Chapter Nine.

Chapter Nine.The Pirate Brigantine.We watched the stranger as she was revealed at uncertain but decreasing intervals by the silent sheet-lightning, which was now flickering up all round the horizon, affording us momentary glimpses of the great lowering cloud-masses that overhung our mastheads as though ready to fall and crush us, the shining undulations of the swell, with the small overrunning ripples caused by the faint breathing of the breeze, the distant land, and the brigantine sliding furtively along within its shadow. When at length she had drawn to a bearing two points abaft our beam, the Captain gave the word to tack; and when, three minutes later, we were fairly round, the yards braced up, sheets hauled aft, and the frigate gathering way on the starboard tack, the stranger lay straight ahead of us.Of course, we had taken the precaution to wait until immediately after a lightning flash before putting our helm down, and, as it happened, the next gleam did not occur until several minutes after we had tacked; the probability, therefore, was that the stranger would know nothing about our manoeuvre until the scene was again illuminated. The question that now interested us was—how would her people act when they made the discovery that we had shifted our helm and were standing in their direction? There were three alternatives open to them. First, they might follow our example—tack, and endeavour to escape to windward if they believed their vessel speedy enough to succeed. Secondly, they might haul their wind and enter the Gulf of Venezuela, along the shores of which there are two or three shallow inlets, in one or the other of which they might take refuge and anchor, in the hope of being able to defend their ship successfully against a boat attack. And, thirdly, if they were perfectly honest—of which we had our doubts—they might proceed steadily on their way, taking no notice of us and our movements. When we next got a sight of them the third alternative seemed to be their intention, for, so far as we could discover, they had started neither tack nor sheet; we therefore proceeded to edge down very cautiously and very gradually toward her, keeping her about a point on our lee-bow.Now we discovered that our task was not going to be nearly so easy as we had at first thought, for in the very light breath of wind that was then blowing—and which was wholly insufficient to keep our lower canvas “asleep”—the stranger undoubtedly had the heels of us, slipping along so fast, indeed, that within a quarter of an hour of tacking we were running off with the wind abeam and our weather braces checked, instead of being upon a taut bowline, as we had been at the beginning of the chase.Meanwhile the expected storm, though it had been brewing long, showed unmistakable signs that it was not going to keep us waiting very much longer, for the sheet—lightning was flickering almost incessantly, while a low, deep muttering of distant thunder occasionally made itself heard. The storm seemed to be working up astern of us, for presently a dazzlingly vivid flash of chain-lightning rent the darkness over our weather quarter, quickly followed by a deep, hollow, reverberating peal of thunder that rumbled like the echo of a seventy-four’s broadside. Another and another quickly followed, each nearer than that which had preceded it; and presently, far away astern of us, we saw advancing toward us a sort of wall of vapour, the lower edge of which gleamed white and phosphorescent as the wind in it lashed the surface of the water into foam.“Hands, shorten sail!” was now the word. The watch sprang to their stations, coils of rope were lifted off their pins and flung to the deck; then in rapid succession followed the orders:—“Royal and topgallant halliards and sheets let go; clew up and furl! Hands by the weather braces; square the yards! Raise main tack and sheet; man the main clew-garnets, buntlines, and leech-lines; clew up cheerily, lads! Up helm, quartermaster, and let her go off. So; steady as you go. Hands by the topsail halliards! Brail in the mizen! Haul down the flying-jib! Here it comes!”The squall swooped down upon us with a weird, shrieking howl, and a dash of wet that was half rain and half spray; and the next moment, with a tremendous creaking and groaning of timbers and gear, with all three topsail-yards on the caps, and with the chain bobstay half-buried in the foam that heaped itself up about our bows, away went the frigate, like a startled sea-bird, speeding down-wind upon the wings of the squall, enveloped in a sheet of rain that was more than half salt water, with the lightning flickering and darting all round her, and the thunder crashing overhead in a continuous booming roar.The squall lasted very nearly three-quarters of an hour; but long before that time had elapsed the weather ahead had cleared sufficiently to enable us again to catch sight of the brigantine, now about two points on our starboard-bow, running dead before it, like ourselves, under nothing but a close-reefed topsail and reefed foresail. She was still maintaining her distance from us in the most wonderful manner; but was now—possibly in consequence of having been compelled by the squall to bear up—steering as though to enter the Gulf of Venezuela. We contrived to gain a little upon her by carefully watching our opportunities and making sail by degrees as the squall blew itself out; but in that respect her people were fully as wide awake as we were, and made sail with a boldness and rapidity which most conclusively proved that she was very strongly manned, and, therefore, not in the least likely to be the harmless, innocent trader that they would doubtless have liked to persuade us she was. She was hugging the land so closely that some of us were of opinion that her skipper intended to run her ashore and take to his boats if it should prove impossible to avoid capture in any other way; but the Captain did not believe this, and the master also seemed to be of his opinion.“His object,” said Trimble, “is undoubtedly to get round Point Espada and fairly into the Gulf. If he can succeed in that, there are plenty of little coves, especially along the western shore, in which he might anchor and, sheltered from our guns, bid defiance to a boat attack.”“Ah!” observed the skipper, with much meaning. “Well, we shall see. It is perfectly evident that he is anxious to keep out of our clutches, which desire argues a guilty conscience on his part, and only makes me the more determined to overhaul him. Confound it, here comes the rain again! Mr Gascoigne, have the goodness to slip into my cabin and desire my steward to bring my oilskins on deck. Or, stay, the fellow will have turned-in by this time; I will get them myself.”The rain came swooping down upon us with the tail-end of the squall, and for a quarter of an hour it was so thick that we could see nothing a couple of ships’-lengths outside the bulwarks. Then it cleared away, the clouds dispersed, the stars came out, the wind dropped to a moderate breeze, and presently the moon, with nearly half her disc in shadow, crept up above the horizon, flooding the heaving waters with ruddy gold that quickly changed to silver as the satellite climbed high enough to clear herself of the vapours that distorted her shape and imparted to her the colour of burnished copper.But where was the brigantine? Ahead, abeam, on our quarter we looked, but nowhere could we discern the faintest trace of her. We had lost sight of her a bare quarter of an hour, and in that brief space of time she had contrived to vanish as completely as though she had gone to the bottom in deep-water, leaving not so much as a fragment of floating wreckage to furnish a clue to her fate.The skipper was as much puzzled as he was annoyed, and in his perplexity he turned to the master.“What do you think has become of her, Mr Trimble?” he demanded. “She cannot have gone ashore and broken up so completely in a quarter of an hour that no sign of her would remain. We should see something at least in the nature of wreckage to give us a hint of what had happened. Yet I see nothing; although if she had been stranded, either purposely or by accident, her wreck ought to be away in there somewhere about abreast of us. And there are no off-shore dangers, are there?”“The nearest that I know of are The Monks, away out here, some twenty-five miles to the nor’ard and east’ard of us,” answered the master. “The coast inshore of us is, of course, a bit rocky, but there is nothing, so far as I know, in the nature of hidden dangers to cause the wreck of the brigantine. No, sir, it is my belief that there is some snug little secret cove, known to the skipper of that brigantine, and that he took advantage of the rain squall to slip into it, in the hope of dodging us.”“Ah!” said the skipper, “yes; that is, after all, the only feasible explanation of his disappearance. He is neither ahead nor astern nor to seaward of us; therefore he must be hidden somewhere inshore. Mr Galway,”—to the first lieutenant—“we will shorten sail, if you please, with the ship’s head off the land, remaining in sight of the coast until daylight, when we shall perhaps be able to discover the hiding-place of that brigantine.”This was done, and during the remainder of the night theEuropa, under her three topsails, jib and spanker, stood off and on, never going farther from the shore than a distance of six miles, and very gradually working her way back to—as nearly as we could guess it—the spot where we had lost sight of the brigantine. As the night wore on all traces of the recent storm passed away; the sky cleared, the moon and stars beamed down upon us in tropical splendour, affording us an ample sufficiency of light to enable us to maintain an effective watch upon the coast, and ensure that the stranger did not creep out from her place of concealment and give us the slip. Theterral, or land wind, overpowered by the recent squall, once more resumed its sway and piped up strongly, bringing off to us the warm, fragrant odour of land and vegetation.At length the day dawned, the sun soared into view above the eastern horizon, and with the coming of the light some half-dozen of the best telescopes in the ship were brought to bear upon the line of coast that lay about five miles distant on our port beam. I happened to be the lucky possessor of an exceptionally good instrument—a present from my father—and I had not been long at work with it when I discovered what was unmistakably a small indentation in the coast-line, sheltered and all but concealed by two headlands which approached each other so closely that, viewed from a distance, they appeared almost to overlap. I immediately directed the first lieutenant’s attention to the spot, at the same time handing him my glass, and he presently picked it up. He agreed with me that it was undoubtedly a cove, or tiny bay of some sort, but was rather of the opinion that it was too small to afford shelter to a vessel of the dimensions of the missing brigantine. Nevertheless, since it was the only opening that we could discover, and was, moreover, about the spot where the stranger had disappeared, it was determined to give the place an overhaul, and the helm was accordingly eased down, the yards braced in, and we began to work in toward it. Then the fighting boats’ crews were told off to overhaul the boats and prepare them for service, yard and stay tackles were got aloft for the purpose of hoisting out the launch, the boat-guns were slung all ready for lowering over the side as soon as the boats should be brought alongside, ammunition boxes were brought on deck, and, in short, every preparation was made for a boat expedition; after which all hands were piped to breakfast.By the time that this meal was finished the frigate had worked in to within about a mile from the shore, at which point she ran into a calm, the land-breeze having died away. The boats were then got into the water and brought to the gangway, the guns were lowered down and secured to platforms in the bows of the launch and the two cutters, shot was passed down and stowed on the bottom-boards on either side of the keel, the ammunition boxes were stowed in the stern-sheets, and then, all else being ready, those who were to take part in the expedition were mustered for inspection prior to being dispatched on what was likely enough to prove a dangerous errand. But little recked any of us of possible danger; on the contrary, if an onlooker had judged only by the satisfied smirk which our countenances wore, it might have been supposed that we were all bound ashore for a day’s holiday in the woods.The expedition was to be under the command of Mr Gadsby, the second lieutenant, who would go in the launch; the first cutter was to be commanded by Mr O’Donnel, the boatswain, and the command of the second cutter was entrusted to me. We mustered fifty altogether, including marines; and when at length, after having been carefully inspected by the first lieutenant, we were given the word to shove off, the men who were left behind sprang into the rigging and sped us on our way with a hearty cheer.We took it very easily as we pulled shoreward, in line abreast, for it was by this time scorching hot, and it was important that the men’s strength should be husbanded to the utmost extent, in view of the possible fight that might be awaiting us at the end of our journey; but I kept a sharp lookout ahead, for, although the country in sight showed no sign of habitations, there was no knowing how soon a masked battery on one, or perhaps each, of the headlands might declare itself by dropping a few shot among us. Nothing, however, happened to hinder our progress over the glass-smooth surface of the water, and in the course of about twenty minutes we reached the opening between the two headlands, and found ourselves in the mouth of a small, practically land-locked cove of some twenty acres in area, with our friend the brigantine in the very centre of it, with four anchors down—two ahead and two astern—with boarding nettings triced up, ports open, guns run out—eight long 12-pounders in each battery—and her starboard broadside bearing full upon the entrance!