Hard Cash Part 29

The giant prow darted at the escaping pirate. That acre of coming canvas took the wind out of the swift schooner's foresail; it flapped: oh, then she was doomed! That awful moment parted the races on board her: the Papuans and Sooloos, their black faces livid and blue with horror, leaped yelling into the sea, or crouched and whimpered; the yellow Malays and brown Portuguese, though blanched to one colour now, turned on death like dying panthers, fired two cannon slap into the ship's bows, and snapped their muskets and matchlocks at their solitary executioner on the ship's gangway, and out flew their knives like crushed wasp's stings. CRASH! the Indiaman's cut.w.a.ter in thick smoke beat in the schooner's broadside: down went her masts to leeward like fishing-rods whipping the water; there was a horrible shrieking yell; wild forms heaped off on the _Agra_, and were hacked to pieces almost ere they reached the deck--a surge, a chasm in the sea, filled with an instant rush of engulphing waves, a long, awful, grating, grinding noise, never to be forgotten in this world, all along under the ship's keel--and the fearful majestic monster pa.s.sed on over the blank she had made, with a pale crew standing silent and awestruck on her deck; a cl.u.s.ter of wild heads and staring eyeb.a.l.l.s bobbing like corks in her foaming wake, sole relic of the blotted-out Destroyer: and a wounded man staggering on the gangway, with hands uplifted and staring eyes.

Shot in two places, the head and the breast!

With a loud cry of pity and dismay, Sharpe, Fullalove, Kenealy, and others rushed to catch him; but ere they got near, the captain of the triumphant ship fell down on his hands and knees, his head sunk over the gangway, and his blood ran fast and pattered in the midst of them on the deck he had defended so bravely.

CHAPTER X

THEY got to the wounded captain and raised him: he revived a little; and, the moment he caught sight of Mr. Sharpe, he clutched him, and cried, "Stunsels!"

"Oh, captain," said Sharpe, "let the ship go; it is you we are anxious for now."

At this Dodd lifted up his hands and beat the air impatiently, and cried again in the thin, querulous voice of' a wounded man, but eagerly, "STUNSELS! STUNSELS!"

On this, Sharpe gave the command.

"Make sail. All hands set stunsels 'low and aloft!"

While the unwounded hands swarmed into the rigging, the surgeon came aft in all haste; but Dodd declined him till all his men should have been looked to: meantime he had himself carried to the p.o.o.p and laid on a mattress, his bleeding head bound tight with a wet cambric handkerchief, and his pale face turned towards the hostile schooner astern. She had to hove to, and was picking up the survivors of her blotted-out consort.

The group on the _Agra's_ quarter-deck watched her to see what she would do next; flushed with immediate success, the younger officers crowed their fears she would not be game to attack them again. Dodd's fears ran the other way: he said, in the weak voice to which he was now reduced, "They are taking a wet blanket aboard; that crew of blackguards we swamped won't want any more of us: it all depends on the pirate captain: if he is not drowned, then blow wind, rise sea, or there's trouble ahead for us."

As soon as the schooner had picked up the last swimmer, she hoisted foresail, mainsail, and jib with admirable rapidity, and bore down in chase.

The _Agra_ had, meantime, got a start of more than a mile, and was now running before a stiff breeze with studding sails alow and aloft.

In an hour the vessels ran nearly twelve miles, and the pirate had gained half a mile.

At the end of the next hour they were out of sight of land, wind and sea rising, and the pirate only a quarter of a mile astern.

The schooner was now rising and falling on the waves; the ship only nodding, and firm as a rock.

"Blow wind, rise sea!" faltered Dodd.

Another half-hour pa.s.sed without perceptibly altering the position of the vessels. Then suddenly the wounded captain laid aside his gla.s.s, after a long examination, and rose unaided to his feet in great excitement, and found his manly voice for a moment: he shook his fist at the now pitching schooner and roared, "Good-bye! ye Portuguese lubber--outfought--outmanoeuvred--AND OUTSAILED!"

It was a burst of exultation rare for him; he paid for it by sinking faint and helpless into his friend's arms; and the surgeon, returning soon after, insisted on his being taken to his cabin and kept quite quiet.

As they were carrying him below, the pirate captain made the same discovery, that the ship was gaining on him: he hauled to the wind directly and abandoned the chase.

When the now receding pirate was nearly hull down, the sun began to set.

Mr. Tickell looked at him and said, "Hallo! old fellow, what are _you_ about? Why, it isn't two o'clock."

The remark was quite honest: he really feared, for a moment, that orb was mistaken and would get himself--and others--into trouble. However, the middy proved to be wrong, and the sun right to a minute: Time flies fast fighting.

Mrs. Beresford came on deck with brat and poodle: Fred, a destructive child, clapped his hands with glee at the holes in the canvas: Snap toddled about smelling the blood of the slain, and wagging his tail by halves, perplexed. "Well, gentlemen," said Mrs. Beresford, "I hope you have made noise enough over one's head: and what a time you did take to beat that little bit of a thing. Freddy, be quiet; you worry me; where is your bearer? Will anybody oblige me by finding Ramgolam?"

"I will," said Mr. Tickell hastily, and ran off for the purpose; but he returned after some time with a long face. No Ramgolam to be found.

Fullalove referred her--with humour-twinkling eye--to Vespasian. "I have a friend here who says he can tell you something about him."

"Can you, my good man?" inquired the lady, turning haughtily towards the negro.

