Chapter Fifteen.

Chapter Fifteen.We sail in search of the pirate.Having received my dismissal from the admiral, I returned to theFrancesca, and, summoning the purser, gave him instructions to overhaul his stores and prepare a requisition for everything necessary to complete for a two months’ cruise. Then, sending for the boatswain, gunner, and carpenter, I in like manner instructed them to overhaul the hull, spars, standing and running rigging, and the contents of the magazine, and to report to me all defects or shortage of stores in their respective departments, and, generally, to prepare the little craft in every way for the task that lay before her. Then, there still remaining a couple of hours of daylight, I jumped into the gig again and pulled aboard four vessels that had arrived during the day, for the purpose of enquiring whether any of them had sighted or fallen in with the disabled brig. As was to be expected, I met with no success, but I was not in the least disappointed, for I had anticipated no other result; indeed I calculated that the ordinary slow-sailing merchantman who might perchance fall in with the pirate could scarcely be expected to reach Kingston until at least three or four days after theFrancesca. Then, availing myself of the very pressing invitation that I had received from my new friend Mr Todd, I made my way to his house, where I spent a most delightful evening with him and his family. Upon learning that I expected to remain a full week in port, these good people at once proceeded to plan for my benefit a number of pleasure jaunts to places of interest in the neighbourhood; but I was far too profoundly impressed with the importance of the task assigned to me, and the responsibility that rested upon my young shoulders, to avail myself of their very great kindness further than to spend an evening or two with them.I divided my time pretty evenly between the schooner—personally seeing that no detail was overlooked in preparing her for her important task—and the various craft that arrived in the port from day to day. Keene, eager to assist, undertook to penetrate, in mufti, the lower and more disreputable parts of the town, and to haunt the wharves upon the chance of picking up some small item of information relating to the mysterious brig which might prove of service to us. But all our efforts availed us nothing, for on the eighth day after our arrival we were no better off than we had been at the beginning. I contrived, however, to filch the few hours that were necessary to enable me to go up for my examination, with the result that I passed with flying colours, so the examiners were kind enough to say. My good friend Sir Timothy at once confirmed my acting order and presented me with the commission which bestowed upon me the rank of lieutenant in his Most Gracious Majesty’s navy.On the evening of the eighth day after our arrival at Port Royal I went ashore to report to the admiral the discouraging fact that I had failed utterly to obtain any information whatever from any of the inward-bound ships relative to the piratical brig, for none of them, apparently, had sighted the craft. Moreover, Jack Keene’s enquiries were practically as unsuccessful as my own; for although he had encountered one or two doubtful characters frequenting the low taverns near the wharves, who seemed to have some knowledge of such a vessel, it was all vague hearsay, and quite valueless. But although we had failed so entirely to obtain any information, the ship’s company had been kept busily at work, with the result that the schooner was now as perfect in every item and particular of hull and equipment as human hands could make her. I therefore wound up my report with the statement that we were ready for sea, and could sail at literally a moment’s notice.“So much the better,” remarked the admiral, “and, since there is nothing to be gained by further delay, you had better make a start forthwith, so that you may be able to work your way out through the channel and secure an offing before nightfall. Now, have you formed any plans for the conduct of this cruise?”“Only those of the most general character, sir,” replied I. “According to my reckoning the brig is by this time very nearly, if not quite, at the rendezvous, where she will refit. I fear, therefore, that there is not much likelihood of my falling in with her for some time to come—until she has refitted and is once more at sea, in fact. But, in order that I may not throw away a possible chance, my idea is to stretch out toward the middle of the Caribbean, and, having arrived there, to work to windward over the track that the brig would have to follow if she were making her way toward the head of the Gulf. Then, if I fail to fall in with her, it may be worth our while to overhaul the Grenadines—there must be several small islands among them well adapted as a rendezvous for a pirate, and there is just a possibility that we may find her there. Failing that, I do not see that I can do anything else than work out clear of the islands and haunt the ground where the tracks of the inward- and outward-bound trade meet, since it seems to me that that is the spot where we are most likely to find the brig when she resumes operations.”“Excellent!” exclaimed the old gentleman, approvingly. “You have thought out the identical scheme that suggested itself to me, and I hope that by following it you will succeed in laying the fellow by the heels. Speak every craft that you may fall in with, make enquiries whenever you have the chance, and perhaps you may be lucky enough to pick up a slaver or two, and so make the cruise a profitable one in a double sense; for if that surmise of yours should happen to be correct, that this pirate brig is the identical craft that stole the slaves from your prize—theDolores—and afterwards destroyed her, the fellow may have played the trick on other slavers, in which case they will be glad enough to give any information that may lead to his capture. And now the sooner that you are off the better, for you will have none too much daylight in which to work out clear of the shoals. So, good-bye, my lad, and good luck to you! Take care of your ship, your crew, and yourself, and bring the fellow back with you as a prize.”So saying, with a hearty handshake the old gentleman dismissed me, and a quarter of an hour later the saucy littleFrancesca, in charge of a pilot, was turning to windward on her way out to the open sea.The sea breeze lasted us just long enough to enable us to clear the shoals and handsomely gain an offing of about three miles. Then it died away and left us wallowing helplessly in the heavy swell that was running. Meanwhile the sun sank beneath the horizon in one of those blazes of indescribable glory of colour which seem to be peculiar to the West Indies. The darkness closed down upon us like a shutter, and the stars leapt out of the rapidly darkening blue overhead with that soft, lambent, clarity of light which is never beheld save in the tropics. Then, after tumbling about uncomfortably for nearly an hour, we felt the land breeze, and, squaring away before it, soon ran off into the true breeze of the trade wind.The following three weeks passed uneventfully in carrying out the first part of the programme upon which Sir Timothy and I had agreed, including a very careful but fruitless search of the entire group of the Grenadines, between Grenada and Saint Vincent. After this we proceeded toward the spot which was to be our cruising ground, and called at the little town of Kingstown, in the latter island, for a few hours, in order to replenish our supplies and lay in a stock of fruit.Thus far we had been favoured with splendid weather, but on the fifth day out from Saint Vincent I observed that the barometer and the wind were falling simultaneously, and by sunset the trade wind had died away to nothing. The western half of the sky looked as though it were on fire, and the horizon in that quarter was piled high with great smears of dusky, smoky-looking cloud, heavily streaked with long splashes of vivid orange and crimson colour. As a spectacle it was magnificent, but the magnificence was gloomy, sombre, and threatening beyond anything that I had ever beheld. Nevertheless, I had seen skies not altogether unlike it before, and my experience had taught me that such gorgeously lurid displays of colour always portended the approach of bad weather, very frequently of the hurricane type. Furthermore, my “Sailing Directions for the West Indies” warned me that we were now in a part of the world which is subject to such terrific outbreaks of atmospheric strife. I therefore resolved to take time by the forelock. Fortunately in such small craft as schooners the amount of work involved in the operation of “snugging-down” is not great, and in less than half an hour we had got our yards and topmasts down on deck and the whole of our canvas snugly stowed, with the exception of the foresail, which, having been close-reefed, remained set, so that we might retain some sort of command over the vessel.Meanwhile the calm continued, but although the regular swell showed some disposition to subside, a heavy cross-swell was rapidly rising, which caused the schooner to plunge and roll in a jerky, irregular manner, and with such violence that at length it became almost impossible to stand without holding on to something, while to attempt to move about became positively dangerous. To add still further to the unpleasantness of the situation, the little hooker was constantly shipping water so heavily over her rail, bows, and taffrail that we were frequently up to our knees in it, although all the ports had been opened to allow it to run off.We contrived to complete all our preparations before it became too dark to see; and it was well for us that we did so, for when the darkness came it was a darkness that might be felt, for it was as though we were hemmed in by great black walls which might be touched by merely stretching forth one’s hand, while the heat of the stagnant atmosphere was so oppressive as to cause the perspiration to pour from us in streams. This disagreeable state of affairs continued without break of any kind until about five bells in the first watch, when a cry of astonishment and alarm broke from the watch on the forecastle-head at the sudden appearance on the bowsprit of a ball of light of a sickly greenish hue, which I immediately recognised as a corposant, although I had never seen one before, but had frequently heard them spoken of and described. It was certainly a weird and uncanny sight to behold under such circumstances, and was well-calculated to strike awe into the minds of superstitious seamen, both from the suddenness and the mystery of its appearance, and from its ghostly and unnatural aspect as it poised itself out there on the end of the spar, clinging tenaciously thereto, and alternately flattening and elongating as it swayed in unison with the violent movements of the schooner. And while the men were still gaping at it, open-mouthed, its sickly radiance faintly illuminating their faces and causing them to wear the horrible aspect of decomposing corpses, two others appeared, one on each of the lower mast-heads. For perhaps two minutes, or it might have been a little longer, these last two ghostly lanterns swayed and lengthened and contracted with the wild plungings of the little craft. Then the one on the foremast-head let go its hold and went drifting away astern until it was lost to sight, while the one on the mainmast-head came gliding down the spar until it reached the flooded deck, and vanished as though extinguished by the washing of the water. While this was happening, the corposant on the bowsprit-end also let go its hold and came floating inboard along the spar, causing a regular stampede of the watch, who incontinently came rushing aft as far as the mainmast, to get out of the way of their uncanny visitor, which, however, vanished as it reached the knightheads.“Ah,” remarked the gunner, who had charge of the watch, “that means that we’re in for a heavy ‘blow’, sir! I’ve seen them things often enough afore, and I’ve always noticed that when any of ’em comes inboard, like them two, extra bad weather is sure to foller. I partic’larly remembers a case in p’int when I was up the Mediterranean in the oldMelampus. We was—”“Listen!” I broke in unceremoniously, as a low, hoarse murmur became audible above the voice of the gunner, the monotonous swish and splash of the water across the deck and in over the bulwarks, and the creaking and groaning of the ship’s timbers. “Surely that is the wind coming at last!”At the same moment a gust of hot air came screaming and scuffling over us, square off the starboard beam, causing the foresail to fill suddenly with a report like that of a gun, and careening the schooner to her covering board.“Hard up with your helm, my man; hard up, and let her pay off before it!” I shouted to the man at the helm, while the sound that I had heard increased rapidly in volume, and a long line of white foam, rendered luminous by the phosphorescent state of the water, appeared broad on our starboard beam, sweeping down upon us with appalling velocity. Fortunate was it for us that a preliminary puff had come to help us, for it lasted just long enough to permit the little hooker to gather steerage way and partially to pay off, far enough, that is to say, to bring the onrushing hurricane well over her starboard quarter. Indeed, had the gale happened to strike us square abeam, and with no way on the ship, I am convinced that she must have inevitably turned turtle with us. As it was, when, a few minutes later, the wind swooped down upon us with the fury of a famished wild beast leaping upon its prey, and with a mad babel of terrifying howls and shrieks that utterly baffles description, the little vessel heeled down beneath its first stroke until her lee rail was buried, and the water rose to the level of her hatchway coamings; and but for the fact that she was at that moment not only forging ahead, but also paying off, there would have been an end of all hands, then and there. For what seemed to be, in our anxious condition, a veritable age, but which was probably no more than a brief half-minute, the little vessel lay there, quivering in every timber, and seemed paralysed with terror, as though she were a sentient thing. The wind yelled and raved through her rigging, and the spindrift and scud-water—showing ghostly in the phosphorescent light emitted by the tormented waters—flew over us in blinding, drenching showers. Then, with a sudden jerk the schooner rose almost upright and, with the water foaming about her bows to the level of her head rails, she sped away to leeward at a pace that seemed absolutely impossible to even so swift a craft as she had proved herself to be.We scudded thus before the gale for nearly an hour, when, availing ourselves of a temporary lull in its fury, we brought the schooner to the wind and hove her to on the starboard tack; but, even then, so tremendous was the force of the wind that, although she showed to it nothing but a close-reefed foresail, the little vessel was buried to the level of her rail.So violent was the first swoop of the hurricane that the surface of the ocean was as it were crushed flat by it, and the slightest irregularity that presented itself was instantly torn away and swept to leeward in the form of spray. Thus for the first hour or so it was impossible for the sea to rise. At the end of that time, however, the tormented ocean began to assert itself, and, although their crests continued to be torn off by the violence of the wind, the seas steadily rose and gathered weight, until by midnight the littleFrancesca, was being hove up and flung about as violently as a cork upon the surface of a turbulent stream. And now another of the schooner’s many good qualities revealed itself, for, despite the furious violence of both wind and wave, the little craft rode the raging seas as buoyantly and as daintily as a sea gull, and shipped not so much as a spoonful of water, excepting, of course, such as flew on board in the form of spray. Even of that small quantity we had very little after the schooner had been brought to the wind, for the tremendous pressure of the gale upon her spars and rigging, and upon the small area of her close-reefed foresail laid her over at so steep an angle, and caused her to turn up so bold a weather side, that most of the spray flew clean over her and was swept away to leeward.The temporary lull in the gale, of which we had taken advantage to heave-to the schooner, lasted only just long enough to enable us to accomplish that manoeuvre. It was well for us that we availed ourselves so promptly of the opportunity, for no other occurred; on the contrary, after that brief lull the gale seemed to increase steadily in fury to such an extent, indeed, that at length I felt that I should not have been in the least surprised had the schooner been blown bodily out of the water and whirled away to leeward like an autumn leaf.Needless to say, that night was one of intense anxiety to me, for the responsibility for the safety of the schooner, and all hands aboard her, rested entirely upon my shoulders. I had already done all that was possible in the way of precaution, while I felt that, despite the magnificent behaviour of the little craft, an exceptionally heavy sea might at any moment catch her at a disadvantage and break aboard her, in which event she would most probably founder out of hand. So great, indeed, was my anxiety that I found it impossible to quit the deck for a moment, although my subordinates were thoroughly steady, trustworthy men, and had far more experience than myself. With the men forward it was totally different. Their minds were thoroughly imbued with the seaman’s maxim: “Let those look out who have the watch,” and those whose watch it was below turned in without the slightest hesitation or qualm of anxiety, trusting implicitly to those in charge of the deck to do everything that might be necessary to ensure the safety of the ship.To me it seemed as though that terrible night would never end, and even when at length the hour of dawn arrived there was no perceptible amelioration in the conditions. The darkness remained as intense as it had been at midnight, and it was not until eight bells—in this case eight o’clock in the morning—that a feeble glimmer of daylight came filtering through the opaque blackness of the firmament over our heads, dimly revealing the shapeless masses of flying cloud and scud, and permitting us to view our surroundings for a space of about a quarter of a mile. But, contracted as was our view, it was more than sufficient to impress us with a deep and overwhelming sense of the impotence of man in the presence of God’s power as manifested in this appalling demonstration of elemental fury. Now, even more than during the hours of darkness, did we appear to be constantly on the point of being lifted out of the water by the terrific strength of the wind. As often as the schooner was hove up on the summit of a sea, and thus exposed to the full force of the hurricane, we could feel her tremble and perceptibly lift when the wind struck her beneath her upturned bilge. As for the sea, I had never seen anything like it before, nor have I since. When people desire to convey the idea of an exceptionally heavy sea they speak of it as running “mountains high”. In the case of which I am now speaking the expression appeared to be no exaggeration at all, for as wave after wave came sweeping down upon us with uplifted, menacing crest, looking up to that crest from the liquid valley in front of it seemed like gazing up the side of a mountain which was threatening to fall upon us and crush us to atoms. Indeed, the wild upward sweep of the schooner, heeling almost to her beam ends as she was flung aloft upon the breast of the onrushing wave, was an experience terrifying enough to turn a man’s hair grey. Yet, after watching the movements of the schooner for about half an hour, and noting how, time after time, when the little barkie seemed to be trembling on the very brink of destruction, she unfailingly came to in time to avoid being overwhelmed, I grew so inured to the experience that I found myself able to go below and make an excellent breakfast with perfect equanimity.It was about five bells in the forenoon watch, and it had by that time grown light enough for us to discern objects at a distance of about a mile, when, as the schooner was tossed aloft to the crest of an exceptionally gigantic wave, Simpson—whose watch it was—and I simultaneously caught sight for a moment of something that, indistinctly seen as it was through the dense clouds of flying scud-water, had the appearance of a ship of some kind, directly to windward of us. The next instant we lost sight of it as we sank into the trough between the wave that had just passed beneath us and that which was sweeping down upon us. When we topped this wave soon afterwards, we again caught sight of the object, and this time held her in view long enough to identify her as a large brigantine, hove-to, like ourselves, on the starboard tack, under a storm-staysail. Unlike ourselves, however, she had all her top-hamper aloft, forward, and seemed to be making desperately bad weather of it. The glimpses that we caught of her were of course very brief, and at comparatively long intervals, for it was only when both craft happened to be on the summit of a wave at the same moment that we were able to see her. Yet two facts concerning her gradually became clear to us, the first of which was that she was undoubtedly a slaver—so much her short, stumpy masts and the enormous longitudinal spread of her yards told us,—the second was that she was steadily settling down to leeward at a more rapid rate than ourselves, as was only to be expected from the fact that she was exposing much more top-hamper to the gale than we were. It would not be long, therefore, before she would drive away to leeward of us, probably passing us at no very great distance.Now, although we were fully convinced that the craft in sight was a slaver, yet we had no thought whatever of attempting to take her just then, for the very simple reason that to do so under the circumstances would be a manifest impossibility. In such an awful sea as was then running we could only work our guns at very infrequent intervals and with the utmost difficulty, while, if we were to hit her, we would do so only by the merest accident. And even if we could contrive by any means to compel her to surrender to us, we could not take possession of her. Our interest in her was therefore no greater than that with which a sailor, caught in a heavy gale, watches the movements of another ship in the same predicament as his own.Meanwhile, by imperceptible degrees she was steadily driving down toward us, until at length she was so close, and so directly to windward of us, that I almost succeeded in persuading myself that there were moments when I could catch, through the strong salt smell of the gale, a whiff of the characteristic odour of a slaver with a living cargo on board. Nor was I alone in this respect, for both Simpson and the man who was tending the schooner’s helm asserted that they also perceived it. But now a question arose which, for the moment at least, was even more important than whether she had or had not slaves aboard, and that was whether she would pass clear of us or not. She had settled away to leeward until she had approached us to within a couple of hundred yards, and as the two craft alternately came to or fell off it alternately appeared as though the stranger would pass clear of us ahead, or fall off and run foul of us. The moment had arrived when it became necessary for one or the other of us to do something to avert a catastrophe; and as those aboard the brigantine gave no indication of a disposition to bestir themselves I ordered Simpson to have the fore-staysail loosed and set, intending to forge ahead and leave room for the other craft to pass athwart our stern. The fore-staysail sheet was accordingly hauled aft, and four men laid out on the bowsprit to loose the sail. This was soon done, and then, when we next settled into the trough of the sea, and were consequently becalmed for the moment, the halyards were manned and the sail hoisted. The brigantine was by this time so dangerously near to us that, even when we were both sunk in the trough of the sea, it was possible for us to see her mast-heads over the crest of the intervening wave, and I now kept my eye on these with momentarily increasing anxiety, for it appeared to me that we were in perilous proximity to a hideous disaster. And then, as the schooner swept upward on the breast of the oncoming wave, I saw the spars of the brigantine forging slowly ahead as the ship to which they belonged fell off, and my heart stood still and my blood froze with horror, for it became apparent that the two craft were sheering inward toward each other, and that nothing short of a miracle could prevent the brigantine from falling foul of and destroying us. For as her spars rose higher into view I saw that her people, too, had set their fore-staysail, and that the two craft, impelled by their additional spread of sail, were rushing headlong toward each other.

