Tailtackle was standing beside me at this time, with his jacket off, his cutlass girded on his thigh, and the belt drawn very tight. All the rest of the crew were armed in a similar fashion, the small-arm-men with muskets in their hands, and the rest at quarters at the guns; while the pikes were cast loose from the spars round which they had been stopped, with tubs of wadding and boxes of grape all ready ranged, and everything clear for action.
“Mr Tailtackle,” said I, “you are gunner here, and should be in the magazine. Cast off that cutlass; it is not your province to lead the boarders.” The poor fellow blushed, having, in the excitement of the moment, forgotten that he was anything more than captain of the Firebrand’s maintop.
“Mr Timotheus,” said Bang, “have you one of these bodkins to spare?”
Timothy laughed. “Certainly, sir; but you don’t mean to head the boarders, sir, do you!”
“Who knows, now since I have learned to walk on this dancing cork of a craft?” rejoined Aaron, with a grim smile, while he pulled off his coat, braced on his cutlass, and tied a large red cotton shawl round his head. He then took off his neckerchief and fastened it round his waist as tight as he could draw.
“Strange that all men in peril—on the uneasiness, like,” said he, “should always gird themselves as tightly as they can.”
The slaver was now within musket-shot, when he put his helm to port, with the view of passing under our stern. To prevent being raked, we had to luff up sharp in the wind, and fire a broadside. I noticed the white splinters glance from his black wales; and once more the same sharp yell rang in our ears, followed by the long melancholy howl already described.
“We have pinned some of the poor blacks again,” said Tailtackle, who still lingered on the deck; small space for remark, for the slaver again fired his broadside at us with the same cool precision as before.
“Down with the helm, and let her come round,” said I; “that will do—master, run across his stern—out—sweeps forward, and keep her there—get the other carronade over to leeward—that is it—now, blaze away while he is becalmed—fire, small-arm-men, and take good aim.”
We were now right across his stern, with the spanker-boom within ten yards of us; and although he worked his two stern-chasers with great determination, and poured whole showers of musketry from his rigging and poop and cabin-windows, yet, from the cleverness with which our sweeps were pulled, and the accuracy with which we were kept in our position right athwart his stern, our fire, both from the cannon and musketry, the former loaded with round and grape, was telling, I could see, with fearful effect,
Crash—”There, my lads, down goes his maintopmast—pepper him well while they are blinded and confused among the wreck. Fire away—there goes the peak, shot away cleverly, close by the throat. Don’t cease firing although his flag be down—it was none of his doing. There, my lads, there he has it again; you have shot away the weather foretopsail sheet, and he cannot get from under you.”
Two men at this moment lay out on his larboard fore-yardarm, apparently with the intention of splicing the sheet, and getting the dew of the foretopsail once more down to the yard; if they had succeeded in this, the vessel would again have fetched way, and drawn out from under our fire. Mr Bang and Paul Gelid had all this time been firing with murderous precision from where they had ensconced themselves under the shelter of the larboard bulwark, close to the taffrail, with their three black servants in the cabin loading the six muskets, and little Wagtail, who was no great shot, sitting on the deck, handing them up and down.
“Now, Mr Bang,” cried I, “for the love of Heaven”—and may Heaven forgive me for the ill-placed exclamation—”mark these two men—down with them!”
Bang turned towards me with all the coolness in the world—”What, those chaps on the end of the long stick?”
“Yes—Yes” (I here, spoke of the larboard fore-yard-arm)—”yes, down with them.”
He lifted his piece as steadily as if he had really been duckshooting.
“I say, Gelid, my lad, take you the innermost.”
“Ah!” quoth Paul. They fired—and down dropped both men, and squattered for a moment in the water like wounded waterfowl, and then sank for ever, leaving two small puddles of blood on the surface.
