Chapter Nineteen.In the Pirate’s Stronghold.Here we waited nearly half-an-hour, at the conclusion of which a door at the upper end of the chamber opened, and a tall, rather good-looking man, dressed entirely in white, entered. At his appearance Carlos sprang to his feet and, saluting, handed over the note which Mateo had scrawled. The stranger, who was none other than “Don” Victor Fernandez, Captain Manuel Garcia’s second-in-command, took the note, read it, glanced at me curiously, and then nodded curtly to Carlos and his companions.“Good!” he ejaculated. “The Captain will highly appreciate the thoughtfulness of your new chief, Mateo, in sending him this Englishman. In his name I desire to tender his warmest thanks to Mateo, and request you to convey them, with every expression of his highest consideration. Do you leave us to-night, or will you remain until the morning? If the latter—”“Mille gracias, señor!” answered Carlos; “we should greatly like to stay here for the night, and rest, for this day has been an exceptionally trying and fatiguing one for us; but Mateo’s instructions that we should rejoin him at the earliest possible moment were imperative and must not be neglected. But if we may be permitted to stay long enough to share your people’s supper, we will gladly do so.”“So be it,” answered Fernandez. “Find Pacheco, and tell him that you will sup in the great hall with the rest of the hands, and then request him to come to me.” Whereupon Carlos and his two fellow-cut-throats saluted and retired.For a minute or two after the departure of the trio, Fernandez sat meditatively regarding me in silence, twisting and turning Mateo’s note in his fingers meanwhile. At length, with just the ghost of a smile flickering over his features, he said, tapping the note in his hand:“The worthy Mateo tells me that you were the officer in command of the little schooner that gave theTiburonsuch a severe dressing down a little while ago. Is that really the fact?”“Yes,” I answered, “I am proud to say that it is.”“Well,” he returned, “I can scarcely credit it. Why, you are only a boy!”“So people are constantly reminding me,” I retorted. “But in the British Navy boys soon learn to do men’s work.”“So it would appear,” assented my interlocutor, apparently in nowise offended at my brusque method of answering him. “And you are an Englishman, of course. What is your name?”I told him.“Well, Señor Delamere,” he said, “it is perhaps a lucky thing for you that Captain Garcia went to sea four days ago in the refittedTiburon, and that he may possibly not return for nearly a month. Had he been here at this moment I do not for an instant believe that he would have given you the chance that I am going to offer you; for he has vowed that if ever he can lay hands upon you he will make such an example of you as will strike terror to the heart of his every enemy. Of course I sympathise with him to a great extent, for he has never in his life had such a trouncing as you gave him with that ridiculous little schooner of yours; and, apart from other considerations, his self-love has been very severely wounded. Therefore, being a man who never forgets nor forgives an injury, he will not be satisfied until he has salved his wounded pride by making you pay in full in a manner that will cause every sailor in West Indian waters to shudder with horror. But I am not vindictive—as he is; I am always willing to subordinate revenge to the good of the community, by which, of course, I mean our community, the little republic which at present is bounded by the cliffs which enclose this cove, but which in process of time is destined to include the whole of this magnificent island of Hayti and—who knows?—possibly the entire group of islands now known as the West Indies. And you, young as you are, have proved yourself to be a formidable enemy; you have courage, resolution, and apparently all the other qualities that go to the making of a successful leader; therefore I think it a thousand pities that you should be wasted, uselessly expended, in the mere gratification of a petty revenge which will benefit nobody anything; on the contrary, I am convinced that we should gain immensely by making you one of ourselves— Nay, do not interrupt me, please; hear me to the end before you attempt to reply. In the absence of Garcia I am supreme here; I can secure your election as a member of our band, and once a member, you are absolutely safe from Garcia, for it is one of the rules of our brotherhood that ‘One is for all, and all are for one;’ private jealousies and animosities are absolutely forbidden, and the punishment for transgressing this law isdeath, let the offender be who he will.“Now, that is one argument in favour of your joining us. But there are others. We are weak, as yet, it is true; but that is because, as a community, we are still very young. We are, however, gaining strength almost daily; every capture we make adds to our numbers, because we give our prisoners the choice between joining us, and—death; and nine of every ten choose the former. Also, we are rapidly accumulating wealth, which is power; and with the power which unlimited wealth will give us, added to the power of constantly increasing numbers, all things are possible to us, even to the conquest of the world! Now, a lad of your intelligence ought to be able to see, without much persuasion, how tremendous an advantage it will be to belong to such a formidable band as we shall soon become, therefore I put it to you in a nutshell—Will you join us?”Upon discovering the direction in which my companion’s arguments were trending, my first impulse had been to interrupt him indignantly by declaring that I saw through his purpose, and would have naught to do with it. But he would not permit me to do this; he insisted upon saying his say to the end; and while he was doing this I had time for reflection. I perceived that the man was an enthusiastic visionary possessed of such boundless ambition that he was able to see nothing except the impossible goal which he and his fellow-leaders had set before themselves. I saw that this fellow Fernandez, at all events, had dwelt upon the mad scheme of conquest, first of Hayti, then of the West Indian Islands, and ultimately, as he had declared, of the whole world, until it had become an obsession with him in which all difficulties were swept away and his gorgeous dream had seemed to be a thing already almost within reach. It occurred to me that by pretending to listen to this dreamer, to appear to treat his dreams as though it was possible for them to eventually materialise, and to seem to weigh the proposal seriously which he had made to me, I might gain time enough to mature some plan of escape, and to put it into effect before the return of theTiburonand my arch-enemy Garcia; and while, as a general rule, I most emphatically disapprove of everything that savours of deception, I felt that, taking all the circumstances of the case into consideration, I should be perfectly justified in practising such dissimulation as might be necessary to extricate myself from the exceedingly awkward situation in which I now found myself.Therefore when, with eyes ablaze with enthusiasm, Fernandez flashed the question at me, “Will you join us?” I hesitated just for a second or two, and then replied:“I suppose you hardly expect me to answer offhand so momentous a question as that, do you? It is all very well, of course, for you, who have given the matter much careful thought, to feel so confident as you do that your plans are capable of realisation, but with me it is very different; the entire idea is absolutely new to me, and—if I may be permitted to say so—looks little short of chimerical.”“But it isnotchimerical,” Fernandez impatiently insisted; “on the contrary, it is perfectly feasible and, as we have planned it, absolutely certain of realisation.”There is no need for me to repeat at length all the arguments that this man adduced in support of his contention; let it suffice me to say that I listened to him with deep attention—for I wanted to learn as many particulars as I possibly could concerning the plans of this extraordinary band, with a view to future contingencies—and when at length I left his presence I believe I also left him under the impression that he had more than half convinced me of the advisability of acceding to his proposal.Meanwhile the man Pacheco, in obedience to the command conveyed through Carlos, had been patiently waiting in the antechamber for the summons to appear and receive the commands of Fernandez concerning me; and now, the interview being at an end, the former was called into the room.“Pacheco,” said Fernandez, “this young gentleman is Señor Delamere, the officer who commanded the small British man-o’-war schooner that lately attacked theTiburon. His vessel foundered in the gale that sprang up immediately after the action, and he contrived somehow to make his way to the shore, where he was nursed back to health and strength in the hacienda of Bella Vista, belonging to Señor Don Luis Calderon y Albuquerque. That hacienda was attacked by Petion and his band in the early hours of this morning, and—as Carlos has doubtless already told you—Petion was killed during the attack, while Señor Delamere subsequently fell into the hands of Mateo, Petion’s second-in-command, who very thoughtfully sent him on to us.“Now, Señor Delamere, being, although still very young, a naval officer of considerable experience and undoubted courage, will be an acquisition of the utmost value to us if we can but succeed in inducing him to join us—and I have hopes, very great hopes of doing so. I, therefore, want you to take him in charge for the present, showing him the utmost consideration, and allowing him free range of the settlement,—since it will be impossible for him to escape,—because I desire him to become thoroughly acquainted with all our resources, and to see for himself the perfection of all our arrangements for securing the success of our great enterprise.”I could scarcely believe my ears when I heard Fernandez give this extraordinary and, as I deemed it, most imprudent order. It seemed too good to be true! Why, if the foolish man had but known it, there was nothing I could possibly have more ardently wished for than liberty to range freely the settlement and become fully acquainted with all its resources! If I had ever dreamed of such a possibility as this it would not have needed that I should be brought a prisoner to the place; I should have been but too eager to make my way to it voluntarily. But, of course, it was much better as it was, for now all that I had to do was to keep my eyes and ears wide-open, learn everything I possibly could, and, generally, make the very best use of my time before the return of Garcia, while humouring Fernandez to the top of his bent in his delusion that he would ultimately convince me of the advantage of joining the band. Moreover, I believed I should not have much difficulty in accomplishing this last; for, although I was at first somewhat at a loss to understand his great eagerness to secure me as a recruit, it became perfectly intelligible when I learned a little later on that the only weak point in the entire scheme consisted in the extreme scarcity of trained sailors capable of undertaking the more important executive duties. Seamen, of the kind to be found in a ship’s forecastle, they possessed, not exactly in abundance, but sufficient for their ordinary necessities; but it appeared that, apart from Garcia, his first lieutenant, and one other, they had not a single navigator among them; and it was easy to understand that, if anything untoward should happen to either of these men, the activities of the brotherhood would be seriously crippled, while a fatality that swept the whole of them away might well mean the utter ruin of all their hopes. I did not learn this quite at once, for it seemed to be the one item of information upon which Fernandez desired me to remain ignorant; but, mingling freely with everybody, as I was permitted to do, it was impossible for them to prevent the secret from ultimately leaking out, and I had not been in the settlement more than three days before I became acquainted with it, and with a good many other things as well.For instance, I learned that of the three navigators which the community boasted, two—namely, Garcia and another—were on board theTiburon, while the third was in command of a most respectable-looking brig, which, provided with a complete set of false papers, was engaged in conveying to various ports such portions of the cargoes of plundered ships as were not needed by the pirates themselves, disposing of the same for cash, and procuring with that cash such commodities as were required from time to time. The felucca that lay at anchor in the bay had also been similarly employed; but she was now idle, the man who had commanded her being with Garcia in theTiburon, in place of an officer who had been killed in the action with theWasp.At the time of my arrival this extraordinary pirate settlement, or community, consisted of some forty seamen of various nationalities—except Englishmen—who had thrown in their lot with Garcia, Fernandez, and the rest; and about a hundred others who, although not seamen, were most useful for the performance of such strictly shore duty as the erection of houses, the loading and discharging of the trading brig, the storage of the various commodities needed by the community, the working up of rough spars into spare masts, yards, booms, etcetera, for the brig and schooner, the making of spare sails for the same, and, in short, the execution of all those multitudinous kinds of work that are essential to the comfort of man in his civilised condition. And exceedingly comfortable the rascals made themselves, for the houses were well-built, and in many cases beautifully furnished; also they enjoyed many luxuries, procured either from the cargoes of plundered ships, or purchased out of the proceeds of the sale of such plunder as they did not require for their own use.It was not long before I discovered that there was a mystery of some sort attaching to the felucca that lay at anchor in the bay. I had made more than one attempt to go on board her, with the object of giving her an overhaul, but each attempt had been quietly met and frustrated in such a way that I soon grew to understand I could not persist further without exciting grave suspicion, which was the one thing of all others that I most desired to avoid. For it was this felucca that I regarded as my only possible means of escape from the pirates, and, that being the case, it was of the utmost importance that I should do nothing to betray the thought that lurked at the back of my mind. She was a fine, sturdy-looking little craft, measuring somewhere about sixty tons; and I felt that if I could but once get aboard her, and get enough sail hoisted to take me out to sea, the most difficult part of my adventure would be over; for Jamaica lay to leeward, and I could not very well lose my way, even