Having received my dismissal from the admiral, I returned to theFrancesca, and, summoning the purser, gave him instructions to overhaul his stores and prepare a requisition for everything necessary to complete for a two months’ cruise. Then, sending for the boatswain, gunner, and carpenter, I in like manner instructed them to overhaul the hull, spars, standing and running rigging, and the contents of the magazine, and to report to me all defects or shortage of stores in their respective departments, and, generally, to prepare the little craft in every way for the task that lay before her. Then, there still remaining a couple of hours of daylight, I jumped into the gig again and pulled aboard four vessels that had arrived during the day, for the purpose of enquiring whether any of them had sighted or fallen in with the disabled brig. As was to be expected, I met with no success, but I was not in the least disappointed, for I had anticipated no other result; indeed I calculated that the ordinary slow-sailing merchantman who might perchance fall in with the pirate could scarcely be expected to reach Kingston until at least three or four days after theFrancesca. Then, availing myself of the very pressing invitation that I had received from my new friend Mr Todd, I made my way to his house, where I spent a most delightful evening with him and his family. Upon learning that I expected to remain a full week in port, these good people at once proceeded to plan for my benefit a number of pleasure jaunts to places of interest in the neighbourhood; but I was far too profoundly impressed with the importance of the task assigned to me, and the responsibility that rested upon my young shoulders, to avail myself of their very great kindness further than to spend an evening or two with them.

