Blackbeard: Buccaneer Part 8

It was the signal for the sailors of the _Plymouth Adventure_ to charge aft and finish the business. They found pirates crawling from under the wreckage. It was like a demolished ant-heap. In the smaller cabins and other rooms far aft, which were more or less intact, some of the rascals showed fight but they were remorselessly prodded out with pikes and those unwounded were hustled forward to be thrown into the forecastle.

It was difficult to restrain the seamen from dealing them the death they deserved but Captain Wellsby was no sea-butcher and he hoped to turn them over to the colonial authorities to be hanged with due ceremony.

The badly hurt were laid in the forecastle bunks where the ship's surgeon washed and bandaged them after he had cared for the injured men of his own crew. Ned Rackham was still alive, conscious and defiant, surviving a wound which would have been mortal in most cases. Whether he lived or died was a matter of small concern to Captain Wellsby but he ordered the surgeon to nurse him with special care.

The dead pirates were flung overboard but the bodies of seven brave British seamen were wrapped in sailcloth to be committed to the deep on the morrow, with a round shot at their feet and a prayer to speed their souls. There were men enough to work the ship but she was in a situation indescribably forlorn. It was possible to patch and sh.o.r.e the cabin house and make a refuge, even to find place for the wretched women who were lifted unharmed out of the lazarette. But the stout ship, her mainmast gone by the board, the deck ravaged by that infernal catapult of an errant gun, the hull pounded by the floating wreckage of spars, would achieve a miracle should she see port again.

The combat with the pirates and their overthrow had been waged in the last hour before the gray night closed over a somber sea. G.o.d's mercy had caused the wind to fall and the waves to diminish in size else the ship would have gone to the bottom ere dawn. Much water had washed down into the hold through the broken cargo hatch and the gaps where the runaway gun had torn other fittings away. The carpenter sounded the well and solemnly stared at the wetted rod by the flicker of his horn lantern. The ship was settling. It was his doleful surmise that she leaked where the pounding spars overside had started the b.u.t.ts. It was man the pumps to keep the old hooker afloat and Captain Wellsby ordered his weary men to sway at the brakes, watch and watch.

Joe Hawkridge and Jack c.o.c.krell, more fit for duty than the others, put their backs into it right heartily while the sailors droned to the cadence of the pump a sentimental ditty which ran on for any number of verses and began in this wise:

"As, lately I traveled toward Gravesend, I heard a fair Damosel a Sea-man commend: And as in a Tilt-boat we pa.s.sed along, In praise of brave Sea-men she sung this new Song, _Come Tradesman or Marchant, whoever he be, There's none but a Sea-man shall marry with me!_"

Thus they labored all the night through, men near dead with fatigue whose hard fate it was to contend now with pirates and again with the hostile ocean. The skipper managed to stay the foremast and to bend steering sails so that the ship was brought into the wind where her motion was easier. The sky cleared before daybreak and the rosy horizon proclaimed a fair sunrise. How far and in what direction the _Plymouth Adventure_ had been blown by the storm was largely guesswork. By means of dead reckoning and the compa.s.s and cross-staff, Captain Wellsby hoped to work out a position but meanwhile he scanned the sea with a sense of brooding anxiety.

Instead of praying for plenty of sea room, he now hoped with all his heart that the vessel had been set in toward the coast. She was sinking under his feet and would not live through the day. It was useless to toil at the pumps or to strive at mending the shattered upperworks. The men turned to the task of quitting the ship, and of saving the souls on board. It was a pitiful extremity and yet they displayed a dogged, unshaken fidelity. Only one boat had escaped destruction. The pinnace had been staved in by the thunderbolt of a gun and the yawl, stowed upon the cabin roof, was wrecked by round shot. The small jolly-boat would hold the women pa.s.sengers and the wounded sailors, with the hands required to tend oars and sail.

Nothing remained but to try to knock together one or more rafts. Captain Wellsby discussed it with his officers and it was agreed that the able-bodied pirates should be left to build a raft for themselves, taking their own wounded with them. This was more mercy than they had any right to expect. The strapping young Devonshire boatswain, with his head tied up, was for leaving the blackguards to drown in the forecastle but the shipmaster was too humane a man for that.

It was drawing toward noon when the first mate descried land to the westward, a bit of low coast almost level with the sea. In the light air the sluggish ship moved ever so slowly, with canvas spread on the fore and mizzen masts. Spirits revived and life tasted pa.s.sing sweet. To drift in the open sea upon wave-washed rafts was an expedient which all mariners shuddered to contemplate. It was with feelings far different that they now a.s.sembled spars and planks and lashed and spiked them together on the chance of needing rafts to ferry them ash.o.r.e from a stranded ship.