"Iss, Missy," said Vespasian, showing his white teeth in a broad grin, "dis child knows where to find dat ar n.i.g.g.ar, widout him been and absquatulated since."

"Then go and fetch him directly."

Vespasian went off with an obedient start.

This annoyed Fullalove; interfered with his system: "Madam," said he gravely, "would you oblige me by bestowing on my friend a portion of that courtesy with which you favour me, and which becomes you so gracefully?"

"Certainly not," replied Mrs. Beresford. "Mr. Fullalove, I am out of patience with you: the idea of a sensible intelligent gentleman like you calling that creature your friend! And you an American, where they do nothing but whip them from morning till night. Who ever heard of making friends with a black?--Now what is the meaning of this? I detest practical jokes." For the stalwart negro had returned, bringing a tall bread-bag in his arms: he now set it up before her, remarking, "Dis yar bag white outside, but him 'nation black inside." To confirm his words, he drew off the bag, and revealed Ramgolam, his black skin powdered with meal. The good-natured negro then blew the flour off his face, and dusted him a bit: the spectators laughed heartily, but Ramgolam never moved a muscle: not a morsel discomposed at what would have made an European miserably ashamed, even in a pantomime--the Caucasian darkie retained all his dignity while the African one dusted him; but, being dusted, he put on his obsequiousness, stepped forward, joined his palms together to Mrs. Beresford--like medieval knights and modern children at their devotions--and addressed her thus:--

"Daughter of light, he who basks in your beams said to himself, 'The pirates are upon us, those children of blood, whom Sheitan their master blast for ever! They will ravish the Queen of Sunshine and the ayahs, and throw the sahibs and sailors into the sea; but, bread being the staff of existence, these foxes of the water will not harm it, but keep it for their lawless appet.i.tes; therefore Ramgolam, son of Chittroo, son of Soonarayan, will put the finger of silence on the lip of discretion, and be bread in the day of adversity: the sons of Sheitan will peradventure return to dry land and close the eye of watchfulness; then will I emerge like the sun from a cloud, and depart in peace."

"Oh, very well," said Mrs. Beresford; "then you are an abominable egotist, that is all, and a coward: and thank Heaven Freddy and I were defended by English and Americans, and--hem!--their friends, and not by Hindoos." She added charmingly, "This shows me my first words on coming here ought to have been to offer my warmest thanks to the brave men who have defended me and my child;" and swept them so queenly a curtesy, that the men's hats and caps flew off in an instant "Mr. Black," said she, turning with a voice of honey to Vespasian, but aiming obliquely at Fullalove's heart, _"would_ you oblige me by kicking that dog a _little:_ he is always smelling what does not belong to him--why, it is blood; oh!" and she turned pale in a moment.

Sharpe thought some excuse necessary. "You see, ma'am, we haven't had time to clean the decks since."

"It is the blood of men--of the poor fellows who have defended us so n.o.bly," faltered the lady, trembling visibly.

"Well, ma'am," said Sharpe, still half apologetically, "you know a ship can't fight all day long without an accident or two." He added, with nautical simplicity and love of cleanliness, "However, the deck will be cleaned and holy-stoned to-morrow, long before you turn out."

Mrs. Beresford was too much overcome to explain how much deeper her emotion was than a dislike to stained floors. She turned faint, and on getting the better of that, went down to her cabin crying. Thence issued a royal order that the wounded were to have wine and every luxury they could fancy, without limit or stint--at her expense.

The next day a deep gloom reigned in the ship; the crew were ranged in their Sunday clothes and bare-headed; a grating was rigged; Sharpe read the burial service; and the dead, each man sewed up in his hammock with a 32-lb. shot, glided off the grating into the sea with a sullen plunge; while their shipmates cried so that the tears dripped on the deck.

With these regrets for the slain, too violent to last, was mingled a gloomy fear that Death had a heavier blow in store. The surgeon's report of Captain Dodd was most alarming; he had become delirious about midnight, and so continued.

Sharpe commanded the ship; and the rough sailors stepped like cats over that part of the deck beneath which their unconscious captain lay. If two men met on the quarter-deck, a look of anxious, but not hopeful, inquiry was sure to pa.s.s between them.

Among the constant inquirers was Ramgolam. The grave Hindoo often waylaid the surgeon at the captain's door, to get the first intelligence This marked sympathy with a hero in extremity was hardly expected from a sage who at the first note of war's trumpet had vanished in a meal-bag.

However, it went down to his credit. One person, however, took a dark view of this innocent circ.u.mstance But then that hostile critic was Vespasian, a rival in matters of tint. He exploded in one of those droll rages darkies seem liable to: "Ma.s.sa cunnel," said he, "what for dat yar n.i.g.g.ar always prowling about the capn's door? What for he ask so many stupid questions? Dat ole fox arter no good: him heart so black as um skin: dam ole n.i.g.g.ar!"

Fullalove suggested slily that a person with a dark skin might have a grateful heart: and the colonel, who dealt little in innuendo, said, "Come, don't you be so hard on jet, you ebony!"

"Bery well, gemmen," replied Vespasian ceremoniously, and with seeming acquiescence. Then, with sudden ire, "Because Goramighty made you white, you tink you bery wise without any more trouble. Dat ar n.i.g.g.ar am an abominable egotisk."

"Pray what does that mean?" inquired Kenealy innocently.

"What him mean? what him mean? Yah! yah!"

"Yes. What does it mean?"

"What him mean? Yah! What didn't you hear Missy Besford miscall him an abominable egotisk?"