“There she is!” exclaimed a dozen eager voices in chorus; and, while the words were still upon our lips, eight jets of flame burst from her side, followed by eight wreaths of whirling white smoke that instantly commingled, forming a curtain that completely hid her long low black hull from us, and as a shower of grape came hurtling about our ears I saw a big black flag go slowly soaring up to her main truck!“A self-confessed pirate, by the Piper!” exclaimed Fred Gascoigne, who had calmly crawled out from under the bow-sheets of my boat when we were half-way between the frigate and the shore. “Now—”“Give way, men!” shouted Gadsby, springing to his feet in the stern-sheets of the launch, and waving his sword above his head. “Give way, and get alongside before they can fire again. Gunners, fire slap at his bulwarks, and we’ll board in the smoke. Marines, fire in through the open ports. Hurrah, lads, put your backs into it!”At that moment, as the smoke of the brigantine’s broadside thinned away and permitted us again to catch a glimpse of her hull, I noticed a peculiarity about the craft that seemed to offer us a very important advantage; her captain had, in fact, committed the same oversight as the Frenchman in Pleher Bay, and I instantly hailed:“Launch ahoy! Do you notice, Mr Gadsby, that she has no nettings triced up on her port side? Apparently they are making certain that we intend to go alongside on her starboard side, and—”“By Jove! Yes, you are right, Delamere,” answered Gadsby. “We will board her on the port side. First cutter on the port quarter; second cutter on her port bow. Keep up your fire, marines. Now, gunners, as soon as you are ready, blaze away!”The three boat-guns spoke at almost the same instant, and so close were we now to our quarry that our grape-shot literally tore her starboard bulwarks to pieces, and a terrific outburst of shrieks and yells that instantly followed upon the discharge bore eloquent evidence to the terrible havoc that it had wrought among her crew. The moment that we had fired the boats separated, the first cutter making a wide sweep to port in order to pass under the brigantine’s counter,while we sheered away to starboard to get under her bows, the launch passing outside of us in order to get a fair run for the brigantine’s waist.Another minute and we were all alongside and hooked on, and then began a most terrific struggle; for the brigantine seemed crowded with men. We had evidently taken them all a little by surprise, by boarding on her inshore side instead of that side which was presented to us upon entering the cove. It was clear that, like the prize-crew of the Indiaman in Pleher Bay, they had never expected us to think of pulling round under her bows and stern, instead of dashing straight alongside; but of course it was a very easy matter for the pirates to cross the deck from one side to the other as soon as they discovered our intention; and this they did, lining her bulwarks from her head-rails to her taffrail, popping at us with muskets and pistols, thrusting at us with pikes and cutlasses, and hacking at our hands and heads as we endeavoured to climb her side and force our way over her bulwarks and in on deck. But our lads were not to be daunted by any resistance, however desperate. As we surged up alongside they dropped their oars, allowing them to slide overboard and tow by the lanyards, and drawing pistol and cutlass, leapt to their feet and, with a wild cheer, sprang on to the boats’ gunwales and thence to any foothold that they could find, snapping their pistols in the faces of any who dared to show their heads above the rail; while the marines thrust their bayonets through the open ports into the legs of any individual who happened to be within their reach, thus disconcerting the aim of many an otherwise deadly stroke. For a few breathless seconds all was fire, smoke, and fury, pistols cracking, steel rasping upon steel, cheers, execrations, groans, the dull crunching sound of cutlasses sheering through muscle and bone, the heavy fall of the stricken on deck, the scuffling of feet, and shouts of defiance exchanged between the contending parties; then a few of us contrived to get in on deck, forcing back the pirates and making room for those who followed us, until all who were not too severely hurt to climb the ship’s side were inboard. There ensued a deadly hand-to-hand fight in which quarter was neither asked for nor given. The pirates seemed to number about three times as many as ourselves, and were a truly desperate set of ruffians, fighting—as they well knew—with halters round their necks, and doubtless preferring to die in the heat of battle rather than perish ignominiously upon the scaffold.For a few minutes we had all our work cut out to retain the slight advantage that we had gained. But gradually our lads drove their antagonists back until the latter were all grouped together in a dense mass round the mainmast, with our people hemming them in on every side and pressing them into such a compact crowd that at least half of them were unable to strike an effective blow. They did what they could, however, by hurling their empty pistols into our faces over the heads of their comrades, and I was busily engaged in defending myself from the attack of a herculean negro when one of these heavy missiles struck me, the hammer taking me fairly in the centre of the forehead and so nearly stunning me that for a moment I all but lost consciousness and was completely thrown off my guard. The next second a terrific blow crashed down upon my bare head—my hat having been lost earlier in the mêlée—and I fell to the deck, my last conscious sensation being that I was being trampled upon and by, as it seemed to me, an innumerable crowd of people. Then I swooned.When I recovered consciousness I found myself in my hammock, in the sick-bay aboard the frigate, with a number of companions in misfortune around me. At first I felt too utterly miserable to take much interest in anything, for my head, swathed in bandages, was aching and smarting so consumedly that for the first quarter of an hour or so I could not bear even the subdued light that entered through the open ports, and was obliged to keep my eyes closed; moreover, I was parched and burnt-up with fever, as weak as a cat, and consumed with an intolerable thirst. I attempted to turn in my hammock, but was unable to do so, and as I still struggled one of the sick-bay attendants came to my side and asked if he could do anything for me. I gasped out something to the effect that I was perishing of thirst, whereupon he brought me a pannikin of tepid water, dipped from a bucket that stood near one of the open ports, and, raising me in my hammock, placed it to my lips. Tepid and insipid as it actually was, I thought I had never tasted anything half so delicious, and I not only drained it to the last drop, but asked for more. This, however, he declined to give me without the surgeon’s direct permission, having, as he explained to me, been warned that when I awoke I should probably be suffering severely from thirst, but that I was only to be given a very limited quantity of liquid at the outset and until the surgeon had had an opportunity to examine further into my condition. The man, however, reported the fact of my return to consciousness; and shortly afterward Wilson, the surgeon, came down to see me.Wilson’s “bedside manner” was somewhat bluff, but, nevertheless, judicious; for I had once heard him say, in a confidential moment, that he always, upon principle, made light of his patients’ aches and ailments, as he had discovered, by long experience, that this had a good effect upon the invalids, causing them to believe that there was never anything very seriously wrong with them, and thus calling in the aid of their imagination to assist in the curative process. This was illustrated in his behaviour toward me upon the occasion of which I am now speaking. He came and stood by the side of my hammock, looking down upon me with a whimsical expression as he took my wrist in his hand and pressed his fingers lightly upon my pulse.“Put out your tongue,” he ordered abruptly, and I did so obediently. He glanced at it for a few seconds, then remarked:“Humph! not much the matter with you, I see. How d’ye feel?”I explained that my head was giving me excruciating pain, and that I felt burnt-up with fever and thirst; at which he laughed.“Pooh! pooh!” he exclaimed, “that’s nothing. Thank your lucky stars that you have got off so lightly as you have. Some of the poor fellows here have lost a limb or two, while others of the boarding party have lost the number of their mess altogether. Yours is simply a broken head; and, since your skull appears to be abnormally thick, I daresay it will very soon mend again. Aches badly, does it? Ah, well, that is an excellent sign; but perhaps you had better remain on the sick list for a few days, and keep to your hammock until the pain passes off—no good going on duty while you are blind with headache, you know. And—yes, now that I am here and you are awake I may as well look at your wound again.”He walked over to the screen, put his head round the end of it, and called sharply:“Sentry, pass the word for Mr Burroughs to come to me; and ask him to bring a basin of hot water, a sponge, a roll of bandage, and anything else he thinks I am likely to want. Tell him that I am going to dress Mr Delamere’s head.”Then, returning to my side, he drew out his penknife and with quick, gentle fingers proceeded to cut away a number of stitches that kept the bandage in place, and when at length he had unwound it he flung it deftly away behind him, though not so deftly but that I caught a glimpse of it out of the corner of my eye and saw that it was drenched with blood. By the time that he had removed the bandage, gently clipping away, with a pair of scissors, the hair that stuck to it here and there, Burroughs, the assistant surgeon, had turned up with hot water and a number of odds and ends, and Wilson took the sponge in his hand, saying:“Now, I shall probably hurt you a little; but don’t yell, if you can help it, because if you do you will disturb the poor fellows around you. So set your teeth and, if you feel anything, just grin and bear it. I will be as gentle as I can.”And he was gentle—no man could have been more so; nevertheless, during the next quarter of an hour he inflicted so much agony upon me as he extracted little splinters of bone with his forceps, and so on, that long before he had finished I was drenched with perspiration, and felt so sick that I finally swooned again; and he completed his operation upon my senseless body.That night, I afterward learned, I passed in a state of high delirium, and for several days I had only a very vague idea of where I was and what was happening around me; my predominating sensations being that the top of my head was on fire and blazing furiously, while I was consumed by fever and a thirst that was almost as exquisite a torture as the pain of my head. The only radical difference between the two was that when I was permitted to quench my thirst that particular form of torture was alleviated for a few brief seconds, while the other was continuous and distracting almost to the point of being unendurable. It seemed to me that I lay for an age in that suffocating sick-bay, every moment of the time being heavy with indescribable torment; but as a matter of fact I was there little more than forty-eight hours, the skipper cracking on for Jamaica, in order that several bad cases—of which I was one of the worst—might have the advantage of the lofty, airy wards of the naval hospital at Port Royal, where we arrived on the morning but one after our attack upon the pirate brigantine. I may as well complete the story of that adventure by saying—what I only learned afterward—that we captured the vessel, with a loss to ourselves of five killed, and eighteen wounded, of whom seven—including myself—were so badly hurt that Wilson gravely doubted whether we should ever pull round. As for the pirates, out of a crew of one hundred and twenty-six men, twenty-three were found dead on her deck after we had taken her, and fifty-four were wounded, some of them so desperately that no less than eleven of them died before we anchored in Port Royal harbour. The remainder were in due course brought to trial for piracy, and found guilty. Five of them were hanged at Gallows Point, while the rest were condemned to work on the roads in chains for the remainder of their miserable lives.

