Journeys Through Bookland Volume Iii Part 9

We waited a great while, though very impatient for their removing; and were very uneasy, when, after a long consultation, we saw them all start up, and march down toward the sea; it seems they had such dreadful apprehensions of the danger of the place, that they resolved to go on board the ship again, give their companions over for lost, and so go on with their intended voyage with the ship.

As soon as I perceived them go toward the sh.o.r.e, I imagined it to be as it really was, that they had given over their search, and were going back again; and the captain, as soon as I told him my thoughts, was ready to sink at the apprehensions of it; but I presently thought of a stratagem to fetch them back again. I ordered Friday and the captain's mate to go over the little creek westward, and so soon as they came to a little rising ground, at about half a mile distance, I bade them halloo out, as loud as they could, and wait till they found the seamen heard them; that as soon as ever they heard the seamen answer them, they should return it again; and then, keeping out of sight, take a round, always answering when the others hallooed, to draw them as far into the island and among the woods as possible, and then wheel about again to me by such ways as I directed them.

They were just going into the boat when Friday and the mate hallooed; and they presently heard them, and, answering, ran along the sh.o.r.e westward, toward the voice they heard, when they were stopped by the creek, where, the water being up, they could not get over, and called for the boat to come up and set them over; as, indeed, I expected.

When they had set themselves over, I observed that the boat being gone a good way into the creek, and, as it were, in a harbor within the land, they took one of the three men out of her, to go along with them, and left only two in the boat, having fastened her to a stump of a little tree on the sh.o.r.e. This was what I wished for; and immediately leaving Friday and the captain's mate to their business, I took the rest with me; and, crossing the creek out of their sight, we surprised the two men before they were aware--one of them lying on the sh.o.r.e, and the other being in the boat; the fellow on sh.o.r.e was between sleeping and waking, and going to start up; the captain, who was foremost, ran in upon him, and knocked him down; and then called out to him in the boat to yield, or he was a dead man. There needed very few arguments to persuade a single man to yield, when he saw five men upon him, and his comrade knocked down; besides, this was, it seems, one of the three who were not so hearty in the mutiny as the rest of the crew, and therefore was easily persuaded not only to yield, but afterward to join very sincerely with us.

In the meantime Friday and the captain's mate so well managed their business with the rest, that they drew them, by hallooing and answering, from one hill to another, and from one wood to another, till they not only heartily tired them, but left them where they were very sure they could not reach back to their boat before it was dark; and, indeed, they were heartily tired themselves also, by the time they came back to us.

We had nothing now to do but to watch for the others in the dark, and to fall upon them, so as to make sure work with them. It was several hours after Friday came back to me before they came back to their boat; and we could hear the foremost of them, long before they came quite up, calling to those behind to come along; and could also hear them answer, and complain how lame and tired they were, and not able to go any faster; which was very welcome news to us. At length they came up to the boat; but it is impossible to express their confusion when they found the boat aground in the creek, the tide ebbed out, and their two men gone; we could hear them call one to another in the most lamentable manner, telling one another they were got into an enchanted island; that either there were inhabitants in it, and they should all be murdered, or else there were devils and spirits in it, and they should all be carried away and devoured. They hallooed again, and called their two comrades by their names a great many times; but no answer. After some time, we could see them, by the little light there was, run about, wringing their hands like men in despair; and sometimes they would go and sit down in the boat to rest themselves, then come ash.o.r.e again, and walk about again, and so the same thing over again. My men would fain have had me give them leave to fall upon them at once in the dark; but I was willing to take them at some advantage, so as to spare them, and kill as few of them as I could; and especially I was unwilling to hazard the killing of any of our men, knowing the others were very well armed. I resolved to wait, to see if they did not separate; and therefore, to make sure of them, I drew my ambuscade nearer. We came upon them, indeed, in the dark, so that they could not see our number; and I made the man they had left in the boat, who was now one of us, to call them by name, to try if I could bring them to a parley, and so perhaps might reduce them to terms; which fell out just as we desired: for, indeed, it was easy to think, as their condition then was, they would be very willing to capitulate. So he calls out as loud as he could to one of them, "Tom Smith! Tom Smith!" Tom Smith answered immediately, "Is that Robinson?"

for it seems he knew the voice. The other answered, "Ay, ay; for G.o.d's sake, Tom Smith, throw down your arms and yield, or you are all dead men this moment." "Who must we yield to? Where are they?" says Smith again. "Here they are," says he; "here's our captain and fifty men with him, have been hunting you these two hours; the boatswain is killed, Will Fry is wounded, and I am a prisoner; and if you do not yield you are all lost."--"Will they give us quarter then?" says Tom Smith, "and we will yield."---"I'll go and ask, if you promise to yield," said Robinson; so he asked the captain. And the captain himself then calls out, "You, Smith, you know my voice; if you lay down your arms immediately, and submit, you shall have your lives, all but Will Atkins."

