The Pirate Slaver Part 12

"If they will rig me a studding-sail, or an old fore-course for'ard, I will do the rest--or _try_ to do it," said I.

"Will you?" exclaimed Mendouca, in surprise. "Then I am sure you may, and I heartily wish you joy of the job."

"Very well, then, I will set about it the first thing after breakfast,"

said I.

And I did. I got the poor wretches forward in batches of thirty, induced them to stand in the basin-like hollow of the sail, and then set half-a-dozen of their number pumping and drawing water, and playing upon their fellows with the hose, or sluicing buckets of water over them, and the exquisite enjoyment, the unspeakable luxury of that bath, as the cool, sparkling liquid dashed upon the filth and sweat-begrimed bodies, was a sight to see! Enjoyed it? Why they revelled in it, so that it was with difficulty that I could get them out; the stony look of hopeless, utter despair faded temporarily out of their eyes, and some of them actually _laughed_! It was by no means a pleasant or a savoury job that I had undertaken, but witnessing the keen enjoyment that I had thus bestowed made it the most delightful that I had ever been engaged in.

It occupied me the whole morning to pa.s.s the entire cargo through the bath and secure the thorough cleansing of their persons, and the whole of the afternoon to get the slave-deck properly cleansed and purified; but when the sun set that evening the ship was once more sweet and wholesome, while the slaves had--taking one with another--been on deck and actively exercised for about half a day instead of about twenty minutes morning and evening. As I had said, it did them more good than double rations for the entire voyage. Even Mendouca was fain to acknowledge that the day, instead of being wasted, had been well spent.

We had been hoping all day that with sunset a breeze would spring up from _somewhere_--I think n.o.body was very particular as to the quarter from which it should come, so long as it came at all--but our hopes were doomed to disappointment; the sun went down in a perfectly clear sky, and there was no sign whatever of wind from any quarter. The same weather conditions prevailed all through the night; and when the sun rose next morning there was still not the slightest sign of wind, while the gla.s.s exhibited a slight tendency to rise. Under these circ.u.mstances I thought I would endeavour to secure a repet.i.tion of the proceedings of the previous day, and so well pleased was Mendouca with the improved appearance of the blacks when, as usual, half of them came on deck at breakfast-time, that he readily gave his consent; and accordingly the poor creatures were again treated to the luxury of the bath, while the slave-deck received another thorough scrubbing to cleanse it from the filth acc.u.mulated during the night. And thus the negroes were enabled to pa.s.s a second day in pure air, to the great improvement of their health and spirits; indeed, the ecstatic delight with which they lingered over their bath, and the cheerfulness with which they afterwards worked at their task of drawing water and scrubbing, chattering almost gaily together all the time, were, to me, most eloquent testimony as to the miseries that they had previously endured, cooped up, tightly wedged together, _day and night_, in the close and noisome hold.

I must not omit to mention a very curious phenomenon of which I had often heard, but had never before beheld until this day. It is known among sailors as the phenomenon of "the ripples." I was on the forecastle superintending the bathing operations when it first made its appearance, the sky being at the time clear and cloudless, with the sun blazing in its midst like a huge ball of living flame, while the water was so oil-smooth and gla.s.sy that it was quite impossible to distinguish the horizon, or to determine where the sea ended and the sky began. It was hotter than I had ever felt it before; dressed only in a thin shirt and the thinnest of white trousers, the perspiration was gushing so freely from every pore of my body that my light and airy garments were saturated with it, while the atmosphere was so stagnant that it seemed impossible to inhale a sufficiency of air for breathing purposes. Under these trying conditions we were, of course, all anxiously watching for a breeze; and it was with a feeling of exquisite delight that, happening to look abroad toward the north, I saw the horizon strongly marked with a line of delicate blue, indicating, as I believed, the approach of a thrice-welcome breeze. In the exuberance of my delight I shouted to Mendouca, who was reclining in a hammock aft slung from the main-boom, and, of course, under the shelter of the awning--

"Hurrah! here comes a breeze at last, although I do not know where it has sprung from, for there is not a cloud to be seen."

