CHAPTER XXXVI.THE FLIGHT.
“Stand to your guns men!” thundered the captain of theXyphias.
And the deafening cheers sank into silence, and theorder was promptly obeyed.
“Mr. Ethel!”
The young lieutenant came quickly at the captain’s call.
“Pass the order to fire at the enemy’s mizzen mast. Strike at as low as possible; for the lower you carry it away the more unmanageable theSea Scourgewill become. The heavy press of sail she carries forward will then lift her stern high out of the water and render her less obedient to her helm.”
“Ay, ay, sir!” responded the cheerful voice of the young officer, as he touched his cap and went forward to see the order executed.
The gunner in charge of the lee-bow chaser was an old and experienced one.
The lieutenant gave him the order, word for word, as he had received it from the captain.
“We’ll try, sir,” said the veteran, with a confident smile and pat on the breech of his gun, which satisfied the lieutenant that the gunner knew his business. The gun was now ready. He sighted her, and gave the command:
“Fire!”
Out poured the deafening discharge, and two hundred pairs of eyes were tracking the course of the ball through the air, each in impatient suspense to see the effect.
It struck close under the stern of the enemy.
“A good shot! a capital shot!” exclaimed the captain. “A little more elevation on your next, and you will splinter his mizzen mast!”
Meanwhile Lieutenant Ethel raised his telescope and took sight at the chase. And it seemed that the captain of theSea Scourge, finding that his false colors did not protect him, and having a ball drop so close under his stern, concluded that he was known, and determined to fight the battle out under his true ones. Down fluttered St. George’s Cross and up flew the Stars and Bars. And the next instant his stern chaser answered the iron messenger from theXyphias.
The shot plunged into the sea close on the weather quarter of our gallant ship, doing no other harm than copiously sprinkling the jolly tars on that side.
“A free shower bath in hot weather is a pleasant and a wholesome thing!” exclaimed a young midshipman, who had received his full share of that blessing.
But another good fellow, a landsman recently shipped from Cape Town, who had been standing gaping and staring with mouth and eyes open, received a deluge on his face and chest, striking him with such a shock that he lost his balance and his reason at the same moment, and fell flat upon his back, rolling over and over, imagining that the ball had struck him, and that the water gurgling back from his throat was his own lifeblood, and bawling at the top of his voice:
“I’m shot! I’m shot! My head’s off! My head’s off! Take me down! Take me down!”
Amid roars of laughter from his companions, an old salt caught up a pair of shell hooks, similar in shape to fire tongs, and, reaching forward, brought the ends together over a piece of flesh under the fellow’s pantaloons with an unmerciful squeeze.
The dead man sprang up with wonderful agility, and, amid piercing shrieks, bawled out:
“I’m shot again! I’m shot again! Take me down below! Take me down below!”
Such peals of laughter followed this that the lad opened his eyes, looked about, came to his senses and realized his position.
At the captain’s command he went forward and slunk out of sight.
The next shot from theSea Scourgetook off the head of the brave old salt, spiraling it round and round until it struck the deck, while the headless body sank quivering down upon the very spot where but a moment before the form of the coward had rolled.
But—
“The coward dies many deaths,The brave man dies but once.”
“The coward dies many deaths,The brave man dies but once.”
“The coward dies many deaths,The brave man dies but once.”
“The coward dies many deaths,
The brave man dies but once.”
Shot after shot was now exchanged between the ships with little effect; theXyphiasall the while gradually drawing nearer theSea Scourge, and the chase growing more exciting.
At length a lucky shot from theXyphiasstruck the enemy’s mizzen mast, just above the mizzen top, and down came the wreck.
Cheers upon cheers went up from the crew of theXyphias.
Yells of defiance answered them from the decks of the enemy.
Lieutenant Ethel again leveled his glass at the chase.
