CHAPTER XXIX.
“The deed is done.”Macbeth.
“The deed is done.”Macbeth.
“The deed is done.”Macbeth.
“The deed is done.”
Macbeth.
When Appadocca with his party had gained the schooner, he immediately ordered the prisoner Willmington to be taken to the torture-room and to be there kept in custody: at the same time the men were summoned to the main deck, and the booty of the previous night, was distributed in the same manner as we have described at the beginning of this tale.
In the meantime the morning dawned more brightly, and the waters of the gulf lay smooth and shining before the piercing rays of the morning sun, unbroken as they were by the faintest breath.
The heavy sails of the man-of-war were still seen to ascend one by one, and fall, as they were spread, heavily against the masts.
They reflected the sunbeams from their white and clear surface, far and wide: and amidst the number of vessels in the harbour, the huge ship-of-war, with all its canvass spread, and its stern decorated with the fiery ensign of England, looked like a gigantic monarch of the sea that floated at the head of its smaller subjects.
She was now ready to weigh anchor, and was now evidently only waiting for the wind which was certain to spring about the hour of ten in the forenoon.
When Appadocca had superintended the division of the spoil amongst his followers, he ordered the young midshipman to be brought before him.
That individual, in a few moments, made his appearance. He had scarcely as yet recovered from the effects of his torture; he was pale, and appeared still weak and emaciated. Yet in his eye there could now be read a more earnest seriousness—the fruit of the self dependent position in which he had for some time so accidentally found himself, and the consequence of the example to whose power he had been exposed, in the stern and manly society into which he had been thrown.
From a boy whose yearnings had been continually after excitement and pleasure, he was suddenly transformed into a man, whose thoughts began to be characterisedby the seriousness of purpose which alone can be worthy of the highest of the animal creation.
A change was marked on his face, and his demeanour was more subdued and more self-possessed.
“Young man,” said Appadocca, as he stood before him, “I set you at liberty, you shall have a small boat, which will in a moment be ready for you, you will be able to skull to your ship. I cannot, I am sorry to say, spare any of my men to help you. I see she is preparing to weigh anchor. Take my compliments to the commander himself, and tell him, to take the advice of one, who has experienced much kindness at his hands, and by no means to move from his anchorage to-day. Ask him to consult a calculation which I made on the partition of the cabin in which I was confined, and he will know the reason. Before you leave the schooner, ask the officer of the watch for a letter which I shall send to your commander’s son.”
Appadocca then descended into his cabin and wrote thus:—
“Dear Hamilton,“The consummation of my existence is now fast approaching; I, therefore, write to you, as I fear it will be the last time that I may have the opportunity of communicating with a dear friend, from whose heart Ihave experienced so much consideration, and from whose hands I have received so much kindness! It is scarcely necessary for me to tell you, that destiny preserved me from the perils from which few could have hoped to escape.“I am at the head of my faithful followers once more, and it rejoices me to think that my escape was effected entirely by my own efforts and quite unknowingly to one on whose escutcheon I should not have even virtue itself accidentally to paint a blot. I shall lead the men who have followed me so bravely, and who have served me so faithfully, to some remote spot on the fertile and vast continent that lies on our right, and build them a city in which they may live happily, quietly, and far removed from the world, whose sympathy they cannot hope, and care not, to possess. For myself....Receive, my dear Charles, the sincere good wishes of one who esteems you.“Emmanuel Appadocca.”“N.B.—Recollect and prevail upon your father not to set sail to-day. Remember the tempest of which I spoke, it will come within these twenty-four hours.“E. A.”
“Dear Hamilton,
“The consummation of my existence is now fast approaching; I, therefore, write to you, as I fear it will be the last time that I may have the opportunity of communicating with a dear friend, from whose heart Ihave experienced so much consideration, and from whose hands I have received so much kindness! It is scarcely necessary for me to tell you, that destiny preserved me from the perils from which few could have hoped to escape.
“I am at the head of my faithful followers once more, and it rejoices me to think that my escape was effected entirely by my own efforts and quite unknowingly to one on whose escutcheon I should not have even virtue itself accidentally to paint a blot. I shall lead the men who have followed me so bravely, and who have served me so faithfully, to some remote spot on the fertile and vast continent that lies on our right, and build them a city in which they may live happily, quietly, and far removed from the world, whose sympathy they cannot hope, and care not, to possess. For myself....