I divided my time pretty evenly between the schooner—personally seeing that no detail was overlooked in preparing her for her important task—and the various craft that arrived in the port from day to day. Keene, eager to assist, undertook to penetrate, in mufti, the lower and more disreputable parts of the town, and to haunt the wharves upon the chance of picking up some small item of information relating to the mysterious brig which might prove of service to us. But all our efforts availed us nothing, for on the eighth day after our arrival we were no better off than we had been at the beginning. I contrived, however, to filch the few hours that were necessary to enable me to go up for my examination, with the result that I passed with flying colours, so the examiners were kind enough to say. My good friend Sir Timothy at once confirmed my acting order and presented me with the commission which bestowed upon me the rank of lieutenant in his Most Gracious Majesty’s navy.

On the evening of the eighth day after our arrival at Port Royal I went ashore to report to the admiral the discouraging fact that I had failed utterly to obtain any information whatever from any of the inward-bound ships relative to the piratical brig, for none of them, apparently, had sighted the craft. Moreover, Jack Keene’s enquiries were practically as unsuccessful as my own; for although he had encountered one or two doubtful characters frequenting the low taverns near the wharves, who seemed to have some knowledge of such a vessel, it was all vague hearsay, and quite valueless. But although we had failed so entirely to obtain any information, the ship’s company had been kept busily at work, with the result that the schooner was now as perfect in every item and particular of hull and equipment as human hands could make her. I therefore wound up my report with the statement that we were ready for sea, and could sail at literally a moment’s notice.

“So much the better,” remarked the admiral, “and, since there is nothing to be gained by further delay, you had better make a start forthwith, so that you may be able to work your way out through the channel and secure an offing before nightfall. Now, have you formed any plans for the conduct of this cruise?”

“Only those of the most general character, sir,” replied I. “According to my reckoning the brig is by this time very nearly, if not quite, at the rendezvous, where she will refit. I fear, therefore, that there is not much likelihood of my falling in with her for some time to come—until she has refitted and is once more at sea, in fact. But, in order that I may not throw away a possible chance, my idea is to stretch out toward the middle of the Caribbean, and, having arrived there, to work to windward over the track that the brig would have to follow if she were making her way toward the head of the Gulf. Then, if I fail to fall in with her, it may be worth our while to overhaul the Grenadines—there must be several small islands among them well adapted as a rendezvous for a pirate, and there is just a possibility that we may find her there. Failing that, I do not see that I can do anything else than work out clear of the islands and haunt the ground where the tracks of the inward- and outward-bound trade meet, since it seems to me that that is the spot where we are most likely to find the brig when she resumes operations.”

“Excellent!” exclaimed the old gentleman, approvingly. “You have thought out the identical scheme that suggested itself to me, and I hope that by following it you will succeed in laying the fellow by the heels. Speak every craft that you may fall in with, make enquiries whenever you have the chance, and perhaps you may be lucky enough to pick up a slaver or two, and so make the cruise a profitable one in a double sense; for if that surmise of yours should happen to be correct, that this pirate brig is the identical craft that stole the slaves from your prize—theDolores—and afterwards destroyed her, the fellow may have played the trick on other slavers, in which case they will be glad enough to give any information that may lead to his capture. And now the sooner that you are off the better, for you will have none too much daylight in which to work out clear of the shoals. So, good-bye, my lad, and good luck to you! Take care of your ship, your crew, and yourself, and bring the fellow back with you as a prize.”

So saying, with a hearty handshake the old gentleman dismissed me, and a quarter of an hour later the saucy littleFrancesca, in charge of a pilot, was turning to windward on her way out to the open sea.

The sea breeze lasted us just long enough to enable us to clear the shoals and handsomely gain an offing of about three miles. Then it died away and left us wallowing helplessly in the heavy swell that was running. Meanwhile the sun sank beneath the horizon in one of those blazes of indescribable glory of colour which seem to be peculiar to the West Indies. The darkness closed down upon us like a shutter, and the stars leapt out of the rapidly darkening blue overhead with that soft, lambent, clarity of light which is never beheld save in the tropics. Then, after tumbling about uncomfortably for nearly an hour, we felt the land breeze, and, squaring away before it, soon ran off into the true breeze of the trade wind.

The following three weeks passed uneventfully in carrying out the first part of the programme upon which Sir Timothy and I had agreed, including a very careful but fruitless search of the entire group of the Grenadines, between Grenada and Saint Vincent. After this we proceeded toward the spot which was to be our cruising ground, and called at the little town of Kingstown, in the latter island, for a few hours, in order to replenish our supplies and lay in a stock of fruit.

Thus far we had been favoured with splendid weather, but on the fifth day out from Saint Vincent I observed that the barometer and the wind were falling simultaneously, and by sunset the trade wind had died away to nothing. The western half of the sky looked as though it were on fire, and the horizon in that quarter was piled high with great smears of dusky, smoky-looking cloud, heavily streaked with long splashes of vivid orange and crimson colour. As a spectacle it was magnificent, but the magnificence was gloomy, sombre, and threatening beyond anything that I had ever beheld. Nevertheless, I had seen skies not altogether unlike it before, and my experience had taught me that such gorgeously lurid displays of colour always portended the approach of bad weather, very frequently of the hurricane type. Furthermore, my “Sailing Directions for the West Indies” warned me that we were now in a part of the world which is subject to such terrific outbreaks of atmospheric strife. I therefore resolved to take time by the forelock. Fortunately in such small craft as schooners the amount of work involved in the operation of “snugging-down” is not great, and in less than half an hour we had got our yards and topmasts down on deck and the whole of our canvas snugly stowed, with the exception of the foresail, which, having been close-reefed, remained set, so that we might retain some sort of command over the vessel.

Meanwhile the calm continued, but although the regular swell showed some disposition to subside, a heavy cross-swell was rapidly rising, which caused the schooner to plunge and roll in a jerky, irregular manner, and with such violence that at length it became almost impossible to stand without holding on to something, while to attempt to move about became positively dangerous. To add still further to the unpleasantness of the situation, the little hooker was constantly shipping water so heavily over her rail, bows, and taffrail that we were frequently up to our knees in it, although all the ports had been opened to allow it to run off.

We contrived to complete all our preparations before it became too dark to see; and it was well for us that we did so, for when the darkness came it was a darkness that might be felt, for it was as though we were hemmed in by great black walls which might be touched by merely stretching forth one’s hand, while the heat of the stagnant atmosphere was so oppressive as to cause the perspiration to pour from us in streams. This disagreeable state of affairs continued without break of any kind until about five bells in the first watch, when a cry of astonishment and alarm broke from the watch on the forecastle-head at the sudden appearance on the bowsprit of a ball of light of a sickly greenish hue, which I immediately recognised as a corposant, although I had never seen one before, but had frequently heard them spoken of and described. It was certainly a weird and uncanny sight to behold under such circumstances, and was well-calculated to strike awe into the minds of superstitious seamen, both from the suddenness and the mystery of its appearance, and from its ghostly and unnatural aspect as it poised itself out there on the end of the spar, clinging tenaciously thereto, and alternately flattening and elongating as it swayed in unison with the violent movements of the schooner. And while the men were still gaping at it, open-mouthed, its sickly radiance faintly illuminating their faces and causing them to wear the horrible aspect of decomposing corpses, two others appeared, one on each of the lower mast-heads. For perhaps two minutes, or it might have been a little longer, these last two ghostly lanterns swayed and lengthened and contracted with the wild plungings of the little craft. Then the one on the foremast-head let go its hold and went drifting away astern until it was lost to sight, while the one on the mainmast-head came gliding down the spar until it reached the flooded deck, and vanished as though extinguished by the washing of the water. While this was happening, the corposant on the bowsprit-end also let go its hold and came floating inboard along the spar, causing a regular stampede of the watch, who incontinently came rushing aft as far as the mainmast, to get out of the way of their uncanny visitor, which, however, vanished as it reached the knightheads.

“Ah,” remarked the gunner, who had charge of the watch, “that means that we’re in for a heavy ‘blow’, sir! I’ve seen them things often enough afore, and I’ve always noticed that when any of ’em comes inboard, like them two, extra bad weather is sure to foller. I partic’larly remembers a case in p’int when I was up the Mediterranean in the oldMelampus. We was—”

“Listen!” I broke in unceremoniously, as a low, hoarse murmur became audible above the voice of the gunner, the monotonous swish and splash of the water across the deck and in over the bulwarks, and the creaking and groaning of the ship’s timbers. “Surely that is the wind coming at last!”

At the same moment a gust of hot air came screaming and scuffling over us, square off the starboard beam, causing the foresail to fill suddenly with a report like that of a gun, and careening the schooner to her covering board.

“Hard up with your helm, my man; hard up, and let her pay off before it!” I shouted to the man at the helm, while the sound that I had heard increased rapidly in volume, and a long line of white foam, rendered luminous by the phosphorescent state of the water, appeared broad on our starboard beam, sweeping down upon us with appalling velocity. Fortunate was it for us that a preliminary puff had come to help us, for it lasted just long enough to permit the little hooker to gather steerage way and partially to pay off, far enough, that is to say, to bring the onrushing hurricane well over her starboard quarter. Indeed, had the gale happened to strike us square abeam, and with no way on the ship, I am convinced that she must have inevitably turned turtle with us. As it was, when, a few minutes later, the wind swooped down upon us with the fury of a famished wild beast leaping upon its prey, and with a mad babel of terrifying howls and shrieks that utterly baffles description, the little vessel heeled down beneath its first stroke until her lee rail was buried, and the water rose to the level of her hatchway coamings; and but for the fact that she was at that moment not only forging ahead, but also paying off, there would have been an end of all hands, then and there. For what seemed to be, in our anxious condition, a veritable age, but which was probably no more than a brief half-minute, the little vessel lay there, quivering in every timber, and seemed paralysed with terror, as though she were a sentient thing. The wind yelled and raved through her rigging, and the spindrift and scud-water—showing ghostly in the phosphorescent light emitted by the tormented waters—flew over us in blinding, drenching showers. Then, with a sudden jerk the schooner rose almost upright and, with the water foaming about her bows to the level of her head rails, she sped away to leeward at a pace that seemed absolutely impossible to even so swift a craft as she had proved herself to be.

We scudded thus before the gale for nearly an hour, when, availing ourselves of a temporary lull in its fury, we brought the schooner to the wind and hove her to on the starboard tack; but, even then, so tremendous was the force of the wind that, although she showed to it nothing but a close-reefed foresail, the little vessel was buried to the level of her rail.