We watched the stranger as she was revealed at uncertain but decreasing intervals by the silent sheet-lightning, which was now flickering up all round the horizon, affording us momentary glimpses of the great lowering cloud-masses that overhung our mastheads as though ready to fall and crush us, the shining undulations of the swell, with the small overrunning ripples caused by the faint breathing of the breeze, the distant land, and the brigantine sliding furtively along within its shadow. When at length she had drawn to a bearing two points abaft our beam, the Captain gave the word to tack; and when, three minutes later, we were fairly round, the yards braced up, sheets hauled aft, and the frigate gathering way on the starboard tack, the stranger lay straight ahead of us.

Of course, we had taken the precaution to wait until immediately after a lightning flash before putting our helm down, and, as it happened, the next gleam did not occur until several minutes after we had tacked; the probability, therefore, was that the stranger would know nothing about our manoeuvre until the scene was again illuminated. The question that now interested us was—how would her people act when they made the discovery that we had shifted our helm and were standing in their direction? There were three alternatives open to them. First, they might follow our example—tack, and endeavour to escape to windward if they believed their vessel speedy enough to succeed. Secondly, they might haul their wind and enter the Gulf of Venezuela, along the shores of which there are two or three shallow inlets, in one or the other of which they might take refuge and anchor, in the hope of being able to defend their ship successfully against a boat attack. And, thirdly, if they were perfectly honest—of which we had our doubts—they might proceed steadily on their way, taking no notice of us and our movements. When we next got a sight of them the third alternative seemed to be their intention, for, so far as we could discover, they had started neither tack nor sheet; we therefore proceeded to edge down very cautiously and very gradually toward her, keeping her about a point on our lee-bow.

Now we discovered that our task was not going to be nearly so easy as we had at first thought, for in the very light breath of wind that was then blowing—and which was wholly insufficient to keep our lower canvas “asleep”—the stranger undoubtedly had the heels of us, slipping along so fast, indeed, that within a quarter of an hour of tacking we were running off with the wind abeam and our weather braces checked, instead of being upon a taut bowline, as we had been at the beginning of the chase.

Meanwhile the expected storm, though it had been brewing long, showed unmistakable signs that it was not going to keep us waiting very much longer, for the sheet—lightning was flickering almost incessantly, while a low, deep muttering of distant thunder occasionally made itself heard. The storm seemed to be working up astern of us, for presently a dazzlingly vivid flash of chain-lightning rent the darkness over our weather quarter, quickly followed by a deep, hollow, reverberating peal of thunder that rumbled like the echo of a seventy-four’s broadside. Another and another quickly followed, each nearer than that which had preceded it; and presently, far away astern of us, we saw advancing toward us a sort of wall of vapour, the lower edge of which gleamed white and phosphorescent as the wind in it lashed the surface of the water into foam.

“Hands, shorten sail!” was now the word. The watch sprang to their stations, coils of rope were lifted off their pins and flung to the deck; then in rapid succession followed the orders:—“Royal and topgallant halliards and sheets let go; clew up and furl! Hands by the weather braces; square the yards! Raise main tack and sheet; man the main clew-garnets, buntlines, and leech-lines; clew up cheerily, lads! Up helm, quartermaster, and let her go off. So; steady as you go. Hands by the topsail halliards! Brail in the mizen! Haul down the flying-jib! Here it comes!”

The squall swooped down upon us with a weird, shrieking howl, and a dash of wet that was half rain and half spray; and the next moment, with a tremendous creaking and groaning of timbers and gear, with all three topsail-yards on the caps, and with the chain bobstay half-buried in the foam that heaped itself up about our bows, away went the frigate, like a startled sea-bird, speeding down-wind upon the wings of the squall, enveloped in a sheet of rain that was more than half salt water, with the lightning flickering and darting all round her, and the thunder crashing overhead in a continuous booming roar.

The squall lasted very nearly three-quarters of an hour; but long before that time had elapsed the weather ahead had cleared sufficiently to enable us again to catch sight of the brigantine, now about two points on our starboard-bow, running dead before it, like ourselves, under nothing but a close-reefed topsail and reefed foresail. She was still maintaining her distance from us in the most wonderful manner; but was now—possibly in consequence of having been compelled by the squall to bear up—steering as though to enter the Gulf of Venezuela. We contrived to gain a little upon her by carefully watching our opportunities and making sail by degrees as the squall blew itself out; but in that respect her people were fully as wide awake as we were, and made sail with a boldness and rapidity which most conclusively proved that she was very strongly manned, and, therefore, not in the least likely to be the harmless, innocent trader that they would doubtless have liked to persuade us she was. She was hugging the land so closely that some of us were of opinion that her skipper intended to run her ashore and take to his boats if it should prove impossible to avoid capture in any other way; but the Captain did not believe this, and the master also seemed to be of his opinion.

“His object,” said Trimble, “is undoubtedly to get round Point Espada and fairly into the Gulf. If he can succeed in that, there are plenty of little coves, especially along the western shore, in which he might anchor and, sheltered from our guns, bid defiance to a boat attack.”

“Ah!” observed the skipper, with much meaning. “Well, we shall see. It is perfectly evident that he is anxious to keep out of our clutches, which desire argues a guilty conscience on his part, and only makes me the more determined to overhaul him. Confound it, here comes the rain again! Mr Gascoigne, have the goodness to slip into my cabin and desire my steward to bring my oilskins on deck. Or, stay, the fellow will have turned-in by this time; I will get them myself.”

The rain came swooping down upon us with the tail-end of the squall, and for a quarter of an hour it was so thick that we could see nothing a couple of ships’-lengths outside the bulwarks. Then it cleared away, the clouds dispersed, the stars came out, the wind dropped to a moderate breeze, and presently the moon, with nearly half her disc in shadow, crept up above the horizon, flooding the heaving waters with ruddy gold that quickly changed to silver as the satellite climbed high enough to clear herself of the vapours that distorted her shape and imparted to her the colour of burnished copper.

But where was the brigantine? Ahead, abeam, on our quarter we looked, but nowhere could we discern the faintest trace of her. We had lost sight of her a bare quarter of an hour, and in that brief space of time she had contrived to vanish as completely as though she had gone to the bottom in deep-water, leaving not so much as a fragment of floating wreckage to furnish a clue to her fate.

The skipper was as much puzzled as he was annoyed, and in his perplexity he turned to the master.

“What do you think has become of her, Mr Trimble?” he demanded. “She cannot have gone ashore and broken up so completely in a quarter of an hour that no sign of her would remain. We should see something at least in the nature of wreckage to give us a hint of what had happened. Yet I see nothing; although if she had been stranded, either purposely or by accident, her wreck ought to be away in there somewhere about abreast of us. And there are no off-shore dangers, are there?”

“The nearest that I know of are The Monks, away out here, some twenty-five miles to the nor’ard and east’ard of us,” answered the master. “The coast inshore of us is, of course, a bit rocky, but there is nothing, so far as I know, in the nature of hidden dangers to cause the wreck of the brigantine. No, sir, it is my belief that there is some snug little secret cove, known to the skipper of that brigantine, and that he took advantage of the rain squall to slip into it, in the hope of dodging us.”

“Ah!” said the skipper, “yes; that is, after all, the only feasible explanation of his disappearance. He is neither ahead nor astern nor to seaward of us; therefore he must be hidden somewhere inshore. Mr Galway,”—to the first lieutenant—“we will shorten sail, if you please, with the ship’s head off the land, remaining in sight of the coast until daylight, when we shall perhaps be able to discover the hiding-place of that brigantine.”

This was done, and during the remainder of the night theEuropa, under her three topsails, jib and spanker, stood off and on, never going farther from the shore than a distance of six miles, and very gradually working her way back to—as nearly as we could guess it—the spot where we had lost sight of the brigantine. As the night wore on all traces of the recent storm passed away; the sky cleared, the moon and stars beamed down upon us in tropical splendour, affording us an ample sufficiency of light to enable us to maintain an effective watch upon the coast, and ensure that the stranger did not creep out from her place of concealment and give us the slip. Theterral, or land wind, overpowered by the recent squall, once more resumed its sway and piped up strongly, bringing off to us the warm, fragrant odour of land and vegetation.

At length the day dawned, the sun soared into view above the eastern horizon, and with the coming of the light some half-dozen of the best telescopes in the ship were brought to bear upon the line of coast that lay about five miles distant on our port beam. I happened to be the lucky possessor of an exceptionally good instrument—a present from my father—and I had not been long at work with it when I discovered what was unmistakably a small indentation in the coast-line, sheltered and all but concealed by two headlands which approached each other so closely that, viewed from a distance, they appeared almost to overlap. I immediately directed the first lieutenant’s attention to the spot, at the same time handing him my glass, and he presently picked it up. He agreed with me that it was undoubtedly a cove, or tiny bay of some sort, but was rather of the opinion that it was too small to afford shelter to a vessel of the dimensions of the missing brigantine. Nevertheless, since it was the only opening that we could discover, and was, moreover, about the spot where the stranger had disappeared, it was determined to give the place an overhaul, and the helm was accordingly eased down, the yards braced in, and we began to work in toward it. Then the fighting boats’ crews were told off to overhaul the boats and prepare them for service, yard and stay tackles were got aloft for the purpose of hoisting out the launch, the boat-guns were slung all ready for lowering over the side as soon as the boats should be brought alongside, ammunition boxes were brought on deck, and, in short, every preparation was made for a boat expedition; after which all hands were piped to breakfast.