Receive, my dear Charles, the sincere good wishes of one who esteems you.
“Emmanuel Appadocca.”
“N.B.—Recollect and prevail upon your father not to set sail to-day. Remember the tempest of which I spoke, it will come within these twenty-four hours.
“E. A.”
The young midshipman was withdrawn and in a fewmoments he pushed off gladly from the schooner, and was soon seen gradually leaving it behind.
Ten o’clock came, and with it the steady trade wind. The placid gulf curled before it—the vessels at anchor in the harbour, swung to and fro on their long cables, as they felt its force, and the vessel-of-war sheered off under her canvass that swelled and looked full and turgid with the wind. The sprays flew about her broad bows, and she was bearing straight down on the schooner with the wind on her quarter. Every sail that could be hoisted was set, and her commander seemed again determined to make another powerful effort, in order to have a chance of bringing his batteries to bear against the Black Schooner. As for that vessel herself, she remained in the same place where she was, and seemed quite indifferent to the movements of the man-of-war.
Appadocca pensively paced her deck, and looked from time to time towards the eastern shore.
“The rash and fiery old man,” he muttered, with an expression half anxious, half indignant, when he saw the large vessel fall off from her anchorage.
When the wind had become fairly settled in, the order was given to set sail.
With the usual rapidity, the masts of the schooner became sheeted in her ample sails, her small kedges werelet go, and she turned gracefully to the wind. Her bow pointed to the southern outlet of the gulf—the Serpent’s Mouth.
The calm and placid picture which the two vessels presented, as they sailed in the same direction, bore in itself but a faint resemblance to the fierce passions that might animate their crews, or the bloody deeds which might be done if once they came within gun-shot of each other.
The usually quiet gulf smiled under the freshness of the morning: the two vessels sailed smoothly on its even bosom. There was no labouring, no plunging, no heaving of terrible seas, to call forth any feeling, akin to terror.
The dark blue waves appeared through the thin vapours of the morning like a landscape in a picture, and the light slender fishing canoes, with their feather-like sails, which seemed to play on the waters, like butterflies in the beams of a sunny day, added a peculiar and peaceful appearance to the scene.
The high and solitary mountain of Naparima, with a few scattered and scathed trees on its crown, rose in the distance; while the low sloping shores before, seemed entirely to enclose the gulf, and to hem it round against the violence of intrusive winds. Upon the whole, abeholder, on seeing the two vessels together, with the thousand sailing boats and sloops that followed in the wake of the man-of-war in order to witness the exciting scene of an action, might have taken them to be the pleasure ships of luxurious lordlings, who had launched forth on the deep to seek another subject of excitement, in order to cheat monotony of some of its victim-days.
The pirate schooner held its course with an indifference that would not have led one to believe she was pursued. The watchful chief stood by the shroud of the mainmast, with his arms folded on his breast, calm and impassable as he was at almost all the moments of his life.
Not so the pursuing man-of-war. Ever and anon, as any of the small sailing vessels that navigate the gulf came in sight, signals upon signals went up her masts, to intimate that the vessel ahead was a pirate, and to command it to be harassed and hindered in its course. But all these were lost on the simple skippers of those simple crafts.
The chase continued. The terrible rock that is known by the name of the “soldier,” and that true to its appellation, seems to guard with unsurprizeable vigilance the passage of the Serpent’s Mouth, was passed. Point Icacos, too, was doubled, and the two vessels werenow riding on the atlantic billows, with the low Orinoco marshes on the right, and the rocky and wild coast of Trinidad on the left.
The sun was setting, when, suddenly, as if some monster screen had been abruptly raised from earth to heaven, in order to keep one part of the globe from the other, the wind fell, and the sails lay like humid sheets against the masts.
“Nature will now begin to speak,” said Appadocca to himself, with a certain air of contentment now lighting up his stern brow, and then looked aloft and around.
At his order, the spars were instantaneously armed with steel spears, from whose feet, conducting wires hung down along the shrouds and dipped into the sea. At another order, the large jibs, foresail, and mainsail of the schooner were stripped from the masts, and in their place, small narrow sails, which, from their size, could not have been supposed to be capable of having the least effect, were set.
The guns were doubly secured in their places, and the arms were fastened with even greater care than usual in their cases, in the bulwarks.
