He was pinioned like the rest, and forthwith we walked them all off to the beach. By this time there was an unusual bustle in the Holy Ground, and we could hear many an anathema—curses not loud but deep—ejaculated from many a half-opened door as we passed along. We reached the boat, and time it was we did, for a number of stout fellows, who had followed us in a gradually increasing crowd until they amounted to forty at the fewest, now nearly surrounded us, and kept closing in. As the last of us jumped into the boat, they made a rush, so that if we had not shoved off with the speed of light, I think it very likely that we should have been overpowered. However, we reached the ship in safety, and the day following we weighed, and stood out to sea with our convoy.
It was a very large fleet, nearly three hundred sail of merchant vessels—and a noble sight truly.
A line-of-battle ship led, and two frigates and three sloops of our class were stationed on the outskirts of the fleet, whipping them in, as it were. We made Madeira in fourteen days, looked in, but did not anchor; superb island—magnificent mountains—white town,—and all very fine, but nothing particular happened for three weeks. One fine evening (we had by this time progressed into the trades, and were within three hundred miles of Barbadoes) the sun had set bright and clear, after a most beautiful day, and we were bowling along right before it, rolling like the very devil; but there was no moon, and although the stars sparkled brilliantly, yet it was dark, and as we were the sternmost of the men-of-war, we had the task of whipping in the sluggards. It was my watch on deck. A gun from the commodore, who showed a number of lights. "What is that, Mr. Kennedy?" said the captain to the old gunner. "The commodore has made the night-signal for the sternmost ships to make more sail and close, sir." We repeated the signal and stood on, hailing the dullest of the merchantmen in our neighbourhood to make more sail, and firing a musket-shot now and then over the more distant of them. By-and-by we saw a large West Indiamen suddenly haul her wind and stand across our bows.
"Forward there!" sung out Mr. Splinter; "stand by to fire a shot at that fellow from the boat gun if he does not bear up. What can he be after? Sergeant Armstrong"—to a marine, who was standing close by him in the waist—"get a musket and fire over him."
It was done, and the ship immediately bore up on her course again; we now ranged alongside of him on his larboard quarter.
"Ho, the ship, ahoy!"—"Hillo!" was the reply. "Make more sail, sir, and run into the body of the fleet, or I shall fire into you: why don't you, sir, keep in the wake of the commodore?" No answer. "What meant you by hauling your wind just now, sir?"
"Yesh, yesh," at length responded a voice from the merchantman.
"Something wrong here," said Mr. Splinter. "Back your maintopsail, sir, and hoist a light at the peak; I shall send a boat on board of you. Boatswain's mate, pipe away the crew of the jolly-boat." We also hove to, and were in the act of lowering down the boat, when the officer rattled out—"Keep all fast with the boat; I can't comprehend that chap's manoeuvres for the soul of me. He has not hove to." Once more we were within pistol-shot of him. "Why don't you heave to, sir?" All silent.
Presently we could perceive a confusion and noise of struggling on board, and angry voices, as if people were trying to force their way up the hatches from below; and a heavy thumping on the deck, and a creaking of the blocks, and rattling of the cordage, while the mainyard was first braced one way, and then another, as if two parties were striving for the mastery. At length a voice hailed distinctly—"we are captured by a——." A sudden sharp cry, and a splash overboard, told of some fearful deed.
"We are taken by a privateer or pirate," sung out another voice. This was followed by a heavy crunching blow, as when the spike of a butcher's axe is driven through a bullock's forehead deep into the brain.