“Clear away this hamper,” shouted the skipper, “stand to your guns forward there, and give it to the pirate.”
With the word the two light pieces and the gun amidships opened on the now rapidly closing foe; but the metal of all except the swivel was so light that it did no perceptible damage on the thick-ribbed hull of our antagonist. The ball from the long eighteen, however, swept the decks of the foe, and appeared to have carried no little havoc in its course. But the broadside did not check the approach of the rover. His object was manifestly to run us afoul and board us. Steadily, therefore, he maintained his course, swerving scarcely a hair’s breadth at our discharge, but keeping right on as if scorning our futile efforts to check his progress. We did not, however, intermit our exertions. Although crippled we were not disheartened—despairing, we entertained no thought of submission, but rallying around our guns, we fought them like lions at bay, firing with such rapidity that our decks, and the ocean around, soon came to be almost obscured in the thick fleecy veil of smoke that settled slowly on the water. Every few minutes a ball from the pirate whizzed by in our immediate vicinity, or crashed among our spars; but the increasing clouds of vapor, clinging about the pathway of our foe as well as of ourselves, made his fire naturally less deadly than at first. For a short space we even lost sight of our antagonist, and the gunners paused, uncertain where to fire; but suddenly the lofty spars of the pirate were seen riding above the white fog, scarcely a pistol shot from us, and in another minute, with a deafening crash, the rover ran us aboard, his bowsprit jamming in our fore-rigging as he approached us head on. Almost before we could recover from our surprise we heard a stern voice crying out in the Spanish tongue for boarders, and immediately a dark mass of ruffians gathered, like a cluster of bees, on the bowsprit of the foe, with cutlasses brandished aloft, preparatory to a descent on our decks.
“Rally to repel boarders!” thundered the skipper, springing forward, “ho! beat back the bloodhounds from your decks,” and with the word, he made a blow at a desperado who, at that moment, sprang into the fore-rigging; when my superior drew back his sword it was red with the heart’s blood of the assailant, who, falling heavily backwards with a dull plash, squatted a second on the water, like a wounded water-fowl, and then sank forever. For a single breath his companions stood appalled, and then, with a savage yell, leaping on our decks, fiercely attacked our little band. In vain our gallant tars disputed every inch of ground—in vain one after another of the assailants dyed the deck with his blood—in vain by word and deed the skipper incited the crew to almost gigantic exertions; nothing could resist the overpowering tide of assailants which poured on in an unremitting stream from the brig, bearing down every thing before it as an avalanche from the hills. Step by step our brave lads were steadily forced backwards, until at length the whole forecastle was in possession of the foe, and a solid mass of freebooters was advancing on the starboard side of the open main-hatch, in eager pursuit of the retreating crew. I had foreseen this result to the conflict, and instead, therefore, of aiding to repel the boarders, had been engaged in loading one of the lighter guns with grape, and dragging it around, so as to command this very path;—a duty which I had been enabled to perform unnoticed by either party in the fierce excitement of the mêlée. I had hardly masked my little battery, and not three minutes had elapsed from the first onset of the boarders, when my messmates came driving towards me, as I have described, beaten in by the solid masses of the enemy. Already the fugitives had passed the hatchway, and the foremost desperados of the assailing column were even now within three feet of the muzzle of my gun, when I signed to my confederate to jerk off the tarpaulin which had masked our piece. The pirates started back in horror when they saw their peril, but I gave them no time to escape. Quick as lightning I applied the match, and the whole fiery cataract was belched upon them. Language cannot depict the fearful havoc of that discharge. The hurricane of fire and shot mowed its way lengthwise, through the narrow and crowded column, scattering the dying and the dead beneath its track, as a whirlwind uproots the forest trees; while groans, and imprecations, and shrieks of anguish rent the air, drowning the sounds of the explosion, and the crashing of the grape, amongst its victims.
“Now charge!” I shouted, as if seized with a sudden frenzy, springing into the very midst of the foe, “charge them, my gallant braves, and sweep the murderers from the deck. No quarter to the knaves! Hew them to the brisket,” and following every word with a blow, and seconded by our men who seemed to catch my fury, we made such havoc among those of the pirates whom the grape had spared, that, astonished, paralized, disconcerted, and finally struck with mortal fear, they fled wildly from the schooner, some regaining their craft by the bowsprit, some plunging overboard and swimming to her, and some leaping headlong into the deep never to rise again. Seizing an axe, and springing forward, I hastily cut our hamper loose from the foe, and with the next swell the two vessels slowly parted.
“Now to your guns, my men,” shouted the skipper, unconscious of a dangerous wound, in the excitement of the moment, “give it to them before they can rally to their quarters. Fire!”
We poured in our broadsides like hail, riddling even the solid sides of our foe, and making his decks slippery with blood, and all this before the discomfited freebooters could rally to their guns and return our shots. Our men, fired with an enthusiasm which approached to madness, loaded with a speed that seems to me now incredible, and the third broadside was shaking every timber of our little craft, before a solitary gun was discharged in reply from the pirate.
“Ah! he has woke up at last,” said my old friend, the captain of our long Tom, “and she may yet regain the day if we don’t fight like devils. Bring me that shot from the galley.”
“In God’s name, what do you mean?” said I, as he coolly sat down by his piece. “In with the ball and let the rover have it—not a moment is to be lost.”
“Aye! I knows that, leftenant; and here comes the settler for which I waited,” he exclaimed, as the cook brought a red-hot shot from the galley, “I thought I’d venture on a little experiment of my own, and I’ve seen ’em do wonders with these fiery comets afore now. There—there she has it,” he exclaimed, as the shot was sent home, “now God have mercy on them varmint’s souls.”
From some strange, unaccountable presentiment, I stepped mechanically backward and cast an eye at the brig, which had now floated to some distance. As I did so, a trail of fire glanced before my sight, and I saw the simmering shot enter her side. Thought was not quicker than the explosion which followed, shaking the sea beneath and the sky above, and almost deafening the ear with its unearthly concussion, while instantaneously a gush of flame shot far up into the sky; the masts of the vessel were lifted perpendicularly upwards, and the whole air was filled with shattered timbers and mangled human bodies that fell the next minute pattering around us into the deep. Oh God! the fearful sight! The shrieks of the wounded and drowning—the awful struggles of the poor wretches in the water—the sullen cloud that settled over the scene of death, will they ever pass away from my memory? But I drop a veil over a sight too horrible to recount. Suffice it to say, of all the rover’s crew, not one survived to see that sun go down. A few we picked up with our boats, but they died ere night. The cause of the explosion is soon told. The brig’s magazine had been struck and fired by our LAST SHOT.