if I were compelled to go to sea without a chart. It is true that the rig of a felucca—namely, a single latteen-sail, its head stretched along an enormously long, tapering yard, hoisted to the top of a stout, stumpy mast raking well forward—is not precisely the rig that I would willingly choose to go to sea alone with; but beggars must not be choosers, and it seemed to me to be Hobson’s choice—that or nothing. I must therefore make up my mind to face the difficulties of the rig and do the best I could with it, or remain until Garcia’s return, and so miss my only chance. Of course, there was just the bare possibility that I might find a man, or even two or three, willing to share the adventure with me—for I could scarcely believe that every member of the community had quite willingly joined it without compulsion of any kind—but I had no intention of jeopardising my chances of success by making inquiries, of however cautious a character. If such men were to be found it would have to be almost by pure accident; meanwhile it was for me to make my plans in such a manner that, if necessary, they could be carried out single-handed.But it was imperative that I should visit the felucca, by hook or by crook; and since I had already discovered that it could not be managed during the day, there was nothing for it but to make the attempt at night. Now, I was in Pacheco’s charge, he was responsible for me, and although I was nominally free to come and go as I would, it was not long before I discovered that it was practically impossible for me to get out of his sight for more than five or ten minutes at a time, except at night time, when I was granted the privilege of a small room to myself in his house. Even then, for the first week of my sojourn, I could scarcely stir in my bed but at the creaking of it he would be at my door, inquiring why I was moving, and whether I required anything, the questioning being, I fancied, simply for the purpose of assuring himself that I was still in the room. But as the days—or rather the nights—went on his vigilance gradually relaxed, for I so shaped my speech as to convey the impression that, at least in my own mind, I had practically decided to join the band. It was this, perhaps, that so far threw him off his guard as to betray him, on a certain night, into the indulgence of his favourite vice, which was a too-marked devotion to the rum bottle. For several nights in succession—ever since I had been placed in his charge, in fact—he had been perforce compelled to remain perfectly sober in order that he might keep a strict watch upon me, but at length when, while we were sitting at table together, taking supper, I allowed him to believe that I had finally decided to go to Fernandez the next morning and take the oath, he ventured to celebrate my conversion by drinking my health in a stiff nor’wester of rum and water—rather more rum than water. That act of weakness was his undoing, for at the first taste of the spirit after his forced abstention he completely lost all control of himself, and could no more refrain from taking a second tumbler than he could have flown. The second naturally led to a third, and the third to a fourth; whereupon, recognising that my chance was at hand, I yawned twice or thrice most portentously, complained of fatigue, and retired to my room, he following as far as the door and locking me in, as was his custom before going to his own room. But that troubled me not a whit, for the house was of one story only, and to slip out of it by way of the open window was almost as easy as walking out through the door, once my gaoler became so deeply wrapped in sleep that my stealthy movements would not awake him.I moved quite carelessly about the room for a minute or two, and then flung myself heavily upon the bed, fully dressed; and as I did so I heard Pacheco go tiptoeing clumsily back to the table, stumbling against a chair on the way, and muttering imprecations at his own clumsiness as he went. A further gurgling of liquor being poured into a glass followed, then a deep sigh of satisfaction as the glass was emptied, the bang of it as it was noisily replaced on the table, and finally the man’s staggering footsteps along the floor as he made his way to his own room. Then came the kicking off of his shoes, followed by other sounds indicative of the fact that he was undressing, a heavy creaking of the bedstead as he flung himself upon it, and, a minute or two later, deep snoring.But it was still much too early for me to think of making a move, for sounds reached me from the outside which told me that quite a number of people were still up and about; I therefore waited, with suchpatience as I could muster, until these had all ceased, and then allowed something like another half-hour to elapse, in order to make all sure—for this was a case where it were better to be half-an-hour late than half-a-minute too early, and by undue haste spoil everything.At length, however, the complete absence of all sound suggestive, of human movement outside, and the steady, regular, resonant snore of Pacheco in the next room, encouraged me to make my preliminary move, which I did by rising, slowly and with infinite caution, to a sitting position on my bed. This done, I next got off the bed altogether, not, however, without causing the thing to give forth sundry most alarming creaks, each of which brought my heart into my mouth. But the snoring in the next room went on steadily, without pause or break, and two minutes later I found myself standing, barefooted, outside my window, ready to scramble back into the room upon the first suggestion of danger. Nothing happened, however; and with my shoes in my hand I next proceeded to creep very cautiously round to the front of the house.The night was clear, with no moon, but the sky was brilliant with stars affording even more light than I really wanted; and at length, having peered cautiously round me and noted that the buildings were all dark, showing that the inhabitants had retired to rest, I stole slowly, crouching, across the open and so down to the beach. Among the boats drawn up on the sand there was a small Norwegian boat, much used as a dinghy, and consequently not drawn as far up on the beach as the others; this was the craft that I was on the lookout for, and by and by I found her, half afloat, and secured by her painter to a small anchor dug well into the sand. Lifting the anchor with the utmost care, I noiselessly deposited it in her bows, and then, making sure that her oars were in her, I lifted her bow and slid her off the sand until she was fairly afloat, when I gently turned her round, gave her a vigorous push, and scrambled in over her stern, taking care to do everything without noise. Then, throwing out an oar over the stern, I headed the boat in the direction of the scarcely visible felucca, and proceeded to scull off to her.Thus far everything had gone smoothly and without the ghost of a hitch, but the really difficult part of my enterprise was still to come. I estimated that a good four hundred miles lay between the cove and Port Royal harbour, which distance, at an average speed of six knots, would take me the best part of three days and nights to cover, under the most favourable conditions. To do this, I should need both food and water, and I had not the most remote idea whether either was to be found on board the felucca, although I hoped they might be, for I had seen half-a-dozen men go off to her regularly every day, for some purpose which I could not divine, unless perchance it were to pump her out. But food and water were absolutely necessary to ensure my success, and unless I could find at least a sufficiency to last me three days, I must return and take measures to provide a supply; for to start without would be simply courting disaster. That, however, was a point which could only be settled upon my arrival on board.Taking the matter very easily, husbanding all my strength for the exceedingly difficult task of getting the felucca under way single-handed—in the event of all things conspiring to render such a decided step justifiable—and sculling so gently that I scarcely raised a ripple on the highly phosphorescent water, I at length glided quietly up alongside the felucca and, taking the end of the boat’s painter with me, climbed in over the vessel’s low bulwarks, passed the dinghy astern, made her fast, and forthwith proceeded to overhaul the craft which I had thus surreptitiously visited.My first visit was to her tiny cabin, the companion door of which I found unlocked. But when I got below it was so intensely dark that I could see nothing, and I felt that at all costs I must have a light, or it would be morning, and my flight would be discovered long before I could learn all that I wanted to ascertain. I, therefore, went on deck again, loosed the immense sail, and spread a fold of it over the small skylight in order to mask the light in the cabin—should I be fortunate enough to obtain one—and then went forward to the forecastle to hunt for a lantern of some sort. I found the fore-scuttle not only closed, but also secured by a stout iron bar, the slotted end of which was passed over a staple and secured by a padlock. Fortunately, however, the individual who had last visited the little vessel had been too careless or too lazy to remove the key from the lock, therefore all I had to do was to turn the key, remove the padlock from the staple, throw back the bar, lift off the cover, and my way down into the forecastle was clear. But I had no sooner lifted off the hatch cover and was preparing to descend than, to my utter consternation, I became aware of the fact that the forecastle was inhabited. For as I flung my leg in over the coamings I distinctly heard a sound of stirring, followed, to my amazement, by the drowsy muttering of a voice in English, grumbling:“What the blazes do they want now; and who comes off here at this time o’ night? ’Taint time to turn out yet, I’ll swear, for I don’t seem to have been asleep more’n five minutes!”English! Then the speaker must certainly be a friend, and without more ado I dropped down into the little forecastle, exclaiming:“Hillo, there! Who are you, my friend; and what the dickens are you doing locked up here in this forecastle?”“Who am I?” retorted the voice. “Why, I’m an Englishman; my name’s Tom Brown, and the name of my mate here is Joe Cutler; both of us late of His Britannic Majesty’s schoonerWasp, what foundered in a gale o’ wind somewheres off this here coast a while since. We was picked up off a bit of wreckage by the crew of this here hooker—what turned out to be something in the piratical line—and brought into harbour. And since we’ve been here we’ve been made to work like niggers because we wouldn’t jine the ‘brotherhood,’ as they calls theirselves. Latterly we’ve been kept aboard this here feluccer, because it appears that there’s some chap ashore there as they don’t want to see us. Ay, and if it comes to that, perhaps you’re the chap. Seems to me as I’ve heard your voice before. Who are you at all, gov’nor?”“My name is Delamere,” I replied, “and I commanded—”“Of course, of course,” interrupted Brown; “Mr Delamere it is! I knowed that I knowed that voice of yours, sir. Here, you Joe, rouse and bitt, man; here’s the skipper come to life again. Half a minute, sir, and we’ll have a light. Joe, you lighted the ‘glim’ last; what did ye do wi’ the tinder-box?”The two men were broad awake, out of their bunks, and bustling about almost before one could draw a breath, and the next moment they had lighted a lantern, in the dim glimmer of which they stood up side by side, saluting, as I stared into their faces scarcely able to credit such a stupendous piece of good fortune as the unexpected discovery of these two men, not only Englishmen, but actually members of my own late crew!“My lads,” I exclaimed, as they stood before me at attention, “I am more glad than I can express, not only to find that you, like myself, have managed to escape with your lives, but also that you are here, aboard this felucca. For I fully intended to make the somewhat desperate attempt to escape in her single-handed; but the presence of you two men puts a very different complexion upon the affair. What I might have been wholly unable to accomplish alone, we three can together manage with ease. There is only one possible difficulty in our way: Can you tell me whether there happens to be any food and water aboard this craft?”“Yes, sir,” answered Brown, “there’s both, for we’re fed every day out of the ship’s stores. There’s the scuttle butt on deck nearly full o’ water, and there’s grub down in the lazarette, but how much I don’t know.”“Then let us go at once and ascertain,” said I, “for my escape may be discovered at any moment, and naturally this would be where they would first look for me. Mask that lantern with your jacket, one of you, and bring it along aft. Every second is now of importance to us.”It took us but a few minutes to penetrate to the little vessel’s lazarette, where we found an ample supply of provisions of all kinds for a much larger crew than ourselves and a much longer voyage than we contemplated.“Very well,” I remarked, as I ran my eye over the array of biscuit and flour barrels and the casks, some of which were branded “prime mess beef,” while others contained potatoes and sundry other commodities, “that will do; we shall certainly not starve during the next few days, whatever else may happen to us. Now clap on that hatch again, and we will go on deck, slip the cable, and make sail without further ado.”
Here we waited nearly half-an-hour, at the conclusion of which a door at the upper end of the chamber opened, and a tall, rather good-looking man, dressed entirely in white, entered. At his appearance Carlos sprang to his feet and, saluting, handed over the note which Mateo had scrawled. The stranger, who was none other than “Don” Victor Fernandez, Captain Manuel Garcia’s second-in-command, took the note, read it, glanced at me curiously, and then nodded curtly to Carlos and his companions.
“Good!” he ejaculated. “The Captain will highly appreciate the thoughtfulness of your new chief, Mateo, in sending him this Englishman. In his name I desire to tender his warmest thanks to Mateo, and request you to convey them, with every expression of his highest consideration. Do you leave us to-night, or will you remain until the morning? If the latter—”
“Mille gracias, señor!” answered Carlos; “we should greatly like to stay here for the night, and rest, for this day has been an exceptionally trying and fatiguing one for us; but Mateo’s instructions that we should rejoin him at the earliest possible moment were imperative and must not be neglected. But if we may be permitted to stay long enough to share your people’s supper, we will gladly do so.”
“So be it,” answered Fernandez. “Find Pacheco, and tell him that you will sup in the great hall with the rest of the hands, and then request him to come to me.” Whereupon Carlos and his two fellow-cut-throats saluted and retired.