By the time that this meal was finished the frigate had worked in to within about a mile from the shore, at which point she ran into a calm, the land-breeze having died away. The boats were then got into the water and brought to the gangway, the guns were lowered down and secured to platforms in the bows of the launch and the two cutters, shot was passed down and stowed on the bottom-boards on either side of the keel, the ammunition boxes were stowed in the stern-sheets, and then, all else being ready, those who were to take part in the expedition were mustered for inspection prior to being dispatched on what was likely enough to prove a dangerous errand. But little recked any of us of possible danger; on the contrary, if an onlooker had judged only by the satisfied smirk which our countenances wore, it might have been supposed that we were all bound ashore for a day’s holiday in the woods.

The expedition was to be under the command of Mr Gadsby, the second lieutenant, who would go in the launch; the first cutter was to be commanded by Mr O’Donnel, the boatswain, and the command of the second cutter was entrusted to me. We mustered fifty altogether, including marines; and when at length, after having been carefully inspected by the first lieutenant, we were given the word to shove off, the men who were left behind sprang into the rigging and sped us on our way with a hearty cheer.

We took it very easily as we pulled shoreward, in line abreast, for it was by this time scorching hot, and it was important that the men’s strength should be husbanded to the utmost extent, in view of the possible fight that might be awaiting us at the end of our journey; but I kept a sharp lookout ahead, for, although the country in sight showed no sign of habitations, there was no knowing how soon a masked battery on one, or perhaps each, of the headlands might declare itself by dropping a few shot among us. Nothing, however, happened to hinder our progress over the glass-smooth surface of the water, and in the course of about twenty minutes we reached the opening between the two headlands, and found ourselves in the mouth of a small, practically land-locked cove of some twenty acres in area, with our friend the brigantine in the very centre of it, with four anchors down—two ahead and two astern—with boarding nettings triced up, ports open, guns run out—eight long 12-pounders in each battery—and her starboard broadside bearing full upon the entrance!

“There she is!” exclaimed a dozen eager voices in chorus; and, while the words were still upon our lips, eight jets of flame burst from her side, followed by eight wreaths of whirling white smoke that instantly commingled, forming a curtain that completely hid her long low black hull from us, and as a shower of grape came hurtling about our ears I saw a big black flag go slowly soaring up to her main truck!

“A self-confessed pirate, by the Piper!” exclaimed Fred Gascoigne, who had calmly crawled out from under the bow-sheets of my boat when we were half-way between the frigate and the shore. “Now—”

“Give way, men!” shouted Gadsby, springing to his feet in the stern-sheets of the launch, and waving his sword above his head. “Give way, and get alongside before they can fire again. Gunners, fire slap at his bulwarks, and we’ll board in the smoke. Marines, fire in through the open ports. Hurrah, lads, put your backs into it!”

At that moment, as the smoke of the brigantine’s broadside thinned away and permitted us again to catch a glimpse of her hull, I noticed a peculiarity about the craft that seemed to offer us a very important advantage; her captain had, in fact, committed the same oversight as the Frenchman in Pleher Bay, and I instantly hailed:

“Launch ahoy! Do you notice, Mr Gadsby, that she has no nettings triced up on her port side? Apparently they are making certain that we intend to go alongside on her starboard side, and—”

“By Jove! Yes, you are right, Delamere,” answered Gadsby. “We will board her on the port side. First cutter on the port quarter; second cutter on her port bow. Keep up your fire, marines. Now, gunners, as soon as you are ready, blaze away!”

The three boat-guns spoke at almost the same instant, and so close were we now to our quarry that our grape-shot literally tore her starboard bulwarks to pieces, and a terrific outburst of shrieks and yells that instantly followed upon the discharge bore eloquent evidence to the terrible havoc that it had wrought among her crew. The moment that we had fired the boats separated, the first cutter making a wide sweep to port in order to pass under the brigantine’s counter,while we sheered away to starboard to get under her bows, the launch passing outside of us in order to get a fair run for the brigantine’s waist.

Another minute and we were all alongside and hooked on, and then began a most terrific struggle; for the brigantine seemed crowded with men. We had evidently taken them all a little by surprise, by boarding on her inshore side instead of that side which was presented to us upon entering the cove. It was clear that, like the prize-crew of the Indiaman in Pleher Bay, they had never expected us to think of pulling round under her bows and stern, instead of dashing straight alongside; but of course it was a very easy matter for the pirates to cross the deck from one side to the other as soon as they discovered our intention; and this they did, lining her bulwarks from her head-rails to her taffrail, popping at us with muskets and pistols, thrusting at us with pikes and cutlasses, and hacking at our hands and heads as we endeavoured to climb her side and force our way over her bulwarks and in on deck. But our lads were not to be daunted by any resistance, however desperate. As we surged up alongside they dropped their oars, allowing them to slide overboard and tow by the lanyards, and drawing pistol and cutlass, leapt to their feet and, with a wild cheer, sprang on to the boats’ gunwales and thence to any foothold that they could find, snapping their pistols in the faces of any who dared to show their heads above the rail; while the marines thrust their bayonets through the open ports into the legs of any individual who happened to be within their reach, thus disconcerting the aim of many an otherwise deadly stroke. For a few breathless seconds all was fire, smoke, and fury, pistols cracking, steel rasping upon steel, cheers, execrations, groans, the dull crunching sound of cutlasses sheering through muscle and bone, the heavy fall of the stricken on deck, the scuffling of feet, and shouts of defiance exchanged between the contending parties; then a few of us contrived to get in on deck, forcing back the pirates and making room for those who followed us, until all who were not too severely hurt to climb the ship’s side were inboard. There ensued a deadly hand-to-hand fight in which quarter was neither asked for nor given. The pirates seemed to number about three times as many as ourselves, and were a truly desperate set of ruffians, fighting—as they well knew—with halters round their necks, and doubtless preferring to die in the heat of battle rather than perish ignominiously upon the scaffold.

For a few minutes we had all our work cut out to retain the slight advantage that we had gained. But gradually our lads drove their antagonists back until the latter were all grouped together in a dense mass round the mainmast, with our people hemming them in on every side and pressing them into such a compact crowd that at least half of them were unable to strike an effective blow. They did what they could, however, by hurling their empty pistols into our faces over the heads of their comrades, and I was busily engaged in defending myself from the attack of a herculean negro when one of these heavy missiles struck me, the hammer taking me fairly in the centre of the forehead and so nearly stunning me that for a moment I all but lost consciousness and was completely thrown off my guard. The next second a terrific blow crashed down upon my bare head—my hat having been lost earlier in the mêlée—and I fell to the deck, my last conscious sensation being that I was being trampled upon and by, as it seemed to me, an innumerable crowd of people. Then I swooned.

When I recovered consciousness I found myself in my hammock, in the sick-bay aboard the frigate, with a number of companions in misfortune around me. At first I felt too utterly miserable to take much interest in anything, for my head, swathed in bandages, was aching and smarting so consumedly that for the first quarter of an hour or so I could not bear even the subdued light that entered through the open ports, and was obliged to keep my eyes closed; moreover, I was parched and burnt-up with fever, as weak as a cat, and consumed with an intolerable thirst. I attempted to turn in my hammock, but was unable to do so, and as I still struggled one of the sick-bay attendants came to my side and asked if he could do anything for me. I gasped out something to the effect that I was perishing of thirst, whereupon he brought me a pannikin of tepid water, dipped from a bucket that stood near one of the open ports, and, raising me in my hammock, placed it to my lips. Tepid and insipid as it actually was, I thought I had never tasted anything half so delicious, and I not only drained it to the last drop, but asked for more. This, however, he declined to give me without the surgeon’s direct permission, having, as he explained to me, been warned that when I awoke I should probably be suffering severely from thirst, but that I was only to be given a very limited quantity of liquid at the outset and until the surgeon had had an opportunity to examine further into my condition. The man, however, reported the fact of my return to consciousness; and shortly afterward Wilson, the surgeon, came down to see me.

Wilson’s “bedside manner” was somewhat bluff, but, nevertheless, judicious; for I had once heard him say, in a confidential moment, that he always, upon principle, made light of his patients’ aches and ailments, as he had discovered, by long experience, that this had a good effect upon the invalids, causing them to believe that there was never anything very seriously wrong with them, and thus calling in the aid of their imagination to assist in the curative process. This was illustrated in his behaviour toward me upon the occasion of which I am now speaking. He came and stood by the side of my hammock, looking down upon me with a whimsical expression as he took my wrist in his hand and pressed his fingers lightly upon my pulse.

“Put out your tongue,” he ordered abruptly, and I did so obediently. He glanced at it for a few seconds, then remarked:

“Humph! not much the matter with you, I see. How d’ye feel?”

I explained that my head was giving me excruciating pain, and that I felt burnt-up with fever and thirst; at which he laughed.

“Pooh! pooh!” he exclaimed, “that’s nothing. Thank your lucky stars that you have got off so lightly as you have. Some of the poor fellows here have lost a limb or two, while others of the boarding party have lost the number of their mess altogether. Yours is simply a broken head; and, since your skull appears to be abnormally thick, I daresay it will very soon mend again. Aches badly, does it? Ah, well, that is an excellent sign; but perhaps you had better remain on the sick list for a few days, and keep to your hammock until the pain passes off—no good going on duty while you are blind with headache, you know. And—yes, now that I am here and you are awake I may as well look at your wound again.”

He walked over to the screen, put his head round the end of it, and called sharply:

“Sentry, pass the word for Mr Burroughs to come to me; and ask him to bring a basin of hot water, a sponge, a roll of bandage, and anything else he thinks I am likely to want. Tell him that I am going to dress Mr Delamere’s head.”

Then, returning to my side, he drew out his penknife and with quick, gentle fingers proceeded to cut away a number of stitches that kept the bandage in place, and when at length he had unwound it he flung it deftly away behind him, though not so deftly but that I caught a glimpse of it out of the corner of my eye and saw that it was drenched with blood. By the time that he had removed the bandage, gently clipping away, with a pair of scissors, the hair that stuck to it here and there, Burroughs, the assistant surgeon, had turned up with hot water and a number of odds and ends, and Wilson took the sponge in his hand, saying:

“Now, I shall probably hurt you a little; but don’t yell, if you can help it, because if you do you will disturb the poor fellows around you. So set your teeth and, if you feel anything, just grin and bear it. I will be as gentle as I can.”