TheSea Scourgestill minded her helm, as her spanker and crotchet were still standing and drawing. The wreck of her mizzen mast was promptly cleared away. And she doggedly answered gun for gun, shot for shot, though theXyphiaswas now gaining rapidly upon her, and her case was well-nigh hopeless.
At last a shot from theXyphiasstruck the taffrail of the enemy, close by the wheel, scattering the splinters in every direction. One struck the helmsman, driven to his very heart. In his death agony and delirium he clutched the spokes of the wheel with the grasp that could not be loosened, and he slowly sank windward to the deck, turning the wheel with him. TheSea Scourge, in obedience to her helm, rounded sharply to the wind.
Seeing his ship broaching to, the captain of theSea Scourgeran aft, yelling:
“What d’ye mean by that, you —— sea cook? Luff! Luff!”
There came no response from the helmsman; and indeed in the same instant that he ceased speaking the captain perceived that the man was past hearing. He reached the helm too late. The ship was already taken aback and lying directly across the course of theXyphias, and not two cables’ length from her. He gave the helm to a seaman near, and, springing upon the poop deck, yelled forth the order:
“Rake her with your port battery!”
Then issued forth a tremendous discharge that shook the privateer from masthead to keel, so that she trembled like a living creature struck with palsy. Then he braced her yards and put her wheel hard down, so as to bring her again upon her course.
Meanwhile, from the deck of theXyphias, Captain Yetsom, observing the privateer in the act of broaching to, first looked, expecting to see her haul down her colors. But as they continued to fly, he put up his helm to clear theXyphiasfrom the raking fire that he foresaw would be poured into her from the port battery of the enemy.
But so quickly did theSea Scourgebroach to, that theXyphiascould not get away in time, and so she received the enemy’s whole broadside obliquely over her lee bows, with disastrous effect.
The roar of the cannon, the crash of falling timbers and the shrieks of the wounded were appalling.
Many poor fellows lost their lives and many more their limbs.
But now, above all the noise and confusion, the voice of Captain Yetsom rang out clearly and firmly:
“Man the starboard guns! Clew up the courses! And so we cross the privateer’s bows, take good aim and pay her well for this!”
And before theSea Scourgecould veer round upon her course again, theXyphiascame across her bows. A long line of fire belched forth from the starboard guns, sending iron missiles crashing and tearing into theSea Scourge, and dealing death and destruction everywhere among her crew.
Here Justin’s clear and ringing voice was heard high above all others in the cheers that rose heavenward from the deck of theXyphias.
Again these cheers were answered with yells of defiance from the deck of the privateer, whose sails now began to fill rapidly, so that she quickly wore round.
This brought the ships opposite to each other.
And now commenced a murderous exchange of broadsides. Roar followed roar! Crash came upon crash! The shrieks of the wounded on both sides mingled with each other and with the cheers of their unhurt companions.
Justin was everywhere—inspiring the brave to still greater deeds of valor, encouraging the faint-hearted till they outrivaled the most heroic, helping all by precept and example, and serving at the guns where men had fallen, until relieved.
And now the foremast of theSea Scourgewas seen to totter and fall!
While the enemy was encumbered with this wreck, Captain Yetsom set his courses and, shooting ahead, took up a raking position, from which he poured into theSea Scourgea galling fire of grape and canister.
The privateer persistently returned the fire with herbow chasers, and promptly cleared her deck from the wreck of the foremast.
Captain Yetsom, seeing that with the indomitable courage of his countrymen she would sink before she would surrender and seeing also that she was manœuvring to get into position again, determined to carry her by the board.
He stood off for a short time and gathered his officers and men about him and said:
“That privateer is well fought. Her commander will go to the bottom with her colors flying, rather than haul them down. He cannot have many men remaining fit for duty. So, to save the lives of my men, as well as that ship and her crew, I am resolved, by the help of the Lord, to carry her by the board.”
This announcement was received with tremendous cheers.
“Enough! To your quarters, men!” thundered the captain.