“Now, master,” shouted I, “put the helm up and lay him alongside—there— stand by with the grapplings—one round the backstay—the other through the chainplate there—so—you have it.” As we ranged under his counter—”Main-chains are your chance, men—boarders, follow me!” And in the enthusiasm of the moment I jumped into the slaver’s main channel, followed by twenty-eight men. We were in the act of getting over the netting when the enemy rallied, and fired a volley of small arms, which sent four out of the twenty-eight to their account, and wounded three more. We gained the quarterdeck, where the Spanish captain and about forty of his crew showed a determined front, Cutlass and Pistol in hand: we charged them—they stood their ground. Tailtackle (who, the moment he heard the boarders called, had jumped out of the magazine and followed me) at a blow clove the Spanish captain to the chine; the lieutenant, or second in command, was my bird, and I disabled him by a sabre-cut on the sword-arm, when he drew his pistol, and shot me through the left shoulder. I felt no pain, but a sharp pinch and then a cold sensation, as if water had been poured down my neck.
Jigmaree was close by me with a boarding-pike, and our fellows were fighting with all the gallantry inherent in British sailors. For a moment the battle was poised in equal scales. At length our antagonist gave way, when about fifteen of the slaves, naked barbarians, who had been ranged with muskets in their hands on the forecastle, suddenly jumped down into the waist with a yell, and came to the rescue of the Spanish part of the crew.
I thought we were lost. Our people, all but Tailtackle, poor Handlead, and Jigmaree, held back. The Spaniards rallied, and fought with renewed courage, and it was now, not for glory, but for dear life as all retreat was cut off by the parting of the grapplings and warps that had lashed the schooner alongside of the slaver, for the Wave had by this time forged ahead, and lay across the brig’s bows, in place of being on our quarter, with her foremast jammed against the slaver’s bowsprit, whose spritsail-yard crossed our deck between the masts. We could not therefore retreat to our own vessel if we had wished it, as the Spaniards had possession of the waist and forecastle; all at once, however, a discharge of round and grape crashed through the bridleport of the brig, and swept off three of the black auxiliaries before mentioned, and wounded as many more, and the next moment an unexpected ally appeared on the field. When we boarded, the Wave had been left with only Peter Mangrove; the five dockyard negroes; Pearl, one of the captain’s gigs, the handsome black already introduced on the scene; poor little Reefpoint, who, as already stated, was badly hurt; Aaron Bang, Paul Gelid, and Wagtail. But this Pearl without price, at the very moment of time when I thought the game was up, jumped on deck through the bowport, cutlass in hand, followed by the five black carpenters and Peter Mangrove, after whom appeared no less a personage than Aaron Bang himself and the three blackamoor valets, armed with boarding-pikes. Bang flourished his cutlass for an instant.
“Now, Pearl, my darling, shout to them in Coromantee—shout;” and forthwith the black quartermaster sang out, “Coromantee Sheik Cocoloo, kockernony populorum fiz,” which, as I afterwards learned, being interpreted, is, “Behold the Sultan Cocoloo, the great ostrich, with a feather in his tail like a palm-branch; fight for him, you sons of female dogs.” In an instant the black Spanish auxiliaries sided with Pearl and Bang and the negroes, and joined in charging the white Spaniards, who were speedily driven down the main hatchway, leaving onehalf of their number dead or badly wounded on the blood-slippery deck. But they still made a desperate defence by firing up the hatchway. I hailed them to surrender.
“Zounds,” cried Jigmaree, “there’s the clink of hammers they are knocking off the fetters of the slaves.”
“If you let the blacks lo
ose,” I sang out in Spanish, “by the heaven above us, I will blow you up, although I should go with you! Hold your hands, Spaniards! Mind what you do, madmen!”
“On with the hatches, men,” shouted Tailtackle.
They had been thrown overboard, or put out of the way, they could nowhere be seen. The firing from below continued.
“Cast loose that carronade there; clap in a canister of grape—so—now run it forward, and fire down the hatchway.” It was done, and taking effect amongst the pent-up slaves, such a yell arose—O God! O God!—I never can forget it. Still the maniacs continued firing up the hatchway.
“Load and fire again.” My people were now furious, and fought more like incarnate fiends broke loose from hell than human beings.
