“Thank you, that will do, Mr Tompion,” said I, and the man turned away to his former post at the gangway.
Whatever the mysterious object might have been it was invisible on the occurrence, not only of the next, but also of several succeeding flashes of the bluish summer lightning which quivered up from behind a heavy bank of cloud low down on the western horizon, momentarily lighting up with a weird evanescent radiance the lagoon, the mainland, the distant islands toward which our suspicious glances were directed, and the ship herself, which, partially dismantled as she was, looked in the faint and momentary illumination like the ghost of some ancient wreck hovering over the scene of her dissolution; the incident was therefore soon forgotten as Courtenay took me round from point to point explaining what further steps he had taken, after my retirement below in the afternoon, to facilitate the floating of the ship.
The tide was now again making, and at length, about two bells in the first watch, we became conscious that the schooner, which had been lying somewhat over on her port bilge, was gradually becoming more upright. Meanwhile the lightning had ceased, and the darkness had become, if possible, more profound than ever, whilst the only sounds audible were the rippling splash of the water alongside, the melancholy sough of the wind, and the faint chirr of insects ashore which the breeze brought off to us on its invisible wings.
As the tide made so the schooner continued imperceptibly to right herself, and at length she was so nearly upright that I thought we might set about the attempt to get her afloat. The wind, being now off-shore, was in our favour, as the deepest water was to leeward or to seaward of us, and the canvas, had I dared to set it, would have materially assisted us; but I did not care to set it, as, once off the bank, we should have perforce to remain at anchor where we were until morning, any attempt at navigating those shallows in darkness being the most utter madness. I therefore left the canvas stowed, resolving to seek its aid only as a last resort, and in the event of all other means failing, and ordered the messenger to be passed and the capstan manned. The anchor was already laid out to leeward, so the slack of the cable was soon hove in, and a steady strain brought to bear upon it, after which came the tug of war. The capstan bars were now fully manned; the tars pressed their broad chests against the powerful levers, planted their feet firmly upon the deck, straightened out their backs, and slowly pawl after pawl was gained until the schooner was once more heeling over on her bilge, this time, however, in consequence of the intense strain upon her cable.
“That’s your sort, my hearties,” exclaimed the boatswain encouragingly, as he applied his tremendous strength to the outer extremity of one of the bars, “heave with a will! heave, and she must come! heave, all of us!! now—one—two—three!!!”
The men strained at the bars until it seemed as though they would burst their very sinews; another reluctant click or two of the pawl showed that something was at length yielding; and then, first with a slow jerky motion which quickened rapidly, and ended in a mighty surge as the men drove the capstan irresistibly round, the bows of the schooner swerved to seaward, the vessel herself righted, hung for a moment, and then glided off the tail of the bank, finally swinging to her anchor, afloat once more.
“Well done, lads!” I exclaimed joyously, for it was a great relief to me to have the schooner afloat again—a sailor feels just as much out of his element in a stranded ship as he does when he personally is on terra firma—and in the exuberance of my gratification I gave orders to “splice the main brace” preparatory to the troublesome and laborious task of getting the guns and ballast on board once more.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The Pirates attempt a Night Attack upon the “Foam”
The men were busily discussing their “nip” of grog when, mechanically glancing over the black surface of the water which lay spread out on all sides of the ship, my gaze was arrested by a sudden phosphorescent flash on our starboard beam, which was now turned in the direction of the islands we had been watching so suspiciously earlier on in the night. Looking intently I caught it again, and yet again, three or four times.
The gunner at that moment approached me to report that the men were all ready to turn-to once more, upon which I directed his attention to the point at which I had noticed the mysterious appearance, and asked him if he could see anything.
Shading his eyes with his hand, he looked earnestly in the direction indicated.
“N–o, sir, I can’t say as I can,” replied he, after a good long look; “you see, sir, it’s so precious dark just now that there’s no—eh, what was that? I thought I seed something just then, sir,” as another flash appeared, this time sensibly nearer the ship than before.
