the tattered legion of Maximo Gomez, and the next they were snatched away to surge hell-bent in the direction of the enemy and the detestable sea. Captain O’Shea might have delayed to dump them into the boats and turn them adrift to flounder about the bay, but in all probability the Spanish gun-boat would overtake and slay many before they could reach the shore. He did not love them, but it was his duty to safeguard them along with the cargo.

Less than ten minutes after the shadow had moved across the entrance of the bay, the Fearless was swinging to point her nose seaward. As soon as the tug was fairly straightened out, O’Shea rang for full speed. It was no longer a silent ship. The patriots raised a lamentable outcry of grief and indignation, unable to comprehend this slip between the cup and the lip. They were unconvinced that the captain had really seen a gun-boat. They accused him of taking fright at phantoms.

Indeed, there was no such thing as slipping unperceived past the waiting enemy, for besides the loud protests of the Cubans, the engines of the Fearless made a strident song that re-echoed from the wooded shores. No longer in ambush, the Spanish craft turned on a search-light whose streaming radiance picked the tug out of the gloom like a lantern-slide projected on a screen. The two vessels were perhaps four hundred yards apart. Straight into the path of the search-light rushed the Fearless, veering neither to right nor left. Her tactics were disconcerting, her insane temerity wholly unexpected. It was obvious that unless the gun-boat very hastily moved out of the way there would occur an impressive collision. And the tall steel-shod prow of an ocean-going tug is apt to shatter the thin plates of a light-draught, coastwise gun-boat.

Captain O’Shea himself held the wheel. The Spanish gunners hurriedly opened fire, but sensations of panic-smitten amazement spoiled their aim, and they might as well have been shooting at the moon.

“By Judas! ye are so gay with your search-light, I will just have a look at you,” muttered O’Shea as he switched on the powerful light which was mounted upon the wheel-house roof. The handsome gun-boat was sharply revealed, her sailors grouped at the quick-fire pieces on the superstructure, the officers clustered forward. Jack Gorham’s Springfield boomed like a small cannon, and a man with gold stripes on his sleeves toppled from his station and sprawled on the deck below.

The Cubans cheered and let fly a scattering, futile rifle fire, but the crew of the Fearless, convinced that they must fight for their skins, crouched behind the heavy bulwarks and handled their Mausers with methodical earnestness. The Spanish officers and seamen took to cover. They were not used to being shot at, and this filibustering tug was behaving like a full-fledged pirate. The commander of the gun-boat made up his mind to dodge collision and sink the Fearless with his guns before she should flee beyond range outside the bay. His mental machinery was not working swiftly, because this was what might be called his crowded hour. He tried to swing his vessel head on and to sheer to one side of the channel.

Captain O’Shea climbed the spokes of his steering-wheel and swung the Fearless to meet the manœuvre. He was bent on crippling the gun-boat. With leaky boiler tubes, the tug was in no condition for another stern chase and the Spanish gunners would certainly hull her through and through and explode the cargo before he could run clear of the hostile search-light.

A few seconds later, the foaming bow of the Fearless struck the gun-boat a quartering, glancing blow that raked along her side. The Spanish commander had almost twisted his vessel out of the other’s path and O’Shea dared not swing to catch her broadside on, for fear of running aground. The impact was terrific. The Spanish craft had a low freeboard and the guns of her main-deck battery protruded their long muzzles only a few feet above the water. The steel stem of the Fearless, moving with tremendous momentum, struck them one after the other, tore them from their mountings and stripped the starboard side clean. The tug’s headway was checked and a tangle of splintered stuff held the two vessels interlocked. The Spanish gunners on the upper deck could not sufficiently depress the secondary battery to fire down into the Fearless, and on board the tug all hands had been knocked flat by the collision, so that for the moment there was no hostile action on either side.

So close together were the two steamers while they hung together that cases of cargo, toppling over, spilled through the crushed bulwark of the Fearless, and slid upon the gun-boat’s lower deck where the side had been fairly ripped out of her above the water-line. Then the tug very slowly forged ahead, tearing herself free and grinding against the gun-boat’s cracked and twisted plates until the twain parted company.