For a minute or two after the departure of the trio, Fernandez sat meditatively regarding me in silence, twisting and turning Mateo’s note in his fingers meanwhile. At length, with just the ghost of a smile flickering over his features, he said, tapping the note in his hand:
“The worthy Mateo tells me that you were the officer in command of the little schooner that gave theTiburonsuch a severe dressing down a little while ago. Is that really the fact?”
“Yes,” I answered, “I am proud to say that it is.”
“Well,” he returned, “I can scarcely credit it. Why, you are only a boy!”
“So people are constantly reminding me,” I retorted. “But in the British Navy boys soon learn to do men’s work.”
“So it would appear,” assented my interlocutor, apparently in nowise offended at my brusque method of answering him. “And you are an Englishman, of course. What is your name?”
I told him.
“Well, Señor Delamere,” he said, “it is perhaps a lucky thing for you that Captain Garcia went to sea four days ago in the refittedTiburon, and that he may possibly not return for nearly a month. Had he been here at this moment I do not for an instant believe that he would have given you the chance that I am going to offer you; for he has vowed that if ever he can lay hands upon you he will make such an example of you as will strike terror to the heart of his every enemy. Of course I sympathise with him to a great extent, for he has never in his life had such a trouncing as you gave him with that ridiculous little schooner of yours; and, apart from other considerations, his self-love has been very severely wounded. Therefore, being a man who never forgets nor forgives an injury, he will not be satisfied until he has salved his wounded pride by making you pay in full in a manner that will cause every sailor in West Indian waters to shudder with horror. But I am not vindictive—as he is; I am always willing to subordinate revenge to the good of the community, by which, of course, I mean our community, the little republic which at present is bounded by the cliffs which enclose this cove, but which in process of time is destined to include the whole of this magnificent island of Hayti and—who knows?—possibly the entire group of islands now known as the West Indies. And you, young as you are, have proved yourself to be a formidable enemy; you have courage, resolution, and apparently all the other qualities that go to the making of a successful leader; therefore I think it a thousand pities that you should be wasted, uselessly expended, in the mere gratification of a petty revenge which will benefit nobody anything; on the contrary, I am convinced that we should gain immensely by making you one of ourselves— Nay, do not interrupt me, please; hear me to the end before you attempt to reply. In the absence of Garcia I am supreme here; I can secure your election as a member of our band, and once a member, you are absolutely safe from Garcia, for it is one of the rules of our brotherhood that ‘One is for all, and all are for one;’ private jealousies and animosities are absolutely forbidden, and the punishment for transgressing this law isdeath, let the offender be who he will.
“Now, that is one argument in favour of your joining us. But there are others. We are weak, as yet, it is true; but that is because, as a community, we are still very young. We are, however, gaining strength almost daily; every capture we make adds to our numbers, because we give our prisoners the choice between joining us, and—death; and nine of every ten choose the former. Also, we are rapidly accumulating wealth, which is power; and with the power which unlimited wealth will give us, added to the power of constantly increasing numbers, all things are possible to us, even to the conquest of the world! Now, a lad of your intelligence ought to be able to see, without much persuasion, how tremendous an advantage it will be to belong to such a formidable band as we shall soon become, therefore I put it to you in a nutshell—Will you join us?”
Upon discovering the direction in which my companion’s arguments were trending, my first impulse had been to interrupt him indignantly by declaring that I saw through his purpose, and would have naught to do with it. But he would not permit me to do this; he insisted upon saying his say to the end; and while he was doing this I had time for reflection. I perceived that the man was an enthusiastic visionary possessed of such boundless ambition that he was able to see nothing except the impossible goal which he and his fellow-leaders had set before themselves. I saw that this fellow Fernandez, at all events, had dwelt upon the mad scheme of conquest, first of Hayti, then of the West Indian Islands, and ultimately, as he had declared, of the whole world, until it had become an obsession with him in which all difficulties were swept away and his gorgeous dream had seemed to be a thing already almost within reach. It occurred to me that by pretending to listen to this dreamer, to appear to treat his dreams as though it was possible for them to eventually materialise, and to seem to weigh the proposal seriously which he had made to me, I might gain time enough to mature some plan of escape, and to put it into effect before the return of theTiburonand my arch-enemy Garcia; and while, as a general rule, I most emphatically disapprove of everything that savours of deception, I felt that, taking all the circumstances of the case into consideration, I should be perfectly justified in practising such dissimulation as might be necessary to extricate myself from the exceedingly awkward situation in which I now found myself.
Therefore when, with eyes ablaze with enthusiasm, Fernandez flashed the question at me, “Will you join us?” I hesitated just for a second or two, and then replied:
“I suppose you hardly expect me to answer offhand so momentous a question as that, do you? It is all very well, of course, for you, who have given the matter much careful thought, to feel so confident as you do that your plans are capable of realisation, but with me it is very different; the entire idea is absolutely new to me, and—if I may be permitted to say so—looks little short of chimerical.”
“But it isnotchimerical,” Fernandez impatiently insisted; “on the contrary, it is perfectly feasible and, as we have planned it, absolutely certain of realisation.”
There is no need for me to repeat at length all the arguments that this man adduced in support of his contention; let it suffice me to say that I listened to him with deep attention—for I wanted to learn as many particulars as I possibly could concerning the plans of this extraordinary band, with a view to future contingencies—and when at length I left his presence I believe I also left him under the impression that he had more than half convinced me of the advisability of acceding to his proposal.
Meanwhile the man Pacheco, in obedience to the command conveyed through Carlos, had been patiently waiting in the antechamber for the summons to appear and receive the commands of Fernandez concerning me; and now, the interview being at an end, the former was called into the room.
“Pacheco,” said Fernandez, “this young gentleman is Señor Delamere, the officer who commanded the small British man-o’-war schooner that lately attacked theTiburon. His vessel foundered in the gale that sprang up immediately after the action, and he contrived somehow to make his way to the shore, where he was nursed back to health and strength in the hacienda of Bella Vista, belonging to Señor Don Luis Calderon y Albuquerque. That hacienda was attacked by Petion and his band in the early hours of this morning, and—as Carlos has doubtless already told you—Petion was killed during the attack, while Señor Delamere subsequently fell into the hands of Mateo, Petion’s second-in-command, who very thoughtfully sent him on to us.
“Now, Señor Delamere, being, although still very young, a naval officer of considerable experience and undoubted courage, will be an acquisition of the utmost value to us if we can but succeed in inducing him to join us—and I have hopes, very great hopes of doing so. I, therefore, want you to take him in charge for the present, showing him the utmost consideration, and allowing him free range of the settlement,—since it will be impossible for him to escape,—because I desire him to become thoroughly acquainted with all our resources, and to see for himself the perfection of all our arrangements for securing the success of our great enterprise.”
I could scarcely believe my ears when I heard Fernandez give this extraordinary and, as I deemed it, most imprudent order. It seemed too good to be true! Why, if the foolish man had but known it, there was nothing I could possibly have more ardently wished for than liberty to range freely the settlement and become fully acquainted with all its resources! If I had ever dreamed of such a possibility as this it would not have needed that I should be brought a prisoner to the place; I should have been but too eager to make my way to it voluntarily. But, of course, it was much better as it was, for now all that I had to do was to keep my eyes and ears wide-open, learn everything I possibly could, and, generally, make the very best use of my time before the return of Garcia, while humouring Fernandez to the top of his bent in his delusion that he would ultimately convince me of the advantage of joining the band. Moreover, I believed I should not have much difficulty in accomplishing this last; for, although I was at first somewhat at a loss to understand his great eagerness to secure me as a recruit, it became perfectly intelligible when I learned a little later on that the only weak point in the entire scheme consisted in the extreme scarcity of trained sailors capable of undertaking the more important executive duties. Seamen, of the kind to be found in a ship’s forecastle, they possessed, not exactly in abundance, but sufficient for their ordinary necessities; but it appeared that, apart from Garcia, his first lieutenant, and one other, they had not a single navigator among them; and it was easy to understand that, if anything untoward should happen to either of these men, the activities of the brotherhood would be seriously crippled, while a fatality that swept the whole of them away might well mean the utter ruin of all their hopes. I did not learn this quite at once, for it seemed to be the one item of information upon which Fernandez desired me to remain ignorant; but, mingling freely with everybody, as I was permitted to do, it was impossible for them to prevent the secret from ultimately leaking out, and I had not been in the settlement more than three days before I became acquainted with it, and with a good many other things as well.
For instance, I learned that of the three navigators which the community boasted, two—namely, Garcia and another—were on board theTiburon, while the third was in command of a most respectable-looking brig, which, provided with a complete set of false papers, was engaged in conveying to various ports such portions of the cargoes of plundered ships as were not needed by the pirates themselves, disposing of the same for cash, and procuring with that cash such commodities as were required from time to time. The felucca that lay at anchor in the bay had also been similarly employed; but she was now idle, the man who had commanded her being with Garcia in theTiburon, in place of an officer who had been killed in the action with theWasp.
At the time of my arrival this extraordinary pirate settlement, or community, consisted of some forty seamen of various nationalities—except Englishmen—who had thrown in their lot with Garcia, Fernandez, and the rest; and about a hundred others who, although not seamen, were most useful for the performance of such strictly shore duty as the erection of houses, the loading and discharging of the trading brig, the storage of the various commodities needed by the community, the working up of rough spars into spare masts, yards, booms, etcetera, for the brig and schooner, the making of spare sails for the same, and, in short, the execution of all those multitudinous kinds of work that are essential to the comfort of man in his civilised condition. And exceedingly comfortable the rascals made themselves, for the houses were well-built, and in many cases beautifully furnished; also they enjoyed many luxuries, procured either from the cargoes of plundered ships, or purchased out of the proceeds of the sale of such plunder as they did not require for their own use.
It was not long before I discovered that there was a mystery of some sort attaching to the felucca that lay at anchor in the bay. I had made more than one attempt to go on board her, with the object of giving her an overhaul, but each attempt had been quietly met and frustrated in such a way that I soon grew to understand I could not persist further without exciting grave suspicion, which was the one thing of all others that I most desired to avoid. For it was this felucca that I regarded as my only possible means of escape from the pirates, and, that being the case, it was of the utmost importance that I should do nothing to betray the thought that lurked at the back of my mind. She was a fine, sturdy-looking little craft, measuring somewhere about sixty tons; and I felt that if I could but once get aboard her, and get enough sail hoisted to take me out to sea, the most difficult part of my adventure would be over; for Jamaica lay to leeward, and I could not very well lose my way, even if I were compelled to go to sea without a chart. It is true that the rig of a felucca—namely, a single latteen-sail, its head stretched along an enormously long, tapering yard, hoisted to the top of a stout, stumpy mast raking well forward—is not precisely the rig that I would willingly choose to go to sea alone with; but beggars must not be choosers, and it seemed to me to be Hobson’s choice—that or nothing. I must therefore make up my mind to face the difficulties of the rig and do the best I could with it, or remain until Garcia’s return, and so miss my only chance. Of course, there was just the bare possibility that I might find a man, or even two or three, willing to share the adventure with me—for I could scarcely believe that every member of the community had quite willingly joined it without compulsion of any kind—but I had no intention of jeopardising my chances of success by making inquiries, of however cautious a character. If such men were to be found it would have to be almost by pure accident; meanwhile it was for me to make my plans in such a manner that, if necessary, they could be carried out single-handed.