And he was gentle—no man could have been more so; nevertheless, during the next quarter of an hour he inflicted so much agony upon me as he extracted little splinters of bone with his forceps, and so on, that long before he had finished I was drenched with perspiration, and felt so sick that I finally swooned again; and he completed his operation upon my senseless body.

That night, I afterward learned, I passed in a state of high delirium, and for several days I had only a very vague idea of where I was and what was happening around me; my predominating sensations being that the top of my head was on fire and blazing furiously, while I was consumed by fever and a thirst that was almost as exquisite a torture as the pain of my head. The only radical difference between the two was that when I was permitted to quench my thirst that particular form of torture was alleviated for a few brief seconds, while the other was continuous and distracting almost to the point of being unendurable. It seemed to me that I lay for an age in that suffocating sick-bay, every moment of the time being heavy with indescribable torment; but as a matter of fact I was there little more than forty-eight hours, the skipper cracking on for Jamaica, in order that several bad cases—of which I was one of the worst—might have the advantage of the lofty, airy wards of the naval hospital at Port Royal, where we arrived on the morning but one after our attack upon the pirate brigantine. I may as well complete the story of that adventure by saying—what I only learned afterward—that we captured the vessel, with a loss to ourselves of five killed, and eighteen wounded, of whom seven—including myself—were so badly hurt that Wilson gravely doubted whether we should ever pull round. As for the pirates, out of a crew of one hundred and twenty-six men, twenty-three were found dead on her deck after we had taken her, and fifty-four were wounded, some of them so desperately that no less than eleven of them died before we anchored in Port Royal harbour. The remainder were in due course brought to trial for piracy, and found guilty. Five of them were hanged at Gallows Point, while the rest were condemned to work on the roads in chains for the remainder of their miserable lives.

