Tom Cringle's Log Part 11

The wind, ever since noon, had been blowing in heavy squalls, with appalling lulls between them. One of these gusts had been so violent as to bury in the sea the lee-guns in the waist, although the brig had nothing set but her close-reefed main-topsail, and reefed foresail. It was now spending, its fury, and she was beginning to roll heavily, when, with a suddenness almost incredible to one unacquainted with these lat.i.tudes, the veil of mist that had hung to windward the whole day was rent and drawn aside, and the red and level rays of the setting sun flashed at once, through a long arch of glowing clouds, on the black hull and tall spars of his Britannic Majesty's sloop, Torch. And, true enough, we were not the only spectators of this gloomy splendour; for, right in the wake of the moon-like sun, now half sunk in the sea, at the distance of a mile or more, lay a long warlike-looking craft, apparently a frigate or heavy corvette, rolling heavily and silently in the trough of the sea, with her masts, yards, and the scanty sail she had set, in strong relief against the glorious horizon.

Jenkins now hailed from the foreyard--"The strange sail is bearing up, sir."

As he spoke, a flash was seen, followed, after what seemed a long interval, by the deadened report of the gun, as if it had been an echo, and the sharp, half-ringing half-hissing sound of the shot. It fell short, but close to us, and was evidently thrown from a heavy cannon, from the length of the range.

Mr Splinter, the first lieutenant, jumped from the gun he stood on.

"Quartermaster, keep her away a bit"--and dived into the cabin to make his report.

Captain Deadeye was a staid, stiff-rumped, wall-eyed, old first lieutenantish-looking veteran, with his coat of a regular Rodney cut, broad skirts, long waist, and standup collar, over which dangled either a queue, or a marlinspike with a tuft of oak.u.m at the end of it,--it would have puzzled Old Nick to say which. His lower spars were cased in tight unmentionables of what had once been white kerseymere, and long boots, the coal-skuttle tops of which served as scuppers to carry off the drainings from his coat-flaps in bad weather; he was, in fact, the "last of the sea-monsters," but, like all his tribe, as brave as steel, and, when put to it, as alert as a cat.

He no sooner heard Splinter's report, than he sprung up the ladder, brushing the tumbler of swizzle he had just brewed clean out of the fiddle into the lap of Mr Saveall, the purser, who had dined with him, and nearly extinguishing the said purser, by his arm striking the bowl of the pipe he was smoking, thereby forcing the shank half-way down his throat.

"My gla.s.s, Wilson," to his steward.

"She is close to, sir; you can see her plainly without it," said Mr Treenail, the second lieutenant, from the weather nettings, where he was reconnoitring.

After a long look through his starboard blinker, (this other skylight had been shut up ever since Aboukir,) Deadeye gave orders to "clear away the weather-bow gun;" and as it was now getting too dark for flags to be seen distinctly, he desired that three lanterns might be got ready for hoisting vertically in the main-rigging.

"All ready forward there?"

"All ready, sir."

"Then hoist away the lights, and throw a shot across her forefoot I fire!"

Bang went our carronade, but our friend to windward paid no regard to the private signal; he had shaken a reef out of his topsails, and wars coming down fast upon us.

It war clear that old Blowhard had at first taken him for one of our own cruisers, and meant to signalize him, "all regular and shipshape," to use his own expression. Most of us, however, thought it would have been wiser to have made sail, and widened our distance, a little, in place of bothering with old fashioned manoeuvres, which might end in our catching a tartar; but the skipper had been all his life in line-of-battle ships, or heavy frigates; and it was a tough job, under, any circ.u.mstances, to persuade him of the propriety of "up-stick-and-away," as we soon felt to our cost.

The enemy, for such he evidently was, now all at once yawed, and indulged us with a sight of his teeth; and there he was, fifteen ports of a side on his maindeck, with the due quantum of carronades on his quarterdeck and forecastle; whilst his short lower masts, white canva.s.s, and the tremendous hoist in his topsails, showed him to be a heavy American frigate; and it was equally certain that he had cleverly hooked us under his lee, within comfortable range of his long twenty-fours. To convince the most unbelieving, three jets of flame, amidst wreaths of white smoke, now glanced from his main-deck; but in this instance, the sound of the cannon was followed by a sharp crackle and a shower of splinters from the foreyard.

