The Wing-and-Wing Part 17

"Thou mean'st to sing thy hymn, Ghita, else the guitar would not have been mentioned?"

"Raoul, I do. I have ever found thy soul the softest after holy music.

Who knows but the mercy of G.o.d may one day touch it through the notes of this very hymn!"

Ghita paused a moment, and then her light fingers pa.s.sed over the strings of her guitar in a solemn symphony; after which came the sweet strains of "Ave Maria," in a voice and melody that might, in sooth, have touched a heart of stone. Ghita, a Neapolitan by birth, had all her country's love for music; and she had caught some of the science that seems to pervade nations in that part of the world. Nature had endowed her with one of the most touching voices of her s.e.x; one less powerful than mellow and sweet; and she never used it in a religious office without its becoming tremulous and eloquent with feeling. While she was now singing this well-known hymn, a holy hope pervaded her moral system, that, in some miraculous manner, she might become the agent of turning Raoul to the love and worship of G.o.d; and the feeling communicated itself to her execution. Never before had she sung so well; as a proof of which Ithuel left his knight-head and came aft to listen, while the two French mariners on watch temporarily forgot their duty, in entranced attention.

"If anything could make me a believer, Ghita," murmured Raoul, when the last strain had died on the lips of his beloved, "it would be to listen to thy melody! What now, Monsieur Etooell! are you, too, a lover of holy music?"

"This is rare singing, Captain Rule; but we have different business on hand. If you will step to the other end of the lugger, you can take a look at the craft that has been crawling along, in-sh.o.r.e of us, for the last three hours--there is something about her that is unnat'ral; she seems to be dropping down nearer to us, while she has no motion through the water. The last circ.u.mstance I hold to be unnat'ral with a vessel that has all sail set and in this breeze."

Raoul pressed the hand of Ghita, and whispered her to go below, as he was fearful the air of the night might injure her. He then went forward, where he could command as good a view of the felucca in-sh.o.r.e, as the obscurity of the hour permitted; and he felt a little uneasiness, when he found how near she had got to the lugger. When he last noted her position, this vessel was quite half a mile distant, and appeared to be crossing the bows of le Feu-Follet, with sufficient wind to have carried her a mile ahead in the interval; yet could he not perceive that she had advanced as far, in that direction, as she had drifted down upon the lugger the while.

"Have you been examining her long?" he demanded of the New Hampshire man.

"Ever since she has seemed to stand still; which is now some twenty minutes. She is dull, I suppose, for she has been several hours getting along a league; and there is now air enough for such a craft to go three knots to the hour. Her coming down upon us is easily accounted for, there being a considerable current out of this river, as you may see by the ripple at our own cut-water; but I find nothing to keep her from going ahead at the same time. I set her by the light you see, here, in the wake of the nearest mountain, at least a quarter of an hour since, and she has not advanced five times her own length since."

"'Tis nothing but a Corsican coaster, after all, Etooell: I hardly think the English would risk our canister again, for the pleasure of being beaten off in another attempt to board!"

"They're a spiteful set, aboard the frigate; and the Lord only knows!

See, here is a good heavy night air, and that felucca is not a cable's length from us; set her by the jib-stay, and judge for yourself how slowly she goes ahead! _That_ it is which nonplusses _me!_"

Raoul did as the other desired, and after a short trial he found that the coaster had no perceptible motion ahead, while it was certain she was drifting down with the current directly athwart the lugger's hawse.

This satisfied him that she must have drags astern; a circ.u.mstance that at once denoted a hostile intention. The enemy was probably on board the felucca, in force; and it was inc.u.mbent on him to make immediate preparations for defence.

Still, Raoul was reluctant to disturb his people. Like all firm and cool men, he was averse to the parade of a false alarm; and it seemed so improbable that the lesson of the morning was so soon forgotten, that he could hardly persuade himself to believe his senses. Then the men had been very hard at work throughout the day; and most of them were sleeping the sleep of the weary. On the other hand, every minute brought the coaster nearer, and increased the danger, should the enemy be really in possession of her. Under all the circ.u.mstances, he determined, first, to hail; knowing that his crew could be got up in a minute, and that they slept with arms at their sides, under an apprehension that a boat attack might possibly be attempted in the course of the night.

"Felucca, ahoy!" called out the captain of le Feu-Follet, the other craft being too near to render any great effort of the voice necessary; "what felucca is that? and why have you so great a drift?"