Mendouca sprang up in his hammock at this news, and looked in the direction to which I was pointing; then sank back again, disgustedly.

"Pshaw, that is no breeze--worse luck!" he cried. "That is only 'the ripples.'"

"The ripples?" I e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. "Surely not. It has every appearance of a genuine breeze!"

Mendouca, however, was too intensely disgusted to reply. Meanwhile, the streak of blue, stretching right athwart the horizon, was advancing rapidly, bearing straight down upon the brigantine, and soon it became possible to see the tiny wavelets sparkling in the dazzling sunlight, and to detect a soft, musical, liquid-tinkling sound, such as one may hear when the tide is rising on a flat, sandy beach on a calm summer's day. But by this time I had made the disappointing discovery that the blue line was merely a belt of rippling water about a quarter of a mile wide, with a perfectly calm, gla.s.sy surface beyond it, and, as there was no advance-guard of cat's-paws, such as may usually be seen playing on the surface of the water as forerunners of an approaching breeze, I was reluctantly compelled to acknowledge to myself that Mendouca was right.

And so it proved; for although the line--or rather belt--of rippling water not only advanced right up to the ship, giving forth a most pleasant and refreshing liquid sound as it came, and lapping musically against the brigantine's sides for a few minutes when it reached her, but also pa.s.sed on and traversed the entire visible surface of the ocean, finally disappearing beyond the southern horizon, the whole phenomenon was absolutely unaccompanied by the slightest perceptible movement of the air. This curious disturbance of the ocean's surface was twice repeated on that same day.

The long, hot, breathless, and wearisome day at length drew to an end, and still there was no sign of wind; the night pa.s.sed; another day dawned; and still we lay, like the craft in Coleridge's _Ancient Mariner_, "as idle as a painted ship upon a painted ocean." That day too waxed and waned without the sign of so much as a cat's-paw to revive our drooping hopes; and although during the succeeding night we were visited by a terrific thunderstorm, accompanied by a perfect deluge of rain, during which a few evanescent puffs intermittently filled our sails, and moved us perhaps a mile nearer Cuba, when day again dawned there was a further recurrence of the same staring, cloudless sky of dazzling blue, the same blazing sun, the same breathless atmosphere, and the same oil-smooth sea. And as these days of calm and stagnation succeeded each other with relentless persistency, I kept up the custom of bathing the negroes and thoroughly cleansing the slave-deck, until at length the poor creatures actually grew fat and merry, so that Mendouca, despite his fast-growing impatience and irritability at the continued calm, was obliged to admit that he had never seen a cargo of "black ivory" in such promising condition before. This, however, was not all; for while superintending these bathing and scrubbing operations I talked cheerfully and pleasantly to the fellows, giving them such names as Tom, Bob, Joe, s...o...b..ll, and so on, to which they readily answered, instead of abusing them and ordering them about with brutal oaths and obscenity, as was the habit of the crew; and although the poor wretches understood not a word of what was spoken to them either by the crew or by myself, yet they readily enough distinguished the difference of manner, and not only so, but they seemed to possess the faculty of interpreting one's meaning from the tones of one's voice, so that they quickly grew to understand what I wanted them to do, and did it cheerfully and with alacrity. In this manner, with persistent calm recurring day after day, we pa.s.sed no less than the almost incredible time of over three weeks without moving as many miles from the spot where the wind had deserted us, Mendouca's temper growing steadily worse every day, until at length he became absolutely unbearable, and I spoke to him as little as possible. And the climax was reached when one day the steward, who had been sent down into the hold to overhaul the stores, came on deck with a face as long as the main-bowline, and reported that there was only food and water enough in the ship to last ten days longer.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN.