“Run the gun up to the hatchway once more.” They ran the carronade so furiously forward that the coaming or ledge was split off, and down went the gun, carriage and all, with a crash into the hold. Presently smoke appeared rising up the fore-hatchway.
“They have set fire to the brig; overboard!—regain the schooner, or we shall all be blown into the air like peels of onions!” sang out little Jigmaree.
But where was the Wave? She had broke away, and was now a cables length ahead, apparently fast leaving us, with Paul Gelid and Wagtail, and poor little Reefpoint, who, badly wounded as he was, had left his hammock and come on deck in the emergency, making signs of their inability to cut away the halyards; and the tiller being shot away, the schooner had become utterly unmanageable.
“Up, and let fall the foresail, men—down with the foretack—cheerily now —get way on the brig and overhaul the Wave promptly, or we are lost,” cried I. It was done with all the coolness of desperate men. I took the helm, and presently we were once more alongside of our own vessel. Time we were so, for about one hundred and fifty of the slaves, whose shackles had been knocked off, now scrambled up the fore-hatchway, and we had only time to jump overboard when they made a rush aft; and no doubt, exhausted as we were, they would have massacred us on the spot, frantic and furious as they had become from the murderous fire of grape that had been directed down the hatchway.
But the fire was quicker than they. The smouldering smoke, that was rising like a pillar of cloud from the fore-hatchway, was now streaked with tongues of red flame, which, licking the masts and spars, ran up and caught the sails and rigging. In an instant the fire spread to every part of the gear aloft, while the other element, the sea, was also striving for the mastery in the destruction of the doomed vessel; for our shot, or the fall of the carronade into the hold, had started some of the bottom planks, and she was fast settling down by the head. We could hear the water rushing in like a mill-stream. The fire increased—her guns went off as they became heated—she gave a sudden heel—and while five hundred human beings, pent up in her noisome hold, split the heavens with their piercing death-yells, down she went with a heavy lurch, head foremost, right in the wake of the setting sun, whose level rays made the thick dun wreaths that burst from her as she disappeared glow with the hue of the amethyst; and while the whirling clouds, gilded by his dying radiance, curled up into the blue sky in rolling masses, growing thinner and thinner until they vanished away, even like the wreck whereout they arose,—and the circling eddies, created by her sinking, no longer sparkled and flashed in the red light,—and the stilled waters where she had gone down, as if oil had been cast on them, were spread out like polished silver, shining like a mirror, while all around was dark-blue ripple,—a puff of fat black smoke, denser than any we had yet seen, suddenly emerged, with a loud gurgling noise, from out the deep bosom of the calmed sea, and rose like a balloon, rolling slowly upwards, until it reached a little way above our mastheads, where it melted and spread out into a dark pall, that overhung the scene of death, as if the incense of such a horrible and polluted sacrifice could not ascend into the pure heaven, but had been again crushed back upon our devoted heads, as a palpable manifestation of the wrath of Him who hath said, “Thou shalt not kill.”
For a few moments all was silent as the grave, and I felt as if the air had become too thick for breathing, while I looked up like another Cain.
Presently about one hundred and fifty of the slaves, men, women, and children, who had been drawn down by the vortex, rose amidst numberless pieces of smoking wreck to the surface of the sea; the strongest yelling like fiends in their despair, while the weaker, the women and the helpless gasping little ones, were choking, and gurgling, and sinking all around. Yea, the small thin expiring cry of the innocent sucking infant torn from its sinking mother’s breast, as she held it for a brief moment above the waters, which had already for ever closed over herself, was there.—But we could not perceive one single individual of her white crew; like desperate men, they had all gone down with the brig. We picked up about one-half of the miserable Africans, and—my pen trembles as I write it—fell necessity compelled us to fire on the remainder, as it was utterly impossible for us to take them on board. Oh that I could erase such a scene for ever from my memory! One incident I cannot help relating. We had saved a woman, a handsome, clear-skinned girl, of about sixteen years of age. She was very faint when we got her in, and was lying with her head over a portsill, when a strong athletic young negro swam to the part of the schooner where she was. She held down her hand to him; he was in the act of grasping it, when he was shot through the heart from above. She instantly jumped overboard, and, clasping him in her arms, they sank, and disappeared together. “Oh, woman, whatever may be the colour of your skin, your heart is of one only!” said Aaron.