"La Bella Corsienne!" was the answer, in a patois, half French, half Italian, as Raoul expected, if all were right. "We are bound into la Padulella, and wish to keep in with the land to hold the breeze the longer. We are no great sailer at the best, and have a drift, because we are just now in the strength of the current.

"At this rate, you will come athwart my hawse. You know I am armed, and cannot suffer that!"

"Ah, Signore, we are friends of the republic, and would not harm you if we could. We hope you will not injure poor mariners like us. We will keep away, if you please, and pa.s.s under your stern--"

This proposition was made so suddenly and so unexpectedly that Raoul had not time to object; and had he been disposed to do so, the execution was too prompt to allow him the means. The felucca fell broad off, and came down almost in a direct line for the lugger's bows before the wind and current, moving fast enough now to satisfy all Ithuel's scruples.

"Call all hands to repel boarders!" cried Raoul, springing aft to the capstan and seizing his own arms--"Come up lively, _mes enfans!_--here is treachery!"

These words were hardly uttered before Raoul was back on the heel of the bowsprit, and the most active of his men--some five or six at most--began to show themselves on deck. In that brief s.p.a.ce, the felucca had got within eighty yards, when, to the surprise of all in the lugger, she luffed into the wind again and drifted down, until it was apparent that she was foul of the lugger's cable, her stern swinging round directly on the latter's starboard bow. At that instant, or just as the two vessels came in actual contact, and Raoul's men were thronging around him to meet the expected attack, the sound of oars, pulled for life or death, were heard, and flames burst upward from the open hatch of the coaster. Then a boat was dimly seen gliding away in a line with the hull, by the glowing light.

"Un brulot!--un brulot!--a fire-ship!" exclaimed twenty voices together, the horror that mingled in the cries proclaiming the extent of a danger which is, perhaps, the most terrific that seamen can encounter.

But the voice of Raoul Yvard was not among them. The moment his eye caught the first glimpse of the flames he disappeared from the bowsprit.

He might have been absent about twenty seconds. Then he was seen on the taffrail of the felucca, with a spare shank-painter, which had been lying on the forecastle, on his shoulder.

"Antoine!--Francois!--Gregoire!"--he called out, in a voice of thunder--"follow me!--the rest clear away the cable and bend a hawser to the better end!"

The people of le Feu-Follet were trained to order and implicit obedience. By this time, too, the lieutenants were among them; and the men set about doing as they had been directed. Raoul himself pa.s.sed into the felucca, followed by the three men he had selected by name. The adventurers had no difficulty, as yet, in escaping the flames, though by this time they were pouring upward from the hatch in a torrent. As Raoul suspected, his cable had been grappled; and, seizing the rope, he tightened it to a severe strain, securing the in-board part. Then he pa.s.sed down to the cable himself, directing his companions to hand him the rope-end of the shank-painter, which he fastened to the cable by a jamming hitch. This took half a minute; in half a minute more he was on the felucca's forecastle again. Here the chain was easily pa.s.sed through a hawse-hole, and a knot tied, with a marlinspike pa.s.sed through its centre. To pa.s.s the fire on the return was now a serious matter; but it was done without injury, Raoul driving his companions before him. No sooner did his foot reach the bows of le Feu-Follet again than he shouted:

"Veer away!--pay out cable, men, if you would save our beautiful lugger from destruction!"

Nor was there a moment to spare. The lugger took the cable that was given her fast enough under the pressure of the current and helped by the breeze; but at first the fire-vessel, already a sheet of flame, her decks having been saturated with tar, seemed disposed to accompany her.

To the delight of all in the lugger, however, the stern of the felucca was presently seen to separate from their own bows; and a sheer having been given to le Feu-Follet, by means of the helm, in a few seconds even her bowsprit and jib had cleared the danger. The felucca rode stationary, while the lugger dropped astern fathom after fathom until she lay more than a hundred yards distant from the fiery ma.s.s. As a matter of course, while the cable was paid out, the portion to which the lanyard or rope part of the shank-painter was fastened dropped into the water, while the felucca rode by the chain.