But it was imperative that I should visit the felucca, by hook or by crook; and since I had already discovered that it could not be managed during the day, there was nothing for it but to make the attempt at night. Now, I was in Pacheco’s charge, he was responsible for me, and although I was nominally free to come and go as I would, it was not long before I discovered that it was practically impossible for me to get out of his sight for more than five or ten minutes at a time, except at night time, when I was granted the privilege of a small room to myself in his house. Even then, for the first week of my sojourn, I could scarcely stir in my bed but at the creaking of it he would be at my door, inquiring why I was moving, and whether I required anything, the questioning being, I fancied, simply for the purpose of assuring himself that I was still in the room. But as the days—or rather the nights—went on his vigilance gradually relaxed, for I so shaped my speech as to convey the impression that, at least in my own mind, I had practically decided to join the band. It was this, perhaps, that so far threw him off his guard as to betray him, on a certain night, into the indulgence of his favourite vice, which was a too-marked devotion to the rum bottle. For several nights in succession—ever since I had been placed in his charge, in fact—he had been perforce compelled to remain perfectly sober in order that he might keep a strict watch upon me, but at length when, while we were sitting at table together, taking supper, I allowed him to believe that I had finally decided to go to Fernandez the next morning and take the oath, he ventured to celebrate my conversion by drinking my health in a stiff nor’wester of rum and water—rather more rum than water. That act of weakness was his undoing, for at the first taste of the spirit after his forced abstention he completely lost all control of himself, and could no more refrain from taking a second tumbler than he could have flown. The second naturally led to a third, and the third to a fourth; whereupon, recognising that my chance was at hand, I yawned twice or thrice most portentously, complained of fatigue, and retired to my room, he following as far as the door and locking me in, as was his custom before going to his own room. But that troubled me not a whit, for the house was of one story only, and to slip out of it by way of the open window was almost as easy as walking out through the door, once my gaoler became so deeply wrapped in sleep that my stealthy movements would not awake him.
I moved quite carelessly about the room for a minute or two, and then flung myself heavily upon the bed, fully dressed; and as I did so I heard Pacheco go tiptoeing clumsily back to the table, stumbling against a chair on the way, and muttering imprecations at his own clumsiness as he went. A further gurgling of liquor being poured into a glass followed, then a deep sigh of satisfaction as the glass was emptied, the bang of it as it was noisily replaced on the table, and finally the man’s staggering footsteps along the floor as he made his way to his own room. Then came the kicking off of his shoes, followed by other sounds indicative of the fact that he was undressing, a heavy creaking of the bedstead as he flung himself upon it, and, a minute or two later, deep snoring.
But it was still much too early for me to think of making a move, for sounds reached me from the outside which told me that quite a number of people were still up and about; I therefore waited, with suchpatience as I could muster, until these had all ceased, and then allowed something like another half-hour to elapse, in order to make all sure—for this was a case where it were better to be half-an-hour late than half-a-minute too early, and by undue haste spoil everything.
At length, however, the complete absence of all sound suggestive, of human movement outside, and the steady, regular, resonant snore of Pacheco in the next room, encouraged me to make my preliminary move, which I did by rising, slowly and with infinite caution, to a sitting position on my bed. This done, I next got off the bed altogether, not, however, without causing the thing to give forth sundry most alarming creaks, each of which brought my heart into my mouth. But the snoring in the next room went on steadily, without pause or break, and two minutes later I found myself standing, barefooted, outside my window, ready to scramble back into the room upon the first suggestion of danger. Nothing happened, however; and with my shoes in my hand I next proceeded to creep very cautiously round to the front of the house.
The night was clear, with no moon, but the sky was brilliant with stars affording even more light than I really wanted; and at length, having peered cautiously round me and noted that the buildings were all dark, showing that the inhabitants had retired to rest, I stole slowly, crouching, across the open and so down to the beach. Among the boats drawn up on the sand there was a small Norwegian boat, much used as a dinghy, and consequently not drawn as far up on the beach as the others; this was the craft that I was on the lookout for, and by and by I found her, half afloat, and secured by her painter to a small anchor dug well into the sand. Lifting the anchor with the utmost care, I noiselessly deposited it in her bows, and then, making sure that her oars were in her, I lifted her bow and slid her off the sand until she was fairly afloat, when I gently turned her round, gave her a vigorous push, and scrambled in over her stern, taking care to do everything without noise. Then, throwing out an oar over the stern, I headed the boat in the direction of the scarcely visible felucca, and proceeded to scull off to her.
Thus far everything had gone smoothly and without the ghost of a hitch, but the really difficult part of my enterprise was still to come. I estimated that a good four hundred miles lay between the cove and Port Royal harbour, which distance, at an average speed of six knots, would take me the best part of three days and nights to cover, under the most favourable conditions. To do this, I should need both food and water, and I had not the most remote idea whether either was to be found on board the felucca, although I hoped they might be, for I had seen half-a-dozen men go off to her regularly every day, for some purpose which I could not divine, unless perchance it were to pump her out. But food and water were absolutely necessary to ensure my success, and unless I could find at least a sufficiency to last me three days, I must return and take measures to provide a supply; for to start without would be simply courting disaster. That, however, was a point which could only be settled upon my arrival on board.
Taking the matter very easily, husbanding all my strength for the exceedingly difficult task of getting the felucca under way single-handed—in the event of all things conspiring to render such a decided step justifiable—and sculling so gently that I scarcely raised a ripple on the highly phosphorescent water, I at length glided quietly up alongside the felucca and, taking the end of the boat’s painter with me, climbed in over the vessel’s low bulwarks, passed the dinghy astern, made her fast, and forthwith proceeded to overhaul the craft which I had thus surreptitiously visited.
My first visit was to her tiny cabin, the companion door of which I found unlocked. But when I got below it was so intensely dark that I could see nothing, and I felt that at all costs I must have a light, or it would be morning, and my flight would be discovered long before I could learn all that I wanted to ascertain. I, therefore, went on deck again, loosed the immense sail, and spread a fold of it over the small skylight in order to mask the light in the cabin—should I be fortunate enough to obtain one—and then went forward to the forecastle to hunt for a lantern of some sort. I found the fore-scuttle not only closed, but also secured by a stout iron bar, the slotted end of which was passed over a staple and secured by a padlock. Fortunately, however, the individual who had last visited the little vessel had been too careless or too lazy to remove the key from the lock, therefore all I had to do was to turn the key, remove the padlock from the staple, throw back the bar, lift off the cover, and my way down into the forecastle was clear. But I had no sooner lifted off the hatch cover and was preparing to descend than, to my utter consternation, I became aware of the fact that the forecastle was inhabited. For as I flung my leg in over the coamings I distinctly heard a sound of stirring, followed, to my amazement, by the drowsy muttering of a voice in English, grumbling:
“What the blazes do they want now; and who comes off here at this time o’ night? ’Taint time to turn out yet, I’ll swear, for I don’t seem to have been asleep more’n five minutes!”
English! Then the speaker must certainly be a friend, and without more ado I dropped down into the little forecastle, exclaiming:
“Hillo, there! Who are you, my friend; and what the dickens are you doing locked up here in this forecastle?”
“Who am I?” retorted the voice. “Why, I’m an Englishman; my name’s Tom Brown, and the name of my mate here is Joe Cutler; both of us late of His Britannic Majesty’s schoonerWasp, what foundered in a gale o’ wind somewheres off this here coast a while since. We was picked up off a bit of wreckage by the crew of this here hooker—what turned out to be something in the piratical line—and brought into harbour. And since we’ve been here we’ve been made to work like niggers because we wouldn’t jine the ‘brotherhood,’ as they calls theirselves. Latterly we’ve been kept aboard this here feluccer, because it appears that there’s some chap ashore there as they don’t want to see us. Ay, and if it comes to that, perhaps you’re the chap. Seems to me as I’ve heard your voice before. Who are you at all, gov’nor?”
“My name is Delamere,” I replied, “and I commanded—”
“Of course, of course,” interrupted Brown; “Mr Delamere it is! I knowed that I knowed that voice of yours, sir. Here, you Joe, rouse and bitt, man; here’s the skipper come to life again. Half a minute, sir, and we’ll have a light. Joe, you lighted the ‘glim’ last; what did ye do wi’ the tinder-box?”
The two men were broad awake, out of their bunks, and bustling about almost before one could draw a breath, and the next moment they had lighted a lantern, in the dim glimmer of which they stood up side by side, saluting, as I stared into their faces scarcely able to credit such a stupendous piece of good fortune as the unexpected discovery of these two men, not only Englishmen, but actually members of my own late crew!
“My lads,” I exclaimed, as they stood before me at attention, “I am more glad than I can express, not only to find that you, like myself, have managed to escape with your lives, but also that you are here, aboard this felucca. For I fully intended to make the somewhat desperate attempt to escape in her single-handed; but the presence of you two men puts a very different complexion upon the affair. What I might have been wholly unable to accomplish alone, we three can together manage with ease. There is only one possible difficulty in our way: Can you tell me whether there happens to be any food and water aboard this craft?”
“Yes, sir,” answered Brown, “there’s both, for we’re fed every day out of the ship’s stores. There’s the scuttle butt on deck nearly full o’ water, and there’s grub down in the lazarette, but how much I don’t know.”
“Then let us go at once and ascertain,” said I, “for my escape may be discovered at any moment, and naturally this would be where they would first look for me. Mask that lantern with your jacket, one of you, and bring it along aft. Every second is now of importance to us.”
It took us but a few minutes to penetrate to the little vessel’s lazarette, where we found an ample supply of provisions of all kinds for a much larger crew than ourselves and a much longer voyage than we contemplated.
“Very well,” I remarked, as I ran my eye over the array of biscuit and flour barrels and the casks, some of which were branded “prime mess beef,” while others contained potatoes and sundry other commodities, “that will do; we shall certainly not starve during the next few days, whatever else may happen to us. Now clap on that hatch again, and we will go on deck, slip the cable, and make sail without further ado.”
