“We have some Jonah on board,” I heard the first mate observe to the second. He was a rough sailor, such as are not often met with now-a-days, though then they were common. “If we could find him, we would heave him overboard.”
I remembered too well what I had often thought about myself, and felt thankful that I had kept my own counsel since I was on board, and had not told my story. The night came on very dark. I do not believe anybody in the ship knew exactly where we were. Several hours of deep anxiety passed away. The ship began to labour dreadfully. All we could hope was that, when daylight returned, we might find ourselves clear to the northward of all dangers, and then with tolerable sea-room we might expect to make sail so as to carry the ship into an English port. Vain were our hopes. Suddenly there was a cry, “Breakers ahead! breakers on the lee beam!” The ship struck, again and again, with terrific violence. The masts went by the board; then she seemed to be lifted over the ledge, and we found her floating in smoother water. We hoped that we were in some bay where we could bring up and ride out the gale; but it was too dark for us to distinguish our position. The captain had just given the order to let go an anchor, when the fearful cry was uttered, “The ship is sinking! the ship is sinking!”
“Get the boats out, my men; no hurry, now!” cried the captain; but it was not quite so easy to obey the order or to follow the advice. The long-boat was stove in; but we had a gig and a whale-boat hanging to the ship’s quarters. We ran to the falls. La Motte and I, with some others, leaped into the whale-boat just as the ship sank beneath our feet. We shouted out to the rest of our shipmates that we would try to pick them up, but we could see no one. Though I said the sea was calmer than on the other side of the reef, still we had no little difficulty in keeping the boat from swamping. We could not tell either in which direction to pull. All we could do, therefore, was to keep the boat’s head to the sea, and wait till daylight, which we knew was not far off. At length it came, as it always comes at last to the weary and the watchful, if they will but patiently wait for it. As the dawn gradually broke we found that we had been drifted into a bay, and that the shore was not four hundred fathoms from us. There was a good deal of surf breaking on it, so that it was necessary to use caution in landing. Waiting out opportunity, we gave way and drove the boat high up on the beach. A sad sight met our view; the sand on each side was covered with portions of the wreck and casks of wine, many of them stove in; but sadder far it was to see the bodies of our late shipmates hove up dead on the beach, while one or two were still washing to and fro in the surf, as if the sea were yet loth to give up its dead. Perhaps there is no more melancholy sight than that for a seaman to behold. We examined the bodies; they were all dead; but as we looked about we came upon some marks of feet in the sand, leading up the beach, and this gave us hopes that some of our companions had escaped. I saw La Motte looking inquiringly about him. I asked him if he knew where we were.
“Yes, that I do,” he answered. “At no great distance from my home. Come along with me, Weatherhelm. My family will be glad to welcome an old shipmate.”
Just as the sun got up we saw several people approaching, and were truly glad to find among them our captain and three of the crew. They took charge of the men who had been saved with us, while I set off with La Motte to his home. It was a large farm-house standing by itself. He looked round the building, and in at one or two of the windows, but could not make up his mind how to announce himself. “I am afraid of giving some of them a fright if I were to appear too suddenly,” he said. At last he told me that I must go in and tell them that I was a shipmate of his, and that he would be there soon. So I opened the door, and an old lady came out and spoke to me, but I could not understand a word she said, and then an old gentleman made his appearance, with white hair, with a long red waistcoat and greatcoat, but he could not help on the conversation. At last they went to the back of the house, and called “Janette! Janette!” and a young girl, with her petticoats tucked up, came tripping in, as if she had just been milking the cows, and she asked me, in broken English, what I wanted; and when I replied that I knew Jacob La Motte, and was a shipmate of his, they seemed very much interested, and not a little agitated. When I saw this, I thought the sooner I told them that he was all right and well the better, and then, to their astonishment, I ran out of the house and called him, and he soon had both them and several other young boys and girls all hanging round his neck, and kissing him and asking him all sorts of questions. I envied him—I could not help it. I had no father or mother, or brothers or sisters, to care for me, so even at that moment I felt very desolate and forlorn. However, they soon recollected me, and then they all did their best to make me happy and comfortable.
The days passed very quickly away. I never had been so happy and merry in my life. Though the old people could not speak English, they understood it a little, and I soon picked up French enough to make out what I wanted to say; and then all the younger people could talk English, though among themselves they always spoke French. As we lived on so quietly and peaceably in that pretty farm-house, no one would have supposed that all the horrors of war were being enacted in the surrounding seas. It might have been supposed that neither of us would ever have wished to leave those quiet scenes, but after a time La Motte began to grow fidgety, and said he must think of getting employment. At last away he went to Peter-le-port, the only town in the island. He was away three or four days, and when he came back he told me that he had taken service on board a privateer, one of the fastest craft out of the island. “She is called the Hirondelle,” he said. “You never set eyes on a more beautiful craft. She is lugger-rigged, mounts sixteen guns, and will carry a hundred and twenty hands, all told, fore and aft. There is nothing will look up to her. I could not resist the temptation of joining her. Her crew will have six months’ protection from the pressgang. That alone is worth something. Now is your opportunity, Will, for making your fortune. Don’t throw it away. By the time you are paid off you’ll have your pockets full of money, and then come and settle down here. That is what I intend to do.”
His reasonings and arguments seemed irresistible. Still I held off. I was balancing between my wish to go and see Aunt Bretta at Southsea and the old lady and her niece at Plymouth, and trying to find my way back to my ship. I had an idea that the latter was the right thing to do. Still, unhappily, I had not always been accustomed to do what was right, and now found it easy to do what was wrong. I told him, in reply, what I wished to do, and what I thought I ought to do; but he laughed at all my reasonings, and before the day was over I had consented to go and enter on board the lugger. In those days not many people thought there was any harm in privateering. Many do not think so now. Still there were some who looked upon it as little better than a sort of lawful piracy, and made but little scruple in running down an enemy’s privateer.
I found the Hirondelle everything La Motte had described her. We had not been out a week before we had taken a couple of prizes, and we recaptured a number of English vessels which had been taken by the enemy and were on their way into French ports. As we were low in the water and had short stumps for masts, by lowering our sails we could lie concealed till we could make out what sort of craft were heaving in sight. We therefore ran but little risk of catching a Tartar, as privateers very often do.
I remained in the privateer upwards of a year and a half, and at last peace came, and the crew were paid off, and she was laid up. Though I had spent my money pretty freely when I was on shore, still I found that, what with wages and prize-money, I had fully four hundred pounds in my pocket. This I might well look on as a handsome fortune to begin life with on shore, and carefully managed it was enough to set a young man up in business. I have known numbers of seamen go on shore with far larger sums, and spend the whole in the course of a few days, but then they have never—poor ignorant fellows!—read the book of Solomon, or, if they have, profited by the wise advice contained in it. I spent a few days with the La Motte family, but the thoughts of Aunt Bretta, and still more, perhaps, that quiet evening spent at Plymouth, were constantly coming into my mind; and wishing him and them good-bye, I shipped myself and my fortune aboard a cutter bound for Portsmouth.