Old Jack

by William Henry Giles Kingston

I constantly think of the saying, “Man proposes, but Heaven disposes.” So I found it in this instance. My kind captain would have done all he intended, but his plans for my benefit were frustrated by circumstances then unforeseen by either of us.

A few days after this, we sailed for the Mediterranean. We had shipped a couple more guns, and four additional hands. In those days it was necessary for merchantmen frequenting that sea to be strongly armed, for it was sadly infested by pirates. There were Moorish pirates, Salee rovers, and others, who went to sea in large vessels as well as in boats, and robbed indiscriminately all vessels they could overpower; then there were Algerine pirates, who had still larger vessels, and were superior to them in numbers; and, lastly, there were Greek pirates, every island and rock in the Aegean Sea harbouring some of them. Long years of Turkish misrule and tyranny had thoroughly enslaved and debased the great mass of the people; and the more daring and adventurous spirits, finding all lawful exercise of their energies denied them on shore, sought instead for such excitement and profit as piracy could afford them afloat. Some of them darted out in small boats from the sheltered coves and bays when any unarmed merchantman was becalmed near them; while others, in well-formed and well-manned vessels of large size, cruised about in all directions in search of prizes. Sometimes their strongholds, when discovered by the Turks, were attacked and destroyed, but generally they carried on their system of rapine with perfect impunity; and though the people of other governments complained, they had no legal power to punish the subjects of a friendly nation. So the Greeks, rejoicing in impunity, grew more and more audacious, till they levied contributions on all the civilised nations of Europe whose traders ventured into the Levant. Such was the state of things when the Rainbow sailed on her first voyage to Smyrna. Captain Helfrich had been there before, and he knew the character of the people he had to deal with.

We met with bad weather soon after leaving the Channel, and had already been driven some way to the westward, when, as we were in about the latitude of Lisbon, it came on to blow harder than ever from the eastward. Had we been close in with the land, this would not have signified; but before we could beat up again, a continuance of northerly and easterly gales drove us to the southward of the Gut of Gibraltar. When there, they left us in a dead calm, with our sails idly flapping against the masts, and rolling bulwarks under in the heavy swell they had caused on Old Ocean’s bosom.

The sun arose over the distant Morocco coast—not then in sight, however—and sent his rays down on our decks with an ardour which made the pitch bubble and hiss up out of the seams. Not a ripple disturbed the rounded smoothness of the heaving swells, while even the bubbles thrown off from our sides refused to float to any distance from us. We were not the only occupants of our own horizon. Some eight miles off, or so, there was another brig rolling away much in the same fashion that we were. All hands were anxious for a breeze, as we in no way liked the heat after the cold of a northern clime, though it mattered nothing to us whether we made a quick or a slow passage. We whistled, as sailors always whistle when they want a breeze; but the breeze did not come the faster for all our whistling. I never knew it do so, with all my experience. What folly, indeed, in man to suppose that He who rules the winds and waves should alter his laws in consequence of their puny efforts to make a wind with their mouths! In those days, of course, I did not think about the matter. I whistled because others whistled; but if any of us had been asked on what ground we founded our hope that the wind would come in consequence, I suspect that we should have been very much puzzled to return a satisfactory answer.

“What countryman do you make that craft out there to be, Mr Gale?” said the captain, handing the mate the glass through which he had been looking.

“Not an Englishman, certainly,” was the reply, after the usual steady glance. “I should say, from the whiteness of her canvas, and her light upper-rigging, that she belongs to some of those turban-wearing people along the African coast in there, or up the Straits. They are seldom pleasant customers for an unarmed craft to come across.”

“I had formed the same idea of her,” observed Captain Helfrich. “We know pretty well, however, how to deal with such gentry: and if she come across us, she’ll find that she has caught a Tartar.”

I told Peter what I had heard; and he, I found, after looking through the telescope, formed much the same opinion of the stranger.

The day wore on, and still the calm continued, so that we in no way decreased our distance from her. Night also overtook us, while we lay rolling away helplessly as before. The swell, however, was going down gradually; as it did so, the brig became more steady in the water.

It was about the first hour of the morning-watch, which Peter and I were keeping, when he asked me suddenly if I did not hear oars. I listened: there could be no doubt about it. There was more than one boat, and the oars were pulled pretty rapidly too. The night was not dark, though there was no moon; but a mist floated on the surface of the water, and served to veil it from our sight, though right overhead the stars could still be seen glimmering faintly in the sky.