So violent was the first swoop of the hurricane that the surface of the ocean was as it were crushed flat by it, and the slightest irregularity that presented itself was instantly torn away and swept to leeward in the form of spray. Thus for the first hour or so it was impossible for the sea to rise. At the end of that time, however, the tormented ocean began to assert itself, and, although their crests continued to be torn off by the violence of the wind, the seas steadily rose and gathered weight, until by midnight the littleFrancesca, was being hove up and flung about as violently as a cork upon the surface of a turbulent stream. And now another of the schooner’s many good qualities revealed itself, for, despite the furious violence of both wind and wave, the little craft rode the raging seas as buoyantly and as daintily as a sea gull, and shipped not so much as a spoonful of water, excepting, of course, such as flew on board in the form of spray. Even of that small quantity we had very little after the schooner had been brought to the wind, for the tremendous pressure of the gale upon her spars and rigging, and upon the small area of her close-reefed foresail laid her over at so steep an angle, and caused her to turn up so bold a weather side, that most of the spray flew clean over her and was swept away to leeward.

The temporary lull in the gale, of which we had taken advantage to heave-to the schooner, lasted only just long enough to enable us to accomplish that manoeuvre. It was well for us that we availed ourselves so promptly of the opportunity, for no other occurred; on the contrary, after that brief lull the gale seemed to increase steadily in fury to such an extent, indeed, that at length I felt that I should not have been in the least surprised had the schooner been blown bodily out of the water and whirled away to leeward like an autumn leaf.

Needless to say, that night was one of intense anxiety to me, for the responsibility for the safety of the schooner, and all hands aboard her, rested entirely upon my shoulders. I had already done all that was possible in the way of precaution, while I felt that, despite the magnificent behaviour of the little craft, an exceptionally heavy sea might at any moment catch her at a disadvantage and break aboard her, in which event she would most probably founder out of hand. So great, indeed, was my anxiety that I found it impossible to quit the deck for a moment, although my subordinates were thoroughly steady, trustworthy men, and had far more experience than myself. With the men forward it was totally different. Their minds were thoroughly imbued with the seaman’s maxim: “Let those look out who have the watch,” and those whose watch it was below turned in without the slightest hesitation or qualm of anxiety, trusting implicitly to those in charge of the deck to do everything that might be necessary to ensure the safety of the ship.

To me it seemed as though that terrible night would never end, and even when at length the hour of dawn arrived there was no perceptible amelioration in the conditions. The darkness remained as intense as it had been at midnight, and it was not until eight bells—in this case eight o’clock in the morning—that a feeble glimmer of daylight came filtering through the opaque blackness of the firmament over our heads, dimly revealing the shapeless masses of flying cloud and scud, and permitting us to view our surroundings for a space of about a quarter of a mile. But, contracted as was our view, it was more than sufficient to impress us with a deep and overwhelming sense of the impotence of man in the presence of God’s power as manifested in this appalling demonstration of elemental fury. Now, even more than during the hours of darkness, did we appear to be constantly on the point of being lifted out of the water by the terrific strength of the wind. As often as the schooner was hove up on the summit of a sea, and thus exposed to the full force of the hurricane, we could feel her tremble and perceptibly lift when the wind struck her beneath her upturned bilge. As for the sea, I had never seen anything like it before, nor have I since. When people desire to convey the idea of an exceptionally heavy sea they speak of it as running “mountains high”. In the case of which I am now speaking the expression appeared to be no exaggeration at all, for as wave after wave came sweeping down upon us with uplifted, menacing crest, looking up to that crest from the liquid valley in front of it seemed like gazing up the side of a mountain which was threatening to fall upon us and crush us to atoms. Indeed, the wild upward sweep of the schooner, heeling almost to her beam ends as she was flung aloft upon the breast of the onrushing wave, was an experience terrifying enough to turn a man’s hair grey. Yet, after watching the movements of the schooner for about half an hour, and noting how, time after time, when the little barkie seemed to be trembling on the very brink of destruction, she unfailingly came to in time to avoid being overwhelmed, I grew so inured to the experience that I found myself able to go below and make an excellent breakfast with perfect equanimity.

It was about five bells in the forenoon watch, and it had by that time grown light enough for us to discern objects at a distance of about a mile, when, as the schooner was tossed aloft to the crest of an exceptionally gigantic wave, Simpson—whose watch it was—and I simultaneously caught sight for a moment of something that, indistinctly seen as it was through the dense clouds of flying scud-water, had the appearance of a ship of some kind, directly to windward of us. The next instant we lost sight of it as we sank into the trough between the wave that had just passed beneath us and that which was sweeping down upon us. When we topped this wave soon afterwards, we again caught sight of the object, and this time held her in view long enough to identify her as a large brigantine, hove-to, like ourselves, on the starboard tack, under a storm-staysail. Unlike ourselves, however, she had all her top-hamper aloft, forward, and seemed to be making desperately bad weather of it. The glimpses that we caught of her were of course very brief, and at comparatively long intervals, for it was only when both craft happened to be on the summit of a wave at the same moment that we were able to see her. Yet two facts concerning her gradually became clear to us, the first of which was that she was undoubtedly a slaver—so much her short, stumpy masts and the enormous longitudinal spread of her yards told us,—the second was that she was steadily settling down to leeward at a more rapid rate than ourselves, as was only to be expected from the fact that she was exposing much more top-hamper to the gale than we were. It would not be long, therefore, before she would drive away to leeward of us, probably passing us at no very great distance.

Now, although we were fully convinced that the craft in sight was a slaver, yet we had no thought whatever of attempting to take her just then, for the very simple reason that to do so under the circumstances would be a manifest impossibility. In such an awful sea as was then running we could only work our guns at very infrequent intervals and with the utmost difficulty, while, if we were to hit her, we would do so only by the merest accident. And even if we could contrive by any means to compel her to surrender to us, we could not take possession of her. Our interest in her was therefore no greater than that with which a sailor, caught in a heavy gale, watches the movements of another ship in the same predicament as his own.

Meanwhile, by imperceptible degrees she was steadily driving down toward us, until at length she was so close, and so directly to windward of us, that I almost succeeded in persuading myself that there were moments when I could catch, through the strong salt smell of the gale, a whiff of the characteristic odour of a slaver with a living cargo on board. Nor was I alone in this respect, for both Simpson and the man who was tending the schooner’s helm asserted that they also perceived it. But now a question arose which, for the moment at least, was even more important than whether she had or had not slaves aboard, and that was whether she would pass clear of us or not. She had settled away to leeward until she had approached us to within a couple of hundred yards, and as the two craft alternately came to or fell off it alternately appeared as though the stranger would pass clear of us ahead, or fall off and run foul of us. The moment had arrived when it became necessary for one or the other of us to do something to avert a catastrophe; and as those aboard the brigantine gave no indication of a disposition to bestir themselves I ordered Simpson to have the fore-staysail loosed and set, intending to forge ahead and leave room for the other craft to pass athwart our stern. The fore-staysail sheet was accordingly hauled aft, and four men laid out on the bowsprit to loose the sail. This was soon done, and then, when we next settled into the trough of the sea, and were consequently becalmed for the moment, the halyards were manned and the sail hoisted. The brigantine was by this time so dangerously near to us that, even when we were both sunk in the trough of the sea, it was possible for us to see her mast-heads over the crest of the intervening wave, and I now kept my eye on these with momentarily increasing anxiety, for it appeared to me that we were in perilous proximity to a hideous disaster. And then, as the schooner swept upward on the breast of the oncoming wave, I saw the spars of the brigantine forging slowly ahead as the ship to which they belonged fell off, and my heart stood still and my blood froze with horror, for it became apparent that the two craft were sheering inward toward each other, and that nothing short of a miracle could prevent the brigantine from falling foul of and destroying us. For as her spars rose higher into view I saw that her people, too, had set their fore-staysail, and that the two craft, impelled by their additional spread of sail, were rushing headlong toward each other.

