The Corsair King Part 6

"You ask which has the richest cargo?"

"If it is against your principles to answer my question, I will take your own ship, and if you should make it compatible with honor to deceive me by false statements, you may rest a.s.sured that you shall eat steel and drink sea-water."

The pirate's resolute language, the sight of the fierce fellows in the doorway, speedily brought the captain to terms and he promised to point out the vessel in question, especially as he felt perfectly sure that, if the pirates ventured to attack it, they would certainly be defeated.

"Dress yourself and come with us," said Barthelemy.

"What? To _your_ ship?"

"That you may not betray us by a signal to the other ships. No excuses.

I must have the _best_ cargo, unless you want me to content myself with yours. Forward!"

The captain yielded, threw on his clothes, and surrounded by the three pirates, without daring to attract the attention of his own men, he followed Barthelemy and his companions into the boat, which returned to the ship.

Meanwhile the men on board of the other vessels in the fleet quietly witnessed the strange vessel's intercourse with the Triton, without the slightest suspicion.

On reaching the Sea Devil, the abducted captain pointed out to Captain Barthelemy the vessel he desired, a.s.suring him, on his word of honor, that it possessed the most valuable cargo, but withholding the fact that it had forty guns and a crew of one hundred and fifty men.

The Sea Devil instantly turned and steered toward the ship.

She was a huge three-master of clumsy build; her elaborately ornamented prow, the shape of her decks, and her rigging all marked her as an old-fashioned merchantman.

The pirate had come so near that one could shout from one ship to the other. The deepest silence reigned on board the former, the men stood motionless at their posts beside the ropes, oars, or guns. Suddenly, when every eye was fixed upon the approaching ship, whose mate watched the craft with drowsy indifference, not feeling the slightest suspicion, the captured captain perceived that no one was watching him and, springing on the bulwark, shouted: "To arms, men!" threw himself into the sea, and swam rapidly back to his own ship.

All this was done so quickly and unexpectedly that the pirates, in their surprise, did not know what course to pursue.

The attention of the crew had been instantly roused by the captain's warning shout, and the pirates saw with astonishment the superior force that opposed them.

Some looked doubtfully at each other, and all thought that instant flight was their only refuge.

Barthelemy gazed scornfully around, and quietly folded his arms.

"They are only Portuguese," he said contemptuously.

The corsairs burst into a loud roar of laughter and pressed closer to the ship, whose defenders, terrified by the sight of the fierce, laughing faces, discharged their guns without taking correct aim, not even doing the rigging of the Sea Devil the slightest damage. The grappling irons of the latter were already flung on her foe, and the next instant the savage pirates sprang on deck, so overwhelming the crew by their furious onslaught that, unheeding their officers' commands, they flung down their weapons and leaped into the sea.

The battle continued on the deck of the merchantman, whose firing had alarmed the other forty-one vessels, which now also began to discharge their guns right and left, but without coming nearer, for they had no desire to mingle in the fray, and, in the very midst of the fleet, the pirates killed one half the Portuguese sailors, while losing only two of their own number.

Barthelemy became master of the ship, and lashing it to the Sea Devil, sailed off with both vessels at a wonderful rate of speed.

The two men-of-war that were guarding the fleet now appeared and gave chase to the pirate craft.

Barthelemy fled for a time and, after drawing the two ships far enough away, he suddenly turned, divided his crew between his own vessel and the prize, and sailed toward the pursuers.

The latter seemed startled by this audacity, signalled to each other, and while the pirates were wondering what was to be the outcome of their clumsy manoeuvres, they stopped the chase and returned to the fleet, leaving the Sea Devil to sail joyously over the high seas with her booty.

The pirates landed on the coast of Guiana in a very merry mood. They had plenty of money; for they had found in the captured ship eight thousand gold coins, strings of oriental pearls sent by the Emperor of Brazil as a gift to the Queen of Portugal, and whole chests of valuable goods.

And was it their intention to put the money at interest, the costly fabrics in shops to be sold by the yard? No indeed, their custom was to drink till the last gold coin was squandered. Whoever laid aside his share of the booty was a traitor, and whoever withdrew with his money to lead a respectable life, they killed.