Chapter Twenty.The Beginning of the End.As I turned to quit the cabin I suddenly became aware that a bell was furiously jangling somewhere; and, dashing up the companion ladder to the deck, I discovered that the sounds proceeded from the shore, where lights were beginning to flash, one after the other, in rapid succession until the whole settlement appeared to be awake and stirring.“On deck, both of you, at once!” I shouted, sending my voice down through the open companion. “Never mind about the hatch; leave everything as it is, for the moment, and clap on to these main halliards; there is an alarm of some sort ashore, and if it happens to be that they have discovered me to be missing, they will come off to this felucca the first thing. Yes, and by Jove, if I am not mistaken there is a boat shoving off already. Look, lads,”—as the two men came tumbling up on deck—“is that not the sparkle of oars in the water, there, right in the heart of that deep shadow?”“Ay, sir, it do look uncommon like it, and no mistake—yes; that’s the sea fire shinin’ to the stroke of oars, right enough,” exclaimed Cutler. “And they’re comin’ along as though they meant business, too! Mr Delamere, it’d be a good plan, sir, if you was to jump for’ard and cast that cable off the bitts while Tom and me here sees about mastheadin’ this here yard; there won’t be so very much room to spare atween us by the time that this here hooker’s paid off and gathered way.”“You are right, Joe, there will not,” answered I; and, dashing forward to the windlass bitts, I proceeded to throw off turn after turn of the stiff hempen cable that held the felucca to her anchor, until the last turn was gone and the flakes went writhing and twisting out through the hawse-hole; then, as the end disappeared with a splash I dashed aft and rammed the tiller hard over to port—noticing, as I did so, that a large boat, pulling eight oars, was less than a hundred fathoms distant from us, and coming up to us hand over hand. Then, catching a turn of the main-sheet round a cleat, I jumped forward again to where the two seamen were dragging desperately at the halliard which hoisted the heavy sail.“Put your backs into it, men,” I cried, as I tailed on to the fall of the tackle; “there is a large boat close aboard of us! It will be ‘touch and go’ with us, even if we are able to scrape clear at all.”Fiercely we dragged at the fall of the fourfold tackle that formed the working end of the halliard, and at each pull the great, heavy, swaying yard slid a few inches up the short, thick mast, as though reluctantly, while away on our weather quarter we heard the fierce shouts of the men in the approaching boat as they encouraged each other, punctuated by the quick jerk of the oars in the rowlocks, and the swish of the water as the oar-blades clipped into it. With the passage of every second those menacing sounds drew appreciably nearer, dominating even the thunderous rustle and slatting of the sail that slowly climbed into the air over our heads, while the felucca, now fast gathering stern-way, and at the same time paying off, was driving steadily down toward the boat at a rate that seemed to render our capture inevitable.At length, with a final jerk that made the little craft tremble to her keel, the big single sail filled, and the felucca careened to her bearings, as her canvas caught the full pressure of the wind. At the same instant I heard an oar-blade clatter as it was hastily laid in, and an exultant cheer arise from immediately under our counter.“Catch a turn with the halliards, quick, and then lay aft,” I gasped. “The villains are alongside, and will be in over our quarter before we can do anything to prevent them if we are not smart.”As I spoke I passed the rope under, then over, a belaying-pin before surrendering it to Cutler to complete the operation of belaying, and then bounded aft, followed by Tom Brown, who had snatched a handspike from the rack as he passed it. My first act was to drag the tiller over to windward and pass a turn of the tiller rope round the head of it, to help the felucca to pay off; for she was now gathering headway. Then I sprang to the taffrail and looked over it. The pursuing boat had actually overtaken us, and the man who pulled “bow,” having laid in his oar, had grabbed the gunwale of the small boat in which I had come off from the shore—and which I had dropped astern upon boarding the felucca—and was now hauling his own boat up alongside her, while some half-dozen of his companions had risen to their feet and were scrambling into the smaller boat, apparently with some idea of climbing aboard us by shinning up her painter. But the felucca had by this time gathered way, and was moving so fast through the water that it was as much as the man could do to hold on, and quite beyond his power to haul the one boat any closer to the other. For a couple of breathless seconds longer he hung on desperately, and then, with a yell of savage disappointment, was obliged to let go, while somebody in the stern—I fancy it must have been Fernandez—seeing how things were going, shouted to the crew to throw out their oars again and give way. But before this could be done the big boat was half-a-dozen fathoms astern, and we were leaving her so rapidly that for her to overtake us was a manifest impossibility. Meanwhile the small boat, with six men in her, was towing astern of the felucca, with her nose raised high in the air and the water bubbling and boiling up to the level of the top of her transom, and even slopping in over it occasionally, so that it was impossible for any of her occupants to move, lest by so doing they should cause her to fill and swamp. The said occupants therefore did what they could in the way of relieving their feelings by vigorously anathematising us in good sonorous Spanish, and explaining, in short, pithy sentences, the sort of treatment that we might confidently look for when next they got us into their power. Then one of them happened to remember that all this time a brace of loaded pistols were sticking in his belt, whereupon he whipped them out and blazed away at us, his companions promptly following suit, but, luckily, without doing us the slightest injury.By this time the felucca was rapidly nearing the weathermost extremity of the island that guarded and masked the entrance of the bay, and presently we weathered it handsomely and bore up to pass out to sea, gliding between the two Heads a minute later. We were now fairly outside, and with the first plunge of the little vessel’s sharp stem into the surges that met us as we swept into the open sea a yell of dismay arose from the occupants of the boat astern, who cried out that they were being swamped, and implored us, for the love of all the saints, to cast them off before they were washed out and drowned. I could not resist the temptation to retort that even, if that happened, they would still be getting less than their deserts; then, adding that I hoped I should soon have the pleasure of seeing them all hanged at Gallows Point, I cast off the painter and set them adrift, leaving them to get back into the cove as best they could, with only one pair of small oars among them. We stood on, close-hauled, until we had gained an offing of about three miles, when we put the helm down, tacked, and lay-to, it being my intention to remain off the entrance of the pirates’ cove until daylight, in order that I might obtain bearings and landmarks, which would enable me to identify the locality of the spot upon my return to destroy the settlement—as I was determined to do.It was well that I took this precaution, for when daylight came we found that, so admirably had nature masked the cove, it was impossible for us to discover it until we again stood close in; and even then we could by no means make sure of the spot until we were within a cable’s length of it. Then, however, by means of a carefully taken set of compass bearings, I obtained the means which would enable me to run in from a distance and hit off the place with unerring precision.We duly arrived in Port Royal harbour early on the fourth morning after our escape from Pirate Cove—as by common consent we called it—our passage being of a perfectly uneventful character. As may be supposed, I kept a sharp lookout for the arrival of the Admiral from Kingston; and the moment that his barge hove in sight I hailed a shore boat—the felucca not possessing a boat of any kind—and landed for the purpose of making my report.He was surprised, but at the same time very pleased to see me, shaking me warmly by the hand as the office messenger closed the door behind me, after showing me into his presence.“Well, youngster,” he exclaimed, “I am very glad to see you back again, all alive and kicking; for to tell you the truth you have been absent so long that I had given you and theWaspup for lost. Well, and what luck have you had? Strange that I did not notice the little schooner at anchor as I came down; for I have been on the lookout for her now a long while.”“Ah!” I replied; “I am grieved to say, Sir Peter, that you will never again set eyes on theWasp, for she lies at the bottom of the Sea of Hayti, with all her crew, I am afraid, save myself and two others.”“Tut, tut, tut!” exclaimed the Admiral; “that is bad news indeed. Tell me how it happened.”As briefly as possible I related the entire history of the cruise, including my adventures upon the island of Hayti, and my escape from the pirates, winding up by pointing out the felucca, which lay in full view of the office window.The old gentleman remained silent and sunk in deep thought for several minutes after I had concluded my story, shaking his head occasionally as he thought the matter over. At length, however, he looked up, and said:“It is a sad business, very sad, losing all those poor fellows, but I do not blame you, boy, in the least; you did what you could, and did it very well, too! To fight and beat off so immensely superior a force as that of the pirates was a very creditable feat, I consider; and all might have been well had it not been for that gale springing up at so inopportune a moment. Well, well, it cannot be helped; these things happen sometimes, in spite of all that we can do. But there is generally a lesson to be learned from every mishap, if we will but look for it, and the lesson conveyed in this case is that we made a mistake in the arming of theWasp. Instead of fitting her with those six long 9-pounders, we ought to have mounted a long 18 and a long 32 upon her deck, then you would have been able to play a game of long bowls with the pirates and fight them upon practically equal terms. As it was, you were badly peppered before you could reach her at all with your own guns. Well, it cannot now be helped; the little hooker is gone, and there’s an end of it. Now, the thing to consider is what is next to be done. What is your own idea? You have been among the rascals, and know their strength; I suppose you have some sort of a notion of how they can best be circumvented, eh?”“Yes, sir,” I said. “It seems to me that there are two ways of dealing with the pirates. One way is, to waylay their schooner at sea, capture her, and then go into the Cove and destroy the settlement. To do that effectively we must have a vessel as fast, as heavily armed, and as strongly manned as their own craft—”“Which we don’t happen to possess just now, worse luck!” cut in the Admiral. “What is your other plan?”I explained the alternative scheme—which I regarded as the more effective of the two—in pretty full detail; and as I unfolded it I saw the old gentleman’s eyes begin to sparkle. When at length I came to an end he dashed his fist down upon the table, and exclaimed with enthusiasm:“That’s the plan, boy; that ought to do the trick! But I’ve no vessel to spare you, so you’ll have to take the felucca, and do the best you can with her. Strictly speaking, you know, I ought to put you under arrest, and not employ you again until after you have been tried for the loss of theWasp; but the circumstances are such that we cannot afford to waste time in mere formalities just now; and I will take the responsibility of sending you to sea again at once. You will be a bit crowded aboard the little hooker, I’m afraid, but that can’t be helped; and if all goes well it ought not to be for long. Now, go and find Carline, talk over the matter with him, and then come up to the Pen to dinner to-night—seven o’clock, sharp—and report to me what you have arranged.”I took the hint, and went, very well pleased, on the whole, with the result of my interview. For I must confess that I had gone to that interview not altogether without trepidation; it was quite possible—I had told myself—that the Admiral might find fault with the manner in which I had engaged the pirate schooner; he might have picked holes in my tactics, or something of that sort; he might even have considered that theWaspmight have been saved, after the fight, had we acted otherwise than we did; but, to my great relief, there was not a word of blame from him; on the contrary, he had murmured a word or two of approval here and there while I had been telling my tale, and was now about to prove his undiminished confidence in me by entrusting me with the command of another expedition against the same formidable foe. I could not possibly have hoped for a more favourable reception.I soon found the Master-Attendant, and inexorably button-holed him while I explained what I wanted done, although the poor man was frightfully busy just then, several ships being in harbour, refitting after having been in action with the enemy. But, let him protest as he might, I would not release him until he had agreed to do everything that I required; the result being that when the dockyard men knocked off work to go to dinner that day, the felucca was already alongside the wharf, and more than half her ballast out of her; while, when the dockyard bell rang at six o’clock that night, signalling the cessation of work for the day, her hold had been swept clean, a quantity of dunnage laid in it, and four 68-pounders stowed on the top thereof, well packed up all round to prevent them from shifting when the craft was at sea. But although I remained on the spot until the last moment, supervising matters in order that everything might be done to my satisfaction, I still managed to reach the Pen by seven o’clock—a smart sailing boat up to Kingston, and a ketureen from thence out to the Pen being my means of conveyance.Sir Peter was as much surprised as pleased when I reported to him the amount of progress that I had made during the day.“It is wonderful!” he exclaimed. “How in the world did you manage it?”“Simply by sticking to the Master-Attendant, and so preventing him from doing anything else until he had attended to my requirements,” I replied.The Admiral laughed in enjoyment of the picture his mind conjured up of the Master-Attendant vainly trying to shake me off.