The Corsair King Part 7

"So you managed to escape."

"We waited for them and, after having lured them far enough from Havana, I and another dare-devil, who, however, did not live to grow old, like me, slipped overboard and, swimming under the ship with our augers, bored eight holes in her bottom. Ho! ho! how quickly she sunk, how the soldiers roared for help, splashed about in the water and held out their hands for aid. Then Olonais went back with the boats and wherever a soldier's head rose out of the water he slashed it off with a huge sabre, all but the executioner, whom he recognized by his red cap and sent back to the governor with his compliments and the message that he did not need him."

"Your captain was a bold fellow, Moody. What became of him?"

"H'm! H'm! he had a strange end."

"I suppose he was captured at last."

"Far stranger than that. In a fight with savages, he was wounded and taken prisoner. The scoundrels ate the poor man."

"The boat!" suddenly shouted the man at the helm, and all left the old pirate and his stories to watch the approaching yawl, which they hailed with cheers, waving their caps aloft, while the returning men sat silent, as if they found the meeting less joyful than their comrades.

Skyrme was the captain of the boat. When he reached the sloop he stepped on her deck with a downcast, angry face, and answered the questions poured upon him from all sides: "Have you rum, meat, biscuit?" with "Nothing," and when, wondering at the reply, the men shook their heads, Skyrme turned to Barthelemy with quivering lips.

"Captain, we are deceived, betrayed, lost."

"What do you mean?"

"Both the ships you intrusted to Kennedy have disappeared."

"Impossible."

"It is true. We searched two days without finding any trace of them; at last we learned from some fisherman that, as soon as we were out of sight, they crowded on all sail and went to sea."

A roar of mingled fury and despair greeted these words; the cheated pirates, with knives uplifted, vowed to inflict a thousand tortures on the traitors. Barthelemy was deadly pale.

"We will meet them," he said hoa.r.s.ely. "There is not a moment to lose.

Forward my lads."

"Where?" asked Skyrme despairingly.

"To sea!" answered Barthelemy proudly, pointing to the offing.

"Yes, but in this plight, without a mouthful of bread, a drop of water."

"The first ship will give us both. Woe to those we encounter, they will fight with fiends."

"But suppose we should meet no vessel for days?"

"There are forty of us. If we meet no ship for two days, we will have a true pirate banquet; whoever draws the fatal lot will yield us his body for food, his blood for drink. We are supplied for forty days; those who survive will inherit our need of vengeance. Forward!"

The savage shouts of the pirates echoed far over the waves as they boldly steered toward the open sea, and that very day they met two well-armed sloops coming from the island of Defrada.

The buccaneers were thirsting for carnage. After a stubborn defence they captured both vessels, from which they took only the guns and provisions and then sunk them.

Again they sailed to and fro for several days without encountering any craft. Their provisions ran out and, just as they had divided the last portion of water, they saw on the horizon a Bristol vessel. The sloop instantly gave chase. The other tried to escape and the pirates pursued all day, crowding so much sail upon the sloop that she often buried her deck in the waves. Towards evening the clumsy ship, finding escape impossible, yielded without resistance.

The pirates were infuriated by the long pursuit, and the faces of many plainly revealed their desire to cool their vengeance by giving their captives a sea-bath.

Barthelemy climbed on deck, where the crew awaited him with uncovered heads.

"Where is your captain?" he shouted.

The worthy man, who was by no means desirous of renown, had gone below to his cabin, from which he was dragged and brought before Barthelemy, to whom he knelt.

"Stand up, don't kneel. Lift him, that he may stand erect."

Two pirates were obliged to drag the captain from his knees by main force, but when he perceived that he would not be allowed to kneel on deck, he lifted up his feet and knelt in the air, a comical sight which turned the pirates' rage into laughter.

"What is your ship's cargo?" asked Barthelemy.

The captain earnestly begged to be released, protesting that he could not speak while he was held in such a way, and then, trembling violently, said that his vessel was loaded with Spanish wine.

"That word saves you," returned Barthelemy, as the pirates exultingly flung the captain into the air like a ball, and then ran down to the hold whence they speedily rolled up two or three iron-bound casks. The poor captain, sighing heavily, answered in reply to the buccaneers'

query concerning the name of his wine, "Malaga."