Well into the bright afternoon the _Plymouth Adventure_ was wafted nearer and nearer the sandy coast. Within a half mile of it a line of breakers frothed and tumbled on a shoal beyond which the water deepened again. The ship could not be steered to avoid this barrier. Her main deck was almost level with the sea which lapped her gently and sobbed through the broken bulwarks. With a slight shock she struck the shoal and rested there just before she was ready to founder.

With disciplined haste, the jolly-boat was launched and filled with its human freightage. The boatswain went in charge and four seamen tugged at the sweeps. There were trees and clumps of bushes among the hillocks of sand and a tiny bight for a landing place. The bulwark was then chopped away so that the largest raft could be shoved into the water by means of tackles, rollers and handspikes. It floated buoyantly and supported as many as fifteen men, who did not mind in the least getting their feet wet. Upon a raised platform in the centre of the raft were fastened barrels of beef and bread and casks of fresh water.

The jolly-boat could hope to make other trips between the ship and the sh.o.r.e but the prudent skipper took no chances with the weather. A sudden gale might pluck the _Plymouth Adventure_ from the shoal or tear her to fragments where she lay. Therefore most of the men, including pa.s.sengers, were embarked on the raft. Captain Wellsby remained aboard with a few of his sailors and our two lads, Joe and Jack, who had not attempted to thrust themselves upon the crowded raft.

The pirates were making a commotion in the forecastle, yammering to be freed, but the skipper had no intention of loosing them until all his people had safely abandoned ship. The jolly-boat made a landing without mishap and returned to the wreck as the sun went down. More stores were dumped into it, sacks of potatoes and onions which had been overlooked, bedding for the women, powder and ball for the muskets, and other things which it was necessary to keep dry.

Captain Wellsby got rid of the rest of his men on this trip, excepting the gunner and carpenter, and these lingered with him as a kind of body-guard pending the ticklish business of releasing the imprisoned pirates and forsaking them to their own devices. The jolly-boat was laden to the gunwales and Jack c.o.c.krell held back, saying to Joe Hawkridge:

"Why trouble the captain to set us ash.o.r.e? Let us make a raft of our own. The breeze holds fair to the beach and it will be a lark."

"It suits me well," grinned Joe. "If we wait to go off with the master, and those sinful pirates see me aboard, I'll need wings to escape 'em.

They saw me serve the gun that was filled with spikes to the muzzle.

Aye, Jack, I will feel happier to be elsewhere when Cap'n Wellsby unbars the fo'castle and holds 'em back with his pistols till he can cast off in the jolly-boat."

"Yes, the sight of you is apt to put them in a vile temper," laughingly agreed Jack, "and 'tis awkward for the master to bother with us. Now about a little raft----"

"Two short spars are enough. There they lie. And the cabin hatch will do for a deck. Spikes for thole-pins, and oars from the pinnace. Unlace the bonnet of the jib for a sail."

"You are a proper sailorman, Joe. A voyage by starlight to an unknown coast. 'Tis highly romantic."

They set to work without delay. Captain Wellsby had occupations of his own and no more than glanced at them in pa.s.sing. Jack insisted on carrying a water breaker and rations, he being hungry and too busy to pause for supper. They would make a picnic cruise of the adventure.

Handily Joe reeved a purchase and they hauled away until their raft slid off the sloping deck to leeward. With a gay hurrah to Captain Wellsby, they paddled around the stern of the ship and through the ruffle of surf that marked the shoal.

In the soft twilight they trimmed the sail and swung at the clumsy oars, while a fire blazing on the beach was a beacon to guide their course.

After a time they rested and wiped the sweat from their faces. The progress of the raft was like that of a lazy snail. In the luminous darkness they pulled with all their strength. The wind had died to a calm. The sail hung idle from its yard. They heard, faint and afar, the deep voices of the sailors in the jolly-boat as they returned to take the skipper and his two companions from the ship on which a light burned.

The lads shouted but there came no answering hail from the unseen boat.

They were perplexed to understand how their courses could be so far apart. Presently the night breeze drew off the land, bringing with it the scent of green things growing. Joe Hawkridge stared at the fire on the beach and then turned to look at the spark of light on the ship. The raft had drifted considerably to the southward. Anxiously Joe said to his shipmate:

"The flood o' the tide must be setting us down the coast, in some crazy current or other. Mayhap it runs strong through this race betwixt the shoal and the beach with a slant that's bad for us."

