Tom Cringle's Log Part 16

As soon as she saw us she tacked and stood towards us, and came bowling along gallantly, with the water roaring and flashing at her bows. As the vessels neared each other, they both shortened sail, and finding that we could not weather her, we steered close under her lee.

As we crossed on opposite tacks her commander hailed, "Ho, the brigantine, ahoy!"

"Hillo!" sung out Blackie, as he backed his maintopsail.

"What schooner is that?"

"The Spanish schooner Caridad."

"Whence, and whither bound?"

"Carthagena to Porto Rico."

"Heave-to, and send your boat on board."

"We have none that will swim, sir."

"Very well--bring-to, and I will send mine."

"Call away the boarders," said our captain, in a low stern tone; "let them crouch out of sight behind the boat."

The cutter wore, and hove-to under our lee quarter, within pistol shot.

We heard the rattle of the ropes running through the davit blocks, and the splash of the jolly boat touching the water, then the measured stroke of the oars, as they glanced like silver in the sparkling sea, and a voice calling out, "Give way, my lads."

The character of the vessel we were on board of was now evident; and the bitter reflection that we were chained to the stake on board of a pirate, on the eve of a fierce contest with one of our own cruisers, was aggravated by the consideration that the cutter had fallen into a snare, by which a whole boat's crew would be sacrificed before a shot was fired.

I watched my opportunity as she pulled up alongside, and called out, leaning well over the nettings, "Get back to your ship! treachery! get back to your ship!"

The little French serpent was at my side with the speed of thought, his long clear knife glancing in one hand, while the fingers of the other were laid on his lips. He could not have said more plainly, "Hold your tongue or I'll cut your throat;" but Sneezer now startled him by rushing between us, and giving a short angry growl.

The officer in the boat had heard me imperfectly; he rose up--"I won't go back, my good man, until I see what you are made of; and as he spoke he sprung on board, but the instant he got over the bulwarks he was caught by two strong hands, gagged and thrown bodily down the main hatchway.

"Heave," cried a voice, "and with a will!" and four cold 32-pound shot were hove at once into the boat alongside, which crashing through her bottom, swamped her in a moment, precipitating the miserable crew into the boiling sea. Their shrieks still ring in my ears as they clung to the oars and some loose planks of the boat.

"Bring up the officer, and take out the gag," said Williamson.

Poor Walcolm, who had been an old messmate of mine, was now dragged to the gangway half-naked, his face bleeding, and heavily ironed, when the blackamoor, clapping a pistol to his head, bid him, as he feared instant death, hail "that the boat had swamped under the counter, and to send another." The poor fellow, who appeared stunned and confused, did so, but without seeming to know what he said.

"Good G.o.d," said Mr Splinter, "don't you mean to pick up the boat's crew?"

The blood curdled to my heart as the black savage answered in a voice of thunder, "Let them drown and be d----d! fill, and stand on!"

But the clouds by this time broke away, and the mild moon shone clear and bright once more, upon this scene of most atrocious villainy. By her light the cutter's people could see that there was no one struggling in the water now, and that the people must either have been saved, or were past all earthly aid; but the infamous deception was not entirely at an end.

The captain of the cutter, seeing we were making sail, did the same, and after having shot ahead of us, hailed once more.

"Mr Walcolm, why don't you run to leeward, and heave-to, sir?"

"Answer him instantly, and hail again for another boat," said the sable fiend, and c.o.c.ked his pistol.

The click went to my heart. The young midshipman turned his pale mild countenance, laced with his blood, upwards towards the moon and stars, as one who had looked his last look on earth; the large tears were flowing down his cheeks, and mingling with the crimson streaks, and a flood of silver light fell on the fine features of the poor boy, as he said firmly, "Never." The miscreant fired, and he fell dead.

"Up with the helm, and wear across her stern." The order was obeyed.

"Fire!" The whole broadside was poured in, and we could hear the shot rattle and tear along the cutter's deck, and the shrieks and groans of the wounded, while the white splinters glanced away in all directions.

We now ranged alongside, and close action commenced, and never do I expect to see such an infernal scene again. Up to this moment there had been neither confusion nor noise on board the pirate--all had been coolness and order; but when the yards locked, the crew broke loose from all control they ceased to be men they were demons, for they threw their own dead and wounded, as they were mown down like gra.s.s by the cutter's grape, indiscriminately down the hatchways to get clear of them. They had stript themselves almost naked; and although they fought with the most desperate courage, yelling and cursing, each in his own tongue, most hideously, yet their very numbers, pent up in a small vessel, were against them. At length, amidst the fire, and smoke, and h.e.l.lish uproar, we could see that the deck had become a very shambles; and unless they soon carried the cutter by boarding, it was clear that the coolness and discipline of my own glorious service must prevail, even against such fearful odds, the superior size of the vessel, greater number of guns, and heavier metal.

The pirates seemed aware of this themselves, for they now made a desperate attempt forward to carry their antagonist by boarding, led on by the black captain. Just at this moment, the cutter's main-boom fell across the schooner's deck, close to where we were sheltering ourselves from the shot the best way we could; and while the rush forward was being made, by a sudden impulse Splinter and I, followed by Peter and the dog, (who with wonderful sagacity, seeing the uselessness of resistance, had cowered quietly by my side during the whole row) scrambled along it as the cutter's people were repelling the attack on her bow, and all four of us in our haste jumped down on the poor Irishman at the wheel.