The terrified man kept glancing anxiously toward one of the part.i.tions in the ship, and the pirates, noticing his fear, broke down the door, behind which was carefully hidden a supply of the finest brain sausages, which they brought out hung around their necks like strings of beads.

This captain was a great gourmand, who had provided himself with the choicest provisions. The pirates found large coops filled with pheasants and Calcutta hens, which had been fed on nuts to give their flesh a better flavor. The rascals pulled out every one of the birds.

"Where's the barber?" they shouted, "Here's something to bleed!" and they dragged Scudamore forward to use his valuable surgical instruments to cut off the heads of the capons. Scudamore gleefully beheaded the squawking fowl, each one of which the Bristol captain seemed to mourn, and when he had dispatched the last, he suddenly seized the sighing sailor by the hair, put his knife to his throat, and would have sent him after the birds, had not Skyrme dealt him such a blow that he fell headlong.

"I supposed _these_ were to follow!" said the doctor with a fiendish laugh.

Meanwhile the pirates began to pluck the poultry, and then cut the fowl up clumsily, lacking the help of Scudamore, who swore by all the imps of Satan that he didn't enlist to kill animals, but men.

The beautiful pheasants were flung into three large copper kettles, white pepper and cod-fish were added, and fires were lighted under the caldrons.

"Oh, what barbarians!" sighed the English captain, "To cook cod-fish with pheasants."

As soon as the meat was half done they gathered around, flourishing their knives. The captain was invited to take his seat among them and share the meal, which he eagerly did, for on discovering that the birds could no longer be saved, he developed a laudable intention of devouring enough of them for three men.

After the repast the wretches brought out the captain's preserved fruit, stored carefully away for his own use, and ate it before his eyes.

The rude fellows, accustomed to coa.r.s.e smoked meat, greedily swallowed the expensive pistachio nuts and preserved pineapples, while saying contemptuously that they would much rather have onions.

And how they drank the n.o.ble wine! From the narrow-necked bottles in which it is usually sold! No, they knocked out the bottoms of the casks and dipped it up with their hats, or held their mouths under the c.o.c.k and drank till they could scarcely rise. Swiftly as the wine poured into their throats, songs and laughter poured out, the wildest shouts of revelry which buccaneers ever uttered; even the English captain was obliged to drink his own wine, and the more he swallowed, the more firmly he began to believe that he himself was the pirate chief who had captured and plundered a ship, and advised the men to hang each other, being affected in precisely the opposite manner from Scudamore, who, under the influence of the wine, believed himself an honest man who had been taken prisoner by bandits; the result of which was that the two men had a violent scuffle, and as the captain proved to be the stronger, Scudamore lost two of his teeth.

The former then triumphantly resumed his seat among the pirates, and by singing several songs aloud, roused their enthusiasm to such a pitch that Skyrme, starting up, vowed by a sea of wine to drink the Bristol captain's health in a gla.s.s which no man had ever used.

He kept his word, for, ordering a cask filled with Malvoisie to be rolled up, he knocked out the head, sprang into it, and there drank the health of the captain, who almost died with laughter, thinking it vastly entertaining that a man should sit in the vessel from which he drank without being afraid of swallowing himself.

The carouse on the captured ship lasted uninterruptedly for three days and nights. On the third day the intoxicated pirates embraced the drunken captain and, rolling a few casks of wine upon their own sloop as a remembrance, took leave, urging him, when he reached Barbadoes, to send them a few rich merchantmen, of which just now they were in great need. Before he arrived there, however, the captain had entirely recovered from his intoxication and, remembering, doubtless, his slaughtered fowl and plundered wine, resolved to send a few ships in pursuit of the pirates.

He went to the governor, related his misfortune, and induced him, in the absence of men-of-war, to fit up a merchant vessel with twenty-four guns and a sloop with ten, and despatch them under the command of Captains Rogers and Graves in chase of the bold buccaneers who roved so daringly in waters so near port. The latter were not yet sober, for they still had their wine, and when they saw the approaching vessels, believing that they would prove rich prizes, tacked and stood toward them.