MENDOUCA BECOMES COMMUNICATIVE.

"Only ten days longer?" roared Mendouca, his face livid with fury and consternation. "Nonsense, Juan! you must have made some stupid mistake; there surely is--there _must_ be--more than that!"

"I have not made any mistake at all, senor," answered the man sulkily; "it is just as I have said; there are only provisions and water enough to last us, on a full allowance, ten days longer."

"Then, if that is the case, all hands must be put on short allowance-- half rations--at once!" exclaimed Mendouca, with an oath. "But, stop a little; there _must_ be some mistake. Light your lantern again, and I will go down below with you, and satisfy myself on the point."

Accordingly Mendouca and the steward went down into the hold together, and gave the stores an exhaustive overhaul, with the result that the original report of the latter was fully confirmed!

Mendouca came up from the hold, raging like a maniac, cursing the weather, the provisions, and everything else that he could think of, including myself, whom he denounced as a Jonah, his ill-luck having commenced, according to his a.s.sertion, with the sparing of my life and my reception on board the _Francesca_. As for the calm, he declared that it should detain him no longer; and, having searched the sky and examined the barometer in vain for any signs of a change, he gave orders for all canvas to be furled, and for the negroes to be set to work forthwith upon the sweeps, his intention being, as he stated, to keep them at it in relays or gangs until the region of apparently eternal calm had been left, and a breeze of some sort found. There were ten of these sweeps, or long, heavy oars, working through the ports, in beckets firmly lashed to ringbolts in the stanchions, that were evidently placed there expressly for that particular purpose. The loom of the sweep was long enough to admit of four men working at it, and accordingly the boatswain, having received his orders from Mendouca, selected forty of the strongest-looking of the negroes, and set them to this exhausting labour, the rest of the unfortunate creatures being driven below out of the way. The vessel, lying there inert as a log on the water, proved very heavy to start, especially as the blacks knew not how to handle the sweeps, having evidently never touched one before; but, once fairly started, the craft was kept moving with comparative ease at a speed of about three and a half knots per hour. But it was cruel work for the unhappy blacks, who, naked as when they were born, were remorselessly kept at it by the boatswain and his mate, both of whom paced the deck, fore and aft, armed with a heavy "colt," which they plied unmercifully upon the shoulders of any man whom they chose to believe was not fully exerting himself, although the perspiration poured from the dark naked hides like rain. "Short spells and hard work" was, however, the order of the day, and after half-an-hour of almost superhuman exertion a relief was called, a fresh gang was set to work, and the exhausted toilers were hustled below to rest and recover themselves as best they could. I remonstrated hotly with Mendouca upon the needless cruelty practised by the boatswain and his mate, but I was roughly told that I did not know what I was talking about; that negroes would never work unless kept continually in wholesome dread of the lash; and that it was absolutely necessary to get every ounce of work out of them if we were not one and all to perish miserably of hunger and thirst. So, as I could do no better, I got a piece of the oldest and softest canvas I could find, and a bucket of water, with which I descended to the slave-deck and carefully bathed the poor lacerated shoulders of those unfortunates who had suffered most severely at the hands of the boatswain and his mate, a little piece of attention that I saw was most gratefully received.

We made fully twenty miles of westing that day, from the time when the negroes were first set to work up to sunset, to Mendouca's great gratification. Indeed, so delighted was he with his own brilliant idea, that he did that night what I had never known him to do before, he indulged rather too freely in the contents of the rum-bottle. And, as a consequence, he grew garrulous and good-humouredly sarcastic over the efforts made for the suppression of the slave-trade, which he emphatically a.s.serted would never be put down.