“Poor Carline!” he remarked. “How he must have suffered before he could bring himself to the point of setting aside all his other work to attend to you. He is a good man, a most excellent fellow in every way; but he has one fault—he allows himself to be too much trammelled by routine. With him everything, irrespective of its importance, must be attended to in its proper order; and now that you have jolted him out of his groove it will be days before he will be able to get comfortably back into it.”I have no doubt Sir Peter was right, but I did not wait to see; all I know is that by noon the next day I had brought the unhappy man into the frame of mind that caused him to yield prompt attention to my requirements, rather than waste valuable time in a fruitless endeavour to evade them; with the result that, three days later, the felucca was ready for the next expedition which I was to lead against the pirates.The moment that my preparations were complete I reported to the Admiral, and received his formal instructions to proceed to sea at once; and that same evening we weighed and stood out of harbour with the first of the land-breeze. We now had to make a passage to windward; and although I hugged the southern coast of Jamaica as closely as I dared, thus availing myself to the fullest possible extent of the land-breeze as far as Morant Point, it was not until daybreak of the ninth day after sailing from Port Royal that we arrived off the entrance to the Pirate Cove. Here we were baffled for a couple of hours, waiting for the springing up of the sea-breeze; but we caught the first breathing of it, and took it in with us, arriving at the anchorage about one bell in the forenoon watch.My plan of campaign was perfectly simple. I intended to enter the Cove, and, if the pirate schooner should happen to be in harbour, run straight alongside her, and board before her crew should have time to clear away their guns and bring them to bear upon the felucca.I had a strong enough crew to do this, and had no doubt as to our ability to carry the schooner in the face of the most determined resistance that the pirates could offer. Then, the schooner captured and her crew safely confined below, the establishment ashore would have no alternative but to surrender at discretion, or be annihilated by the schooner’s guns. There was only one weak point that I could see in this scheme, which was that a considerable number of the men constituting the shore portion of the establishment might escape into the interior of the island, unless some means were devised to prevent them. It was, however, not very difficult to accomplish this; for it will be remembered that there was but one way of entrance to—and egress from—the Cove on the land side, namely, a narrow and very dangerous zigzag path down the face of the perpendicular cliff, a gap in which, wide enough to prevent all effectual possibility of passage that way, might easily be made by the explosion of a bag of powder. The preparations for the little expedition which was to accomplish this piece of work were made during the time that we were lying becalmed off the mouth of the Cove; and when at length we entered, a boat, containing four seamen in charge of a midshipman, who had been most carefully instructed concerning the precise nature of the duty which he was to perform, was cast adrift, just inside the Heads, but outside the islet which masked the entrance. While they pulled away for the shore we in the felucca stood on into the Cove, every man of us with his sword or cutlass girded to his waist, and a brace of loaded pistols thrust into his belt, standing ready to leap aboard the schooner—should she happen to be in the roadstead.We had no sooner cleared the islet, however, and fairly entered the Cove, than we discovered that the schooner was not in harbour, and that consequently we should be obliged to adopt the modification of plan which I had devised in view of such a very possible contingency. But although theTiburonwas not in the Cove, the anchorage was not tenantless, a brig of some two hundred and seventy tons being moored therein, while apparently every boat belonging to the settlement, as well as her own, was passing to and fro between her and the shore, those bound shoreward being loaded to the gunwale, while those coming from it were light. At the first glimpse of this somewhat unexpected sight, I jumped to the conclusion that the vessel was a prize; but almost instantly I remembered that, in addition to theTiburon, the pirates owned a brig, by means of which they disposed of such captured booty as they did not require for their own use, purchasing with the proceeds other goods of which they stood in need; and I had very little doubt that the craft before us was the brig in question. Be that as it might, our first task was, obviously, to secure possession of the vessel; and the felucca was accordingly at once headed for her.So busily employed were the pirates aboard the brig in the task of hoisting out cargo and striking it into the boats alongside that we were quite half-way across the bay before they discovered our presence, although the people ashore, who were unloading the boats, did their utmost to warn their comrades, by hailing and pointing. But no sooner was the felucca seen and recognised than the whole place was thrown into a state of consternation. The alarm bell ashore was rung, the people made a dash for their weapons, and then, tumbling the goods haphazard out of the boats on to the sand, sprang in and pulled might and main for the brig, while those on board her swarmed up out of the hold and down over the side into the half-loaded or empty boats, and gave way for the shore in a very panic of confusion.But although the brig was moored well in, so that the boats passing to and fro might have but a short distance to travel, we in the felucca were alongside and had secured undisputed possession of the vessel before the boats with their armed crews had traversed half the distance between her and the shore; seeing which, the occupants paused and drew together, as if to confer and to await further developments. Of this brief pause we promptly availed ourselves by getting the brig under way and working her and the felucca out toward the entrance, when, much to our astonishment, the boats with one accord turned round and pulled back to the beach. This unexpected action on their part was a great relief to me, for I had fully expected that they would make a concerted effort to recapture the brig, or the felucca, or both, by boarding, in which case we should have had our hands full, and must almost certainly have lost a few men. But probably they believed the felucca to be armed with cannon, and fully expected to be received with liberal doses of grape and canister, which would fully account for their sudden and unexpected display of prudence. Be that as it may, we were allowed to work both craft out to sea without molestation; when, having hurriedly overhauled our prize and found that she was amply provisioned for a much longer voyage than that to Port Royal, I put her in command of my second midshipman, with a prize-crew of ten men, and, giving him instructions to report to the Admiral without delay, dispatched him forthwith. Then, transferring myself and the remainder of my following back to the felucca, we re-entered the Cove and came to an anchor outside of but close to the islet that masked the entrance, and in such a position that the little craft could be warped right in alongside a bit of cliff that dropped sheer down into the water. We had scarcely done this when a deep, hollowboom, echoing and re-echoing along the face of the cliff that enclosed the Cove, told us that the party which had been dispatched to breach the road up the face of the cliff, and so cut off the retreat of the pirates toward the interior of the island, had accomplished its task.Time was now all important to us; for, of course, we could not tell at what moment Garcia, the arch-pirate, and his crew in theTiburon, might put in an appearance upon the scene; and we had a few very important preparations to make before we could consider ourselves ready to deal with him; therefore we had no sooner let go the felucca’s anchor than we lowered the only other boat that we had brought with us, and ran warps away to the shore of the islet, securing them to such rocks as were most convenient for our purpose. This done, we warped the little craft right in alongside the cliff, and made her secure; after which our next task was to carry ashore two stout hawsers which we had brought with us for the purpose, and convey them to the top of the cliff under which the felucca lay moored. Then we rigged a pair of sheers over the vessel’s hatchway, and proceeded to hoist our 68-pounders out of the hold—one at a time, of course. Then, having got the first gun on deck—already prepared in Port Royal dockyard, by being encased in a stout cylindrical packing of planks—we passed the bights of our two hawsers round it, one at each end, and with all hands tailing on—except one, whom we set to watch as a sentinel—proceeded to parbuckle it up the face of the cliff. It was a stiff job, but, all our preparations having been made beforehand, everything went without a hitch; and when we knocked off work for the night all four guns were landed, together with their carriages; while, so far as we could discover, the pirates ashore remained in absolute ignorance not only of our doings but also of our whereabouts.The same night, waiting until the darkness was sufficient to hide our movements from the pirates ashore, the gunner, the boatswain, the carpenter and I ascended to the highest point of the little islet, in search of a suitable spot upon which to construct our projected battery, and were fortunate enough to find it on the very summit itself. It was, indeed, perfectly ideal for its purpose, for it commanded not only the whole of the interior of the Cove, with the settlement ashore, but also both entrances, and the open sea, for a space of about a mile. And it possessed the further advantage that it needed but very little labour to completely adapt it for our purpose. So eager was I to complete our preparations that I would fain have set the men to work upon it that night; but they had already done extraordinarily well in getting the four guns landed and mounted upon their carriages; I therefore decided, though somewhat reluctantly, to let them have a long, unbroken night’s rest; and when the next day arrived I was glad that I had been wise enough to do so, for they came to their work fresh, and laboured with a will. As for me, I spent the night doing sentry-go, for I fully expected to receive a visit from the shore some time during the hours of darkness. But nothing happened; and when at length day dawned and I was relieved, I was inclined to believe that our efforts to conceal our presence on the island from the pirates had been successful.With the dawning of a new day, however, the critical period was past, and I cared very little whether the inhabitants of the settlement did or did not discover our whereabouts. We, therefore, got all hands to work the moment that it was light enough to see; and by the time that the pirates ashore began to show themselves, two of our four 68-pounders were in place on the spot which we had chosen for our battery, and were ready to open fire at a moment’s notice. But the Cove was too small, and the islet too close to the settlement for us to conceal our whereabouts or our movements, when once we began to work upon the summit, where we were in full view of every eye within a range of a couple of miles; and the pirates ashore had not been on the move more than half-an-hour before it became apparent that our presence had been discovered. The indications that this was the case were clear and unmistakable; the alarm bell clanged out its summons, and instantly all work ceased and every man was seen to be hurrying toward the building in which I had been interviewed by Fernandez upon my arrival in the settlement. This could mean but one thing, namely, a speedy attack upon the islet; and in anticipation of this we hastened the completion of our preparations, so that we might be quite ready to meet that attack when it came. Our first business was to get the remaining two guns into position, and bring up to the battery our entire stock of ammunition. This did not cost us more than half-an-hour’s strenuous labour, at the completion of which all hands went to work to tumble a sufficient quantity of ballast into the felucca to enable her to stand up under sail; and the moment that this was done I sent her out to sea, with a midshipman and four hands on board—in order that she might not fall into the hands of the pirates—with instructions to return only when the British ensign should be displayed from the battery.Scarcely was the felucca under way when the sentinel who had been left in the battery, to keep watch upon the movements of the pirates ashore, summoned us to our posts; and upon our arrival there we at once saw that our preparations had not been completed a moment too soon. For, as we topped the hill that obstructed the view of the Cove from the seaward side of the islet, we saw the whole male population of the settlement, numbering about one hundred and forty, marching down to the beach, with the evident intention of embarking in their boats and pulling off to attack us. With the aid of my telescope I could distinctly distinguish the figure of Fernandez, who was assuming the direction of operations; and I could not but admire the strictness of the discipline which he appeared to exercise over his followers, for the fellows seemed amenable to his briefest order. They possessed exactly twenty boats in all, ranging in size from a craft capable of accommodating forty men down to the little Norwegian dinghy in which I had made my escape, and it was evident that every man of the party had been previously told off to some particular boat; for upon their arrival at the beach the hitherto compact body at once dissolved into twenty separate detachments, each of which made its way, in a perfectly orderly manner, to a particular boat; the whole flotilla being launched and manned at Fernandez’ word of command. This done, the boats were turned round with their bows pointing straight for the islet, and—again at the word of command—the oars, as one, dropped into the water and the expedition advanced to the attack in a long straight line.The boats had not so much as a single gun among them, their crew being armed simply with cutlass, pistol, and musket; I therefore felt no apprehension at all concerning the result of the coming conflict, but rather a somewhat unaccountable pity for the unfortunate wretches who seemed to be quite unaware that they were advancing to their doom. But this singular feeling of pity was quickly swamped by the reflection of the fate that would certainly be ours, should we by any chance be foolish enough to let the pirates get the better of us; and since it was important that we should make the utmost of our opportunities, I gave orders for the four guns to be loaded with grape and carefully aimed at the four largest boats. This was done, and the four pieces spoke their deadly message almost simultaneously, the smoke momentarily obscuring our vision, while the thunder of the discharge echoed and re-echoed round the cliffs in a long series of slowly decreasing reverberations. But long before these had died away the breeze had swept aside the pall of smoke that hid the boats from us, and we saw that, so carefully had the guns been aimed, each shot had taken effect, the four boats at which they had been discharged being now mere shapeless masses of wreckage, among which a few men struggled, here and there, to keep themselves afloat.The casualties among the pirates must have been appalling, for I estimated that those four boats, being the largest in the entire flotilla, must have contained at least half the total number of men comprising the expedition, and, so far as I could ascertain, with the aid of my telescope, the survivors of the four crews scarcely numbered a dozen in all! Of course the nearest boats at once closed in upon the wreckage, with the object of rescuing those few survivors, and in so doing some half-a-dozen of them became bunched close together for about a minute. Such an opportunity was too good to be missed, and our guns having meanwhile been smartly loaded again, two of them were brought to bear upon the bunch, and simultaneously discharged. The result of these two shots was scarcely as effective as that of the previous discharge—possibly because the gun-captains had become a little flurried and excited—nevertheless two of the boats aimed at were blown to pieces, while two or three of the others showed signs of more or less serious damage, and the occupants were thrown into such dire confusion that, abandoning all further effort to save their comrades, they took to their oars and seemed intent only upon getting apart as quickly as possible, an example which was immediately followed by the remaining boats, the crews of which opened out until there was at least a couple of fathoms of clear water separating boat from boat.For a few seconds I was under the impression that the havoc thus quickly wrought by our guns had so far discouraged the pirates that they intended to abandon the attack upon the islet—for there were several very evident signs of hesitation among them—but presently, apparently in response to the exhortations of Fernandez, who pulled along the line in a fast gig, the oars dipped once more, and the remnant of the flotilla most gallantly resumed its advance, amid cheers and yells of encouragement and defiance that clearly reached us on the islet.
As I turned to quit the cabin I suddenly became aware that a bell was furiously jangling somewhere; and, dashing up the companion ladder to the deck, I discovered that the sounds proceeded from the shore, where lights were beginning to flash, one after the other, in rapid succession until the whole settlement appeared to be awake and stirring.
“On deck, both of you, at once!” I shouted, sending my voice down through the open companion. “Never mind about the hatch; leave everything as it is, for the moment, and clap on to these main halliards; there is an alarm of some sort ashore, and if it happens to be that they have discovered me to be missing, they will come off to this felucca the first thing. Yes, and by Jove, if I am not mistaken there is a boat shoving off already. Look, lads,”—as the two men came tumbling up on deck—“is that not the sparkle of oars in the water, there, right in the heart of that deep shadow?”
“Ay, sir, it do look uncommon like it, and no mistake—yes; that’s the sea fire shinin’ to the stroke of oars, right enough,” exclaimed Cutler. “And they’re comin’ along as though they meant business, too! Mr Delamere, it’d be a good plan, sir, if you was to jump for’ard and cast that cable off the bitts while Tom and me here sees about mastheadin’ this here yard; there won’t be so very much room to spare atween us by the time that this here hooker’s paid off and gathered way.”
