One of Clive's Heroes Part 13

CHAPTER THE NINTH

*In which the *_*Good Intent*_* makes a running fight; and Mr. Toley makes a suggestion.*

Making good sailing, the _Good Intent_ reached Saldanhas Bay, where she put in for a few necessary repairs, then safely rounded the Cape, and after a short stay at Johanna, one of the Comoro Islands, taking in fresh provisions there, set sail for the Malabar coast. The wind blew steadily from the south-west, and she ran merrily before it.

During this part of the voyage Desmond found his position somewhat improved. His pluck had won the rough admiration of the men; Captain Barker was not so constantly chevying him; and Mr. Toley showed a more active interest in him, teaching him the use of the s.e.xtant and quadrant, how to take the alt.i.tude of the sun, and many other matters important in navigation.

It was the third week of April, and the monsoon having begun, Captain Barker expected before long to sight the Indian coast. One morning, about two bells, the look-out reported a small vessel on the larboard bow, labouring heavily. The captain took a long look at it through his perspective gla.s.s, anc made out that it was a two-masted grab; the mainmast was gone.

"Odds bobs," he said to Mr. Toley, "'tis strange to meet a grab so far out at sea. We'll run down to it."

"What is a grab?" asked Desmond of Bulger, when the news had circulated through the ship's company.

"Why, that's a grab, sure enough. I en't a good hand at pictur'

paintin'; we're runnin' square for the critter, and then you'll see for yourself. This I'll say, that you don't see 'em anywheres in partickler but off the Malabar coast."

Desmond was soon able to take stock of the vessel. It was broad in proportion to its length, narrowing from the middle to the end, and having a projecting prow like the old-fashioned galleys of which he had seen pictures. The prow was covered with a deck, level with the main deck of the vessel, but with a bulkhead between this and the forecastle.

"En't she pitchin'!" remarked Bulger, standing by Desmond's side. "You couldn't expect nothing else of a craft built that shape. Look at the water pourin' off her; why, I may be wrong, but I'll lay my best breeches she's a-founderin'."

As usual, Bulger was right. When the grab was overhauled, the men on board, dark-skinned Marathas with very scanty clothing, made signs that they were in distress.

"Throw her into the wind," shouted the captain.

Mr. Toley at the wheel put the helm down, the longboat was lowered, and with some difficulty, owing to the heavy sea, the thirty men on the grab were taken off. As they came aboard the _Good Intent_, Diggle, who was leaning over the bulwarks, suddenly straightened himself, smiled, and moved towards the taffrail. One of the newcomers, a fine muscular fellow, seeing Diggle approaching, stood for a moment in surprise, then salaamed. The Englishman said something in the stranger's tongue, and grasped his hand with the familiarity of old friendship.

"You know the man, Mr. Diggle?" said the captain.

"Yes, truly. The Gentoos and I are in a sense comrades in arms. His name is Hybati; he's a Maratha."

"What's he jabbering about?"

The man was talking rapidly and earnestly.

"He says, captain," returned Diggle with a smile, "that he hopes you will send and fetch the crew's rice on board. They won't eat our food--afraid of losing caste."

"I'll be hanged if I launch the long-boat again. The grab won't live another five minutes in this sea, and I wouldn't risk two of my crew against a hundred of these dirty Moors."

"They'll starve otherwise, captain."

"Well, let 'em starve. I won't have any nonsense aboard my ship.

Beggars mustn't be choosers, and if the heathen can't eat good honest English vittles they don't deserve to eat at all."

Diggle smiled and explained to Hybati that his provisions must be left to their fate. Even as he spoke a heavy sea struck the vessel athwart, and amid cries from the Marathas she heeled over and sank.

When the strangers had dried themselves, Diggle inquired of Hybati how he came to be in his present predicament. The Maratha explained that he had been in command of Angria's fortress of Suvarndrug, which was so strong that he had believed it able to withstand all attacks. But one day a number of vessels of the East India Company's fleet had appeared between the mainland and the island on which the fortress was situated, and had begun a bombardment which soon reduced the parapets to ruins.

The chief damage had been done by an English ship. Hybati and his men had made the best defence they could, but the gunners were shot down by musket fire from the round-tops of the enemy, and when a sh.e.l.l set fire to a thatched house within the fort, the garrison were too much alarmed to attempt to extinguish the flames; the blaze spread, a powder magazine blew up, and the inhabitants, with the greater part of the soldiers, fled to the sh.o.r.e, and tried to make their escape in eight large boats.

Hybati had kept up the fight for some time longer, hoping to receive succour; but under cover of the fire of the ships the English commodore landed half his seamen, who rushed up to the gate, and, cutting down the sally-port with their axes, forced their way in.

Seeing that the game was up, Hybati fled with thirty of his men, and was lucky in pushing off in the grab un.o.bserved by the enemy. The winds, however, proving contrary, the vessel had been blown northward along the coast and then driven far out to sea. With the breaking of the monsoon a violent squall had dismasted the grab and shattered her bulkhead; she was continually shipping water, and, as the sahib saw, was at the point of sinking when the English ship came up.

Such was the Maratha's story, as by and by it became common property on board the _Good Intent_. Of all the crew Desmond was perhaps the most interested. To the others there was nothing novel in the sight of the Indians; but to him they stood for romance, the embodiment of all the tales he had heard and all the dreams he had dreamed of this wonderful country in the East. He was now a.s.sured that he was actually within reach of his desired haven; and he hoped shortly to see an end of the disappointments and hardships, the toils and distresses, of the long voyage.