It was clear we had got an ugly customer--poor Jenkins now called to Treenail, who was standing forward near the gun which had been fired "Och, sir, and it's badly wounded we are here."

The officer was a Patlander, as well as the seaman. "Which of you my boy?"

the growing seriousness of the affair in no way checking his propensity to fun,--"Which of you,--you, or the yard?"

"Both of us, your honour; but the yard badliest."

"The devil!--Come down, then, or get into the top, and I will you looked after presently."

The poor fellow crawled off the yard into the foretop, as he was ordered, where he was found after the brush, badly wounded by a splinter in the breast.

Jonathan, no doubt "calculated," as well he might, that this taste of his quality would be quite sufficient for a little eighteen-gun sloop, close under his lee; but the fight was not to be so easily taken out of Deadeye, although even to his optic it was now high time to be off.

"All hands make sail, Mr Splinter; that chap is too heavy for us. Mr Kelson," to the carpenter, "jump up and see what the foreyard will carry.

Keep her away, my man," to the seaman at the helm. "Crack on, Mr Splinter, shake all the reefs out,----set the fore-topsail, and loose topgallant-sails;--stand by to sheet home; and see all clear to rig the booms out, if the breeze lulls."

In less than a minute we were bowling along before it; but the wind was breezing up again, and no one could say how long the wounded foreyard would carry the weight and drag of the sails. To mend the matter, Jonathan was coming up hand over hand with the freshening breeze, under a press of canva.s.s; it was clear that escape was next to impossible.

"Clear away the larboard guns!" I absolutely jumped off the deck with astonishment--who could have spoken it? It appeared such downright madness to show fight under the very muzzles of the guns of an enemy, half of whose broadside was sufficient to sink us. It was the captain, however, and there was nothing for it but to obey.

In an instant, the creaking and screaming of the carronade slides, the rattling of the carriage of the long twelve-pounder amidships, the thumping and punching of handspikes, and the dancing and jumping of jack himself, were heard through the whistling of the breeze, as the guns were being shotted and run out. In a few seconds all was still again, but the rushing sound of the vessel going through the water, and of the rising gale amongst the rigging.

The men stood cl.u.s.tered at their quarters, their cutla.s.ses buckled round their waists, all without jackets and waistcoats, and many with nothing but their trowsers on.

"Now, men, mind your aim; our only chance is to wing him. I will yaw the ship, and as your guns come to bear, slap it right into his bows.

Starboard your helm, my man, and bring her to the wind." As she came round, blaze went our carronades and long-gun in succession, with goodwill and good aim, and down came his foretop-sail on the cap, with all the superinc.u.mbent spars and gear; the head of the topmast had been shot away.

The men instinctively cheered. "That will do; now knock off, my boys, and let us run for it. Keep her away again; make all sail."

Jonathan was for an instant paralysed by our impudence; but just as we were getting before the wind, he yawed, and let drive his whole broadside; and fearfully did it transmogrify us. Half an hour before we were as gay a little sloop as ever floated, with a crew of 120 as fine fellows as ever manned a British man-of-war. The iron-shower sped--ten of the hundred and twenty never saw the sun rise again; seventeen more were wounded, three mortally; we had eight shot between wind and water, our maintop-mast shot away as clean as a carrot, and our hull and rigging otherwise regularly cut to pieces. Another broadside succeeded; but by this time we had bore up thanks to the loss of our after sail, we could do nothing else; and what was better luck still, whilst the loss of our maintop-mast paid the brig off on the one hand, the loss of head-sail in the frigate brought her as quickly to the wind on the other; thus most of her shot fell astern of us; and, before she could bear up again in chase, the squall struck her, and carried her maintop-mast overboard.

This gave us a start, crippled and bedevilled though we were; and as the night fell, we contrived to lose sight of our large friend. With breathless anxiety did we carry on through that night, expecting every lurch to send our remaining topmast by the board; but the weather moderated, and next morning the sun shone on our bloodstained decks, at anchor off the entrance to St George's harbour.

