Undiscouraged by this event, Captain Glass found means to open up a communication with the king of the country, to lay before him the wrong that had been done, and the advantages that were certain to accrue from mutual trade and barter. The sable potentate affected to be pleased with the proposal, but only to the end that he might get Glass completely into his power; but the Scotsman was on his guard, and foiled him.
The king then attempted to poison the whole crew by provisions which he sent on board impregnated by some deadly drug. Glass, by his previous medical knowledge perhaps, discovered this in time; but so scarce had food become in his vessel, that he was compelled to go with a few hands in an open boat to the Canaries, where he hoped to purchase what he wanted from the Spaniards.
In his absence the savages were encouraged to attack the ship in their war-canoes; but were repulsed by a sharp musketry-fire opened upon them by the remainder of the crew, who losing heart by the protracted absence of the captain, quitted his fatal harbour, and sailed for the Thames, which they reached in safety.
Meanwhile the unfortunate captain, after landing on one of the Canaries, presented a petition to the Spanish governor to the effect that he might be permitted to purchase food; but that officer, inflamed by national animosity, cruelly threw him into a dark and damp dungeon, and kept him there without pen, ink, or paper, on the accusation that he was a spy. Being thus utterly without means of making his case known, he contrived another way of communicating with the external world. One account has it that he concealed a pencilled note in a loaf of bread which fell into the hands of the British consul; another states that he wrote with a piece of charcoal on a ship-biscuit and sent it to the captain of a British man-of-war that was lying off the island, and who with much difficulty, and after being imprisoned himself, effected the release of Glass. The latter, on being joined by his wife and daughter, who had come in search of him, set sail for England in 1765, on board the merchant brig Earl of Sandwich, Captain Cochrane.
Glass doubtless supposed his troubles were now over; but the knowledge that much of his property and a great amount of specie, one hundred thousand pounds, belonging to others, was on board, induced four of the crew to form a conspiracy to murder every one else and seize the ship. These mutineers were respectively George Gidley, the cook, a native of the west of England; Peter M’Kulie, an Irishman; Andrew Zekerman, a Hollander; and Richard H. Quintin, a Londoner. On three different nights they are stated to have made the attempt, but were baffled by the vigilance of Captain Glass, rather than that of his countryman, Captain Cochrane; but at eleven o’clock at night on the 30th of November 1765, it chanced, as shewn at their trial, that these four miscreants had together the watch on deck, when the Sandwich was already in sight of the coast of Ireland; and when Captain Cochrane, after taking a survey aloft, was about to return to the cabin, Peter M’Kulie brained him with ‘an iron bar’ (probably a marline-spike), and threw him overboard.
A cry that had escaped Cochrane alarmed the rest of the crew, who were all despatched in the same manner as they rushed on deck in succession. This slaughter and the din it occasioned roused Captain Glass, who was below in bed; but he soon discovered what was occurring, and after giving one glance on deck, rushed away to get his sword. M’Kulie imagining the cause of his going back, went down the steps leading to the cabin, and stood in the dark, expecting Glass’s return, and suddenly seized his arms from behind; but the captain being a man of great strength, wrenched his sword-arm free, and on being assailed by the other three assassins, plunged his weapon into the arm of Zekerman, when the blade became wedged or entangled. It was at length wrenched forth, and Glass was slain by repeated stabs of his own weapon, while his dying cries were heard by his wife and daughter–two unhappy beings who were ruthlessly thrown overboard and drowned.
Besides these four victims, James Pincent, the mate, and three others lost their lives. The mutineers now loaded one of the boats with the money, chests, and so forth, and then scuttled the Sandwich, and landed at Ross on the coast of Ireland. But suspicion speedily attached to them; they were apprehended; and confessing the crimes of which they had been guilty, were tried before the Court of King’s Bench, Dublin, and sentenced to death. They were accordingly executed in St Stephen’s Green, on the 10th of October 1765.
[AN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY ROMANCE.]
On a bright cold day in April 1719, a travelling carriage with three postillions dashed, full of the importance which always attends a fashionable well-built vehicle, into the famous but not progressive town of Innsbruck. The carriage contained four persons, said to be going to Loretto on pilgrimage–the Comte and Comtesse de Cernes, with the brother and sister of the comtesse; and as the aristocratic party alighted at their hotel, they created some sensation among those who clustered round the porch in the clear sharp twilight. The comtesse and her sister were very much enveloped in furs, and wore travelling masks, which effectually screened their faces from the vulgar gaze, and diverted the curiosity of the homely Tyrolese to the undisguised figures of the comte and the comtesse’s brother. The former was the statelier of the two, but the latter was universally pronounced to be ein herrlicher Mensch. There was a certain sprightly grace in his movements which yet did not detract from the dignity essential in those days to a gentleman, and which would have saved him from being addressed with too great familiarity. The news soon circulated among the loungers that the fresh arrivals were Flemings; and the pleasant blue eyes of the comte and his brother-in-law–though certainly not the sprightly grace of the latter–accorded with these floating accounts of their origin.