Chapter Ten.Ashore—Invalided.I have a hazy recollection of suddenly finding myself on deck, still in my hammock; and then, a few minutes later, of being in a boat. Finally, when I next came to myself I discovered that I was no longer in my hammock, but in a bed—a delightful spacious comfortable bed in which there was room for one to stretch oneself, change from one side to the other, and otherwise obtain a little temporary relief when lying long in one posture had become wearisome. Then, instead of being enveloped in stiflingly hot blankets, I lay upon one fragrant, cool, snow-white sheet, with another over me, the bed enclosed by mosquito-netting, and a deliciously cool breeze streaming into the long ward through several wide-open, lofty windows, one of which, immediately opposite the foot of my bed, afforded me an excellent view of a considerable portion of Port Royal harbour, with the Apostles’ Battery, crouching at the foot of the Salt Pond Hills, almost immediately opposite, on the other side of the water. One of the hospital orderlies, who was on duty in the ward, came to the side of my bed at once upon finding that I was awake, and gave me a long, satisfying draught of lemonade, cool and exquisitely refreshing, after which I think he must have summoned the doctor to me, for a few minutes later that individual came lightly to the side of my bed, thrust his hand beneath the sheet and felt my pulse.I afterward learned that this was Dr Loder, chief of the medical staff in the Port Royal Naval Hospital. And oh! what a difference there was between him and Wilson, theEuropa’ssurgeon. The latter was bluff, hearty, and slightly inclined to be boisterous in manner; while Dr Loder’s every word and every movement, nay his whole appearance, suggested peace, quietness, and perfect restfulness, as well as—by some subtlety of manner—a vague but none the less distinct impression that things were going well with one. He was a tall and rather thin man, with dark-brown hair, beard, and moustache; he was bald on the top of his head, and wore gold-rimmed spectacles through which his fine dark eyes beamed down upon his patients with an expression of sympathy that was in itself as good as a tonic. He asked me a few questions in a quiet, almost caressing tone of voice, gave the orderly who had me in charge certain instructions, and then, patting me gently upon the shoulder, assured me that I should soon be all right again, in a tone of voice that, quiet as it was, somehow seemed to carry absolute conviction with it.As a matter of fact I really did begin to mend practically from that moment—so rapidly indeed that on the twenty-third day after my admission the wound in my head had so far healed that the bandages were discarded—and three weeks later I was discharged into the guardship cured, theEuropahaving gone to sea again some time before.But the guardship was no place for me, weak and shaken as I then was by my long and serious spell of illness; and although the Admiral might well, in the press of daily affairs, have been excused had he forgotten so unimportant a detail as the state of my health, he did not; on the contrary, he invited me to spend a week at the Pen, to recuperate, during which his wife, Lady Agnes, was a second mother to me and a hospital nurse combined. From that moment there was no lack of invitations for me to go into the country and regain my strength, my former acquaintances one and all hunting me up and reminding me of several almost forgotten promises that I would visit them.As the frigate was not expected to return to Port Royal for at least two months, and as, although discharged from the hospital, I was as yet by no means fit for duty, I had not the slightest difficulty in obtaining a month’s leave, which I spent most enjoyably with friends whose estates were situated in Saint Thomas-in-the-East and on the northern slopes of the Blue Mountain Range. It is no part of my purpose to enter into a detailed description of life on a Jamaican sugar plantation, nor will I attempt to convey to the reader any definite idea of the Jamaicans’ hospitality. Let it suffice to say that I never spent a happier month anywhere, and that the planters, with all their jollity, light-heartedness, and love of fun, were the most genial, kindly, hospitable folk I ever met with, each of them vieing with all the rest in an amicable contest who should show me the most kindness and attention. I went among them an almost total stranger; when I left, I felt as though I were parting with as many brothers and sisters.Upon reporting myself to the Admiral, at his office, he received me very kindly, asked whether I felt fit to return to duty—to which I replied with a most emphatic Yes—informed me that theEuropawas not expected for another month at least; then invited me to dine with him that evening at the Pen, and spend the night there.His table was, as usual, well filled with guests, but they were all civilians, excepting some three or four military officers over from Up Park Camp. The navy was entirely unrepresented, save by myself, the reason being, as I soon learned, that the French, Dutch, and Spanish were all exceedingly active in and about the Caribbean, and there were not enough of our own ships to cope with them; consequently every available craft of any sort flying the British pennant had been sent to sea, and was being kept there.At length, when all the guests had left the Pen, and Lady Agnes had retired for the night, Sir Peter invited me to accompany him to the broad gallery, covered by a veranda, which stretched right athwart the front of the house, from end to end, and directed one of his negro servants to carry out to it a small table, a box of cigars, a jug of sangaree, and two wicker basket-chairs wherein we seated ourselves preparatory, as I surmised, to a more or less confidential chat of some sort, though what, of such a nature, so important a personage as the Port Admiral could possibly have to say to an insignificant mid like myself, I could not divine.Sir Peter, however, was not the sort of man to beat about the bush; if he had anything to say he generally said it without any circumlocution, and he did so now. Selecting with care a cigar for himself, lighting it, and pouring out a couple of tumblers of sangaree, he settled himself in his chair, and began by remarking:“Well, young gentleman, so you have quite recovered from the effects of your wound, eh?—and feel fit and ready for duty once more?”“Yes, to both questions, Sir Peter,” I answered. “But I think I understood you to say that theEuropais not expected to return to Port Royal for at least another month—”“So I did,” interrupted the Admiral; “and the question is, What are you going to do with yourself meanwhile? This is no time for an officer to idle about ashore, you know.”“No, sir,” I responded, “it certainly is not, and I am exceedingly glad that you have broached the subject, for it affords me an early opportunity to do what I have had it in my mind to do, namely, to ask you whether you cannot find me some better employment than kicking my heels aboard the guardship until the frigate returns.”“Ah!” commented Sir Peter, “so that was what you had in your mind, was it? Have you served your time yet?”“Yes, sir,” I replied, “with nearly three months to spare.”“Good!” remarked my companion. “But of course you have not passed yet? You have not had an opportunity. Have you your log-books with you?”“Yes, sir,” I answered. “When I was sent ashore to the hospital, Captain Vavassour was good enough to send with me all my belongings.”“Where are they—the log-books, I mean—now?” demanded Sir Peter.“They are aboard the guardship, with the rest of my things,” I answered.“Very well,” returned my companion. “You had better go down to Port Royal with me in the morning, and bring your log-books ashore for me to look at. I have a scheme in my head for employing you, but I am not at all sure whether you are fit to undertake a duty of so exceedingly responsible a character as that which I have in my mind; although I don’t hesitate to tell you, youngster, that Captain Vavassour gave you a most excellent character in every respect. What sort of a navigator are you? I suppose, like most other young gentlemen, you can fudge a day’s work well enough to pass muster, eh?”I laughed. “I am afraid, sir,” I replied, “that too many of us would rather fudge than take the trouble to do our day’s work properly. But I got out of that lazy trick some time ago; and now I will not turn my back upon any lad of my own age, whether midshipman, or master’s-mate, where navigation is concerned.”“Ah!” he remarked, “that sounds all right. Tell me, what can you do in navigation problems?”“I can do Plane, Traverse, Middle-Latitude, and Mercator’s Sailing,” I answered. “I can also do a Day’s Work; I can use my quadrant with accuracy; can find the Latitude by a meridian altitude of the sun, moon, or a star; can find the error and rate of the chronometer, and also the longitude by it; can determine the variation of the compass; can find the longitude by a ‘lunar’; can do the Pole Star problem; and—well, I think that is about all, sir, thus far.”“And a very creditable ‘all,’ too,” answered the Admiral, evidently well pleased. “And what about your seamanship?” he continued.“I believe I am pretty good at that too, sir,” I said. “I was at Portsmouth, in the dockyard, every day during the fitting-out of the frigate, and watched the whole process of rigging her. When I first saw her she had nothing standing but her three lower-masts.”“Well,” remarked Sir Peter, “you ought to have picked up a little knowledge relative to the spars and rigging of a ship during that time. Butdidyou? That is the question. Come, I’ll put you through your facings a bit, if you are not too sleepy. Supposing that it became necessary for you to get the maintop over the masthead, how would you go to work?”I considered a moment, recalled the operation as I had witnessed it, and then proceeded to describe what I had seen.“Yes; very good,” commented my companion. “Now, get your lower rigging into place, and set it up.”I described how I would do that; and also answered several other questions, apparently to his satisfaction.“Very well,” he said, “that’s all rigger’s work; exceedingly important to know, of course, but still not exactly seamanship. Now, young gentleman, suppose yourself to be in command of a fine frigate—as I hope you will be some day, please God. You are turning to windward in a fresh breeze, under all plain sail, and it becomes necessary to tack. Describe the various evolutions.”I did so; and then the old gentleman gradually took me, still aboard my suppositious frigate, through a rapidly freshening breeze into a regular hurricane, until I had got the ship hove-to under bare poles, with a tarpaulin lashed in the weather mizen rigging, and then he shook hands with me and dismissed me to my room.The next morning, immediately after first breakfast, we got under way in the Admiral’s ketureen—a sort of gig with a roof to it—and drove down to the wharf at Kingston, where the barge, a fine boat, was waiting for us. The sea-breeze had set in and was piping up merrily, and in about three-quarters of an hour we were alongside the dockyard wall at Port Royal. Here the Admiral left me, with instructions to go off aboard the guardship at once, and bring my log-books ashore for his inspection. This I did, but it was nearly noon before Sir Peter was ready to attend to me, and even then it was after all but a cursory glance that he bestowed upon my books. But, cursory though it was, what he saw appeared to satisfy him, for he was good enough to express his approval as he closed the books and pushed them across the table to me.“Very good, very good indeed,” he remarked; “far more creditable than mine were when I was your age, I am afraid. I consider you a most promising young officer, and am going to take you under my wing, because I believe you will do me credit. Nay, boy, I want no thanks,”—as I broke in somewhat incoherently in an attempt to express my gratitude—“at least, not in the form of words,” he continued; “words are often spoken under the influence of a strong momentary impulse, and forgotten almost immediately afterward. But if you should desire to show that you are grateful to me for what I intend to do for you, you cannot exhibit it more acceptably than by justifying the very great trust that I am about to repose in you. And I believe you will, for, young as you are, you have proved yourself to be made of the right stuff; you have made good use of your time, and have as much knowledge in that curly pate of yours as many officers of twice your length of service possess. Now, I am not telling you this because I want to make you conceited—far from it; it is simply because I want you to understand that I have formed a very high opinion of you, and that I expect you to live up to it. D’ye understand that, youngster?”“Quite clearly, Sir Peter,” I answered. “It is exceedingly kind, and most encouraging on your part that you have spoken so frankly as you have, and I can assure you that I am not in the least likely to entertain an unduly high opinion of myself in consequence of it. On the contrary, I am afraid that you have formed altogether too favourable an opinion of me and my qualities; but I shall remember that opinion, and will do my utmost to justify it.”“Very well,” he answered; “no man can say more than that, and if you fulfil your promise I shall be perfectly satisfied. And now, as to the work upon which I propose to employ you. You must know that there is more work—a good deal more work—to be done on this station than there are ships to do it; consequently, although every ship at my disposal is now at sea, I am continually receiving complaints that the commerce in West Indian waters is inadequately protected. I have applied for additional ships, but have been told that there are none to spare, and that I must do the best I can with what I have. The fact is that the Caribbean and its approaches are not only swarming with privateers, but I have too much reason to believe that there is a strong gang of out-and-out pirates at work as well. I was in hopes that the capture of that pirate brigantine by theEuropawould put an end to all that kind of work, but it has not; indeed, it has scarcely made any appreciable impression upon the number of outrages of a distinctly piratical character that are being constantly reported to me. I am, of course, not now alluding to vessels that have gone temporarily missing, for they may in most cases be traced to the operations of the enemy; but I refer to those which vanish utterly, leaving no trace of any kind behind them to hint at their fate; and also to those other craft which are fallen in with, derelict, from time to time, plundered, and bearing indications that an attempt has been made to destroy them, either by scuttling them, or setting them on fire. Privateers don’t do that sort of thing, you know. If they capture a ship they generally put a prize-crew aboard her and send her into the nearest port belonging to them. Pirates, however, endeavour to escape identification by destroying all traces of their handiwork and butchering the unfortunate crews of the vessels.“A case of this kind came to light only last week. TheKingston Traderof Bristol, with a very valuable cargo and five thousand pounds in specie, has been overdue about a month, and her consignees have been worrying me accordingly. Last Friday a small turtling schooner arrived from the Windward Passages, reporting that they had seen a wreck ashore near Tête de Chien on the island of Tortuga, off the north-west coast of Saint Domingo. They launched their pirogue, and succeeded in getting close enough to the wreck to identify her as the missingKingston Trader, and also to ascertain that she had been on fire, most of her upper works having been consumed. That is the third case of an almost identical kind that has occurred within the last two months, and I am convinced that it is the work of pirates.“Now, young gentleman, I am going to give you the job of finding those pirates and bringing them to book. It is work for aman, I know, but I have not a man to spare; and I am convinced, from the way in which you answered my questions last night, and from the character which Captain Vavassour has given you, not only that you are a very capable young officer, but also that you have your full share of sound common sense and self-reliance—that you are, in fact, quite as likely to give a good account of yourself over this business as would many a much older man.“Therefore, since you are certain to pass with flying colours as soon as an opportunity to present yourself for examination offers itself, I intend to give you an acting order as lieutenant, to place you in command of a small schooner with a good strong crew, and to send you off upon a roving commission to do your best to put down these piratical outrages that are so frequently occurring under our very noses. Now, what d’ye think of my scheme, youngster? Is the job too big for you to tackle?”“No, sir,” I answered; “certainly not too big. The only thing I fear is that I may not be sufficiently experienced to execute so responsible a duty as efficiently as it ought to be executed. But I will do my very utmost, Sir Peter, I can promise you that; and if I can only have with me one or two thoroughly steady, reliable men to help me with an occasional word of advice, I believe we shall be able to give a very good account of ourselves.”“Yes,” returned Sir Peter, “I believe so too, otherwise I would not dream of sending you. As to experience, well, there is only one way of gaining it, and that is by actually doing a thing; it is rather a rough school, perhaps, but it is the only one in which you can thoroughly learn your lesson, and I am glad to see that you have no idea of shirking it.“And now, as to this seventy-four of yours. She is a fore-and-aft schooner of one hundred and ten tons, said to have been built at Baltimore. She is something of a freak, her designer having apparently turned his lines end for end and put his bows where his stern should be, andvice versa. Nevertheless, his theory seems to have been sound, for I’m told that she is a perfect witch for speed, especially in light weather, and speed is one of the qualities which you must have. She was caught smuggling, and was condemned to be sawn in two; but I thought we might perhaps be able to find a better use for her than that, so I have postponed the operation. She is called theWasp, and if you have as much enterprise as I give you credit for, you ought to make her sting to some purpose. You will find her in Hulk Hole, and— Stop a minute.” He rang a bell and a messenger entered.“Jones,” said Sir Peter, “have you any idea where the master-attendant is?”“Yes, sir,” answered the man, “he was outside on the wharf not half a minute ago.”“Then, please, see if you can find him,” said the Admiral, “and request him to come here to me. Carline is a very decent fellow,” he continued, as soon as the messenger had vanished. “I’ll get him to take you aboard and show you the craft—he has the keys of the companion and fore-scuttle, I believe—and you and he can talk matters over together and decide what she will need to fit her for service. Ah! here is Carline. Good morning, Mr Carline. This is Mr Delamere, whom I am going to send out in charge of theWasp, to see what he can do toward putting a stop to these repeated piracies. I want you to take him aboard and let him have a thorough good look at the schooner; after which you and he can draw up a list of what is needed to render her fit for the work which she will have to do. And now, good morning, Mr Delamere. Come up to the Pen to dinner to-night; then you can report to me what you think the craft requires.”“So the Admiral’s going to fit out that smugglin’ schooner and send you to sea in her, eh?” remarked the master-attendant as soon as we got outside.I replied that I quite understood that to be Sir Peter’s intention.“Oh, well,” he observed, “I don’t know how you’ll get on with her; she’s a queer one to look at, and I expect she’ll want some learnin’ before you’ll be able to handle her properly. Have you had any experience in a fore-and-after?”“Only in boats,” I replied. “The barge of my old ship, theColossus, was rigged as a fore-and-aft schooner, and I’ve sailed her many’s the time; and I suppose all fore-and-afters are handled in pretty much the same way. The matter of mere size won’t make very much difference, I imagine.”“Well, I expect you’ll find theWaspa bit different,” observed my companion; “she’s such a queer model, you see—everything about her is exactly the opposite of what we think it should be. She has tremendous beam, and no draught of water worth speakin’ of; an outrageously long tapering bow, and a short, squat stern— But there, you’ll see her presently. But there’s no doubt about it, she can sail—there’s nothing in this harbour that can look at her; and as for working, why, I’ve been told that she has been known to be round and full on the other tack twenty seconds after puttin’ the helm down!”“Well, that is good news at all events,” I remarked. “I like a nice, smart-working ship— Why, Henderson, where in the world did you spring from? and how is it that you are not away in the frigate?” I exclaimed, as we encountered a figure that was perfectly familiar to me.“For the same reason as yourself, Mr Delamere,” answered the man, touching his hat. “I was on my beam-ends in the hospital when she went to sea—bowled over in the scrimmage wi’ that brigantine, same as you was.”“And where are you, and what doing now?” I demanded.“Why, sir, I’m aboard the guardship, along wi’ another or two of our chaps as was discharged from the hospital about the same time as I was,” answered the man—formerly one of theEuropa’squartermasters.“Oh, indeed,” I replied, very much surprised, for I had not known that there were others as well as myself put ashore from the frigate; “and are you all ready for duty again?” I asked.“Ay, that we are, sir,” answered Henderson, “and shall be glad enough to get to sea and have a mouthful of fresh air once more. This bein’ in harbour is all very well for a change, but a man soon gets enough of it; and, a’ter all, it ain’t half so comfortable as bein’ at sea.”“Then in that case,” said I, seeing my way to getting one good hand, at least, “perhaps you may be willing to volunteer for a little schooner that the Admiral is going to give me to go pirate-hunting in?”“Ay, that indeed I will, Mr Delamere, and glad of the chance,” answered Henderson heartily; “and perhaps, sir,” he added, “I could help you to two or three more good men, if so be as you happen to want ’em.”“Well, I think it more than likely that I shall,” said I, “so just keep your eyes open in that direction. I shall no doubt see you again to-morrow or next day, when we can have a further chat.”Henderson touched his hat and turned away, and the master-attendant and I made our way along the wharf to the landing-steps. Here he directed four men to jump down into his gig and spread the cushions in the stern-sheets, while he went into his office to procure the keys which were to afford us access to the interior of my “seventy-four,” as the Admiral had jestingly called her. Then, descending the steps and taking our places in the gig, Carline seized the yoke-lines, gave the word to shove off, and away we went, across the upper end of the harbour and through the boat channel, past Gallows Point, whereon stood the stout posts and beam from which the five ringleaders of the pirates taken aboard the brigantine had been launched into eternity.