Upon this, Will Atkins cried out, "For G.o.d's sake, captain, give me quarter; what have I done? They have all been as bad as I" (which, by the way, was not true; for, it seems, this Will Atkins was the first man that laid hold of the captain, when they first mutinied, and used him barbarously, in tying his hands, and giving him injurious language); however, the captain told him he must lay down his arms at discretion, and trust to the Governor's mercy; by which he meant me, for they all called me Governor. In a word, they all laid down their arms, and begged their lives; and I sent the man that had parleyed with them, and two more, who bound them all; and then my great army of fifty men, which, with those three, were in all but eight, came up and seized upon them, and upon their boat; only that I kept myself and one more out of sight, for reasons of state.

Our next work was to repair the boat, and think of seizing the ship; and as for the captain, now he had leisure to parley with them, he expostulated with them upon the villainy of their practices with him, and at length upon the further wickedness of their design, and how certainly it must bring them to misery and distress in the end, and perhaps to the gallows. They all appeared very penitent, and begged hard for their lives. As for that, he told them they were not his prisoners, but the commander's of the island; that they thought they had set him on sh.o.r.e in a barren, uninhabited island; but it had pleased G.o.d so to direct them, that it was inhabited, and that the Governor was an Englishman; that he might hang them all there if he pleased; but, as he had given them all quarter, he supposed he would send them to England, to be dealt with there as justice required, except Atkins, whom he was commanded by the Governor to advise to prepare for death; for that he would be hanged in the morning.

Though this was all but a fiction of his own, yet it had its desired effect; Atkins fell upon his knees to beg the captain to intercede with the Governor for his life; and all the rest begged of him, for G.o.d's sake, that they might not be sent to England. It now occurred to me, that the time of our deliverance was come, and that it would be a most easy thing to bring these fellows in to be hearty in getting possession of the ship; so I retired in the dark from them, that they might not see what kind of a Governor they had, and called the captain to me; when I called, as at a good distance, one of the men was ordered to speak again, and say to the captain, "Captain, the commander calls for you"; and presently the captain replied, "Tell his Excellency I am just a-coming." This more perfectly amused them, and they all believed that the commander was just by, with his fifty men. Upon the captain coming to me, I told him my project for seizing the ship, which he liked wonderfully well, and resolved to put it in execution the next morning. But, in order to execute it with more art, and to be secure of success, I told him we must divide the prisoners, and that he should go and take Atkins, and two more of the worst of them, and send them pinioned to the cave where the others lay; this was committed to Friday and the two men who came on sh.o.r.e with the captain. They conveyed them to the cave as to a prison; and it was, indeed, a dismal place, especially to men in their condition. The others I ordered to my bower, as I called it; and as it was fenced in, and they were pinioned, the place was secure enough, considering they were upon their behavior.

To these in the morning I sent the captain, who was to enter into a parley with them; in a word, to try them, and tell me whether he thought they might be trusted or not to go on board and surprise the ship. He talked to them of the injury done him, of the condition they were brought to; and that though the Governor had given them quarter for their lives as to the present action, yet that if they were sent to England, to be sure they would all be hanged in chains; but that if they would join in so just an attempt as to recover the ship, he would have the Governor's engagement for their pardon.

Any one may guess how readily such a proposal would be accepted by men in their condition; they fell down on their knees to the captain, and promised, with the deepest imprecations, that they would be faithful to him to the last drop, and that they should owe their lives to him, and would go with him all over the world; that they would own him as a father to them as long as they lived.

Our strength was now thus ordered for the expedition: 1, the captain, his mate, and pa.s.senger; 2, the two prisoners of the first gang, to whom, having their character from the captain, I had given their liberty, and trusted them with arms; 3, the other two that I had kept till now in my apartment pinioned, but, on the captain's motion, had now released; 4, the single man taken in the boat; 5, these five released at last; so that there were thirteen, in all, besides five we kept prisoners in the cave for hostages.