I was the mate of the watch, and, as day dawned, I had amused myself with other younkers over the side, examining the shot holes and other injuries sustained from the fire of the frigate, and contrasting the clean, sharp, well-defined apertures, made by the 24-pound shot from the long guns, with the bruised and splintered ones from the 32-pound carronades; but the men had begun to wash down the decks, and the first gush of clotted blood an water from the scuppers fairly turned me sick. I turned away, when Mr Kennedy, our gunner, a good steady old Scotchman, with whom I was a bit of a favourite, came up to me--"Mr Cringle, the Captain has sent for you; poor Mr Johnstone is fast going, he wants to see you."

I knew my young messmate had been wounded, for I had seen him carried below after the frigate's second broadside; but the excitement of a boy, who had seldom smelled powder fired in anger before, had kept me on deck the whole night, and it never once occurred to me to ask for him, until the old gunner spoke.

I hastened down to our small confined berth, where I saw a sight that quickly brought me to myself. Poor Johnstone was indeed going; a grapeshot had struck him, and torn his belly open. There he lay in his b.l.o.o.d.y hammock on the deck, pale and motionless as if he had already departed, except a slight twitching at the corners of his mouth, and a convulsive contraction and distension of his nostrils.

His brown ringlets still cl.u.s.tered over his marble forehead, but they were drenched in the cold sweat of death. The surgeon could do nothing for him, and had left him; but our old captain--bless him for it--I little expected, from his usual crusty bearing, to find him so employed--had knelt by his side, and, whilst he read from the Prayer-book one of those beautiful pet.i.tions in our Church service to Almighty G.o.d, for mercy to the pa.s.sing soul of one so young, and so early cut off, the tears trickled down the old man's cheeks, and filled the furrows worn in them by the washing up of many a salt spray. On the other side of his narrow bed, fomenting the rigid muscles of his neck and chest, sate Mistress Connolly, one of three women on board--a rough enough creature, Heaven knows! in common weather; but her stifled sobs showed that the mournful sight had stirred up all the woman within her. She had opened the bosom of the poor boy's shirt, and untying the riband that fastened a small gold crucifix round his neck, she placed it in his cold hand. The young midshipman was of a respectable family in Limerick, her native place, and a Catholic--another strand of the cord that bound her to him. When the Captain finished reading, he bent over the departing youth and kissed his cheek. "Your young messmate just now desired to see you, Mr Cringle, but it is too late, he is insensible and dying." Whilst he spoke, a strong shiver pa.s.sed through the boy's frame, his face became slightly convulsed, and all was over!

The Captain rose, and Connolly, with a delicacy of feeling which many might not have looked for in her situation, spread one of our clean mess tablecloths over the body. "And is it really gone you are, my poor dear boy!" forgetting all difference of rank in the fulness of her heart. "Who will tell this to your mother, and n.o.body here to wake you but ould Kate Connolly, and no time will they be giving me, nor whisky--Ochon! ochon!"

But enough and to spare of this piping work. The boatswain's whistle now called me to the gangway, to superintend the handling up, from a sh.o.r.e boat alongside, a supply of the grand staples of the island--ducks and onions.

The three Mudians in her were characteristic samples of the inhabitants.

Their faces and sins, where exposed, were not tanned, but absolutely burnt into a fiery-red colour by the sun. They guessed and drawled like any buckskin from Virginia, superadding to their accomplishments their insular peculiarity of always shutting one eye when they spoke to you. They are all Yankees at bottom; and if they could get their 365 Islands--so they call the large stones on which they live--under weigh, they would not be long in towing them into the Chesapeake.

The word had been pa.s.sed to get six of the larboard-guns and all the shot over to the other side, to give the brig a list of a streak or two a-starboard, so that the stage on which the carpenter and his crew were at work over the side, stopping the shot holes about the water line, might swing clear of the wash of the sea. I had jumped from the nettings, where I was perched, to a.s.sist in unbolting one of the carronade slides, when I slipped and capsized against a peg sticking out of one of the scuppers. I took it for something else, and d----d the ring-bolt incontinently. Caboose, the cook, was pa.s.sing with his mate, a Jamaica negro of the name of John Crow, at the time. "Don't d----n the remains of your fellow-mortals, Master Cringle; that is my leg." The cook of a man-of-war is no small beer; he is his Majesty's warrant-officer, a much bigger wig than a poor little mid, with whom it is condescension on his part to jest.

