A bright flash followed, and then a noise as if heaven’s artillery had pealed forth a salvo; and all was silent!
The lofty sloop, and the graceful schooner, where were they? They had entirely disappeared; and in the place they had occupied nothing was now to be seen but a confused mass of spars! splinters! cordage! dead men’s bodies! legs! arms! heads! floating about; and here and there a few who had escaped with their lives, swimming and endeavoring to get on some floating spar, to prolong for a little time their existence.
Willis, before the combat, had placed a train from his magazine to a keg of powder at the foot of the cabin companion-way, and finding he was about to be captured, he had set fire to the train, by firing his pistol into the open keg, and blown up his own vessel and the sloop, which was lying close alongside.
Sitting on a large spar, which had formerly done duty as the Maraposa’s main-mast, was the figure of a man, the calm and philosophical expression of whose countenance was strangely at variance with the scene of confusion and death that surrounded him; and the current of his thoughts was equally uncommon for one in his situation.
“Well!” soliloquized he, “that was the tallest hoist I have ever had yet. I fell from a frigate’s topgallant-yard once, but, by the Virgin’s Son, that was nothing to this! First, I went up, until I thought I was on a voyage to the moon, and then I came down like a burst rocket, and sunk into the sea, down, down, until I was sure I would come out on the other side; and then I came up in the midst of this infernal mess, safe and sound, and am booked for a cruise on this old spar. Maldito! I wish the berth was a better one! But after getting alive out of that hot fight, and coming off safe from a blowing up, I know I am not going to be drowned or starved to death! No, no, hanging will be my lot yet! and I could make out well enough here, for a while, if I only had a shipmate; messmates we would not be, for there is no grub—and, blast me, if there is not another chap alive, if he only has strength enough to get here.” As he said this, he stretched out his arm to aid a man, who, with feeble effort, was endeavoring to get on the spar.
The new comer’s face was grimed and black with powder, and he was stained with blood that was exuding from a deep gash in his shoulder; for a moment he sat motionless to recover himself, and then exclaimed, extending his hand to his companion on the mast,
“My God, is that you, Mateo!”
“Madre de Cielo!” said Mateo, who was the individual that had been philosophising. “Is that you, captain? By St. Antony, I am glad to see you! I was just wishing for a shipmate, but had no thought I would be lucky enough to fall in with you; for I thought it hardly possible we should both escape.”
“Nor have we yet,” said Willis; for it was he. “We have a poor chance of ever going from here, but to the fishes; but even that is better than to be carried into Havana again and hung. And it is some consolation that the sloop’s gone to Davy Jones’ locker as well as the Maraposa. I said this would be her last voyage to the coast, but I had no idea the poor craft would come to an end altogether.”
“Keep up your heart, captain,” said Mateo, “for I know I am going to die by hanging; and as you could not find the means of doing the job for me here, even if I wished it, we must necessarily get safe somewhere; and you know I am a true prophet!”