Antony Waymouth; Or, The Gentlemen Adventurers

by William Henry Giles Kingston

“Oh, we are all honourable men here,” cried several of the men in a derisive tone, to which remark the surgeon thought it imprudent to reply.

While this scene was acting, Dick Lizard and his companions were exchanging blows with the rest of the mutineers; but overwhelmed by numbers, two were killed, and Dick and another were brought to the deck badly wounded. Dick had been a general favourite; and although the mutineers were exasperated with him for the attack he had made on them, and for the unmeasured abuse he now heaped on their heads, they agreed he was too good a fellow to be put out of the way, and that if he would keep a civil tongue in his head, he should live. This was a somewhat difficult task for honest Dick, though, when his life was offered, like a wise man he accepted it without thinking it necessary to make any stipulations.

The mutineers had now decidedly gained the day; the officers were forced at the sword’s point to go below, and each was confined in his own cabin. The threatening state of the weather made Hagger anxious to arrange matters. There was no wind, but an ominous swell had got up which made the ship roll heavily, and loud claps of thunder rattled through the sky, while vivid flashes of forked lightning darted from the clouds, hissing like fiery serpents along the surface of the ocean, or playing round the masts and threatening the Lion with destruction.

Waymouth lay in his cabin, feeling like a chained beast of the forest eager to be loose, indignant at the treachery practised on him, and feeling also the probability that the ignorant men who had been guilty of this act of atrocity would wreck the ship, and involve both themselves and him and his officers in a common destruction. He knew that they were totally unaware of the intricacies of the navigation through which the Lion had got so far to the eastward, and that it would be impossible for them unaided to retrace their course. He had perhaps a grim satisfaction in contemplating this, though all his own prospects of wealth would vanish, and life itself be lost. At length, however, the very intensity of his feelings overcame him, and he fell asleep. His sleep was far from refreshing, and his dreams were strangely troubled. Yet on he slept for some time, he believed. Whenever he felt himself waking, he forced himself to doze off again rather than awake to the disagreeable realities of his position. At length, however, the violent rolling and pitching of the ship roused him completely up. The roar of the sea, the howling of the wind, the dashing of the waves on the side of the ship, the rattling of blocks and ropes, and the tramp and shouts of men overhead, convinced him that the long-expected strife of the elements had begun. The rolling and pitching and jerking of the ship became more and more violent, the washing of the water up the sides and over the deck showed him that the sea was running high, and the way in which the ship occasionally heeled over showed him that the gale was blowing furiously. The sounds which reached him from the deck told him also that efforts were being made to shorten sail.

“The mutinous varlets! Now is the occasion to prove their seamanship, if they have any,” he muttered to himself. “What the idiots will do it is hard to say, except let the good ship drive on the rocks. What are they about now? There’s not one of them can stow the mainsail properly but Hagger in a gale like this. They’ll capsize the stout ship, or send the masts over the sides—the idiots!”

Thus he spoke, or rather thought, for some time. The ship plunged on through the mountainous seas, her timbers creaking and groaning as if they were about to be torn asunder. The cabin was in obscurity, for all the hatches were battened down, and not without good reason, for the foaming seas often broke so completely over the ship that without this precaution she might have filled and gone bodily down. Waymouth believed that the day was advancing from the sensations of hunger which he was beginning to experience. In vain he tried to release himself from the ropes which bound him. The more he struggled the tighter they became. Nor could he manage to get his mouth down to any part of the rope, or he would have tried to gnaw it asunder with his teeth. He shouted over and over again to his friends in captivity; but though the sound of his voice reached them, he could not, from the noises in the interior of the ship, make out what they said in return. They were evidently as securely bound as he was, and also confined in their cabins.

“Patience is a virtue, I doubt not, but it is sore difficult to exercise it just now,” he said to himself, with a mocking laugh.

Suddenly the ship heeled over more than ever—there was a loud crash—the sea seemed with fierce roars to be washing over her—shrieks and cries of distress reached his ears even where he lay. Again she righted, and seemed to go tearing on through the ocean as before.

“One or more of our masts have gone,” muttered Waymouth. “Well, let them go; it is but the beginning of the end. The sooner those scoundrels find out their folly the better. Had we shortened sail as I was about to do, this disaster would have been avoided.”

On, on went the ship, plunging down, again to be lifted up, truly reeling to and fro like a drunken man. Once more she was pressed down; another fearful crash followed, and there were piercing shrieks and cries. Waymouth believed fully that the ship was foundering; but no, she rose again, and rushed on still more unsteadily than before. On, on she went. Time was pressing. A hatch was removed for an instant, and a gleam of light penetrated into the cabin. Again it was obscured, and a lantern was lighted; three or four men descended. Waymouth heard them go to his lieutenant’s cabin. They were offering him the command, if he would help them out of their difficulties. An indignant refusal was the reply.