Soon all was quiet; a wounded black here and there was shrieking in his great agony, and struggling for a moment before he sank into his watery grave for ever; a few pieces of wreck were floating and sparkling on the surface of the deep in the blood-red sunbeams, which streamed in a flood of glorious light on the bloody deck, shattered hull, and torn sails and rigging of the Wave, and on the dead bodies and mangled limbs of those who had fallen; while some heavy scattering drops of rain fell sparkling from a passing cloud, as if Nature had wept in pity over the dismal scene; or as if they had been blessed tears, shed by an angel, in his heavenward course, as he hovered for a moment, and looked down in pity on the fantastic tricks played by the worm of a day—by weak man in his little moment of power and ferocity. I said something—ill and hastily. Aaron was close beside me, sitting on a carronade slide, while the surgeon was dressing a pike-wound in his neck. He looked up solemnly in my face, and then pointed to the blessed luminary that was now sinking in the sea, and blazing up into the resplendent heavens—”Cringle, for shame—for shame—your impatience is blasphemous. Remember this morning—and thank Him”—here he looked up and crossed himself—”thank Him who, while He has called poor Mr Handlead and so many brave fellows to their last awful reckoning, has mercifully brought us to the end of this fearful day;—Oh, thank Him, Tom, that you have seen the sun set once more!”
* Customhouse officers, from the resemblance of the broad arrow, or mark of seizure, to the impression of a fowl’s foot.
CHAPTER XVI.
THE SECOND CRUISE OF THE WAVE.
“I longed to see the Isles that gem
Old Ocean’s purple diadem;
I sought by turns, and saw them all.”
Bride of Abydos.
THE PUNCTURE in Mr Bang’s neck from the boarding-pike was not very deep, still it was an ugly lacerated wound; and if he had not, to use his own phrase, been somewhat bull-necked, there is no saying what the consequences might have been.
“Tom, my boy,” said he, after the doctor was done with him, “I am nicely coopered now—nearly as good as new—a little stiffish or so—lucky to have such a comfortable coating of muscle, otherwise the carotid would have been in danger. So come here, and take your turn, and I will hold the candle.”
It was a dead calm, and as I had desired the cabin to be again used as a cockpit, it was at this time full of poor fellows, waiting to have their wounds dressed whenever the surg
eon could go below. The lantern was brought, and, sitting down on a wadding tub, I stripped. The ball, which I knew had lodged in the fleshy part of my left shoulder, had first of all struck me right over the collar-bone, from which it had glanced, and then buried itself in the muscle of the arm just below the skin, where it stood out as if it had been a sloe both in shape and colour. The collar-bone was much shattered, and my chest was a good deal shaken and greatly bruised but I had perceived nothing of all this at the time I was shot; the sole perceptible sensation was the feeling of cold water running down, and the pinch in the shoulder, as already described. I was much surprised (every man who has been seriously hit being entitled to expatiate) with the extreme smallness of the puncture in the skin through which the ball had entered; you could not have forced a pea through it, and there was scarcely any flow of blood.
“A very simple affair this, sir,” said the surgeon, as he made a minute incision right over the ball, the instrument cutting into the cold dull lead with a cheep, and then pressing his fingers, one on each side of it, it jumped out nearly into Aaron’s mouth.
“A pretty sugar-plum, Tom: if that collar-bone of yours had not been all the harder, you would have been embalmed in a gazette, to use your own favourite expression. But, my good boy, your bruise on the chest is serious; you must go to bed, and take care of yourself.”
Alas, there was no bed for me to go to. The cabin was occupied by the wounded, where the surgeon was still at work. Out of our small crew, nine had been killed and eleven wounded, counting passengers—twenty out of forty-two—a fearful proportion.
The night had now fallen.
“Pearl, send some of the people aft, and get a spare squaresail from the sail-maker, and—”
Tom Cringle's Log Page 49