These events occupied less than five minutes; and all had been done with a steadiness and prompt.i.tude that seemed more like instinct than reason. Raoul's voice was not heard, except in the few orders mentioned; and when, by the glaring light which illuminated all in the lugger and the adjacent water to some distance, nearly to the brightness of noonday, he saw Ghita gazing at the spectacle in awed admiration and terror, he went to her, and spoke as if the whole were merely a brilliant spectacle, devised for their amus.e.m.e.nt.

"Our girandola is second only to that of St. Peter," he said, smiling.

"'Twas a narrow escape, love; but, thanks to thy G.o.d, if thou wilt it shall be so, we have received no harm."

"And you have been the agent of his goodness, Raoul; I have witnessed all from this spot. The call to the men brought me on deck; and, oh! how I trembled as I saw you on the flaming ma.s.s!"

"It has been cunningly planned on the part of Messieurs les Anglais; but it has signally failed. That coaster has a cargo of tar and naval stores on board; and, capturing her this evening, they have thought to extinguish our lantern by the brighter and fiercer flame of their own.

But le Feu-Follet will shine again when their fire is dead!"

"Is there, then, no danger that the brulot will yet come down upon us--she is fearfully near!"

"Not sufficiently so to do us harm; more especially as our sails are damp with dew. Here she cannot come so long as our cable stands; and as that is under water where she lies, it cannot burn. In half an hour there will be little of her left, and we will enjoy the bonfire while it lasts."

And, now the fear of danger was past, it was a sight truly to be enjoyed. Every anxious and curious face in the lugger was to be seen, under that brilliant light, turned toward the glowing ma.s.s as the sunflower follows the great source of heat in his track athwart the heavens; while the spars, sails, guns, and even the smallest object on board the lugger started out of the obscurity of night into the brightness of such an illumination, as if composing parts of some brilliant scenic display. But so fierce a flame soon exhausted itself.

Ere long the felucca's masts fell, and with them a pyramid of fire. Then the glowing deck tumbled in; and, finally, timber after timber and plank after plank fell, until the conflagration, in a great measure, extinguished itself in the water on which it floated. An hour after the flames appeared little remained but the embers which were glowing in the hold of the wreck.

CHAPTER XII.

"A justice of the peace, for the time being, They bow to, but may turn him out next year; They reverence their priest, but, disagreeing In price or creed, dismiss him without fear; They have a natural talent for foreseeing And knowing all things;--and should Park appear From his long tour in Africa, to show The Niger's source, they'd meet him with--We know."

HALLECK.

Raoul was not mistaken as to the manner in which they were obtained and the means employed by his enemies. The frigate had found one of the feluccas loaded with naval stores, including some ten or fifteen barrels of tar; and it instantly struck Griffin, who was burning to revenge the defeat of the morning, that the prize might be converted into a fire-vessel. As the second lieutenant volunteered to carry her in, always a desperate service, Cuffe gave his consent. Nothing could have been better managed than the whole duty connected with this exploit, including the manner in which our hero saved his vessel from destruction. The frigate kept between her prize and the lugger, to conceal the fact that a boat remained on board the former, and when all was ready the felucca was apparently permitted to proceed on her voyage.

The other two prizes were allowed to go free also, as cloaks to the whole affair. Griffin, as has been seen, kept standing in for the land; his object being to get up stream from the lugger and as near her as possible. When he found himself almost as far ahead as was desirable, drags were used to keep the craft stationary, and in this manner she drifted down on her intended victim, as has been already described. But for the sagacity and uneasiness of Ithuel the plan would altogether have escaped detection; and but for the coolness, courage, and resources of Raoul, it would infallibly have succeeded, notwithstanding the suspicions that had been excited.

Cuffe and the people on deck watched the whole affair with the deepest interest. They were barely able to see the sails of the felucca by means of a night-gla.s.s as she was dropping down on the lugger; and Yelverton had just exclaimed that the two vessels were foul of each other, when the flames broke out. As a matter of course, at that distance both craft seemed on fire; and when le Feu-Follet had dropped a hundred yards nearer to the frigate, leaving the felucca blazing, the two were so exactly in a line as to bring them together as seen from the former's decks. The English expected every moment to hear the explosion of the lugger's magazine; but, as it did not happen, they came to the conclusion it had been drowned. As for Griffin, he pulled in-sh.o.r.e, both to avoid the fire of le Feu-Follet, in pa.s.sing her broadside, and in the hope of intercepting Raoul while endeavoring to escape in a boat. He even went to a landing in the river quite a league from the anchorage, and waited there until long past midnight, when, finding the night beginning to cloud over and the obscurity to increase, he returned to the frigate, giving the smouldering wreck a wide berth for fear of accidents.