The captain had now no difficulty before him, but to furnish his two boats, stop the breach of one, and man them. He made his pa.s.senger captain of one, with four of the men; and himself, his mate, and five more, went in the other; and they contrived their business very well, for they came up to the ship about midnight. As soon as they came within call of the ship, he made Robinson hail them, and tell them he had brought off the men and the boat, but that it was a long time before they had found them, and the like; holding them in chat till they came to the ship's side; when the captain and mate, entering first, with their arms immediately knocked down the second mate and carpenter with the b.u.t.t end of their muskets, being very faithfully seconded by their men; they secured all the rest that were upon the main and quarter-decks, and began to fasten the hatches, to keep them down that were below, when the other boat and their men, entering the forechains, secured the forecastle of the ship, and the scuttle which went down into the cook-room, making three men they found there prisoners. When this was done, and all safe upon deck, the captain ordered the mate, with three men, to break into the roundhouse, where the new rebel captain lay, who, having taken the alarm, had got up, and with two men and a boy had got firearms in their hands; and when the mate, with a crow, split open the door, the new captain and his men fired boldly among them, and wounded the mate with a musket ball, which broke his arm, and wounded two more of the men, but killed n.o.body. The mate, calling for help, rushed, however, into the roundhouse, wounded as he was, and with his pistol shot the new captain through the head, the bullet entering at his mouth, and came out again behind one of his ears, so that he never spoke a word more; upon which the rest yielded, and the ship was taken effectually, without any more lives being lost.

As soon as the ship was thus secured, the captain ordered seven guns to be fired, which was the signal agreed upon with me to give me notice of his success; which, you may be sure, I was very glad to hear, having sat watching upon the sh.o.r.e for it till nearly two of the clock in the morning. Having thus heard the signal plainly, I laid me down; and it having been a day of great fatigue to me, I slept very sound, till I was surprised with the noise of a gun; and presently starting up, I heard a man call me by the name, "Governor! Governor!"

and presently I knew the captain's voice; when, climbing to the top of the hill, there he stood, and pointing to the ship, he embraced me in his arms. "My dear friend and deliverer," said he, "there's your ship; for she is all yours, and so are we, and all that belong to her." I cast my eyes to the ship, and there she rode, within little more than half a mile of the sh.o.r.e; for they had weighed her anchor as soon as they were masters of her, and, the weather being fair, had brought her to an anchor just against the mouth of the little creek; and, the tide being up, the captain had brought the pinnace in near the place where I had first landed my rafts, and so landed just at my door, I was at first ready to sink down with the surprise; for I saw my deliverance, indeed, visibly put into my hands, all things easy, and a large ship just ready to carry me away whither I pleased to go.

We then began to consult what was to be done with the prisoners we had; for it was worth considering whether we might venture to take them away with us or no, especially two of them, whom we knew to be incorrigible and refractory to the last degree; and the captain said he knew they were such rogues that there was no obliging them, and if he did carry them away, it must be in irons, as malefactors, to be delivered over to justice at the first English colony he could come at; and I found that the captain himself was very anxious about it.

Upon this, I told him that, if he desired it, I durst undertake to bring the two men he spoke of to make it their own request that he should leave them upon the island.

"I should be very glad of that," said the captain, "with all my heart."

"Well," said I, "I will send for them up, and talk with them for you."

So I caused Friday and the two hostages, for they were now discharged, their comrades having performed their promise; I say, I caused them to go to the cave, and bring up the five men, pinioned as they were, to the bower, and keep them there till I came. After some time, I came thither dressed in the new habit which had been given me by the captain. Being all met, and the captain with me, I caused all the men to be brought before me, and I told them I had got a full account of their villainous behavior to the captain, but that they were fallen into the pit which they had dug for others. They might see by and by that their new captain had received the reward of his villainy; for that they would see him hanging at the yardarm; as to them, I wanted to know what they had to say why I should not execute them as pirates, taken in the fact, as by my commission they could not doubt I had authority to do.

One of them answered in the name of the rest, that they had nothing to say but this, that when they were taken, the captain promised them their lives, and they humbly implored my mercy: but I told them I knew not what mercy to show them; for as for myself, I had resolved to quit the island with all my men, and had taken pa.s.sage with the captain to go for England; and as for the captain, he could not carry them to England, other than as prisoners in irons, to be tried for mutiny, and running away with the ship; the consequence of which, they must needs know, would be the gallows; so that I could not tell what was best for them, unless they had a mind to take their fate in the island; if they desired that, I did not care, as I had liberty to leave it. They seemed very thankful for it, and said they would much rather venture to stay there than to be carried to England to be hanged: so I left it on that issue.