"One very serious disadvantage which you labour under," he remarked, referring particularly to the operations of the British slave-squadron, "is that you are altogether too confiding and credulous; you accept every man as honest and straightforward until you have learned, to your cost, that he is the reverse. Take the case, for example, of your attack upon Chango Creek. You were led to undertake it upon the representations made and the information given by Lobo, the Portuguese trader of Banana Point, weren't you? Oh, I know all about it, I have heard the whole story," he interrupted himself to say, in reply to my e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n of surprise. "You were all very much obliged to Lobo, of course; and your captain paid him handsomely for his information and a.s.sistance. I suppose there was not one of you, from the captain downward, who ever had the ghost of a suspicion that the fellow was playing you false, and that the affair was a bold yet carefully arranged plot to exterminate the whole of you, and destroy your ship, eh? No; of course you hadn't; yet I give you my word that it _was_. Ay; and the only wonder to me was that it did not succeed. I suppose it was that you had a good deal more fight in you than any of them gave you credit for; and that is where so many excellently arranged traps have failed; the plotters have never made sufficient allowance for the fighting powers of the British, as I have told them over and over again. It was just that important oversight that caused what ought to have been a splendid success to result in a serious disaster; the intention was good, but, as is much too often the case, they had reckoned without their host."

"But I do not understand," I cut in, as Mendouca paused. "What was the plot? and how was Lobo concerned in it? It appears to me that the man acted in perfect good faith; he gave us certain information which proved to be substantially correct--except that he was mistaken as to the force that we should have to encounter--and he safely piloted us to the spot from which our boat attack was to be made; I can see nothing like a plot or treachery in that."

"No; of course you cannot, you sweet innocent," retorted Mendouca, with fine sarcasm, "for the simple reason, as I say, that the British are altogether too trustful and confiding to see treachery or double-dealing until it is thrust openly in their faces. You are altogether too simple and unsuspicious, you navy men, to deal with the tricks and ruses of the slave-dealing fraternity; and before your eyes are opened you either die of fever, or are killed in some brush with us, or are invalided home."

"It may be so," I agreed; "but so general a statement as that does not in the least help me to see what was the character of Lobo's plot, or even that there was a plot at all."

"Well, I will tell you," said Mendouca thickly, helping himself to another caulker of rum--he had already swallowed two tumblers of stiff grog since the subject had been broached, in addition to what he had previously taken--"I will tell you, because, having made up my mind that you shall never rejoin your own people, the information is not likely to do Lobo any harm. When you arrived at Banana Point on that particular morning, your presence seriously threatened to entirely upset a very important transaction which Senor Lobo had in hand, namely, the disposal and shipment of a prime lot of nearly a thousand able-bodied, full-grown, male blacks that he had got snugly stowed away in two big barrac.o.o.ns a short distance up the creek from his factory. Had your captain taken it into his head to land a party and make a search of the peninsula, the barrac.o.o.ns would have been discovered, and friend Lobo would have been a ruined man. So, as soon as your brig was identified as a man-o'-war--and that was as soon as she could be distinctly made out--another mistake that you man-o'-war's men make, friend Dugdale; you can scarcely ever bring yourselves to disguise your ships; they declare their character as far as it is possible to see them.--Let me see, what was I saying? I have run clean off my course, and don't know where I am."

"You were going to tell me what happened when the _Barracouta_ was identified from Banana Point as a man-o'-war," said I.