Such, then, was the state of things when Captain Cuffe appeared on deck just as the day began to dawn on the following morning. He had given orders to be called at that hour, and was now all impatience to get a view of the sea, more particularly in-sh.o.r.e. At length the curtain began slowly to rise, and his view extended further and further toward the river, until all was visible, even to the very land. Not a craft of any sort was in sight. Even the wreck had disappeared, though this was subsequently discovered in the surf, having drifted out with the current until it struck an eddy, which carried it in again, when it was finally stranded. No vestige of le Feu-Follet, however, was to be seen. Not even a tent on the sh.o.r.e, a wandering boat, a drifting spar, or a rag of a sail! All had disappeared, no doubt, in the conflagration. As Cuffe went below he walked with a more erect mien than he had done since the affair of the previous morning; and as he opened his writing-desk it was with the manner of one entirely satisfied with himself and his own exertions.

Still, a generous regret mingled with his triumph. It was a great thing to have destroyed the most pernicious privateer that sailed out of France; and yet it was a melancholy fate to befall seventy or eighty human beings--to perish like so many curling caterpillars, destroyed by fire. Nevertheless, the thing was done; and it must be reported to the authorities above him. The following letter was consequently written to the commanding officer in that sea, viz.:

His Majesty's Ship Proserpine, off the mouth of the Golo, Island of Corsica, July 23, 1799.

My Lord--I have the satisfaction of reporting, for the information of my Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty, the destruction of the Republican privateer, the le Few-Folly, commanded by the notorious Raoul Yvard, on the night of the 22d inst. The circ.u.mstances attending this important success are as follows: Understanding that the celebrated picaroon had been on the Neapolitan and Roman coasts, doing much mischief, I took his Majesty's ship close in, following up the peninsula, with the land in sight, until we got through the Ca.n.a.l of Elba, early on the morning of the 21st. On opening Porto Ferrajo bay, we saw a lugger lying at anchor off the town, with English colors flying. As this was a friendly port, we could not suppose the craft to be the le Few-Folly; but, determined to make sure, we beat in, signalling the stranger, until he took advantage of our stretching well over to the eastward to slip round the rocks and get off to windward. We followed for a short distance and then ran over under the lee of Capraya, where we remained until the morning of the 22d, when we again went off the town. We found the lugger in the offing; and being now well satisfied of her character, and it falling calm, I sent the boats after her, under Messrs. Winchester and Griffin, the first and second of this ship. After a sharp skirmish, in which we sustained some loss, though that of the Republicans was evidently much greater, Monsieur Yvard succeeded in effecting his escape in consequence of a breeze's suddenly springing up. Sail was now made on the ship, and we chased the lugger into the mouth of the Golo. Having fortunately captured a felucca with a quant.i.ty of tar and other combustible materials on board, as we drew in with the land, I determined to make a fire-ship of her, and to destroy the enemy by that mode; he having anch.o.r.ed within the shoals, beyond the reach of shot. Mr. Winchester, the first, having been wounded in the boat-affair, I intrusted the execution of this duty to Mr. Griffin, who handsomely volunteered, and by whom it was effectually discharged about ten last evening in the coolest and most officer-like manner. I inclose this gentleman's report of the affair and beg leave to recommend him to the favor of my Lords Commissioners. With Mr. Winchester's good conduct under a sharp fire in the morning the service has also every reason to be satisfied. I hope this valuable officer will soon be able to return to duty.

Permit me to congratulate you, my lord, on the complete destruction of this most pernicious cruiser of the enemy. So effectual has it been, that not a spar or a fragment of wreck remains. We have reason to think every soul on board perished; and though this fearful loss of human life is to be deeply deplored, it has been made in the service of good government and religion. The lugger was filled with loose women; our people hearing them singing their philosophical and irreligious songs, as they approached with the fire-vessel. I shall search the coast for any rafts that may be drifting about, and then proceed to Leghorn for fresh provisions.

I have the honor to be, my lord,

Your lordship's most obedient servant, RICHARD CUFFE.

To Rear Admiral the Right Hon. Lord Nelson, Duke of Bronte, &c., &c., &c.