“So did I,” I replied; “and it is my belief, Tompion, that what we saw is neither more nor less than the phosphorescent flash of oars in the water. If I am not mistaken there is a boat out there trying to steal down and catch us unawares. Just go to the men, please, and pass the word for them to go quietly to quarters, and see that the starboard broadside guns are loaded with grape.”
Courtenay just then emerged from the companion with a lighted cigar in his mouth, which he had helped himself to in the brief interval of rest following the floating of the schooner. The spark at the end of the weed glowed brightly in the intense darkness, and could probably be seen for a considerable distance.
“Dowse that cigar, Courtenay, quick!” I exclaimed, as I moved to his side, “and tell me if you can hear or see anything over there.”
Instinctively guessing at an alarm of some kind from the quarter I had indicated, my shipmate stepped to the opposite side of the deck, dropped his cigar over the rail, and rejoined me.
“Now then, what is it, Lascelles?” he asked; “is there anything wrong? and why are the men mustering at quarters?”
“Look over in that direction, and see if you can find an explanation,” said I.
Unconsciously imitating Tompion in the attitude he assumed, Courtenay stood intently gazing into the darkness for a full minute or more, without result. He had turned to me and was about to speak when a faint crack, like the breaking of a thole-pin, was heard, the sound being accompanied by a very distinct luminous splash of the water.
“Ha!” exclaimed Courtenay, “there is a boat over there at no great distance from us!” and at the same moment Fidd came barefooted and noiselessly to my side with the question:
“Did ye see and hear that, sir?”
“Ay, ay, Mr Fidd, I saw it. Are the starboard guns loaded?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then kindly pass along the word to the captain of each gun to watch for the next splash and then to train his gun upon it.”
“Ay, ay, sir,” was the reply; and Fidd turned away to execute his mission as I sprang upon the rail and, grasping one of the shrouds of the main rigging to steady myself, hailed in Spanish:
“Boat ahoy! who are you, and what do you want? Lay on your oars and answer instantly, or I will fire upon you.”
I waited a full minute without eliciting any response or sign of any description from the direction in which our enemies were supposed to be lurking, and then ordered a port-fire to be burnt and a musket to be fired in their direction.
A brief interval elapsed, and then the darkness was suddenly broken into by the ghastly glare of the port-fire, with which one of the men nimbly shinned up the fore-rigging in order to send the illumination as far abroad as possible, and at the same instant a musket was fired. For a moment or two nothing whatever was to be seen but our own decks, with the men standing stripped to the waist at their guns—a row of statues half marble, half ebony, as the glare lighted up one side of each figure and left the other side in blackest shadow—the spars and rigging towering weird and ghostly up into the opaque blackness above us like those of a phantom ship; whilst the water shimmered like burning brimstone under the baleful light. Then, evidently under the impression that the boat had become visible in the gleam of the port-fire—though at that instant we could s
ee nothing—a voice was heard from out the darkness on our starboard beam exclaiming in Spanish:
“Give way with a will, my heroes! one smart dash now and we shall be alongside yet before they can load their guns.”
The dash of oars in the water instantly followed, the whereabouts of the boat being at once made manifest by the flash of the port-fire upon the wet oar-blades, and upon the foaming ripple which gathered under the bows of the boat; and by the time that half a dozen strokes had been pulled the boat herself—a very large craft, apparently, and crowded with men—became dimly visible like a faint luminous mist driving along the surface of the inky water.
“Steady now, men,” I cried. “Take your time, and aim straight. Say when you are ready.”
“All ready with the midship gun!”
“All ready aft!”
“Ready for’ard!”
The replies were uttered almost simultaneously, and I instantly gave the word “Fire!”