I have a hazy recollection of suddenly finding myself on deck, still in my hammock; and then, a few minutes later, of being in a boat. Finally, when I next came to myself I discovered that I was no longer in my hammock, but in a bed—a delightful spacious comfortable bed in which there was room for one to stretch oneself, change from one side to the other, and otherwise obtain a little temporary relief when lying long in one posture had become wearisome. Then, instead of being enveloped in stiflingly hot blankets, I lay upon one fragrant, cool, snow-white sheet, with another over me, the bed enclosed by mosquito-netting, and a deliciously cool breeze streaming into the long ward through several wide-open, lofty windows, one of which, immediately opposite the foot of my bed, afforded me an excellent view of a considerable portion of Port Royal harbour, with the Apostles’ Battery, crouching at the foot of the Salt Pond Hills, almost immediately opposite, on the other side of the water. One of the hospital orderlies, who was on duty in the ward, came to the side of my bed at once upon finding that I was awake, and gave me a long, satisfying draught of lemonade, cool and exquisitely refreshing, after which I think he must have summoned the doctor to me, for a few minutes later that individual came lightly to the side of my bed, thrust his hand beneath the sheet and felt my pulse.

I afterward learned that this was Dr Loder, chief of the medical staff in the Port Royal Naval Hospital. And oh! what a difference there was between him and Wilson, theEuropa’ssurgeon. The latter was bluff, hearty, and slightly inclined to be boisterous in manner; while Dr Loder’s every word and every movement, nay his whole appearance, suggested peace, quietness, and perfect restfulness, as well as—by some subtlety of manner—a vague but none the less distinct impression that things were going well with one. He was a tall and rather thin man, with dark-brown hair, beard, and moustache; he was bald on the top of his head, and wore gold-rimmed spectacles through which his fine dark eyes beamed down upon his patients with an expression of sympathy that was in itself as good as a tonic. He asked me a few questions in a quiet, almost caressing tone of voice, gave the orderly who had me in charge certain instructions, and then, patting me gently upon the shoulder, assured me that I should soon be all right again, in a tone of voice that, quiet as it was, somehow seemed to carry absolute conviction with it.

As a matter of fact I really did begin to mend practically from that moment—so rapidly indeed that on the twenty-third day after my admission the wound in my head had so far healed that the bandages were discarded—and three weeks later I was discharged into the guardship cured, theEuropahaving gone to sea again some time before.

But the guardship was no place for me, weak and shaken as I then was by my long and serious spell of illness; and although the Admiral might well, in the press of daily affairs, have been excused had he forgotten so unimportant a detail as the state of my health, he did not; on the contrary, he invited me to spend a week at the Pen, to recuperate, during which his wife, Lady Agnes, was a second mother to me and a hospital nurse combined. From that moment there was no lack of invitations for me to go into the country and regain my strength, my former acquaintances one and all hunting me up and reminding me of several almost forgotten promises that I would visit them.

As the frigate was not expected to return to Port Royal for at least two months, and as, although discharged from the hospital, I was as yet by no means fit for duty, I had not the slightest difficulty in obtaining a month’s leave, which I spent most enjoyably with friends whose estates were situated in Saint Thomas-in-the-East and on the northern slopes of the Blue Mountain Range. It is no part of my purpose to enter into a detailed description of life on a Jamaican sugar plantation, nor will I attempt to convey to the reader any definite idea of the Jamaicans’ hospitality. Let it suffice to say that I never spent a happier month anywhere, and that the planters, with all their jollity, light-heartedness, and love of fun, were the most genial, kindly, hospitable folk I ever met with, each of them vieing with all the rest in an amicable contest who should show me the most kindness and attention. I went among them an almost total stranger; when I left, I felt as though I were parting with as many brothers and sisters.

Upon reporting myself to the Admiral, at his office, he received me very kindly, asked whether I felt fit to return to duty—to which I replied with a most emphatic Yes—informed me that theEuropawas not expected for another month at least; then invited me to dine with him that evening at the Pen, and spend the night there.

His table was, as usual, well filled with guests, but they were all civilians, excepting some three or four military officers over from Up Park Camp. The navy was entirely unrepresented, save by myself, the reason being, as I soon learned, that the French, Dutch, and Spanish were all exceedingly active in and about the Caribbean, and there were not enough of our own ships to cope with them; consequently every available craft of any sort flying the British pennant had been sent to sea, and was being kept there.

At length, when all the guests had left the Pen, and Lady Agnes had retired for the night, Sir Peter invited me to accompany him to the broad gallery, covered by a veranda, which stretched right athwart the front of the house, from end to end, and directed one of his negro servants to carry out to it a small table, a box of cigars, a jug of sangaree, and two wicker basket-chairs wherein we seated ourselves preparatory, as I surmised, to a more or less confidential chat of some sort, though what, of such a nature, so important a personage as the Port Admiral could possibly have to say to an insignificant mid like myself, I could not divine.

Sir Peter, however, was not the sort of man to beat about the bush; if he had anything to say he generally said it without any circumlocution, and he did so now. Selecting with care a cigar for himself, lighting it, and pouring out a couple of tumblers of sangaree, he settled himself in his chair, and began by remarking:

“Well, young gentleman, so you have quite recovered from the effects of your wound, eh?—and feel fit and ready for duty once more?”

“Yes, to both questions, Sir Peter,” I answered. “But I think I understood you to say that theEuropais not expected to return to Port Royal for at least another month—”

“So I did,” interrupted the Admiral; “and the question is, What are you going to do with yourself meanwhile? This is no time for an officer to idle about ashore, you know.”

“No, sir,” I responded, “it certainly is not, and I am exceedingly glad that you have broached the subject, for it affords me an early opportunity to do what I have had it in my mind to do, namely, to ask you whether you cannot find me some better employment than kicking my heels aboard the guardship until the frigate returns.”

“Ah!” commented Sir Peter, “so that was what you had in your mind, was it? Have you served your time yet?”

“Yes, sir,” I replied, “with nearly three months to spare.”

“Good!” remarked my companion. “But of course you have not passed yet? You have not had an opportunity. Have you your log-books with you?”

“Yes, sir,” I answered. “When I was sent ashore to the hospital, Captain Vavassour was good enough to send with me all my belongings.”

“Where are they—the log-books, I mean—now?” demanded Sir Peter.

“They are aboard the guardship, with the rest of my things,” I answered.

“Very well,” returned my companion. “You had better go down to Port Royal with me in the morning, and bring your log-books ashore for me to look at. I have a scheme in my head for employing you, but I am not at all sure whether you are fit to undertake a duty of so exceedingly responsible a character as that which I have in my mind; although I don’t hesitate to tell you, youngster, that Captain Vavassour gave you a most excellent character in every respect. What sort of a navigator are you? I suppose, like most other young gentlemen, you can fudge a day’s work well enough to pass muster, eh?”

I laughed. “I am afraid, sir,” I replied, “that too many of us would rather fudge than take the trouble to do our day’s work properly. But I got out of that lazy trick some time ago; and now I will not turn my back upon any lad of my own age, whether midshipman, or master’s-mate, where navigation is concerned.”

“Ah!” he remarked, “that sounds all right. Tell me, what can you do in navigation problems?”

“I can do Plane, Traverse, Middle-Latitude, and Mercator’s Sailing,” I answered. “I can also do a Day’s Work; I can use my quadrant with accuracy; can find the Latitude by a meridian altitude of the sun, moon, or a star; can find the error and rate of the chronometer, and also the longitude by it; can determine the variation of the compass; can find the longitude by a ‘lunar’; can do the Pole Star problem; and—well, I think that is about all, sir, thus far.”

“And a very creditable ‘all,’ too,” answered the Admiral, evidently well pleased. “And what about your seamanship?” he continued.

“I believe I am pretty good at that too, sir,” I said. “I was at Portsmouth, in the dockyard, every day during the fitting-out of the frigate, and watched the whole process of rigging her. When I first saw her she had nothing standing but her three lower-masts.”

“Well,” remarked Sir Peter, “you ought to have picked up a little knowledge relative to the spars and rigging of a ship during that time. Butdidyou? That is the question. Come, I’ll put you through your facings a bit, if you are not too sleepy. Supposing that it became necessary for you to get the maintop over the masthead, how would you go to work?”

I considered a moment, recalled the operation as I had witnessed it, and then proceeded to describe what I had seen.

“Yes; very good,” commented my companion. “Now, get your lower rigging into place, and set it up.”

I described how I would do that; and also answered several other questions, apparently to his satisfaction.

“Very well,” he said, “that’s all rigger’s work; exceedingly important to know, of course, but still not exactly seamanship. Now, young gentleman, suppose yourself to be in command of a fine frigate—as I hope you will be some day, please God. You are turning to windward in a fresh breeze, under all plain sail, and it becomes necessary to tack. Describe the various evolutions.”

I did so; and then the old gentleman gradually took me, still aboard my suppositious frigate, through a rapidly freshening breeze into a regular hurricane, until I had got the ship hove-to under bare poles, with a tarpaulin lashed in the weather mizen rigging, and then he shook hands with me and dismissed me to my room.