The two vessels now lay on the ocean, that now heaved as if from its own convulsions; for the lightestvane hung straight and stiffly down. There was not a breath of air. The vessels turned round and round helplessly on the seas, and as they rose on this wave, and were beaten athwart, or astern by the other, for the billows rolled at this time in no regular course, they fell into the troughs, or rose on the brows of the waves with such sudden and straining movements, that the wood and iron that formed them, seemed scarcely strong enough to hold together.
Night closed in; with it came a darkness that in itself was awful. No man could see his hand before him, shipmate could not see even the shipmate that stood at his side; which was the sea, which the deck, no one could tell, save when some counter-running wave broke suddenly on the side or bow of the schooner, and threw up the myriads of shining insects that inhabited its full and swollen bosom.
Those that were obliged to move about, clung cautiously to the bulwarks, and set one foot carefully before the other, that they might not throw themselves over.
The cries of the terror-stricken sea-birds, as they wandered on the still and suffocating air, with even instinct failing to lead them to their resting place on the shore, sounded hoarse and ominous to the ear.
Not a sound was heard on board the schooner, except the creaks of the straining cordage, as the vessel violently and madly plunged.
Now, like molten lead, the rain began to fall in large, heavy, and leisurely drops. Then distant sounds, like the groans of a labouring world, when earthquakes shake it to its base, were heard. A sudden and faint gush of wind, like the fluttering of gigantic wings, came and turned the schooner round and round, and passed away, leaving the deadly calm as it was before. Flash—flash—the lightning came, and by its lurid light, the ocean to the southward shone in one sheet of foam.
“How is your helm?” inquired Appadocca of the steersman.
“Very slack, your excellency. She does not feel it,” the man replied.
The sounds increased; they approached nearer and nearer; they came, and like a toy in the hand of a giant, the schooner was suddenly thrown on her beam-ends. The water washed one-half of her long deck, and the first gust of the hurricane swept with a terrible noise, over the prostrate vessel, and seemed to crush her, like a mountain that had fallen from its base, and had met some paltry obstacle in its way, while it was rolling along to find its level.
“Luff,” cried the chief to the steersman.
“Luff.”
The schooner lay on her side for a few minutes, as if she would never right again: at last, like an impatient steed, whose course has been arrested by some temporary barrier, after sustaining the violence of the gust, she sprang forth into the face of the wind, and seemed like a thing of passion and pride, roused to brave the power of the overwhelming hurricane.
With the scanty storm sails, which the foresight of Appadocca had had bent, she shot through the mountain billows with her usual speed, cleaving them through, and throwing the sprays mast high.
On—on, she went, as if actuated by the bold spirit of the man who commanded her, she sought to penetrate the very bosom of the hurricane.
Her slender masts bent like willows to and fro, as she mounted the mountains of rushing water, that struck and shook her to the very keel.
By the flashes of glaring and frequent lightning, the fierce sailors could now and then be seen standing stolidly at their respective stations, their red caps drawn far down over their puckered brows, and their black beards dripping with spray and rain.
A rope fastened each man to his post, and unmoved,like carved wood, they stood in the terrors of the howling winds: the bonds of discipline were still on them.
As for Appadocca himself far from evincing any anxiety, he seemed to take pleasure in the terrible convulsions of nature. With the dark heavens above him re-echoing far and wide with the rolls of the loud and never-ceasing thunder; with the balancing ocean below him, and the terrifying howls of the devastating hurricane around him, he was the same unimpassioned, collected, intrepid man, as when the schooner rode on the calmest sea, under the most smiling sky. He seemed to take pleasure—if his nature could receive pleasure—in the awe-striking scene. Ever and anon he took up his red cap, and pressed his hand over his brow in apparent delight.
The schooner still laboured in the seas that now began to grow higher and higher, and heavier and heavier. The lightnings came and played about her masts, like the spirits of the tempest, that seemed marking her as their victim; but the fluid glided down the wires, and lost itself in the foaming deep.
Still on—on—on she went. A terrible gust.... She was laid on her beams again. The wind was gone: the air was calm and close: not a breath;—her narrowsails hung to her masts, and she was tossed about without wind enough to feel her helm.
At this frightful interval the echoes of rending broadsides were heard towards the north. They were the reports of the man-of-war’s distress guns.
“Take in the fore and mainsail,” cried Appadocca, in a voice that seemed to sound solitary and lonely amidst the terrors of the night.