“You are right, Joe, there will not,” answered I; and, dashing forward to the windlass bitts, I proceeded to throw off turn after turn of the stiff hempen cable that held the felucca to her anchor, until the last turn was gone and the flakes went writhing and twisting out through the hawse-hole; then, as the end disappeared with a splash I dashed aft and rammed the tiller hard over to port—noticing, as I did so, that a large boat, pulling eight oars, was less than a hundred fathoms distant from us, and coming up to us hand over hand. Then, catching a turn of the main-sheet round a cleat, I jumped forward again to where the two seamen were dragging desperately at the halliard which hoisted the heavy sail.
“Put your backs into it, men,” I cried, as I tailed on to the fall of the tackle; “there is a large boat close aboard of us! It will be ‘touch and go’ with us, even if we are able to scrape clear at all.”
Fiercely we dragged at the fall of the fourfold tackle that formed the working end of the halliard, and at each pull the great, heavy, swaying yard slid a few inches up the short, thick mast, as though reluctantly, while away on our weather quarter we heard the fierce shouts of the men in the approaching boat as they encouraged each other, punctuated by the quick jerk of the oars in the rowlocks, and the swish of the water as the oar-blades clipped into it. With the passage of every second those menacing sounds drew appreciably nearer, dominating even the thunderous rustle and slatting of the sail that slowly climbed into the air over our heads, while the felucca, now fast gathering stern-way, and at the same time paying off, was driving steadily down toward the boat at a rate that seemed to render our capture inevitable.
At length, with a final jerk that made the little craft tremble to her keel, the big single sail filled, and the felucca careened to her bearings, as her canvas caught the full pressure of the wind. At the same instant I heard an oar-blade clatter as it was hastily laid in, and an exultant cheer arise from immediately under our counter.
“Catch a turn with the halliards, quick, and then lay aft,” I gasped. “The villains are alongside, and will be in over our quarter before we can do anything to prevent them if we are not smart.”
As I spoke I passed the rope under, then over, a belaying-pin before surrendering it to Cutler to complete the operation of belaying, and then bounded aft, followed by Tom Brown, who had snatched a handspike from the rack as he passed it. My first act was to drag the tiller over to windward and pass a turn of the tiller rope round the head of it, to help the felucca to pay off; for she was now gathering headway. Then I sprang to the taffrail and looked over it. The pursuing boat had actually overtaken us, and the man who pulled “bow,” having laid in his oar, had grabbed the gunwale of the small boat in which I had come off from the shore—and which I had dropped astern upon boarding the felucca—and was now hauling his own boat up alongside her, while some half-dozen of his companions had risen to their feet and were scrambling into the smaller boat, apparently with some idea of climbing aboard us by shinning up her painter. But the felucca had by this time gathered way, and was moving so fast through the water that it was as much as the man could do to hold on, and quite beyond his power to haul the one boat any closer to the other. For a couple of breathless seconds longer he hung on desperately, and then, with a yell of savage disappointment, was obliged to let go, while somebody in the stern—I fancy it must have been Fernandez—seeing how things were going, shouted to the crew to throw out their oars again and give way. But before this could be done the big boat was half-a-dozen fathoms astern, and we were leaving her so rapidly that for her to overtake us was a manifest impossibility. Meanwhile the small boat, with six men in her, was towing astern of the felucca, with her nose raised high in the air and the water bubbling and boiling up to the level of the top of her transom, and even slopping in over it occasionally, so that it was impossible for any of her occupants to move, lest by so doing they should cause her to fill and swamp. The said occupants therefore did what they could in the way of relieving their feelings by vigorously anathematising us in good sonorous Spanish, and explaining, in short, pithy sentences, the sort of treatment that we might confidently look for when next they got us into their power. Then one of them happened to remember that all this time a brace of loaded pistols were sticking in his belt, whereupon he whipped them out and blazed away at us, his companions promptly following suit, but, luckily, without doing us the slightest injury.
By this time the felucca was rapidly nearing the weathermost extremity of the island that guarded and masked the entrance of the bay, and presently we weathered it handsomely and bore up to pass out to sea, gliding between the two Heads a minute later. We were now fairly outside, and with the first plunge of the little vessel’s sharp stem into the surges that met us as we swept into the open sea a yell of dismay arose from the occupants of the boat astern, who cried out that they were being swamped, and implored us, for the love of all the saints, to cast them off before they were washed out and drowned. I could not resist the temptation to retort that even, if that happened, they would still be getting less than their deserts; then, adding that I hoped I should soon have the pleasure of seeing them all hanged at Gallows Point, I cast off the painter and set them adrift, leaving them to get back into the cove as best they could, with only one pair of small oars among them. We stood on, close-hauled, until we had gained an offing of about three miles, when we put the helm down, tacked, and lay-to, it being my intention to remain off the entrance of the pirates’ cove until daylight, in order that I might obtain bearings and landmarks, which would enable me to identify the locality of the spot upon my return to destroy the settlement—as I was determined to do.
It was well that I took this precaution, for when daylight came we found that, so admirably had nature masked the cove, it was impossible for us to discover it until we again stood close in; and even then we could by no means make sure of the spot until we were within a cable’s length of it. Then, however, by means of a carefully taken set of compass bearings, I obtained the means which would enable me to run in from a distance and hit off the place with unerring precision.
We duly arrived in Port Royal harbour early on the fourth morning after our escape from Pirate Cove—as by common consent we called it—our passage being of a perfectly uneventful character. As may be supposed, I kept a sharp lookout for the arrival of the Admiral from Kingston; and the moment that his barge hove in sight I hailed a shore boat—the felucca not possessing a boat of any kind—and landed for the purpose of making my report.
He was surprised, but at the same time very pleased to see me, shaking me warmly by the hand as the office messenger closed the door behind me, after showing me into his presence.
“Well, youngster,” he exclaimed, “I am very glad to see you back again, all alive and kicking; for to tell you the truth you have been absent so long that I had given you and theWaspup for lost. Well, and what luck have you had? Strange that I did not notice the little schooner at anchor as I came down; for I have been on the lookout for her now a long while.”
“Ah!” I replied; “I am grieved to say, Sir Peter, that you will never again set eyes on theWasp, for she lies at the bottom of the Sea of Hayti, with all her crew, I am afraid, save myself and two others.”
“Tut, tut, tut!” exclaimed the Admiral; “that is bad news indeed. Tell me how it happened.”
As briefly as possible I related the entire history of the cruise, including my adventures upon the island of Hayti, and my escape from the pirates, winding up by pointing out the felucca, which lay in full view of the office window.
The old gentleman remained silent and sunk in deep thought for several minutes after I had concluded my story, shaking his head occasionally as he thought the matter over. At length, however, he looked up, and said:
“It is a sad business, very sad, losing all those poor fellows, but I do not blame you, boy, in the least; you did what you could, and did it very well, too! To fight and beat off so immensely superior a force as that of the pirates was a very creditable feat, I consider; and all might have been well had it not been for that gale springing up at so inopportune a moment. Well, well, it cannot be helped; these things happen sometimes, in spite of all that we can do. But there is generally a lesson to be learned from every mishap, if we will but look for it, and the lesson conveyed in this case is that we made a mistake in the arming of theWasp. Instead of fitting her with those six long 9-pounders, we ought to have mounted a long 18 and a long 32 upon her deck, then you would have been able to play a game of long bowls with the pirates and fight them upon practically equal terms. As it was, you were badly peppered before you could reach her at all with your own guns. Well, it cannot now be helped; the little hooker is gone, and there’s an end of it. Now, the thing to consider is what is next to be done. What is your own idea? You have been among the rascals, and know their strength; I suppose you have some sort of a notion of how they can best be circumvented, eh?”
“Yes, sir,” I said. “It seems to me that there are two ways of dealing with the pirates. One way is, to waylay their schooner at sea, capture her, and then go into the Cove and destroy the settlement. To do that effectively we must have a vessel as fast, as heavily armed, and as strongly manned as their own craft—”
“Which we don’t happen to possess just now, worse luck!” cut in the Admiral. “What is your other plan?”
I explained the alternative scheme—which I regarded as the more effective of the two—in pretty full detail; and as I unfolded it I saw the old gentleman’s eyes begin to sparkle. When at length I came to an end he dashed his fist down upon the table, and exclaimed with enthusiasm:
“That’s the plan, boy; that ought to do the trick! But I’ve no vessel to spare you, so you’ll have to take the felucca, and do the best you can with her. Strictly speaking, you know, I ought to put you under arrest, and not employ you again until after you have been tried for the loss of theWasp; but the circumstances are such that we cannot afford to waste time in mere formalities just now; and I will take the responsibility of sending you to sea again at once. You will be a bit crowded aboard the little hooker, I’m afraid, but that can’t be helped; and if all goes well it ought not to be for long. Now, go and find Carline, talk over the matter with him, and then come up to the Pen to dinner to-night—seven o’clock, sharp—and report to me what you have arranged.”
I took the hint, and went, very well pleased, on the whole, with the result of my interview. For I must confess that I had gone to that interview not altogether without trepidation; it was quite possible—I had told myself—that the Admiral might find fault with the manner in which I had engaged the pirate schooner; he might have picked holes in my tactics, or something of that sort; he might even have considered that theWaspmight have been saved, after the fight, had we acted otherwise than we did; but, to my great relief, there was not a word of blame from him; on the contrary, he had murmured a word or two of approval here and there while I had been telling my tale, and was now about to prove his undiminished confidence in me by entrusting me with the command of another expedition against the same formidable foe. I could not possibly have hoped for a more favourable reception.
I soon found the Master-Attendant, and inexorably button-holed him while I explained what I wanted done, although the poor man was frightfully busy just then, several ships being in harbour, refitting after having been in action with the enemy. But, let him protest as he might, I would not release him until he had agreed to do everything that I required; the result being that when the dockyard men knocked off work to go to dinner that day, the felucca was already alongside the wharf, and more than half her ballast out of her; while, when the dockyard bell rang at six o’clock that night, signalling the cessation of work for the day, her hold had been swept clean, a quantity of dunnage laid in it, and four 68-pounders stowed on the top thereof, well packed up all round to prevent them from shifting when the craft was at sea. But although I remained on the spot until the last moment, supervising matters in order that everything might be done to my satisfaction, I still managed to reach the Pen by seven o’clock—a smart sailing boat up to Kingston, and a ketureen from thence out to the Pen being my means of conveyance.
Sir Peter was as much surprised as pleased when I reported to him the amount of progress that I had made during the day.
“It is wonderful!” he exclaimed. “How in the world did you manage it?”
“Simply by sticking to the Master-Attendant, and so preventing him from doing anything else until he had attended to my requirements,” I replied.
The Admiral laughed in enjoyment of the picture his mind conjured up of the Master-Attendant vainly trying to shake me off.
“Poor Carline!” he remarked. “How he must have suffered before he could bring himself to the point of setting aside all his other work to attend to you. He is a good man, a most excellent fellow in every way; but he has one fault—he allows himself to be too much trammelled by routine. With him everything, irrespective of its importance, must be attended to in its proper order; and now that you have jolted him out of his groove it will be days before he will be able to get comfortably back into it.”
I have no doubt Sir Peter was right, but I did not wait to see; all I know is that by noon the next day I had brought the unhappy man into the frame of mind that caused him to yield prompt attention to my requirements, rather than waste valuable time in a fruitless endeavour to evade them; with the result that, three days later, the felucca was ready for the next expedition which I was to lead against the pirates.
The moment that my preparations were complete I reported to the Admiral, and received his formal instructions to proceed to sea at once; and that same evening we weighed and stood out of harbour with the first of the land-breeze. We now had to make a passage to windward; and although I hugged the southern coast of Jamaica as closely as I dared, thus availing myself to the fullest possible extent of the land-breeze as far as Morant Point, it was not until daybreak of the ninth day after sailing from Port Royal that we arrived off the entrance to the Pirate Cove. Here we were baffled for a couple of hours, waiting for the springing up of the sea-breeze; but we caught the first breathing of it, and took it in with us, arriving at the anchorage about one bell in the forenoon watch.
My plan of campaign was perfectly simple. I intended to enter the Cove, and, if the pirate schooner should happen to be in harbour, run straight alongside her, and board before her crew should have time to clear away their guns and bring them to bear upon the felucca.