The next morning, immediately after first breakfast, we got under way in the Admiral’s ketureen—a sort of gig with a roof to it—and drove down to the wharf at Kingston, where the barge, a fine boat, was waiting for us. The sea-breeze had set in and was piping up merrily, and in about three-quarters of an hour we were alongside the dockyard wall at Port Royal. Here the Admiral left me, with instructions to go off aboard the guardship at once, and bring my log-books ashore for his inspection. This I did, but it was nearly noon before Sir Peter was ready to attend to me, and even then it was after all but a cursory glance that he bestowed upon my books. But, cursory though it was, what he saw appeared to satisfy him, for he was good enough to express his approval as he closed the books and pushed them across the table to me.

“Very good, very good indeed,” he remarked; “far more creditable than mine were when I was your age, I am afraid. I consider you a most promising young officer, and am going to take you under my wing, because I believe you will do me credit. Nay, boy, I want no thanks,”—as I broke in somewhat incoherently in an attempt to express my gratitude—“at least, not in the form of words,” he continued; “words are often spoken under the influence of a strong momentary impulse, and forgotten almost immediately afterward. But if you should desire to show that you are grateful to me for what I intend to do for you, you cannot exhibit it more acceptably than by justifying the very great trust that I am about to repose in you. And I believe you will, for, young as you are, you have proved yourself to be made of the right stuff; you have made good use of your time, and have as much knowledge in that curly pate of yours as many officers of twice your length of service possess. Now, I am not telling you this because I want to make you conceited—far from it; it is simply because I want you to understand that I have formed a very high opinion of you, and that I expect you to live up to it. D’ye understand that, youngster?”

“Quite clearly, Sir Peter,” I answered. “It is exceedingly kind, and most encouraging on your part that you have spoken so frankly as you have, and I can assure you that I am not in the least likely to entertain an unduly high opinion of myself in consequence of it. On the contrary, I am afraid that you have formed altogether too favourable an opinion of me and my qualities; but I shall remember that opinion, and will do my utmost to justify it.”

“Very well,” he answered; “no man can say more than that, and if you fulfil your promise I shall be perfectly satisfied. And now, as to the work upon which I propose to employ you. You must know that there is more work—a good deal more work—to be done on this station than there are ships to do it; consequently, although every ship at my disposal is now at sea, I am continually receiving complaints that the commerce in West Indian waters is inadequately protected. I have applied for additional ships, but have been told that there are none to spare, and that I must do the best I can with what I have. The fact is that the Caribbean and its approaches are not only swarming with privateers, but I have too much reason to believe that there is a strong gang of out-and-out pirates at work as well. I was in hopes that the capture of that pirate brigantine by theEuropawould put an end to all that kind of work, but it has not; indeed, it has scarcely made any appreciable impression upon the number of outrages of a distinctly piratical character that are being constantly reported to me. I am, of course, not now alluding to vessels that have gone temporarily missing, for they may in most cases be traced to the operations of the enemy; but I refer to those which vanish utterly, leaving no trace of any kind behind them to hint at their fate; and also to those other craft which are fallen in with, derelict, from time to time, plundered, and bearing indications that an attempt has been made to destroy them, either by scuttling them, or setting them on fire. Privateers don’t do that sort of thing, you know. If they capture a ship they generally put a prize-crew aboard her and send her into the nearest port belonging to them. Pirates, however, endeavour to escape identification by destroying all traces of their handiwork and butchering the unfortunate crews of the vessels.

“A case of this kind came to light only last week. TheKingston Traderof Bristol, with a very valuable cargo and five thousand pounds in specie, has been overdue about a month, and her consignees have been worrying me accordingly. Last Friday a small turtling schooner arrived from the Windward Passages, reporting that they had seen a wreck ashore near Tête de Chien on the island of Tortuga, off the north-west coast of Saint Domingo. They launched their pirogue, and succeeded in getting close enough to the wreck to identify her as the missingKingston Trader, and also to ascertain that she had been on fire, most of her upper works having been consumed. That is the third case of an almost identical kind that has occurred within the last two months, and I am convinced that it is the work of pirates.

“Now, young gentleman, I am going to give you the job of finding those pirates and bringing them to book. It is work for aman, I know, but I have not a man to spare; and I am convinced, from the way in which you answered my questions last night, and from the character which Captain Vavassour has given you, not only that you are a very capable young officer, but also that you have your full share of sound common sense and self-reliance—that you are, in fact, quite as likely to give a good account of yourself over this business as would many a much older man.

“Therefore, since you are certain to pass with flying colours as soon as an opportunity to present yourself for examination offers itself, I intend to give you an acting order as lieutenant, to place you in command of a small schooner with a good strong crew, and to send you off upon a roving commission to do your best to put down these piratical outrages that are so frequently occurring under our very noses. Now, what d’ye think of my scheme, youngster? Is the job too big for you to tackle?”

“No, sir,” I answered; “certainly not too big. The only thing I fear is that I may not be sufficiently experienced to execute so responsible a duty as efficiently as it ought to be executed. But I will do my very utmost, Sir Peter, I can promise you that; and if I can only have with me one or two thoroughly steady, reliable men to help me with an occasional word of advice, I believe we shall be able to give a very good account of ourselves.”

“Yes,” returned Sir Peter, “I believe so too, otherwise I would not dream of sending you. As to experience, well, there is only one way of gaining it, and that is by actually doing a thing; it is rather a rough school, perhaps, but it is the only one in which you can thoroughly learn your lesson, and I am glad to see that you have no idea of shirking it.

“And now, as to this seventy-four of yours. She is a fore-and-aft schooner of one hundred and ten tons, said to have been built at Baltimore. She is something of a freak, her designer having apparently turned his lines end for end and put his bows where his stern should be, andvice versa. Nevertheless, his theory seems to have been sound, for I’m told that she is a perfect witch for speed, especially in light weather, and speed is one of the qualities which you must have. She was caught smuggling, and was condemned to be sawn in two; but I thought we might perhaps be able to find a better use for her than that, so I have postponed the operation. She is called theWasp, and if you have as much enterprise as I give you credit for, you ought to make her sting to some purpose. You will find her in Hulk Hole, and— Stop a minute.” He rang a bell and a messenger entered.

“Jones,” said Sir Peter, “have you any idea where the master-attendant is?”

“Yes, sir,” answered the man, “he was outside on the wharf not half a minute ago.”

“Then, please, see if you can find him,” said the Admiral, “and request him to come here to me. Carline is a very decent fellow,” he continued, as soon as the messenger had vanished. “I’ll get him to take you aboard and show you the craft—he has the keys of the companion and fore-scuttle, I believe—and you and he can talk matters over together and decide what she will need to fit her for service. Ah! here is Carline. Good morning, Mr Carline. This is Mr Delamere, whom I am going to send out in charge of theWasp, to see what he can do toward putting a stop to these repeated piracies. I want you to take him aboard and let him have a thorough good look at the schooner; after which you and he can draw up a list of what is needed to render her fit for the work which she will have to do. And now, good morning, Mr Delamere. Come up to the Pen to dinner to-night; then you can report to me what you think the craft requires.”

“So the Admiral’s going to fit out that smugglin’ schooner and send you to sea in her, eh?” remarked the master-attendant as soon as we got outside.

I replied that I quite understood that to be Sir Peter’s intention.

“Oh, well,” he observed, “I don’t know how you’ll get on with her; she’s a queer one to look at, and I expect she’ll want some learnin’ before you’ll be able to handle her properly. Have you had any experience in a fore-and-after?”

“Only in boats,” I replied. “The barge of my old ship, theColossus, was rigged as a fore-and-aft schooner, and I’ve sailed her many’s the time; and I suppose all fore-and-afters are handled in pretty much the same way. The matter of mere size won’t make very much difference, I imagine.”

“Well, I expect you’ll find theWaspa bit different,” observed my companion; “she’s such a queer model, you see—everything about her is exactly the opposite of what we think it should be. She has tremendous beam, and no draught of water worth speakin’ of; an outrageously long tapering bow, and a short, squat stern— But there, you’ll see her presently. But there’s no doubt about it, she can sail—there’s nothing in this harbour that can look at her; and as for working, why, I’ve been told that she has been known to be round and full on the other tack twenty seconds after puttin’ the helm down!”

“Well, that is good news at all events,” I remarked. “I like a nice, smart-working ship— Why, Henderson, where in the world did you spring from? and how is it that you are not away in the frigate?” I exclaimed, as we encountered a figure that was perfectly familiar to me.

“For the same reason as yourself, Mr Delamere,” answered the man, touching his hat. “I was on my beam-ends in the hospital when she went to sea—bowled over in the scrimmage wi’ that brigantine, same as you was.”

“And where are you, and what doing now?” I demanded.

“Why, sir, I’m aboard the guardship, along wi’ another or two of our chaps as was discharged from the hospital about the same time as I was,” answered the man—formerly one of theEuropa’squartermasters.

“Oh, indeed,” I replied, very much surprised, for I had not known that there were others as well as myself put ashore from the frigate; “and are you all ready for duty again?” I asked.

“Ay, that we are, sir,” answered Henderson, “and shall be glad enough to get to sea and have a mouthful of fresh air once more. This bein’ in harbour is all very well for a change, but a man soon gets enough of it; and, a’ter all, it ain’t half so comfortable as bein’ at sea.”

“Then in that case,” said I, seeing my way to getting one good hand, at least, “perhaps you may be willing to volunteer for a little schooner that the Admiral is going to give me to go pirate-hunting in?”

“Ay, that indeed I will, Mr Delamere, and glad of the chance,” answered Henderson heartily; “and perhaps, sir,” he added, “I could help you to two or three more good men, if so be as you happen to want ’em.”

“Well, I think it more than likely that I shall,” said I, “so just keep your eyes open in that direction. I shall no doubt see you again to-morrow or next day, when we can have a further chat.”

Henderson touched his hat and turned away, and the master-attendant and I made our way along the wharf to the landing-steps. Here he directed four men to jump down into his gig and spread the cushions in the stern-sheets, while he went into his office to procure the keys which were to afford us access to the interior of my “seventy-four,” as the Admiral had jestingly called her. Then, descending the steps and taking our places in the gig, Carline seized the yoke-lines, gave the word to shove off, and away we went, across the upper end of the harbour and through the boat channel, past Gallows Point, whereon stood the stout posts and beam from which the five ringleaders of the pirates taken aboard the brigantine had been launched into eternity.

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