He was eager to learn more of these Marathas, and their fortress, and the circ.u.mstances of the recent fight. Bulger was willing to tell all he knew; but his information was not very exact, and Desmond did not hear the full story till long after.

The Malabar coast had long been the haunt of Maratha pirates, who interfered greatly with the native trade between India and Arabia and Persia. In defence of the interests of his Mohammedan subjects the Mogul emperor at length, in the early part of the eighteenth century, fitted out a fleet, under the command of an admiral known as the Sidi.

But there happened to be among the Marathas at that time a warrior of great daring and resource, one Kunaji Angria. This man first defeated the Sidi, then, in the insolence of victory, revolted against his own sovereign, and set up as an independent ruler. By means of a well-equipped fleet of grabs and gallivats he made himself master of place after place along the coast, including the Maratha fortress at Suvarndrug and the Portuguese fort of Gheria. His successors, who adopted in turn the dynastic name of Angria, followed up Kunaji's conquest, until by the year 1750 the ruling Angria was in possession of a strip of territory on the mainland a hundred and eighty miles long and about forty broad, together with many small adjacent islands.

For the defence of this little piratical state Angria's Marathas constructed a number of forts, choosing admirable positions and displaying no small measure of engineering skill. From these strongholds they made depredations by sea and land, not only upon their native neighbours, but also upon the European traders, English, Dutch, and Portuguese; swooping down on unprotected merchant vessels and even presuming to attack warships. Several expeditions had been directed against them, but always in vain; and when in 1754 the chief of that date, Tulaji Angria, known to Europeans as the Pirate, burnt two large Dutch vessels of fifty and thirty-six guns respectively, and captured a smaller one of eighteen guns, he boasted in his elation that he would soon be master of the Indian seas.

But a term was about to be put to his insolence and his depredations.

On March 22, 1755, Commodore William James, commander of the East India Company's marine force, set sail from Bombay in the _Protector_ of forty-four guns, with the _Swallow_ of sixteen guns, and two bomb vessels. With the a.s.sistance of a Maratha fleet he had attacked the island fortress of Suvarndrug, and captured it, as Hybati had related.

A few days afterwards another of the Pirate's fortresses, the island of Bancoote, six miles north of Suvarndrug, surrendered. The Maratha rajah, Ramaji Punt, delighted with these successes against fortified places which had for nearly fifty years been deemed impregnable, offered the English commodore an immense sum of money to proceed against others of Angria's forts; but the monsoon approaching, the commodore was recalled to Bombay.

The spot at which the _Good Intent_ had fallen in with the sinking grab was about eighty miles from the Indian coast, and Captain Barker expected to sight land next day. No one was more delighted at the prospect than Desmond. Leaving out of account the miseries of the long voyage, he felt that he was now within reach of the goal of his hopes.

The future was all uncertain; he was no longer inclined to trust his fortunes to Diggle, for though he could not believe that the man had deliberately practised against his life, he had with good reason lost confidence in him, and what he had learnt from Bulger threw a new light on his past career.

One thing puzzled him. If the Pirate was such a terror to unprotected ships, and strong enough to attack several armed vessels at once, why was Captain Barker running into the very jaws of the enemy? In her palmy days as an East Indiaman the _Good Intent_ had carried a dozen nine pounders on her upper deck and six on the quarter-deck; and Bulger had said that under a stout captain she had once beaten off near Surat half a dozen three-masted grabs and a score of gallivats from the pirate stronghold at Gheria. But now she had only half a dozen guns all told, and even had she possessed the full armament there were not men enough to work them, for her complement of forty men was only half what it had been when she sailed under the Company's flag.

Desmond confided his puzzlement to Bulger. The seaman laughed.

"Why, bless 'ee, we en't a-goin' to run into no danger. Trust Cap'n Barker for that. You en't supercargo, to be sure; but who do you think them guns and round shots in the hold be for? Why, the Pirate himself.

And he'll pay a good price for 'em too."

"Do you mean to say that English merchants supply Angria with weapons to fight against their own countrymen?"

"Well, blest if you en't a' innocent. In course they do. The guns en't always fust-cla.s.s metal, to be sure; but what's the odds? The interlopers ha' got to live."

"I don't call that right. It's not patriotic."

"Patry what?"

"Patriotic--a right way of thinking of one's own country. An Englishman isn't worth the name who helps England's enemies."

Bulger looked at him in amazement. The idea of patriotism was evidently new to him.

"I'll have to put that there notion in my pipe and smoke it," he said.

"I'd fight any mounseer, or Dutchman, or Portuguee as soon as look at him, 'tis on'y natural; but if a mounseer likes to give me twopence for a thing what's worth a penny--why, I'll say thank 'ee and ax him--leastways if there's any matey by as knows the lingo--to buy another."

Shortly after dawn next morning the look-out reported four vessels to windward. From their appearance Captain Barker at once concluded that two were Company's ships, with an escort of a couple of grabs. As he was still scanning them he was joined by Diggle, with whom he entered into conversation.

"They're making for Bombay, I reckon," said the captain.

"I take it we don't wish to come to close quarters with them, Barker?"