However, the captain seemed to make some difficulty of it, as if he durst not leave them there; upon this, I seemed a little angry with the captain, and told him they were my prisoners, not his; and that seeing I had offered them so much favor, I would be as good as my word; and that if he did not think fit to consent to it, I would set them at liberty, as I found them; and if he did not like it, he might take them again if he could catch them. Upon this, they appeared very thankful, and I accordingly set them at liberty, and bade them retire into the woods, to the place whence they came, and I would leave them some firearms, some ammunition, and some directions how they should live very well, if they thought fit. Upon this I prepared to go on board the ship, and desired him to go on board in the meantime, and keep all right in the ship; but told the captain I would stay that night to prepare my things, and told him to send the boat on sh.o.r.e next day for me; ordering him, at all events, to cause the new captain, who was killed, to be hanged at the yardarm, that these men might see him.

When the captain was gone, I sent for the men up to me to my apartment, and entered seriously into discourse with them on their circ.u.mstances. I told them I thought they had made a right choice; that if the captain had carried them away, they would certainly be hanged. I showed them the new captain hanging at the yardarm of the ship, and told them they had nothing less to expect.

When they had all declared their willingness to stay, I then told them I would let them into the story of my living there, and put them into the way of making it easy to them: accordingly, I gave them the whole history of the place, and of my coming to it; showed them my fortifications, the way I made my bread, planted my corn, cured my grapes; and, in a word, all that was necessary to make them easy. I told them the story also of the sixteen Spaniards that were to be expected, for whom I left a letter, and made them promise to treat them in common with themselves.

I left them my firearms, viz., five muskets, three fowling pieces, and three swords. I had above a barrel and a half of powder left; for after the first year or two I used but little, and wasted none. I gave them a description of the way I managed the goats, and directions to milk and fatten them, and to make both b.u.t.ter and cheese. In a word, I gave them every part of my own story; and told them I should prevail with the captain to leave them two barrels of gunpowder more, and some garden seeds, which I told them I would have been very glad of. Also, I gave them the bag of peas which the captain had brought me to eat, and bade them to be sure to sow and increase them.

I left them the next day, and went on board the ship. We prepared immediately to sail, but did not weigh that night. The next morning early, two of the five men came swimming to the ship's side, and, making the most lamentable complaint of the other three, begged to be taken into the ship for G.o.d's sake, for they should be murdered, and begged the captain to take them on board, though he hanged them immediately. Upon this the captain pretended to have no power without me; but after some difficulty, and after solemn promises of amendment, they were taken on board, and were, some time after, roundly whipped and pickled; after which they proved very honest and quiet fellows.

Sometime after this, the boat was ordered on sh.o.r.e, the tide being up, with the things promised to the men; to which the captain, at my intercession, caused their chests and clothes to be added, which they took, and were very thankful for.

And thus I left the island, the 19th of December, as I found by the ship's account, in the year 1686, after I had been upon it eight-and- twenty years, two months, and nineteen days; being delivered from this captivity the same day of the month that I first had been cast ash.o.r.e.

In this vessel, after a long voyage, I arrived in England the 11th of June, in the year 1687, having been thirty-five years absent.

FAITHLESS SALLY BROWN

By THOMAS HOOD

Young Ben he was a nice young man, A carpenter by trade; And he fell in love with Sally Brown, That was a lady's maid.

But as they fetched a walk one day, They met a press-gang crew; And Sally she did faint away, Whilst Ben he was brought to.

The boatswain swore with wicked words Enough to shock a saint, That, though she did seem in a fit, 'Twas nothing but a feint.

"Come, girl," said he, "hold up your head, He'll be as good as me; For when your swain is in our boat A boatswain he will be."

So when they'd made their game of her, And taken off her elf, She roused, and found she only was A-coming to herself.

"And is he gone, and is he gone?"

She cried and wept outright; "Then I will to the water-side, And see him out of sight."

A waterman came up to her; "Now, young woman," said he, "If you weep on so, you will make Eye-water in the sea."

"Alas! they've taken my beau, Ben, To sail with old Benbow;"

And her woe began to run afresh, As if she'd said, "Gee woe!"

Says he, "They've only taken him To the tender-ship, you see."

"The tender-ship," cried Sally Brown-- "What a hard-ship that must be!"

"O, would I were a mermaid now, For then I'd follow him!

But O, I'm not a fish-woman, And so I cannot swim.

"Alas! I was not born beneath The Virgin and the Scales, So I must curse my cruel stars, And walk about in Wales."

Now Ben had sailed to many a place That's underneath the world; But in two years the ship came home, And all her sails were furled.

But when he called on Sally Brown, To see how she got on, He found she'd got another Ben, Whose Christian name was John.

"O Sally Brown! O Sally Brown!

How could you serve me so?

I've met with many a breeze before, But never such a blow!"

Then, reading on his 'bacco box, He heaved a heavy sigh, And then began to eye his pipe And then to pipe his eye.

And then he tried to sing "All's Well!"