"Murder, fire, rape, and robbery! it is capsized, stove in, sunk, burned, and destroyed I am! Captain, Captain, we are carried aft here--Och, hubbaboo for Patrick Donnally!"

There was no time to be lost; if any of the crew came aft, we were dead men, so we tumbled down through the cabin skylight, men and beast, the hatch having been knocked off by a shot, and stowed ourselves away in the side berths. The noise on deck soon ceased the cannon were again plied gradually the fire slackened, and we could hear that the pirate had sc.r.a.ped clear and escaped. Some time after this, the lieutenant commanding the cutter came down. Poor Mr Douglas! both Mr Splinter and I knew him well. He sat down and covered his face with his hands, while the blood oozed down between his fingers. He had received a cutla.s.s wound on the head in the attack. His right arm was bound up with his neckcloth, and he was very pale.

"Steward, bring me a light.--Ask the doctor how many are killed and wounded; and, do you hear, tell him to come to me when he is done forward, but not a moment sooner. To have been so mauled and duped by a cursed buccaneer; and my poor boat's crew."

Splinter groaned. He started--but at this moment the man returned again.

"Thirteen killed, your honour, and fifteen wounded; scarcely one of us untouched." The poor fellow's own skull was bound round with a b.l.o.o.d.y cloth.

"G.o.d help me! G.o.d help me! but they have died the death of men. Who knows what death the poor fellows in the boat have died?" Here he was cut short by a tremendous scuffle on the ladder, down which an old quarter-master was trundled neck and crop into the cabin. "How now, Jones?"

"Please your honour," said the man, as soon as he had gathered himself up, and had time to turn his quid, and smooth down his hair; but again the uproar was renewed, and Donnally was lugged in, scrambling and struggling, between two seamen--"this here Irish chap, your honour, has lost his wits, if so be he ever had any, your honour. He has gone mad through fright."

"Fright be d----d!" roared Donnally; "no man ever frightened me: but as his honour was skewering them b.l.o.o.d.y thieves forward, I was boarded and carried aft by the devil, your honour--p.o.o.ped by Beelzebub, by--," and he rapped his fist on the table until every thing on it danced again. "There were four of them, yeer honour--a black one and two blue ones--and a piebald one, with four legs and a bushy tail--each with two horns on his head, for all the world like those on Father M'Cleary's red cow--no, she was humbled--it is Father Clannachan's I mane--no, not his neither, for his was the parish bull; fait, I don't know what I mane, except that they had all horns on their heads, and vomited fire, and had each of them a tail at his stem, twisting and twining like a conger eel, with a blue light at the end on't."

"And dat's a lie, if ever dere was one," exclaimed Peter Mangrove, jumping from the berth. "Look at me, you Irish tief, and tell me if I have a blue light or a conger eel at my stem?"

This was too much for poor Donnally. He yelled out, "You'll believe your own eyes now, yeer honour, when you see one o'dem bodily before you! Let me go--let me go" and, rushing up the ladder, he would, in all probability, have ended his earthly career in the salt sea, had his bullet head not encountered the broadest part of the purser, who was in the act of descending, with such violence, that he shot him out of the companion several feet above the deck, as if he had been discharged from a culverin; but the recoil sent poor Donnally, stunned and senseless, to the bottom of the ladder. There was no standing all this; we laughed outright, and made ourselves known to Mr Douglas, who received us cordially, and in a week we were landed at Port Royal.

CHAPTER VI.--The Cruise of the Spark

"Ours are the tears, though few, sincerely shed."

Byron, The Corsair, I.35.

The only other midshipman on board the cutter beside young Walcolm, whose miserable death we had witnessed, twas a light delicate little fellow, about fourteen years old, of the name of Duncan; he was the smallest boy of his age I ever saw, and had been badly hurt in repelling the attack of the pirate. His wound was a lacerated puncture in the left shoulder from a boarding pike, but it appeared to be healing kindly, and for some days we thought he was doing well. However, about five o'clock in the afternoon on which we made Jamaica, the surgeon accosted Mr Douglas as we were walking the deck together.

"I fear little Duncan is going to slip through my fingers after all, sir."

"No!--I thought he had been better."

"So he was till about noon, when a twitching of the muscles came on, which I fear betokens lock jaw; he wavers, too, now and then, a bad sign of itself where there is a fretting wound."

We went below, where, notwithstanding the wind--sail that was let down close to where his hammock was slung, the heat of the small vessel was suffocating. The large coa.r.s.e tallow candle in the purser's lantern, that hung beside his shoulder, around which the loathsome c.o.c.kroaches fluttered like moths in a summer evening, filled the between decks with a rancid oil smell, and with smoke as from a torch, while it ran down and melted like fat before a fire. It cast a dull sickly, gleam on the pale face of the brown-hefted, girlish-looking lad, as he lay in his narrow hammock.

When we entered, an old quartermaster was rubbing his legs, which were jerking about like the limbs of a galvanized frog, while two of the boys held his arms, also violently convulsed. The poor little fellow was crying and sobbing most piteously, but made a strong effort to compose himself and "be a man" when he saw us.