The three guns rang out as one, the triple flash not only illuminating vividly, for a fraction of a second, the boat against which they were discharged, but also revealing for the same brief space of time a second and similar boat a few yards in the rear of the first. Fatally sped those three terrible charges of grape. The guns had been aimed with such deadly precision, and discharged so exactly at the right moment, that the leading boat was literally torn to pieces; so utterly destroyed, indeed, that she seemed to have vanished instantly from the surface of the lagoon, leaving in her stead only a few fragments of shattered planking, and a broad patch of phosphorescent foam in the midst of which floated her late crew, a ghastly array of corpses, save where, here and there, some wretch, less fortunate than his comrades, still writhed and splashed feebly as the life reluctantly left his torn and mutilated body. The spectacle of this catastrophe, so suddenly and completely wrought, this instant destruction of some thirty or forty human beings, was absolutely appalling; and its effect was intensified by the extraordinary circumstance that not a single shriek, or groan, or outcry of any description, escaped the victims of our murderous fire. So dreadful was the sight that, for perhaps half a minute, the entire crew of the schooner, fore and aft, stood motionless and dumb, petrified with horror, staring with dilated eyeballs at the spot where the bodies, now all motionless, lay faintly defined in the last rays of the almost burnt-out port-fire.
But there was no time to be lost; another boat was lurking out there somewhere, in the impenetrable gloom; so, rallying my faculties by a powerful effort, I managed to exclaim in a tolerably steady voice:
“Load again, men, smartly! there is another boat out there somewhere, and she must be prevented from coming alongside at all costs. Light another port-fire forward, there!” as the man in the fore-rigging dropped the fag-end of the first into the water alongside and the blackness of darkness once more enshrouded us as with a pall.
There was, apparently, to be no more fighting just then, however; the crew of the remaining boat had evidently seen enough to completely damp their ardour, for the time being at least, for before the operation of reloading the guns had been completed, the splash and roll of oars in their rowlocks could be heard in fast diminishing cadence, conveying to our experienced ears the fact that our enemies were beating a precipitate retreat.
But the horrors of the night were not yet quite over, for, whilst we were busily preparing to hoist in the guns from the raft alongside and to get the ballast back into its proper place in the hold, a loud, confused, splashing sound was suddenly heard away on our starboard beam, and, on looking in that direction to ascertain what this new disturbance might portend, we saw that the water was literally alive with hundreds of sharks, distinctly visible by the phosphorescent glow which shone from their bodies, which were tearing and snapping at the floating corpses of the pirates, rending them limb from limb, and rushing off in all directions with the dismembered fragments as the monsters succeeded in securing them.
Such a sight was not calculated to inspire the men with any relish for the somewhat perilous task of going down upon the submerged raft and into the deeply-laden boats to sling the guns and ballast; but the work had to be done, and the boatswain and the gunner volunteering to go down first, we soon had the work well under weigh, finishing it satisfactorily off and bringing a toilsome night of labour to an end about two o’clock the next morning.
By daybreak all hands were once more astir, notwithstanding the arduous character of their previous day’s and night’s work; the anchor was weighed; and under short canvas, with Courtenay once more on the topgallant-yard to con us, and a leads-man in the fore-chains on each side of the ship, we cautiously felt our way to the northward and westward until, about seven bells, we managed to reach the anchorage which the feluccas had vacated on the previous day. A hurried breakfast was then scrambled through; after which the long-boat and the gig, under the command of Courtenay and the boatswain, with their crews fully armed, pulled away for the shore, to see whether they could discover anything like a dépôt, of which no sign whatever could be detected from the deck of the schooner.
They pulled inshore about a quarter of a mile, after which we suddenly lost sight of them among the mangroves which thickly fringed the shores of the island. Three or four minutes later the sound of musketry firing, at first in whole volleys and then intermittingly, floated off to us from the direction where the boats had disappeared, and very soon we saw the light wreaths of pale-blue smoke floating up and out from among the trees. The firing soon ceased; and then nothing more was heard or seen for nearly two hours, at the end of which time a thin volume of light brownish smoke rose into the sky from about the spot where we had before seen the indications of musketry firing; the smoke, rapidly increasing in volume and deepening in colour until, thickly besprinkled with sparks, it poured across the bay in one vast dense black cloud which swept right over us where we lay, half suffocating us with its pungent fumes, and almost hiding the islands from sight. Then, when the smoke-cloud had become almost intolerable, the boats were seen approaching; upon which the schooner was hove short and the canvas set in readiness for a speedy retreat from our uncomfortable berth. The moment that they came alongside the anchor was tripped, and, by the time that the boat’s crews were once more on the schooner’s decks, we had run out clear of the nuisance. The Foam was then hove to; seven singularly heavy kegs were hoisted in from the long-boat; the boats themselves next followed; and then away we went, groping our way as before, back toward the main channel from the sea. This channel was successfully traversed and the open sea reached about three bells in the afternoon watch, when I turned over the command of the schooner to Courtenay and went below to my berth, not only dead tired, but also suffering dreadfully from the wound in my head, which had not been dressed for nearly twenty-four hours, and which was certainly none the better for the excitement and exposure of the preceding night. Previous to this, though, I had been fully informed of what had transpired on shore; and which may be related in a very few words.