"Ah, yes, exactly," answered Mendouca. "Well, as soon as it was discovered that your brig was a British man-o'-war, every available hand was set to work to clear everything of an incriminating character out of the two brigs that were going to ship the slaves; so that, should you overhaul them--as I was told you did--nothing might be found on board to justify their seizure. This job was successfully completed only a few minutes before you entered the creek. But that would have availed Lobo nothing had your captain happened to have thought of landing upon the peninsula; the next thing, therefore, was to furnish him with a totally different subject to think about; and this Lobo found in the opportune presence of the four craft in Chango Creek. The captains of three out of the four vessels happened to be down at Banana when you arrived; and Lobo--who is gifted with quite an unusual measure of persuasiveness--had very little difficulty in convincing them that you would be absolutely certain to discover their hiding-place sooner or later, and that consequently it would be a good plan to inveigle you into making an immediate attack upon them; when, by concerting proper measures of defence, they might succeed in practically annihilating you, and so sweeping a formidable enemy out of their path. The three skippers fell in readily with his plan, when he had propounded it, and also undertook to secure the cooperation of the fourth; and as the creek offered exceptional facilities for a successful defence, it was accepted that you were all as good as done for, especially as Lobo had undertaken to cut the brig adrift at the right moment, so that she might be driven ash.o.r.e and rendered useless for the time being, if not altogether. This matter arranged, the slave-captains left Banana forthwith to carry out their plans for the defence of the creek, taking a short cut by way of the back of the creek, and taking with them also every available man that Lobo could spare; the idea being to allow you to advance unmolested as far as the boom--which, they never dreamed that you would succeed in forcing--and then destroy you by a musketry fire from the banks, when, weakened by your unavailing attack upon the boom, you should at length be compelled to retire. Your astounding pluck and perseverance in forcing the boom completely upset all their plans, and converted what would have been for them an easy and bloodless victory into a disastrous defeat, while it saved the lives of the survivors of the attacking party. But though it turned out disastrously for Aravares, of the _Mercedes_, and his friends, the plot served Lobo's purpose perfectly; the shipping of the slaves on board the two brigs which were waiting for them proceeding immediately that you were clear of the creek, and both vessels getting away to sea that same night. So that, you see, it is by no means as difficult a matter to deceive and hoodwink you man-o'-war people as you choose to suppose."

"No," answered I; "so it would seem. Yet, by your own showing, we were not the only deceived parties; and, after all, the attack was successful, so far as we were concerned."

"That is very true, and only confirms what I have always insisted upon; namely, that, in making their plans, foreigners do not allow sufficiently for British pluck and obstinacy. Now _I_ do; I never leave anything to chance, but always lay my plans so carefully that the destruction or capture of my enemies is an absolute certainty. But for such careful forethought on my part, the _Sapphire's_ two boats would never have fallen into my power."

"The _Sapphire's_ boats?" I exclaimed. "Surely you do not mean to tell me that _you_ are responsible for the ma.s.sacre of those two boats'

crews?"

"No, not the ma.s.sacre of them, certainly, but their capture," answered Mendouca, with a smile of gratified pride.

"And are the people still alive, then?" I asked.

"They were when I last heard of them," answered Mendouca. "But it is quite possible that by this time they--or at least a part of them--have been tortured to death by Matadi--the chief to whom I sold them--as a sacrifice to his fetish."

"Gracious powers, how horrible!" I exclaimed. "And to think that you, an Englishman, could consign your fellow-countrymen to such a fate as that!"

"Why not?" demanded Mendouca fiercely; "why should I be more gentle to my countrymen than they have been to me? Do you think that, because I carry my fate lightly and gaily, I do not feel keenly the depth to which I have fallen? I might have been a post-captain by this time, honoured and distinguished for great services worthily rendered; but I am instead a slaver and a pirate masquerading under the disguise of a Spanish name.

Do you think I am insensible of the immeasurable gulf that separates me from what I might have been? And it is my own countrymen who have opened that gulf--who have robbed me of the opportunity of reaching that proud eminence that was at one time all but within my reach, and have hurled me into the abyss of crime and infamy in which you find me. And you are surprised, forsooth, that I should avenge myself whenever the opportunity comes!"

I knew now from experience that it was quite useless to argue with Mendouca when he got upon the subject of his grievances; I therefore gave the conversation a turn by asking--

"Where, then, are these wretched people now, if indeed they are still alive?"

"I presume," answered he, "that, if still alive, as you say, they are where I last heard of them; namely, at Matadi's village; a place on the south bank of the Congo, about one hundred miles, or rather more, from its mouth. But why do you take such a profound interest in them?" he asked. "Possibly you are contemplating the formation of an expedition for their rescue, as soon as you have effected your escape from me?" and he laughed satirically.