Chapter Sixteen.Some vicissitudes of fortune.“Hard up with your helm,” I shouted, “hard over with it; we must take our chance of being swamped. Better that than that both craft should be destroyed.” And, dashing aft, I lent my assistance to the man who was tending the helm.Then ensued a breathless, hair-raising fifteen seconds, during which it seemed impossible for the schooner and the brigantine to avoid a collision—in which case they must have sunk each other out of hand. Then, when the two craft were not more than fifteen feet apart, the schooner’s head fell off, she turned broadside-on to the sea, and, our people smartly hauling down our fore-staysail, the brigantine drew slowly ahead and clear of us, our bowsprit-end missing her mainboom by the merest hairbreadth, and the danger was over. But during that minute or so of frightful suspense, which the stranger’s crew had spent in rushing madly and aimlessly about the decks, execrating us in voluble Spanish, an opportunity had been afforded us to ascertain that the brigantine was named theSan Antonio, and that she was beyond all question a slaver, with a cargo on board.We contrived to avoid her without shipping so much as a drop of water, thanks mainly to the fact that the brigantine had served, at the critical moment, as a floating breakwater for us. Putting our helm down again the moment that we were clear of her, we came safely to the wind again on her weather quarter. Had we allowed matters to remain as they were before our narrow escape, theSan Antoniowould soon have parted company with us, for, as I said before, she was driving to leeward much more rapidly than we were. Now that would not suit me at all, for since I had made certain that she was a slaver, I was determined to capture her as soon as the weather should moderate sufficiently to allow us to do so. Therefore, when she had drifted about half a mile to leeward of us, I gave instructions that the helm should be eased up as often as opportunity permitted. The result of this was that we contrived to make our own lee drift amount to about the same as hers, thus maintaining no more than a bare half-mile of water between us.Shortly after noon the gale broke, the sky quite suddenly cleared, and an hour later we were able to set the fore-staysail and shake a reef out of the foresail in order to steady the ship. Although the sea was still running too high to permit of our bearing up and running down to the brigantine, we managed to edge down a little nearer to her, so that by eight bells in the afternoon watch we had reduced the distance to something like the eighth part of a mile. At this distance we were able to maintain a pretty close watch upon the craft, and half an hour later we detected signs indicative of a determination on the part of her crew to make sail. Evidently they distrusted us as a neighbour, and were desirous of putting a little more water between us and themselves. Seeing this, I took a long look round to ascertain what our chances might be should we attempt to bear up and run down to her. There was still a very high, steep, and dangerous sea running, to attempt to run before which would be hazardous in the extreme; for should we happen to be pooped by even a single one of them, the least that could happen to us would be that our decks would be swept, and very possibly we should lose several men overboard, to save whom would be impossible in that mountainous sea, while it was quite on the cards that the schooner might be swamped out of hand and go to the bottom with all the crew. But I remembered that among our stores there was a quantity of lamp oil, and I believed that a few gallons of this, towed astern in a porous bag, would smooth the water sufficiently to prevent the seas from breaking aboard during the short time that we should need to enable us to run down to the brigantine, and I gave orders to have such a bag prepared and dropped over the stern.Meanwhile the crew of the brigantine had not been idle, for scarcely had I given the order to prepare the oil bag when her people proceeded to set their jib, close-reefed topsail, and double-reefed mainsail, with the evident determination of escaping from our neighbourhood with as little delay as might be. I thereupon ordered our colours to be hoisted and a shot to be fired across her forefoot as a gentle hint for her to remain where she was. To my surprise—for slavers do not often fight when they find themselves opposed to a superior force—the brigantine promptly replied to our single shot by letting drive at us with her starboard broadside of four 9-pounders, none of which, however, came near us, for the sea was altogether too high to allow of accurate shooting. For this reason I refrained from firing a second time, but replied to our antagonist by making sail, for it now appeared as though she had some hope of escaping to windward by outsailing and weathering upon us. Evidently her people did not know the littleFrancesca! The first quarter of an hour of the chase sufficed to prove that theSan Antoniocould not possibly escape us in the manner that her people had evidently believed would be successful. Not only did we outsail her, but we also contrived to edge down upon her to within about a cable’s-length, when her skipper deliberately opened fire upon us with his broadside guns, apparently with the hope that a lucky shot would knock away a spar or two aboard us, and thus compel us to abandon the chase. But this was a game that two could play at, and since the rascal seemed determined not to yield without a fight we cleared away our Long Tom and proceeded to return his compliments. To shoot with any degree of accuracy in such a sea was impossible, and I was particularly anxious to avoid hulling the fellow, for I knew that this would mean the killing of several of the unfortunate slaves in her hold. I therefore gave instructions to the men working the gun to exercise the utmost care, and to fire only when they could be reasonably certain that their shot would not strike the brigantine’s hull. By observing this precaution we at length succeeded in shooting away his fore-topmast, and thus rendering him helpless to continue his flight. Whereupon, like a sensible fellow, he ran the Spanish flag up to his gaff, allowed it to flutter there for a moment, and then hauled it down again in token of his surrender.Our chance encounter with the brigantine thus ended satisfactorily enough, so far as we were concerned. However, it was not until the next morning that the weather had moderated sufficiently to enable us to take possession of our prize, when we found that we had captured a very smart vessel of two hundred and sixty-five tons measurement, with a cargo of three hundred slaves on board, bound for Havana. I lost no time in turning her over to Jack Keene, with a prize crew of twelve men, with instructions to take her into Port Royal for adjudication, and to await there the arrival of the schooner. Before parting company I seized the opportunity to question the crew of theSan Antonioas to the brig of which I was in search, but they professed to know nothing whatever of her.By midday all signs of the hurricane had disappeared, the sea had gone down, and the trade wind had returned, blowing briskly out from about east-north-east.It was therefore a fair wind for the prize, and half an hour after I had secured a meridian altitude of the sun for the determination of our latitude Master Jack bore up, dipped his colours, and squared away.Now ensued a fortnight of uneventful and wearisome cruising along the parallel of 21° north latitude, and between the meridians of 62° and 74° west longitude, that being the line upon which I thought it most likely that I might encounter the pirate, or at least gather some news of him. During that period we sighted and spoke not far short of forty sail, of one sort and another, both outward and homeward bound, but learned not a word that would furnish us with a clue to the whereabouts of the craft that we were so anxiously seeking. I was beginning to fear that our quarry had betaken himself to some other cruising ground altogether, when one morning, at dawn, Simpson, who had charge of the watch, sent down word to say that there was a brig in sight that he would very much like me to come up and look at, as he seemed to recognise her. Accordingly, without waiting to dress I tumbled out of my bunk and made my way up on deck. We were on a bowline under short canvas at the time, to the eastward of the Silver Bank, the tail of which we had cleared about an hour before, while the stranger was apparently hove-to dead to windward of us, and hull-down from the deck.There was not much to be learned by looking at the stranger from the level of the deck. I therefore slung the glass over my shoulder and made my way aloft as far as the main cross-trees, from which a full view of her was to be obtained. But before so much as taking a single look at her through the telescope, her behaviour assured me that she must be either a ship of war, or a craft of decidedly suspicious character. For no ordinary trader would be lying hove-to, just where she was; the inference therefore was indisputable that, if not a man-o’-war, she must be lurking just off the entrance of the Windward Passage for some unlawful purpose. If by any chance the craft in sight should prove to be the one that we were after, I believed that I should be able to recognise her upon my first glimpse of her through the telescope. When I got aloft and brought my instrument to bear upon her, I found, however, that she was just in the very thick of the dazzle of the newly risen sun, and it was not until I had been aloft quite a quarter of an hour that I was able to see her at all distinctly. Even then I could discern no details of painting; I could not make out whether her hull was painted black or green, whether she had painted ports, or merely a narrow ribbon, or had neither. She showed against the strong light of the eastern horizon simply as a dainty jet-black silhouette, rising and falling lazily upon the long swell. But after looking long and steadfastly at her I came to the conclusion, in the first instance, that she was not a man-o’-war, and, in the next, that her general shape and style of rig were sufficiently familiar to justify me in the belief, or at least the suspicion, that I had seen her before. At all events it was my obvious duty to get near enough to her to enable me to ascertain what business she had to be lying-to just where we had happened to find her, and I accordingly gave Simpson instructions to make sail, and then see all clear for action.It was evident that, whatever might be the character of the stranger, those aboard her were fully as wide awake as ourselves, for no sooner did we start to make sail than she did the same, with a celerity, too, that would not have disgraced a man-o’-war. Within five minutes of my having given the order to make sail, both craft were thrashing hard to windward, under all plain sail to their royals. And then we were not long in discovering that, fast as was theFrancesca, the stranger appeared to be nearly if not quite as fast, although we in the schooner seemed to be rather the more weatherly of the two. This, however, might simply mean that the skipper of the brig was intentionally allowing us to close very gradually with him, in order that he might have the opportunity to get a nearer look at us, and so be enabled to form a better judgment regarding our character, while making his own preparations, if indeed he happened to be the craft for which we were looking. And of this I became increasingly convinced as we gradually neared the brig; for although she was now painted dead black to her bends, without any relief whatever, of colour, there were certain little details and peculiarities of shape and rig that I felt convinced I had seen before.At length, about three bells, that is to say half-past nine-o’clock, in the forenoon watch, the skipper of the brig seemed to have made up his mind to a definite course of action, for he suddenly put up his helm, squared away, and came running straight down for us. Whereupon we in the schooner at once went to quarters, cast loose the guns, opened the powder magazine, and got a good supply of ammunition up on deck, at the same time hoisting our colours. The stranger, apparently, was not quite so willing as ourselves to display the hue of his bunting; at all events we saw none. But this might have been due to the fact that his gaff-end was obscured from our view by the spread of his topsails. When about half a mile to windward of us the brig, which we could now see was a most beautiful craft, suddenly rounded-to, clewed up her courses and royals, hauled down her flying-jib, and, throwing open her ports, let fly her whole broadside of 9-pounders at us, the shot humming close over our heads and considerably cutting up our rigging. And at the same instant a great black flag went soaring aloft to her gaff-end!“So,” said I to Simpson, who was standing close beside me, “that clears the ground and enables us to know just where we are. With that black rag staring us in the face there is no possibility of making a mistake. Return his fire, lads, as your guns come to bear, and be careful not to throw a single shot away. Aim at his spars first; then, when we have crippled him, we will close and finish him off.”But in talking thus I was reckoning without my host, for the brig carried more than twice our weight of metal in her broadside batteries, and a long thirty-two on her forecastle as against our own long eighteen. In a word, I soon found that I had caught a Tartar, for her crew were quite as nimble as our own, and quite as good shots, which was worse. Thus, when it came to playing the dismantling game, which seemed to be the object of both craft, we soon found that we were suffering much more severely than our antagonist. The skipper of the brig saw this quite as clearly as we did, and presently, believing that he had us completely in his power, he bore up and ran down toward us, with the evident intention of boarding.“Mr Simpson,” said I, “that fellow looks very much as though he intended to lay us aboard. That ought to suit us a great deal better than playing at long bowls, so please have both broadsides and the long gun double-shotted, and we will give him everything we can as he ranges up alongside, and then board him in the smoke, instead of waiting for him to board us.”“An excellent plan, sir, I think,” answered Simpson. “Boardin’ and bein’ boarded are two very different things; and although them chaps may be ready enough to follow their skipper on to our decks, it’ll take a good deal of the fight out of them if they finds that we’re beforehand with ’em, and that they’ve got to defend their own ship instead of attackin’ us. I’ll go and see everything ready to give ’em a warm reception when they comes alongside.”We were not long kept in suspense, for, to do the pirates justice, they came on to the attack with every symptom of perfect fearlessness, and we had only just sufficient time wherein to make our preparations when, taking a broad sheer, the brig rounded-to and shot alongside us. At the moment when she was within about a fathom of us, her bulwarks lined with swarthy, unkempt-looking desperadoes, holding themselves in readiness to fling themselves in upon our decks, I gave the word to fire, and the whole double-shotted broadside—with a charge of canister on top of it, which Simpson had quietly ordered to be rammed home on top of the round shot—went crashing into her, making a very pretty “general average” among her crew, and among her spars and rigging. The crew of boarders seemed to have been swept out of existence, and so severely wounded were her masts that the shock of her collision with the schooner, a moment later, sent both of them over the side, fortunately into the sea instead of across our decks; and there she lay, a sheer hulk, secured to us by the grappling irons which our people had promptly hove, and quite unable to escape.“Hurrah, lads,” I shouted, “we have her now; she cannot escape us! Boarders, follow me!” And away we all went, helter-skelter, over our own bulwarks and those of the brig into the thick cloud of smoke that hung over the brig’s decks, completely obscuring them and everything upon them.I quite expected to find that our final broadside, in addition to bringing down the brig’s masts, had swept her crew practically out of existence. I was therefore most disagreeably surprised to discover that, despite the havoc which we had undoubtedly wrought, and the evidences of which became clearly visible as the breeze swept the smoke away, the pirates still numbered at least two to our one, and were apparently in nowise dismayed at the havoc which that last broadside of ours had wrought; on the contrary, they received us with the utmost intrepidity, and in an instant we of theFrancescafound ourselves hemmed in and pressed so vigorously that, instead of sweeping the decks and carrying the brig with a rush, as I had fully expected we should, it was with the utmostdifficulty that we were able to hold our ground at all. The pirate captain, easily distinguishable among the rest by his good looks and the smartness of his dress, was here, there, and everywhere apparently at the same moment, urging on and encouraging his men in fluent Spanish, while he defended himself from the simultaneous attack of three of our people with consummate ease. He fought cheerfully, joyously, like a man who enjoys fighting, with a reckless jest on his lips, but with a ferocity that was terrible to behold. Twice I crossed swords with him. On the first occasion I had hardly engaged when I was so severely jostled that I suddenly found myself completely at his mercy, and gave myself up as lost, for his sword was descending straight upon my defenceless head as his eyes glared tiger-like into mine, when, apparently through sheer caprice, he diverted his stroke, and, instead of cleaving me to the chin, as he could easily have done, vigorously attacked the man next to me; while on the second occasion, which occurred a minute or two later, he contented himself with simply parrying my thrust, and then permitted himself to be separated from me by a rush of our men. For ten long minutes the fight raged most furiously on the brig’s deck, fortune sometimes favouring us for a moment and then deserting us in favour of the pirates. The battle occasionally resolved itself for a moment into a series of desperate single combats, during which men savagely clutched each other by the throat and stabbed at each other with shortened weapons, and then merged again into a general mêlée in which each man seemed to strike recklessly at every enemy within reach, regardless of his own safety. And then, while the fight was still in full swing, I suddenly received a terrific blow on the top of my skull and fell senseless upon the deck. My last conscious sensation was that of being trampled remorselessly under foot by a furious rush of men.When at length I recovered my senses I found that I was lying, undressed, in a cot, suffering from a nerve-racking headache of so violent a character that I could scarcely endure to open my eyes to the brilliant sunlight that flooded the cabin of which I was an occupant. For the first minute or two after my recovery my senses were so utterly confused that I found it impossible to recall anything that had happened save that, somehow, I had been struck down in a fight. Gradually, as I lay there wrestling with the state of confusion in which I found myself plunged, my memory returned, and I recollected everything up to the moment when I had been struck down on the deck of the pirate brig. Then I began to look about me, with the view of ascertaining where I was. I found that the exceedingly roomy and comfortable cot in which I was lying was slung from the beams of an equally roomy and luxurious cabin which was furnished with a degree of mingled elegance and comfort that was seldom found afloat in those days, and indeed is very far from being common even now. The whole of the after end of this cabin was occupied by a series of windows of semi-elliptical shape, beyond which the sparkling sea could be seen, and through which a delicious, balmy, refreshing breeze was blowing. A broad locker arrangement, handsomely worked in choice mahogany, stretched right athwart the cabin immediately beneath the stern windows, and upon this stood several beautiful flowering plants in pots of elaborately hammered brass, this locker forming the top of a long sofa, or divan, upholstered in crimson velvet, which also stretched across the full width of the cabin. The interior paintwork of the apartment was a rich, creamy white, imparting a deliciously cool and bright appearance to it. The furniture which it contained, and which consisted of, among other less important matters, a table of elaborately carved mahogany, a large bookcase full of books, many of which were in sumptuous bindings, a rack containing about a dozen charts, four chairs, each one of different pattern from all the others, and a very fine, thick carpet, was all exceptionally good. The only fault that I could find with it was that it lacked uniformity of design, and suggested the idea that it had been acquired in a more or less haphazard way and at different times and places.By the time that I had completed my survey of the cabin in which I lay I had sufficiently regained the control of my senses to realise that I was certainly not aboard theFrancesca; and, that being the case, where was I? Undoubtedly aboard the pirate brig, on the deck of which I had been struck down senseless. And then arose the question, what had become of the schooner and my shipmates? Had they been captured, sunk, or driven off? That the fight was over, and had probably been over for some time, was evident; for although there was a sound of much movement on the deck overhead, with the jabber of many voices in Spanish, intermingled with frequent calls and commands, the stir and bustle were of that quiet and orderly character which conveyed to my practised ear the suggestion that the people on deck were engaged upon the task of repairing damages. For a moment the idea presented itself to me that we might possibly have proved the victors, and that the brig was in our possession, but it was dispelled the next moment by the reflection that, had such been the case, the speech on deck would have been English, not Spanish, and I should probably not have been left unattended. As my mental balance gradually recovered itself, so did my anxiety touching the fate of theFrancescaand my comrades intensify, until at length I felt that I could endure the suspense no longer, but must turn out and investigate for myself. I accordingly made an effort to raise myself in my cot, but instantly sank back with an involuntary groan, for not only did the effort result in an immediate and severe attack of vertigo, but I also became aware of the fact that, in addition to the injury to my head, I had received a very painful hurt in the left breast, close above my heart. To get up and dress, as I had intended, was obviously impossible, and the only thing to be done, therefore, was to remain where I was until somebody should come to me.I lay thus for perhaps a quarter of an hour longer, fretting and fuming at my helplessness, and still more at my ignorance of what had happened to the schooner, when the door of the cabin opened softly, and a rather good-looking young Spaniard approached my cot on tiptoe. Seeing that my eyes were open, and probably detecting a look of rationality in them, he smiled as his fingers closed gently upon my wrist to feel my pulse.“So, señor,” he said, “you have recovered your senses at last! There was a moment when I almost began to fear that you would slip through my fingers.”“And pray, señor, who may you be, and where am I?” I asked.“To reply to your questions in their regular order, señor,” answered the Spaniard, “I am Miguel Fonseca, the surgeon of this brig, the name of which is theBarracouta; and you are the prisoner, or the guest, I am not quite sure which, of her commander, Captain Ricardo.”“Captain Ricardo!” repeated I. “What is his other name?”“Ah, señor, that I cannot tell you! We know him only as Captain Ricardo,” answered my companion.“Thank you very much for your information,” said I. “But there are one or two matters of much greater importance to me than your captain’s name. Can you tell me, for instance, what has become of my schooner and her crew?”“Assuredly, señor,” answered the surgeon. “We beat her off, with great loss, and, taking advantage of the fact that you had dismasted us with that last venomous broadside that you poured into us just as we ran alongside you, your people made good their escape. But I doubt very much whether they will ever reach a port; indeed it is most probable that they have all gone to the bottom by this time, for the schooner was terribly cut up, and appeared to be making a great deal of water when she hauled off and made sail.”“They will get in all right, señor,” said I. “I have very little fear of that. If they managed to get from under your guns without being sunk, they will somehow contrive to keep the schooner afloat until they reach a port. And now perhaps you can tell me how it is that I happen to be here. Does your captain take care of his wounded prisoners and nurse them back to health, as a rule?”“By no means, señor,” answered Fonseca with a grin. “His usual practice, after a fight, is to fling the wounded and dead alike to the sharks, while the unwounded are afforded the option of joining us or—walking the plank. Why he has made an exception in your case, señor, is more than I can tell; it is a mystery which I will not attempt to fathom. Nor should I care to hazard a guess as to whether his action bodes you good or evil; all I know is that he happened to be standing by when, after the retreat of your schooner, our people were clearing the decks of the dead and wounded, and that when you were about to be thrown overboard he suddenly interposed and ordered you to be taken below and placed in his own cot, my instructions being to attend to your hurts at once, before attending to even the most seriously injured of our own people.”“Um! that is rather queer behaviour, isn’t it?” I commented. And, as Fonseca nodded, I continued: “And pray, when did this happen?”“About five hours ago, immediately after the fight,” was the answer. “I have been attending to our own wounded during the interval, and have only just finished with them. I am afraid I shall lose a good many of them. Your men fought like fiends, and struck some very shrewd blows; indeed there was a moment when I began to think that Captain Ricardo had made a serious mistake in determining to run down and lay you aboard. For a minute or two it looked very much as though our people were about to give way before you, and indeed I believe they would have done so but for the fact that your men grew discouraged and gave way when you fell. But this will not do at all; here am I talking to you when it is of the utmost importance that you should be kept perfectly quiet. Now, not another word, if you please, but allow me to dress your wounds afresh.”And so saying he softly opened the cabin door and said something in a low voice to someone who was apparently waiting outside. Then, closing the door again, he returned to the side of my cot and began, with very gentle fingers and a light touch, to remove the bandages that were wrapped about my breast and shoulder.“This,” he said, “is your most serious injury—a pike wound; when did you get it?”“I have really not the slightest idea when or how I got it,” I answered. Then I stopped suddenly, for, as I spoke, I suddenly remembered that when I sprang aboard the brig, at the head of the boarders, I was conscious for a moment of having received a violent blow on the chest, the memory of which, however, had instantly vanished in the excitement of the fierce struggle that promptly ensued. “Yes,” said I, “that must have been it.” And I related the occurrence just as it had happened.Just then a low tap came on the cabin door, and in response to Fonseca’s bidding a young mulatto lad entered, bearing a large basin of warm water, towels, bandages, lint, and other matters.“Good! Now stand you there, François, and hold the basin while I foment the wound,” ordered Fonseca, who forthwith proceeded to bathe and patch me up in the most careful and skilful manner.“There!” said he, when he had at length attended to my hurts and made me tolerably comfortable. “I think you will do pretty well now for an hour or two. The wound in your breast looks very much inflamed, but that is only to be expected from the character of the weapon with which it was inflicted. But I have applied a lotion which ought to allay the inflammation somewhat, and I will prepare you a nice, soothing, cooling drink, of which you may take as much as you please; and when you have finished it, François, who will remain here to look after you, will bring you a further supply. But what you now need more than anything else is sleep; so, if you should experience the slightest inclination that way, please yield to it without hesitation. And now, señor, I will bid youadiosfor the present, but will come and have another look at you before dark.”And, so saying, he withdrew from the cabin as quietly as he had come.