This habit of the pirates was well-known on sh.o.r.e. They came on land only when they had money and wanted to spend their treasure in the shortest possible time. On the sea men trembled before them, on sh.o.r.e they received them with open arms. There are doc.u.ments proving that on the islands near Surinam the highest officials vied with one another in their hospitality to the pirates.

True the corsairs, in a single fortnight, spent eight thousand gold moidores, and the women of the city, from the highest lady to the lowest servant wench, were clad in silks and cashmeres, while the costly pearls destined for the fair neck of Her Majesty the Queen of Portugal clasped that of the Regent's wife; indeed there were gala entertainments from the halls of the governor's residence to the lowest hut, and the pirates went from one to another, here a gentleman and there a lout, carousing, dancing, fighting, and love-making all day long. For an entire fortnight there was neither night nor day, only one continuous revel, a sea of pleasure whose depths no man could sound.

Then, when all joys were exhausted, that is, when the last moidore had slipped through their fingers, the pirates went back to their ships, rubbed their eyes, and looked about for more work.

They received tidings of a richly laden brigantine which was approaching the coast. Towards evening the helmsman saw the ship on the horizon.

"Caution!" warned Barthelemy. "If they see us, they will have time to escape. Let the two ships remain here under Lieutenant Kennedy's command, while forty picked men go on board the sloop with me. Then we can approach the brigantine unsuspected."

He himself chose his men, among them Skyrme, Scudamore, the mate Henry Glasby, Asphlant, Moody, and Simpson, and felt so sure of capturing the brigantine before morning that, contrary to his custom, he did not see that the sloop was provided with a sufficient supply of provisions.

The night was dark and all through the long hours the sloop fairly flew in the direction where they expected to find the brigantine. According to Barthelemy's calculation, they would be within gunshot of her at dawn.

And lo, when the sun rose and they gazed around the horizon, the brigantine was nowhere in sight. They tacked right and left, but not a sail was visible anywhere on the horizon.

The brigantine had doubtless discovered them and vanished under cover of the darkness.

Barthelemy was furious, and, unwilling to return defeated, sought the brigantine by altering his course hither and thither. For a week he sailed the seas, constantly struggling with head winds and currents; on the eighth day his supply of provisions was exhausted and he was forced to anchor and send a small boat back to his ships for food and a.s.sistance. Barthelemy and his companions remained on the sloop.

According to the closest estimate the boat would need three days to reach the ships and the same time to return. So Barthelemy must stay six days at one point in the ocean.

A week before they were revelling in luxury, while wine flowed in rivers, now, under the rays of a scorching sun, they divided their last biscuit and longed for a drink of water.

At last Barthelemy thought of lashing some masts together into a raft, on which he sent two men with a cask to seek land. They were almost dying of thirst when the raft returned; the men had reached the sh.o.r.e and filled the cask with muddy water. They also brought a bunch of some plant which resembled a radish.

Miry water and radishes! A royal banquet for the pirates! But soon this, too, was exhausted, the six days had expired, the boat had not returned, and the adverse tide made it impossible for the raft to reach the sh.o.r.e a second time.

The men grew desperate and began to murmur.

"Worthless fellows!" bl.u.s.tered Moody. "Degenerate pirates, who succ.u.mb to hunger after fasting only three days. The world is going to ruin.

Even pirates turn cowards. It wasn't so when I was young and Olonais was captain.

"For a whole week we ate nothing but dry roots, and then we got food from the governor's table in the heart of Vera Cruz."

"And you ventured to fight on land?" asked Asphlant, with an incredulous look.

"The ground certainly didn't tremble under our feet as it does under yours when you go ash.o.r.e; once, twenty of us, under Olonais, pushed forward to the gates of Havana."

"I didn't hear that you ever captured the city."

"We came within an ace of it. Luckily for himself, the governor found out how few of us there were in the party before we got our hands on his throat."

"So you returned whence you came."

"It's easy enough for you to talk; the governor sent two hundred men after us in a warship, while we had only two boats. He also sent along an executioner to hang us to the trees on the coast when we were caught."