It seems to be a sort of rule, that no old sailor who has not lost a limb, or an eye at least, shall be eligible to the office; but as the kind of maiming is so far circ.u.mscribed that all cooks must have two arms, a laughable proportion of them have but one leg. Besides the honour, the perquisites are good; accordingly, all old quartermasters, captains of tops, etc. look forward to the cookdom, as the cardinals look to the popedom; and really there is some a.n.a.logy between them, for neither are preferred from any especial fitness for the office. A cardinal is made pope because he is old, infirm, and imbecile,--our friend Caboose was made cook because he had been Lord Nelson's c.o.xswain, was a drunken rascal, and had a wooden leg; for, as to his gastronomical qualifications, he knew no more of the science than just sufficient to watch the copper where the salt junk and potatoes were boiling. Having been a little in the wind overnight, he had quartered himself, in the superabundance of his heroism, at a gun where he had no business to be, and in running it out, he had jammed his toe in a scupper hole, so fast that there was no extricating him; and notwithstanding his piteous entreaty "to be eased out handsomely, as the leg was made out of a plank of the Victory, and the ring at the end out of one of her bolts," the captain of the gun finding, after a stout pull, that the man was like to come home in his hand without the leg, was forced "to break him short off," as he phrased it, to get him out of the way, and let the carriage traverse. In the morning when he sobered, he had quite forgotten where the leg was, and how he broke it; he therefore got Kelson to splice the stump with the but-end of a mop; but in the hurry it had been left three inches too long, so he had to jerk himself up to the top of his peg at every step. The Doctor, glad to breathe the fresh air after the horrible work he had gone through, was leaning over the side speaking to Kelson. When I fell, he turned round and drew Cookee's fire on himself. "Doctor, you have not prescribed for me yet."

"No, Caboose, I have not; what is wrong?"

"Wrong, sir? why, I have lost my leg, and the Captain's clerk says I am not in the Return!--Look here, sir, had Doctor Kelson not coopered me, where should I have been?--Why, Doctor, had I been looked after, amputation might have been unnecessary; a fish might have done, whereas I have had to be spliced."

He was here cut short by the voice of his mate, who had gone forward to slay a pig for the gunroom mess. "Oh, Lad, oh!--Ma.s.sa Caboose!--Dem dam Yankee!--De Purser killed, ma.s.sa!--Dem shoot him troo de head!--Oh, Lad!"

Captain Deadeye had come on deck. "You John Crow, what is wrong with you?"

"Why, de Purser killed, Captain, dat all."

"Purser killed?--Doctor, is Saveall hurt?"

Treenail could stand it no longer. "No, sir, no; it is one of the gunroom pigs that we shipped at Halifax three cruises ago; I am sure I don't know how he survived one, but the seamen took a fancy to him, and nicknamed him the Purser. You know, sir, they make pets of any thing, and every thing, at a pinch!"

Here John Crow drew the carca.s.s from the hog-pen, and sure enough a shot had cut the poor Purser's head nearly off. Blackee looked at him with a most whimsical expression; they saynno one can fathom a negro's affection for a pig. "Poor Purser! de people call him Purser, sir, because him knowing chap; him cabbage all de grub, slush, and stuff in him own corner, and give only de small bit, and de bad piece, to de older pig; so Captain."

Splinter saw the poor fellow was like to get into a sc.r.a.pe. "That will do, John Crow--forward with you now, and lend a hand to cat the anchor.--All hands up anchor!" The boatswain's hoa.r.s.e voice repeated the command, and he n turn was re-echoed by his mates. The capstan was manned, and the crew stamped, round to a point of wart most villainously performed by a bad drummer and a worse fifer, in as high glee as if those who were killed had been snug and well in their hammocks on the berth-deck--, in place of at the bottom of the sea, with each a shot at his feet. We weighed, and began to work up, tack and tack, towards the island of Ireland, where the a.r.s.enal is, amongst a perfect labyrinth of shoals, through which the Mudian pilot conned the ship with great skill, taking his stand, to our no small wonderment, not at the gangway or p.o.o.p, as usual, but on the bowsprit end, so that he might see the rocks under foot, and shun them accordingly, for they are so steep and numerous, (they look like large fish in the clear water,) and the channel is so intricate, that you have to go quite close to them. At noon we arrived at the anchorage, and hauled our moorings on board.

We had refitted, and been four days at sea, on our voyage to Jamaica, when the gunroom officers gave our mess a blow-out.