The Missing Ship: The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley

by William Henry Giles Kingston

The commander leaped down from his exposed position unhurt. “Now, give it to them, my lads!” he cried, and the guns sent forth an iron shower into the midst of their assailants. Shrieks and cries arose from the direction of the enemy, who had evidently not expected to find the English possessed of guns. Still the little garrison fully expected to be attacked; but when the smoke from the first discharge of the guns cleared off, the whole body of the enemy were discovered in rapid flight, making their way back to their boats.

“Let us follow them, sir,” cried several voices from among the men; “not one of them shall get back to their ship.”

“They have been sufficiently punished, and are not likely to renew the attack,” answered the commander, who had no wish to make prisoners, and saw no necessity for the utter destruction of the enemy. “If they come on again they must take the consequences.”

The seamen were somewhat disappointed at this, but they knew that it would be useless to expostulate. They remained at their guns, hoping that the enemy would again attack them; but when daylight appeared, the boats were seen making their way back to the frigate, which lay outside the reef. On the ground they had occupied when the fort opened fire on them were stretched upward of a dozen dead men. It was evident that the Spanish had carried off their wounded, who probably numbered as many more. A party was at once sent down, accompanied by the surgeon, to ascertain if any of those on the ground were still alive; but Mac, having gone round and examined each of these carefully, pronounced them all as “dead as herrings.”

“There, my lads,” he said to the men, who had come with pickaxes and spades. “Now you may bury them all as fast as you like; their fighting days are over.”

The seamen carried the bodies off to a distance from the fort, when having dug a large grave, they tumbled them in without any ceremony. Before the sun had risen many degrees above the horizon, the dead Spaniards were for ever put out of the sight of their fellow-creatures.

Meantime, the proceedings of the frigate had been watched with no inconsiderable interest by Commander Olding and his officers. The wind was still blowing a moderate breeze from the south-west, and would enable her without difficulty to get in much nearer than she was at present to the island. She was seen to be getting up her anchor. The topsails were let fall, and, with her boats ahead, she stood in towards the fort.

“Her captain, finding that he cannot capture us as he expected, intends to attack the fort with his great guns,” observed the commander. “He will find, if he attempts to do so, that he has made a still greater mistake than at first. He must be well acquainted, however, with the navigation or he would not venture to bring his frigate in among these reefs.”

The men had in the mean time been piped to breakfast, the commander and his two lieutenants alone remaining on the ramparts to watch the proceedings of the frigate. The wind was light, the sea smooth, and she was enabled to thread her way amid the reefs without difficulty.

“Her captain maybe a bold fellow, but he is not a wise one,” observed Mr Tarwig. “If it comes on to blow, and I think there is a great probability that it will do so, he will wish himself well out to sea again before he can get there. He seems only to be thinking how he can get near the fort, but if he had kept his eye to windward he would have observed yonder bank of clouds rising above the horizon.”