“Hard up with your helm,” I shouted, “hard over with it; we must take our chance of being swamped. Better that than that both craft should be destroyed.” And, dashing aft, I lent my assistance to the man who was tending the helm.

Then ensued a breathless, hair-raising fifteen seconds, during which it seemed impossible for the schooner and the brigantine to avoid a collision—in which case they must have sunk each other out of hand. Then, when the two craft were not more than fifteen feet apart, the schooner’s head fell off, she turned broadside-on to the sea, and, our people smartly hauling down our fore-staysail, the brigantine drew slowly ahead and clear of us, our bowsprit-end missing her mainboom by the merest hairbreadth, and the danger was over. But during that minute or so of frightful suspense, which the stranger’s crew had spent in rushing madly and aimlessly about the decks, execrating us in voluble Spanish, an opportunity had been afforded us to ascertain that the brigantine was named theSan Antonio, and that she was beyond all question a slaver, with a cargo on board.

We contrived to avoid her without shipping so much as a drop of water, thanks mainly to the fact that the brigantine had served, at the critical moment, as a floating breakwater for us. Putting our helm down again the moment that we were clear of her, we came safely to the wind again on her weather quarter. Had we allowed matters to remain as they were before our narrow escape, theSan Antoniowould soon have parted company with us, for, as I said before, she was driving to leeward much more rapidly than we were. Now that would not suit me at all, for since I had made certain that she was a slaver, I was determined to capture her as soon as the weather should moderate sufficiently to allow us to do so. Therefore, when she had drifted about half a mile to leeward of us, I gave instructions that the helm should be eased up as often as opportunity permitted. The result of this was that we contrived to make our own lee drift amount to about the same as hers, thus maintaining no more than a bare half-mile of water between us.