My reply and his laugh were alike cut short by the sound of heavy footsteps on the companion-ladder outside the cabin, and the next moment the boatswain made his appearance in the doorway with the intimation that a craft of some sort had just been made out, at a distance of about three miles broad on the starboard bow; and he wished to know whether the course of the brigantine was to be altered or not.

Mendouca sprang to his feet and hurried on deck, I following him.

On our first emergence from the brilliantly-lighted cabin the night appeared to be dark; but as our eyes accommodated themselves to the change of conditions, it became apparent that the cloudless sky was thickly gemmed and powdered with stars of all magnitudes, from those of the first order down to the star-dust const.i.tuting the broad belt of the Milky Way, all gleaming with that soft, resplendent l.u.s.tre that is only to be witnessed within the zone of the tropics. Moreover, there was a young moon, a delicate, crescent-shaped paring, about two days old, hanging low in the western sky, yet capable, in that pure, translucent atmosphere, of yielding quite an appreciable amount of light. The water was still smooth as polished gla.s.s, even the swell having gone down so completely that its undulations were not to be detected by even the delicate test of watching the star reflections in the polished depths, while the brigantine was as steady as though still on the stocks where she took form and substance. The negroes were still toiling at the sweeps, and the watch, armed to the teeth, were cl.u.s.tered fore and aft, on the alert to guard against any attempt at an outbreak among them.

The canvas was all closely furled, so that we had an uninterrupted view of the sky from horizon to zenith, all around, toward the latter of which the delicate, tapering, naked spars pointed as steadily as the spires of a church. The boatswain, however, was eagerly directing Mendouca's attention toward small, dark object, broad on our starboard bow; and turning my gaze toward it, I made out a brig under her two topsails, jib, and trysail, with her courses in the brails. Mendouca had already seized the night-gla.s.s, and with its aid was subjecting her to a prolonged and searching scrutiny, upon the completion of which he handed the instrument to me, with the remark, in English--

"Take a good look at her, Dugdale, and tell me what you think of her?"

I took the gla.s.s, and, having brought the stranger into its field, soon managed, by an adjustment of the focus, to get a clear, sharply-defined image of her, as she floated motionless, a black silhouette, against the deep, velvety, purple-black, star-spangled sky. And as I did so a certain sense of familiarity with the delicate, diminutive, black picture upon which I was gazing thrilled through me. Surely I knew that low, long, shapely hull; those lofty, slightly-raking masts; those s.p.a.cious topsails? Even the very steeve of the bowsprit seemed familiar to me, and I felt certain that the superbly cut jib and handsome trysail could belong only to the _Barracouta_! And, if so, how was I to act?

It was plainly my duty to do anything and everything that might be in my power to promote the capture of the daring slaver and unscrupulous pirate, whose guest--or prisoner--I was; but had I the power to do _anything_? With that now thoroughly alert and even suspicious individual at my side, and the watch on deck all about me, it was clearly evident that nothing in the shape of signalling could even be attempted with the slightest hope or chance of success; and the only other mode of action that remained to me appeared to be to carefully conceal my knowledge--or, rather, very strong suspicion--as to the ident.i.ty of the brig. I had barely arrived at this conclusion when Mendouca, with an accent of impatience, interrupted my reverie with the exclamation--

"Well, surely you have seen all that it is possible to see by this time?

Or cannot you quite make up your mind as to her character?"

"I have an impression that I have seen her before, and it seems to me that she bears a very striking resemblance to the Spanish brig that was lying off Lobo's factory on the day of our first arrival in the Congo,"

said I; the happy idea suggesting itself to me, as I began to speak, that I might safely make this statement without any breach of the truth, all of us on board the _Barracouta_ having observed and remarked upon the striking resemblance between the two craft.