It appeared that the sudden evanishment of the boats from our sight was due to the fact that they had discovered and pushed into a narrow channel running to the northward and eastward between the two westernmost islands of the group; along which channel they had proceeded for about half a mile when they suddenly opened a tiny bay, on their starboard hand, from the shore of which projected a long wooden jetty of rough mangrove piles decked over with ship timber. This jetty they at once headed for, and were immediately saluted with a volley of musketry from a long black wooden building which stood close to the shore. Luckily, nobody was hit; and the same good fortune befell them when, whilst landing on the jetty, a second volley was fired at them. The tars, headed by Courtenay and the boatswain, then charged up to the building, and, without very much difficulty, burst in the door, just in time to see some twenty Spaniards effecting a hasty retreat through an opening in the opposite side of the building. Our lads at once crowded sail in chase, shouting and laughing like a parcel of scho
olboys out for a holiday, and occasionally stopping to pop away at the enemy with musket or pistol as opportunity offered. The Spaniards, however, were lighter in the heels than our own men, and they possessed the further advantage of knowing the country, so they quickly hauled out of sight, nor was anything further seen of them, though Courtenay maintained the pursuit for about half an hour. The party then returned to the shed by the beach; and whilst Courtenay with three or four hands gave the place a thorough overhaul, Fidd, with the remainder of the men, turned to and broke up a very large yawl-built boat which was lying alongside the jetty, afterwards carrying her dismembered planking and timbers up to the shed, to be still more effectually destroyed with it by fire. A quantity of ship’s stores, such as rope, canvas, pitch, tar, paint, etcetera, was found, evidently showing that this was one of the many pirates’ rendezvous which were known to be in existence along this coast; but there was nothing in the shape of plunder except the seven heavy kegs before mentioned, one of which, upon being opened, proved to be filled with Spanish dollars (as did the rest, eventually), so they were promptly tumbled down to the jetty and put on board the long-boat. It had evidently been a place of some little importance; but, from Courtenay’s account, it was not to be compared for a moment with Merlani’s establishment. At last, the place having been thoroughly rummaged, a bonfire was built on the weather side of the shed, which, being well fed with tar, etcetera, soon set the entire building in a blaze, after which they retreated to the boats, firing the jetty also before shoving off. Altogether it was a very satisfactory morning’s work, since, with their limited facilities, it would be a long time before the pirates could make good the loss and damage inflicted upon them, if indeed they would have the heart to attempt it at all. The Barcos Channel being only some five hours’ sail distant from the Cristo Cays, near which we had emerged once more into open water, and as it would be quite impossible for us to traverse the intricate channel through Santa Clara Bay during the hours of darkness, Courtenay stretched off the land under easy canvas, and employed the remainder of the afternoon in getting up the two topmasts which the carpenter had reduced, in place of the spars expended on the previous day. This job was completed and the schooner made all ataunto again by sunset; at which hour the Foam was hove to with her head toward the land; and all hands, with the exception of the officer of the watch and two men on the lookout, were allowed to go below and get as much rest as possible, in order that they might not only recover from the fatigue of the previous night, but also prepare for what would probably prove an equally fatiguing day on the morrow.
The Pirate Story Megapack: 25 Classic and Modern Tales Page 158