Shortly after noon the gale broke, the sky quite suddenly cleared, and an hour later we were able to set the fore-staysail and shake a reef out of the foresail in order to steady the ship. Although the sea was still running too high to permit of our bearing up and running down to the brigantine, we managed to edge down a little nearer to her, so that by eight bells in the afternoon watch we had reduced the distance to something like the eighth part of a mile. At this distance we were able to maintain a pretty close watch upon the craft, and half an hour later we detected signs indicative of a determination on the part of her crew to make sail. Evidently they distrusted us as a neighbour, and were desirous of putting a little more water between us and themselves. Seeing this, I took a long look round to ascertain what our chances might be should we attempt to bear up and run down to her. There was still a very high, steep, and dangerous sea running, to attempt to run before which would be hazardous in the extreme; for should we happen to be pooped by even a single one of them, the least that could happen to us would be that our decks would be swept, and very possibly we should lose several men overboard, to save whom would be impossible in that mountainous sea, while it was quite on the cards that the schooner might be swamped out of hand and go to the bottom with all the crew. But I remembered that among our stores there was a quantity of lamp oil, and I believed that a few gallons of this, towed astern in a porous bag, would smooth the water sufficiently to prevent the seas from breaking aboard during the short time that we should need to enable us to run down to the brigantine, and I gave orders to have such a bag prepared and dropped over the stern.

Meanwhile the crew of the brigantine had not been idle, for scarcely had I given the order to prepare the oil bag when her people proceeded to set their jib, close-reefed topsail, and double-reefed mainsail, with the evident determination of escaping from our neighbourhood with as little delay as might be. I thereupon ordered our colours to be hoisted and a shot to be fired across her forefoot as a gentle hint for her to remain where she was. To my surprise—for slavers do not often fight when they find themselves opposed to a superior force—the brigantine promptly replied to our single shot by letting drive at us with her starboard broadside of four 9-pounders, none of which, however, came near us, for the sea was altogether too high to allow of accurate shooting. For this reason I refrained from firing a second time, but replied to our antagonist by making sail, for it now appeared as though she had some hope of escaping to windward by outsailing and weathering upon us. Evidently her people did not know the littleFrancesca! The first quarter of an hour of the chase sufficed to prove that theSan Antoniocould not possibly escape us in the manner that her people had evidently believed would be successful. Not only did we outsail her, but we also contrived to edge down upon her to within about a cable’s-length, when her skipper deliberately opened fire upon us with his broadside guns, apparently with the hope that a lucky shot would knock away a spar or two aboard us, and thus compel us to abandon the chase. But this was a game that two could play at, and since the rascal seemed determined not to yield without a fight we cleared away our Long Tom and proceeded to return his compliments. To shoot with any degree of accuracy in such a sea was impossible, and I was particularly anxious to avoid hulling the fellow, for I knew that this would mean the killing of several of the unfortunate slaves in her hold. I therefore gave instructions to the men working the gun to exercise the utmost care, and to fire only when they could be reasonably certain that their shot would not strike the brigantine’s hull. By observing this precaution we at length succeeded in shooting away his fore-topmast, and thus rendering him helpless to continue his flight. Whereupon, like a sensible fellow, he ran the Spanish flag up to his gaff, allowed it to flutter there for a moment, and then hauled it down again in token of his surrender.

Our chance encounter with the brigantine thus ended satisfactorily enough, so far as we were concerned. However, it was not until the next morning that the weather had moderated sufficiently to enable us to take possession of our prize, when we found that we had captured a very smart vessel of two hundred and sixty-five tons measurement, with a cargo of three hundred slaves on board, bound for Havana. I lost no time in turning her over to Jack Keene, with a prize crew of twelve men, with instructions to take her into Port Royal for adjudication, and to await there the arrival of the schooner. Before parting company I seized the opportunity to question the crew of theSan Antonioas to the brig of which I was in search, but they professed to know nothing whatever of her.

By midday all signs of the hurricane had disappeared, the sea had gone down, and the trade wind had returned, blowing briskly out from about east-north-east.

It was therefore a fair wind for the prize, and half an hour after I had secured a meridian altitude of the sun for the determination of our latitude Master Jack bore up, dipped his colours, and squared away.

Now ensued a fortnight of uneventful and wearisome cruising along the parallel of 21° north latitude, and between the meridians of 62° and 74° west longitude, that being the line upon which I thought it most likely that I might encounter the pirate, or at least gather some news of him. During that period we sighted and spoke not far short of forty sail, of one sort and another, both outward and homeward bound, but learned not a word that would furnish us with a clue to the whereabouts of the craft that we were so anxiously seeking. I was beginning to fear that our quarry had betaken himself to some other cruising ground altogether, when one morning, at dawn, Simpson, who had charge of the watch, sent down word to say that there was a brig in sight that he would very much like me to come up and look at, as he seemed to recognise her. Accordingly, without waiting to dress I tumbled out of my bunk and made my way up on deck. We were on a bowline under short canvas at the time, to the eastward of the Silver Bank, the tail of which we had cleared about an hour before, while the stranger was apparently hove-to dead to windward of us, and hull-down from the deck.

There was not much to be learned by looking at the stranger from the level of the deck. I therefore slung the glass over my shoulder and made my way aloft as far as the main cross-trees, from which a full view of her was to be obtained. But before so much as taking a single look at her through the telescope, her behaviour assured me that she must be either a ship of war, or a craft of decidedly suspicious character. For no ordinary trader would be lying hove-to, just where she was; the inference therefore was indisputable that, if not a man-o’-war, she must be lurking just off the entrance of the Windward Passage for some unlawful purpose. If by any chance the craft in sight should prove to be the one that we were after, I believed that I should be able to recognise her upon my first glimpse of her through the telescope. When I got aloft and brought my instrument to bear upon her, I found, however, that she was just in the very thick of the dazzle of the newly risen sun, and it was not until I had been aloft quite a quarter of an hour that I was able to see her at all distinctly. Even then I could discern no details of painting; I could not make out whether her hull was painted black or green, whether she had painted ports, or merely a narrow ribbon, or had neither. She showed against the strong light of the eastern horizon simply as a dainty jet-black silhouette, rising and falling lazily upon the long swell. But after looking long and steadfastly at her I came to the conclusion, in the first instance, that she was not a man-o’-war, and, in the next, that her general shape and style of rig were sufficiently familiar to justify me in the belief, or at least the suspicion, that I had seen her before. At all events it was my obvious duty to get near enough to her to enable me to ascertain what business she had to be lying-to just where we had happened to find her, and I accordingly gave Simpson instructions to make sail, and then see all clear for action.

It was evident that, whatever might be the character of the stranger, those aboard her were fully as wide awake as ourselves, for no sooner did we start to make sail than she did the same, with a celerity, too, that would not have disgraced a man-o’-war. Within five minutes of my having given the order to make sail, both craft were thrashing hard to windward, under all plain sail to their royals. And then we were not long in discovering that, fast as was theFrancesca, the stranger appeared to be nearly if not quite as fast, although we in the schooner seemed to be rather the more weatherly of the two. This, however, might simply mean that the skipper of the brig was intentionally allowing us to close very gradually with him, in order that he might have the opportunity to get a nearer look at us, and so be enabled to form a better judgment regarding our character, while making his own preparations, if indeed he happened to be the craft for which we were looking. And of this I became increasingly convinced as we gradually neared the brig; for although she was now painted dead black to her bends, without any relief whatever, of colour, there were certain little details and peculiarities of shape and rig that I felt convinced I had seen before.

At length, about three bells, that is to say half-past nine-o’clock, in the forenoon watch, the skipper of the brig seemed to have made up his mind to a definite course of action, for he suddenly put up his helm, squared away, and came running straight down for us. Whereupon we in the schooner at once went to quarters, cast loose the guns, opened the powder magazine, and got a good supply of ammunition up on deck, at the same time hoisting our colours. The stranger, apparently, was not quite so willing as ourselves to display the hue of his bunting; at all events we saw none. But this might have been due to the fact that his gaff-end was obscured from our view by the spread of his topsails. When about half a mile to windward of us the brig, which we could now see was a most beautiful craft, suddenly rounded-to, clewed up her courses and royals, hauled down her flying-jib, and, throwing open her ports, let fly her whole broadside of 9-pounders at us, the shot humming close over our heads and considerably cutting up our rigging. And at the same instant a great black flag went soaring aloft to her gaff-end!

“So,” said I to Simpson, who was standing close beside me, “that clears the ground and enables us to know just where we are. With that black rag staring us in the face there is no possibility of making a mistake. Return his fire, lads, as your guns come to bear, and be careful not to throw a single shot away. Aim at his spars first; then, when we have crippled him, we will close and finish him off.”

But in talking thus I was reckoning without my host, for the brig carried more than twice our weight of metal in her broadside batteries, and a long thirty-two on her forecastle as against our own long eighteen. In a word, I soon found that I had caught a Tartar, for her crew were quite as nimble as our own, and quite as good shots, which was worse. Thus, when it came to playing the dismantling game, which seemed to be the object of both craft, we soon found that we were suffering much more severely than our antagonist. The skipper of the brig saw this quite as clearly as we did, and presently, believing that he had us completely in his power, he bore up and ran down toward us, with the evident intention of boarding.

“Mr Simpson,” said I, “that fellow looks very much as though he intended to lay us aboard. That ought to suit us a great deal better than playing at long bowls, so please have both broadsides and the long gun double-shotted, and we will give him everything we can as he ranges up alongside, and then board him in the smoke, instead of waiting for him to board us.”

“An excellent plan, sir, I think,” answered Simpson. “Boardin’ and bein’ boarded are two very different things; and although them chaps may be ready enough to follow their skipper on to our decks, it’ll take a good deal of the fight out of them if they finds that we’re beforehand with ’em, and that they’ve got to defend their own ship instead of attackin’ us. I’ll go and see everything ready to give ’em a warm reception when they comes alongside.”

We were not long kept in suspense, for, to do the pirates justice, they came on to the attack with every symptom of perfect fearlessness, and we had only just sufficient time wherein to make our preparations when, taking a broad sheer, the brig rounded-to and shot alongside us. At the moment when she was within about a fathom of us, her bulwarks lined with swarthy, unkempt-looking desperadoes, holding themselves in readiness to fling themselves in upon our decks, I gave the word to fire, and the whole double-shotted broadside—with a charge of canister on top of it, which Simpson had quietly ordered to be rammed home on top of the round shot—went crashing into her, making a very pretty “general average” among her crew, and among her spars and rigging. The crew of boarders seemed to have been swept out of existence, and so severely wounded were her masts that the shock of her collision with the schooner, a moment later, sent both of them over the side, fortunately into the sea instead of across our decks; and there she lay, a sheer hulk, secured to us by the grappling irons which our people had promptly hove, and quite unable to escape.