I had a strong enough crew to do this, and had no doubt as to our ability to carry the schooner in the face of the most determined resistance that the pirates could offer. Then, the schooner captured and her crew safely confined below, the establishment ashore would have no alternative but to surrender at discretion, or be annihilated by the schooner’s guns. There was only one weak point that I could see in this scheme, which was that a considerable number of the men constituting the shore portion of the establishment might escape into the interior of the island, unless some means were devised to prevent them. It was, however, not very difficult to accomplish this; for it will be remembered that there was but one way of entrance to—and egress from—the Cove on the land side, namely, a narrow and very dangerous zigzag path down the face of the perpendicular cliff, a gap in which, wide enough to prevent all effectual possibility of passage that way, might easily be made by the explosion of a bag of powder. The preparations for the little expedition which was to accomplish this piece of work were made during the time that we were lying becalmed off the mouth of the Cove; and when at length we entered, a boat, containing four seamen in charge of a midshipman, who had been most carefully instructed concerning the precise nature of the duty which he was to perform, was cast adrift, just inside the Heads, but outside the islet which masked the entrance. While they pulled away for the shore we in the felucca stood on into the Cove, every man of us with his sword or cutlass girded to his waist, and a brace of loaded pistols thrust into his belt, standing ready to leap aboard the schooner—should she happen to be in the roadstead.
We had no sooner cleared the islet, however, and fairly entered the Cove, than we discovered that the schooner was not in harbour, and that consequently we should be obliged to adopt the modification of plan which I had devised in view of such a very possible contingency. But although theTiburonwas not in the Cove, the anchorage was not tenantless, a brig of some two hundred and seventy tons being moored therein, while apparently every boat belonging to the settlement, as well as her own, was passing to and fro between her and the shore, those bound shoreward being loaded to the gunwale, while those coming from it were light. At the first glimpse of this somewhat unexpected sight, I jumped to the conclusion that the vessel was a prize; but almost instantly I remembered that, in addition to theTiburon, the pirates owned a brig, by means of which they disposed of such captured booty as they did not require for their own use, purchasing with the proceeds other goods of which they stood in need; and I had very little doubt that the craft before us was the brig in question. Be that as it might, our first task was, obviously, to secure possession of the vessel; and the felucca was accordingly at once headed for her.
So busily employed were the pirates aboard the brig in the task of hoisting out cargo and striking it into the boats alongside that we were quite half-way across the bay before they discovered our presence, although the people ashore, who were unloading the boats, did their utmost to warn their comrades, by hailing and pointing. But no sooner was the felucca seen and recognised than the whole place was thrown into a state of consternation. The alarm bell ashore was rung, the people made a dash for their weapons, and then, tumbling the goods haphazard out of the boats on to the sand, sprang in and pulled might and main for the brig, while those on board her swarmed up out of the hold and down over the side into the half-loaded or empty boats, and gave way for the shore in a very panic of confusion.
But although the brig was moored well in, so that the boats passing to and fro might have but a short distance to travel, we in the felucca were alongside and had secured undisputed possession of the vessel before the boats with their armed crews had traversed half the distance between her and the shore; seeing which, the occupants paused and drew together, as if to confer and to await further developments. Of this brief pause we promptly availed ourselves by getting the brig under way and working her and the felucca out toward the entrance, when, much to our astonishment, the boats with one accord turned round and pulled back to the beach. This unexpected action on their part was a great relief to me, for I had fully expected that they would make a concerted effort to recapture the brig, or the felucca, or both, by boarding, in which case we should have had our hands full, and must almost certainly have lost a few men. But probably they believed the felucca to be armed with cannon, and fully expected to be received with liberal doses of grape and canister, which would fully account for their sudden and unexpected display of prudence. Be that as it may, we were allowed to work both craft out to sea without molestation; when, having hurriedly overhauled our prize and found that she was amply provisioned for a much longer voyage than that to Port Royal, I put her in command of my second midshipman, with a prize-crew of ten men, and, giving him instructions to report to the Admiral without delay, dispatched him forthwith. Then, transferring myself and the remainder of my following back to the felucca, we re-entered the Cove and came to an anchor outside of but close to the islet that masked the entrance, and in such a position that the little craft could be warped right in alongside a bit of cliff that dropped sheer down into the water. We had scarcely done this when a deep, hollowboom, echoing and re-echoing along the face of the cliff that enclosed the Cove, told us that the party which had been dispatched to breach the road up the face of the cliff, and so cut off the retreat of the pirates toward the interior of the island, had accomplished its task.
Time was now all important to us; for, of course, we could not tell at what moment Garcia, the arch-pirate, and his crew in theTiburon, might put in an appearance upon the scene; and we had a few very important preparations to make before we could consider ourselves ready to deal with him; therefore we had no sooner let go the felucca’s anchor than we lowered the only other boat that we had brought with us, and ran warps away to the shore of the islet, securing them to such rocks as were most convenient for our purpose. This done, we warped the little craft right in alongside the cliff, and made her secure; after which our next task was to carry ashore two stout hawsers which we had brought with us for the purpose, and convey them to the top of the cliff under which the felucca lay moored. Then we rigged a pair of sheers over the vessel’s hatchway, and proceeded to hoist our 68-pounders out of the hold—one at a time, of course. Then, having got the first gun on deck—already prepared in Port Royal dockyard, by being encased in a stout cylindrical packing of planks—we passed the bights of our two hawsers round it, one at each end, and with all hands tailing on—except one, whom we set to watch as a sentinel—proceeded to parbuckle it up the face of the cliff. It was a stiff job, but, all our preparations having been made beforehand, everything went without a hitch; and when we knocked off work for the night all four guns were landed, together with their carriages; while, so far as we could discover, the pirates ashore remained in absolute ignorance not only of our doings but also of our whereabouts.
The same night, waiting until the darkness was sufficient to hide our movements from the pirates ashore, the gunner, the boatswain, the carpenter and I ascended to the highest point of the little islet, in search of a suitable spot upon which to construct our projected battery, and were fortunate enough to find it on the very summit itself. It was, indeed, perfectly ideal for its purpose, for it commanded not only the whole of the interior of the Cove, with the settlement ashore, but also both entrances, and the open sea, for a space of about a mile. And it possessed the further advantage that it needed but very little labour to completely adapt it for our purpose. So eager was I to complete our preparations that I would fain have set the men to work upon it that night; but they had already done extraordinarily well in getting the four guns landed and mounted upon their carriages; I therefore decided, though somewhat reluctantly, to let them have a long, unbroken night’s rest; and when the next day arrived I was glad that I had been wise enough to do so, for they came to their work fresh, and laboured with a will. As for me, I spent the night doing sentry-go, for I fully expected to receive a visit from the shore some time during the hours of darkness. But nothing happened; and when at length day dawned and I was relieved, I was inclined to believe that our efforts to conceal our presence on the island from the pirates had been successful.
With the dawning of a new day, however, the critical period was past, and I cared very little whether the inhabitants of the settlement did or did not discover our whereabouts. We, therefore, got all hands to work the moment that it was light enough to see; and by the time that the pirates ashore began to show themselves, two of our four 68-pounders were in place on the spot which we had chosen for our battery, and were ready to open fire at a moment’s notice. But the Cove was too small, and the islet too close to the settlement for us to conceal our whereabouts or our movements, when once we began to work upon the summit, where we were in full view of every eye within a range of a couple of miles; and the pirates ashore had not been on the move more than half-an-hour before it became apparent that our presence had been discovered. The indications that this was the case were clear and unmistakable; the alarm bell clanged out its summons, and instantly all work ceased and every man was seen to be hurrying toward the building in which I had been interviewed by Fernandez upon my arrival in the settlement. This could mean but one thing, namely, a speedy attack upon the islet; and in anticipation of this we hastened the completion of our preparations, so that we might be quite ready to meet that attack when it came. Our first business was to get the remaining two guns into position, and bring up to the battery our entire stock of ammunition. This did not cost us more than half-an-hour’s strenuous labour, at the completion of which all hands went to work to tumble a sufficient quantity of ballast into the felucca to enable her to stand up under sail; and the moment that this was done I sent her out to sea, with a midshipman and four hands on board—in order that she might not fall into the hands of the pirates—with instructions to return only when the British ensign should be displayed from the battery.
Scarcely was the felucca under way when the sentinel who had been left in the battery, to keep watch upon the movements of the pirates ashore, summoned us to our posts; and upon our arrival there we at once saw that our preparations had not been completed a moment too soon. For, as we topped the hill that obstructed the view of the Cove from the seaward side of the islet, we saw the whole male population of the settlement, numbering about one hundred and forty, marching down to the beach, with the evident intention of embarking in their boats and pulling off to attack us. With the aid of my telescope I could distinctly distinguish the figure of Fernandez, who was assuming the direction of operations; and I could not but admire the strictness of the discipline which he appeared to exercise over his followers, for the fellows seemed amenable to his briefest order. They possessed exactly twenty boats in all, ranging in size from a craft capable of accommodating forty men down to the little Norwegian dinghy in which I had made my escape, and it was evident that every man of the party had been previously told off to some particular boat; for upon their arrival at the beach the hitherto compact body at once dissolved into twenty separate detachments, each of which made its way, in a perfectly orderly manner, to a particular boat; the whole flotilla being launched and manned at Fernandez’ word of command. This done, the boats were turned round with their bows pointing straight for the islet, and—again at the word of command—the oars, as one, dropped into the water and the expedition advanced to the attack in a long straight line.
The boats had not so much as a single gun among them, their crew being armed simply with cutlass, pistol, and musket; I therefore felt no apprehension at all concerning the result of the coming conflict, but rather a somewhat unaccountable pity for the unfortunate wretches who seemed to be quite unaware that they were advancing to their doom. But this singular feeling of pity was quickly swamped by the reflection of the fate that would certainly be ours, should we by any chance be foolish enough to let the pirates get the better of us; and since it was important that we should make the utmost of our opportunities, I gave orders for the four guns to be loaded with grape and carefully aimed at the four largest boats. This was done, and the four pieces spoke their deadly message almost simultaneously, the smoke momentarily obscuring our vision, while the thunder of the discharge echoed and re-echoed round the cliffs in a long series of slowly decreasing reverberations. But long before these had died away the breeze had swept aside the pall of smoke that hid the boats from us, and we saw that, so carefully had the guns been aimed, each shot had taken effect, the four boats at which they had been discharged being now mere shapeless masses of wreckage, among which a few men struggled, here and there, to keep themselves afloat.
The casualties among the pirates must have been appalling, for I estimated that those four boats, being the largest in the entire flotilla, must have contained at least half the total number of men comprising the expedition, and, so far as I could ascertain, with the aid of my telescope, the survivors of the four crews scarcely numbered a dozen in all! Of course the nearest boats at once closed in upon the wreckage, with the object of rescuing those few survivors, and in so doing some half-a-dozen of them became bunched close together for about a minute. Such an opportunity was too good to be missed, and our guns having meanwhile been smartly loaded again, two of them were brought to bear upon the bunch, and simultaneously discharged. The result of these two shots was scarcely as effective as that of the previous discharge—possibly because the gun-captains had become a little flurried and excited—nevertheless two of the boats aimed at were blown to pieces, while two or three of the others showed signs of more or less serious damage, and the occupants were thrown into such dire confusion that, abandoning all further effort to save their comrades, they took to their oars and seemed intent only upon getting apart as quickly as possible, an example which was immediately followed by the remaining boats, the crews of which opened out until there was at least a couple of fathoms of clear water separating boat from boat.
For a few seconds I was under the impression that the havoc thus quickly wrought by our guns had so far discouraged the pirates that they intended to abandon the attack upon the islet—for there were several very evident signs of hesitation among them—but presently, apparently in response to the exhortations of Fernandez, who pulled along the line in a fast gig, the oars dipped once more, and the remnant of the flotilla most gallantly resumed its advance, amid cheers and yells of encouragement and defiance that clearly reached us on the islet.