"I noted it," glumly agreed Jack. "The jolly-boat pa.s.sed too far away to please me. And this landward breeze is driving us to sea."

"No sense in breaking our backs at these oars," grumbled Joe. "We go ahead like a crab, with a sternboard. Think ye we can swing the raft to fetch the ship?"

"After Captain Wellsby turns the pirates loose and quits her?" scoffed Jack.

"I am a plaguey fool," cheerfully admitted Joe Hawkridge. "'Twould be out of the frying-pan into the fire, with a vengeance."

"And no way to signal our friends," sadly exclaimed Jack. "We forgot flint and steel. It looks much like another voyage."

"Straight for the open sea, my bully boy," agreed Joe. "And I'd as soon chance it on a hen-coop."

CHAPTER VI

THE VOYAGE OF THE LITTLE RAFT

THESE st.u.r.dy youngsters were not easily frightened, and Jack c.o.c.krell, the landsman, was confident that wind and tide would change to send the little raft sh.o.r.eward. So tranquil was the sea that they rode secure and dry upon the cabin hatch which was buoyed by the two short spars. Joe Hawkridge was silent with foreboding of a fate more bitter than the perils which they had escaped. He had seen a lone survivor of a crew of pirates picked off a raft in the Caribbean, a grisly phantom raving mad who had gnawed the flesh of his dead comrades.

They drifted quietly before the land breeze, beneath a sky all jeweled with bright stars. The fire on the beach dimmed to a red spark and then vanished from their wistful ken. They could no longer see the light on the wreck of the _Plymouth Adventure_. Now and then the boys struggled with the heavy oars and rowed until exhausted but they knew they could be making no headway against the current which had gripped the derelict raft. They ate sparingly of flinty biscuit and leathery beef pickled in brine and stinted themselves to a few swallows of water from the wooden breaker or tiny cask.

"Hunger and thirst are strange to ye, Jack," said young Hawkridge as they lay stretched side by side. "Hanged if I ever did get enough to eat till I boarded the _Plymouth Adventure_. Skin and bone I am. I'll not call this a bad cruise unless we have to chew our boot-tops. A pesky diet is leather. I've tried it."

"Truly, Joe?" cried Jack in lugubrious accents. "We may have more heart when morning comes. A piping easterly breeze, such as is wont to come up with the sun in Charles Town, and we can steer for the coast all taut and cheery."

"I dread the sun, Jack. For men adrift the blaze of it fries them like fish on a grid. A pint of water a day, no more, is the allowance. 'Twill torture you, but castaways can live on it. They have done it for weeks on end. Here's two musket b.a.l.l.s in my pocket. I can whittle a balance from a bit of pine and we must weigh the bread and meat."

"Two musket b.a.l.l.s' weight of food for a meal?" protested Jack.

"Not a morsel more," was the grim answer. "Granted we be not washed off this silly raft and drowned when a fresh breeze kicks up the sea, we may hold body and soul together through five or six days."

"But some vessel will sight us, Joe, even if the plight is as dark as your melancholy fancies paint it. And I thought you a light-hearted mariner in danger."

"The sea is a cruel master and she hath taught me prudence," was the reply. "A vessel sight us? I fear an empty sea so soon after the storm.

And honest ships will be loth to venture out from port if the word sped that Blackbeard was cruising off Charles Town bar."

Jack c.o.c.krell forsook the attempt to wring comfort out of his hardy companion who refused to delude himself with vain imaginings. However, it is the blessed gift of youth to keep the torch of hope unquenched and presently they diverted themselves with chatting of their earlier adventures. Jack was minded of his pompous, stout-hearted uncle, Mr.

Peter Arbuthnot Forbes, and wondered how he had fared, whether he had set out to return to Blackbeard's ship with the store of medicines from Charles Town when the great storm swooped down. Forgotten were Jack's hot grievances against the worthy Secretary of the Council who had sought to take a father's place. Piracy had lost its charm for young Master c.o.c.krell and meekly would he have obeyed the mandate to go to school in merry England among sober, Christian folk.

"Tremendous odd, I call it," exclaimed Joe Hawkridge. "Here I was a pirate and hating the dirty business. And my dreams were all of learnin'

to be a gentleman ash.o.r.e, to know how to read books and such. Blow me, Jack, we should ha' swapped berths."