“Hurrah, lads,” I shouted, “we have her now; she cannot escape us! Boarders, follow me!” And away we all went, helter-skelter, over our own bulwarks and those of the brig into the thick cloud of smoke that hung over the brig’s decks, completely obscuring them and everything upon them.

I quite expected to find that our final broadside, in addition to bringing down the brig’s masts, had swept her crew practically out of existence. I was therefore most disagreeably surprised to discover that, despite the havoc which we had undoubtedly wrought, and the evidences of which became clearly visible as the breeze swept the smoke away, the pirates still numbered at least two to our one, and were apparently in nowise dismayed at the havoc which that last broadside of ours had wrought; on the contrary, they received us with the utmost intrepidity, and in an instant we of theFrancescafound ourselves hemmed in and pressed so vigorously that, instead of sweeping the decks and carrying the brig with a rush, as I had fully expected we should, it was with the utmostdifficulty that we were able to hold our ground at all. The pirate captain, easily distinguishable among the rest by his good looks and the smartness of his dress, was here, there, and everywhere apparently at the same moment, urging on and encouraging his men in fluent Spanish, while he defended himself from the simultaneous attack of three of our people with consummate ease. He fought cheerfully, joyously, like a man who enjoys fighting, with a reckless jest on his lips, but with a ferocity that was terrible to behold. Twice I crossed swords with him. On the first occasion I had hardly engaged when I was so severely jostled that I suddenly found myself completely at his mercy, and gave myself up as lost, for his sword was descending straight upon my defenceless head as his eyes glared tiger-like into mine, when, apparently through sheer caprice, he diverted his stroke, and, instead of cleaving me to the chin, as he could easily have done, vigorously attacked the man next to me; while on the second occasion, which occurred a minute or two later, he contented himself with simply parrying my thrust, and then permitted himself to be separated from me by a rush of our men. For ten long minutes the fight raged most furiously on the brig’s deck, fortune sometimes favouring us for a moment and then deserting us in favour of the pirates. The battle occasionally resolved itself for a moment into a series of desperate single combats, during which men savagely clutched each other by the throat and stabbed at each other with shortened weapons, and then merged again into a general mêlée in which each man seemed to strike recklessly at every enemy within reach, regardless of his own safety. And then, while the fight was still in full swing, I suddenly received a terrific blow on the top of my skull and fell senseless upon the deck. My last conscious sensation was that of being trampled remorselessly under foot by a furious rush of men.

When at length I recovered my senses I found that I was lying, undressed, in a cot, suffering from a nerve-racking headache of so violent a character that I could scarcely endure to open my eyes to the brilliant sunlight that flooded the cabin of which I was an occupant. For the first minute or two after my recovery my senses were so utterly confused that I found it impossible to recall anything that had happened save that, somehow, I had been struck down in a fight. Gradually, as I lay there wrestling with the state of confusion in which I found myself plunged, my memory returned, and I recollected everything up to the moment when I had been struck down on the deck of the pirate brig. Then I began to look about me, with the view of ascertaining where I was. I found that the exceedingly roomy and comfortable cot in which I was lying was slung from the beams of an equally roomy and luxurious cabin which was furnished with a degree of mingled elegance and comfort that was seldom found afloat in those days, and indeed is very far from being common even now. The whole of the after end of this cabin was occupied by a series of windows of semi-elliptical shape, beyond which the sparkling sea could be seen, and through which a delicious, balmy, refreshing breeze was blowing. A broad locker arrangement, handsomely worked in choice mahogany, stretched right athwart the cabin immediately beneath the stern windows, and upon this stood several beautiful flowering plants in pots of elaborately hammered brass, this locker forming the top of a long sofa, or divan, upholstered in crimson velvet, which also stretched across the full width of the cabin. The interior paintwork of the apartment was a rich, creamy white, imparting a deliciously cool and bright appearance to it. The furniture which it contained, and which consisted of, among other less important matters, a table of elaborately carved mahogany, a large bookcase full of books, many of which were in sumptuous bindings, a rack containing about a dozen charts, four chairs, each one of different pattern from all the others, and a very fine, thick carpet, was all exceptionally good. The only fault that I could find with it was that it lacked uniformity of design, and suggested the idea that it had been acquired in a more or less haphazard way and at different times and places.

By the time that I had completed my survey of the cabin in which I lay I had sufficiently regained the control of my senses to realise that I was certainly not aboard theFrancesca; and, that being the case, where was I? Undoubtedly aboard the pirate brig, on the deck of which I had been struck down senseless. And then arose the question, what had become of the schooner and my shipmates? Had they been captured, sunk, or driven off? That the fight was over, and had probably been over for some time, was evident; for although there was a sound of much movement on the deck overhead, with the jabber of many voices in Spanish, intermingled with frequent calls and commands, the stir and bustle were of that quiet and orderly character which conveyed to my practised ear the suggestion that the people on deck were engaged upon the task of repairing damages. For a moment the idea presented itself to me that we might possibly have proved the victors, and that the brig was in our possession, but it was dispelled the next moment by the reflection that, had such been the case, the speech on deck would have been English, not Spanish, and I should probably not have been left unattended. As my mental balance gradually recovered itself, so did my anxiety touching the fate of theFrancescaand my comrades intensify, until at length I felt that I could endure the suspense no longer, but must turn out and investigate for myself. I accordingly made an effort to raise myself in my cot, but instantly sank back with an involuntary groan, for not only did the effort result in an immediate and severe attack of vertigo, but I also became aware of the fact that, in addition to the injury to my head, I had received a very painful hurt in the left breast, close above my heart. To get up and dress, as I had intended, was obviously impossible, and the only thing to be done, therefore, was to remain where I was until somebody should come to me.

I lay thus for perhaps a quarter of an hour longer, fretting and fuming at my helplessness, and still more at my ignorance of what had happened to the schooner, when the door of the cabin opened softly, and a rather good-looking young Spaniard approached my cot on tiptoe. Seeing that my eyes were open, and probably detecting a look of rationality in them, he smiled as his fingers closed gently upon my wrist to feel my pulse.

“So, señor,” he said, “you have recovered your senses at last! There was a moment when I almost began to fear that you would slip through my fingers.”

“And pray, señor, who may you be, and where am I?” I asked.

“To reply to your questions in their regular order, señor,” answered the Spaniard, “I am Miguel Fonseca, the surgeon of this brig, the name of which is theBarracouta; and you are the prisoner, or the guest, I am not quite sure which, of her commander, Captain Ricardo.”

“Captain Ricardo!” repeated I. “What is his other name?”

“Ah, señor, that I cannot tell you! We know him only as Captain Ricardo,” answered my companion.

“Thank you very much for your information,” said I. “But there are one or two matters of much greater importance to me than your captain’s name. Can you tell me, for instance, what has become of my schooner and her crew?”

“Assuredly, señor,” answered the surgeon. “We beat her off, with great loss, and, taking advantage of the fact that you had dismasted us with that last venomous broadside that you poured into us just as we ran alongside you, your people made good their escape. But I doubt very much whether they will ever reach a port; indeed it is most probable that they have all gone to the bottom by this time, for the schooner was terribly cut up, and appeared to be making a great deal of water when she hauled off and made sail.”

“They will get in all right, señor,” said I. “I have very little fear of that. If they managed to get from under your guns without being sunk, they will somehow contrive to keep the schooner afloat until they reach a port. And now perhaps you can tell me how it is that I happen to be here. Does your captain take care of his wounded prisoners and nurse them back to health, as a rule?”

“By no means, señor,” answered Fonseca with a grin. “His usual practice, after a fight, is to fling the wounded and dead alike to the sharks, while the unwounded are afforded the option of joining us or—walking the plank. Why he has made an exception in your case, señor, is more than I can tell; it is a mystery which I will not attempt to fathom. Nor should I care to hazard a guess as to whether his action bodes you good or evil; all I know is that he happened to be standing by when, after the retreat of your schooner, our people were clearing the decks of the dead and wounded, and that when you were about to be thrown overboard he suddenly interposed and ordered you to be taken below and placed in his own cot, my instructions being to attend to your hurts at once, before attending to even the most seriously injured of our own people.”

“Um! that is rather queer behaviour, isn’t it?” I commented. And, as Fonseca nodded, I continued: “And pray, when did this happen?”

“About five hours ago, immediately after the fight,” was the answer. “I have been attending to our own wounded during the interval, and have only just finished with them. I am afraid I shall lose a good many of them. Your men fought like fiends, and struck some very shrewd blows; indeed there was a moment when I began to think that Captain Ricardo had made a serious mistake in determining to run down and lay you aboard. For a minute or two it looked very much as though our people were about to give way before you, and indeed I believe they would have done so but for the fact that your men grew discouraged and gave way when you fell. But this will not do at all; here am I talking to you when it is of the utmost importance that you should be kept perfectly quiet. Now, not another word, if you please, but allow me to dress your wounds afresh.”

And so saying he softly opened the cabin door and said something in a low voice to someone who was apparently waiting outside. Then, closing the door again, he returned to the side of my cot and began, with very gentle fingers and a light touch, to remove the bandages that were wrapped about my breast and shoulder.

“This,” he said, “is your most serious injury—a pike wound; when did you get it?”

“I have really not the slightest idea when or how I got it,” I answered. Then I stopped suddenly, for, as I spoke, I suddenly remembered that when I sprang aboard the brig, at the head of the boarders, I was conscious for a moment of having received a violent blow on the chest, the memory of which, however, had instantly vanished in the excitement of the fierce struggle that promptly ensued. “Yes,” said I, “that must have been it.” And I related the occurrence just as it had happened.

Just then a low tap came on the cabin door, and in response to Fonseca’s bidding a young mulatto lad entered, bearing a large basin of warm water, towels, bandages, lint, and other matters.

“Good! Now stand you there, François, and hold the basin while I foment the wound,” ordered Fonseca, who forthwith proceeded to bathe and patch me up in the most careful and skilful manner.

“There!” said he, when he had at length attended to my hurts and made me tolerably comfortable. “I think you will do pretty well now for an hour or two. The wound in your breast looks very much inflamed, but that is only to be expected from the character of the weapon with which it was inflicted. But I have applied a lotion which ought to allay the inflammation somewhat, and I will prepare you a nice, soothing, cooling drink, of which you may take as much as you please; and when you have finished it, François, who will remain here to look after you, will bring you a further supply. But what you now need more than anything else is sleep; so, if you should experience the slightest inclination that way, please yield to it without hesitation. And now, señor, I will bid youadiosfor the present, but will come and have another look at you before dark.”

And, so saying, he withdrew from the cabin as quietly as he had come.

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