“Reef the jib.”
The order was scarcely executed, when the rumbling sounds were again heard. It was coming—it was coming; the schooner was thrust forward, as if some immense rock had been let to fall against her; her bows were dashed through the approaching billows; as she emerged for a moment, the same power thrust her backwards; her stern sank under the volumes of water that washed over her decks; and then, as quick as thought, she was lifted from the surface, and twisted, and twisted, and turned reelingly round in mid-air, and was let to fall with a tremendous crash again. Crack—crack—her two tapering masts snapt from the deck. They were overboard, and the lately resisting schooner was now borne with the rapidity of lightning before the hurricane.
“Get up the anchors,” the voice of Appadocca wasagain heard; as he recovered from the concussion of the whirlwind.
The prostrate sailors scrambled from the corners into which they had been thrown; the hatches were raised, and the only hope of the schooner,—the anchors—were quickly drawn on deck.
The hurricane was now at its height. Like a feather on the overturning currents of an overflowing cataract, the vessel was furiously borne away before the sweeping wind.
The anchors, with their immense coils of chain-cable were thrown overboard, to arrest the progress of the vessel for a time, until jury-masts could be rigged.
It was of no avail.—Fast—fast—before the wind the schooner went; and then a grating noise, and a dreadful shock;—every man fell on his face—she was ashore—on the rocks.
“Save yourselves, my brave men,” the deep-toned Appadocca cried, as he stood boldly prominent amidst the surrounding rack and ruin.
The ocean was fringed with foam, as it broke on the rocks of Trinidad, on which the once beautiful schooner was at this moment being dashed to pieces.
The sailors now thought of saving themselves. The distance from dry land was not much, and it might begained on the crest of the waves, if no rock dashed to pieces the daring fugitives in their attempt.
Each bold pirate watched his time, and leapt boldly on the crest of the billow, as it came washing by, and in the twinkling of an eye, was thrown up high and dry, alive or dead, on the top of the rocks.
Already every man had left the schooner, and had perished or been tossed up alive.
Appadocca still stood leaning on the bulwarks, contemplating the sad remnants of his once all but animated vessel.
Lorenzo and Jack Jimmy drew together imperceptibly to his sides. They stood around him silent, and unperceived.
The schooner was breaking up; still Appadocca stood where he was.
“Will not your excellency go on shore?” Lorenzo at last ventured to say.
Appadocca started slightly, as if awakened from a dream or reverie.
“Yes, Lorenzo; but save yourselves first. Watch the wave; here it is—jump in—you, too, Jack Jimmy, quickly, so, so.”
The two men jumped on the billow as it swept by the schooner, Appadocca followed, and they reached the shore.
Now the wind suddenly ceased as before.
Appadocca, with Lorenzo and Jack Jimmy, were sitting on the top of a lofty rock: they were viewing the last struggles of their vessel.
“A terrible night, this is, Lorenzo,” said Appadocca.
“It is, indeed, your excellency, a frightful night! for——hark! What cry is that? It is from the schooner,” cried Lorenzo, as he stood up.
A supernatural shriek fell on the ear. It came from the schooner. Again it came—again—and again—as she was battered against the rock.
The three persons were silent.
“Oh, I know,” cried Lorenzo.
“It is the prisoner—I may save him yet—I may save him yet,” said Lorenzo.
They were the shrieks of James Willmington, who was still battened down in the narrow torture-room, into which he had been thrown, and was undergoing more than a thousand deaths; dying as he was, thus cooped up in a dark narrow cabin, and the vessel breaking asunder under him.
The cabin was so close, that his terrified shrieks could not be heard before; but now, when the seams were opened, they alone, prolonged, and agonizing as theywere, were now to be heard in the lull of the wind, on the silent, close, and death-strewn air.
Lorenzo rushed down the rock, but ere he could devise a means to rescue him, the schooner broke in two, and the unhappy Willmington sank for ever, still a prisoner in the torture-room.
The schooner went to pieces, and soon the billows rolled on the rocks over her once graceful form.
Appadocca silently watched the gradual destruction of his vessel, and silently listened to the shrieks of his father.
When not a timber of her remained above water, he heaved a heavy sigh. The first, that Lorenzo had ever heard from him. It was the sigh that came from a hurricane of feelings within him, which equalled the raging hurricane of nature without.