The order was immediately obeyed.
“Mr. Ethel!”
The young lieutenant sprang to his captain’s side.
“Get ready the boarding party!”
Ethel sprang to execute his order.
Captain Yetsom then put his ship about, and as she came in collision with theSea Scourge, poured into the enemy a broadside from her port battery, and then, cutlass in hand, leaped on board, followed by Justin and the whole boarding party.
Here they were met by a set of men, few in number, but desperate in resolution, and a terrible conflict ensued. Foremost among the boarding party might have been seen the tall form of Justin, cheering on the men and striking good blows for the flag he loved so well.
In the meantime, what was Britomarte doing? Where Justin had left her, she had sat studying what she might do to help the good cause. Suddenly she found out her mission.
“There will be wounded men,” she said, “and no one to attend to them in the excitement of the action.”
And she arose and opened her trunks and boxes, and took from them all the soft old linen she could find, andsat down to tear it into bandages, and having done that, she began to pick the shreds that were left into lint.
While Britomarte was engaged in this humane work, her panic-stricken companion lay in one of the berths, with her head under the cover, trying to deafen herself to the sound of the battle.
When the shrieks and groans of the wounded and dying began to mingle with the roar of cannon and the crash of timbers, then Britomarte gathered up her linen bandages and lint, and put them in a little basket with a pair of scissors, a flat knife, and needles and thread, and with the basket on her arm, she went up on deck.
Everybody was too busy there to see or stop her.
Through the black and sulphurous smoke, through pools of blood, between dead bodies, heedless of the cannon balls that tore crashing past her, she made her way to that part of the deck where the ship’s surgeon stood among the wounded, having them carefully carried below.
“Doctor, I have come to take care of these brave fellows,” she said, pausing at his side.
The surgeon looked at her in dismay.
“Young lady, for Heaven’s sake——” he began; but she took the word from his lips.
“Doctor, for Heaven’s sake forget that I am a ‘young lady,’ and look upon me only as a human being, able and willing to be useful!” she said.
“Boom-oom-me! crash! splash!” came the cannon ball from theSea Scourge, tearing its way over their heads, and dropping into the sea before them.
Britomarte stood like a statue, absolutely unshaken by the tremendous shock.
“Were you not frightened?” asked the doctor, in amazement.
“No; why should I be?” she coolly demanded.
“Nay, why should you not be?”
“In the first place, because I have no fear of death; in the second, because I have no great love of life. If I could feel fear, I should rush to the very front of danger to cure myself of the weakness.”
“I believe you would. You are formed of the metal of which heroes are made!”
“Let me help you,” said Britomarte, feeling impatient of his praise, and pointing to the basket of linen bandages and lint that she carried in her hand.
“Well, my child, you can help me, and you may. And at least you had better be down below with me binding up wounds, than up on deck with the gunners helping to make them, as I think was your first aspiration,” replied the doctor.
“Yes,” said Britomarte, “I should like to serve at one of the guns, but since I am not permitted to do so, I am willing to be useful in any other way. And you will find that I shall not dress our brave sailor’s wounds any the less tenderly because I should prefer to make wounds for other people to dress on the bodies of the foemen!”
And saying these words, she followed the doctor down into the cockpit, where the wounded lay, some in hammocks, some on sail cloth, and some on the naked planks.
And there her courage, her humanity, and, above all, her divine purity, so impressed the ship’s surgeon, that he did utterly forget that she was a young lady, and he made her as useful as if she had been a medical student.
At the surgeon’s orders, with her sharp scissors and steady hand she ripped up the sleeves of the sailors’ wounded arms, or the trousers of their wounded legs, with equal promptness. She cut sticking plaster into long, slender slips, and watched the doctor to see how he brought the gaping lips of mere flesh wounds together, and closed them, by laying across them, at right angles, these delicate strips of plaster, and then bandaged them up with linen.
She watched him perform this simple operation once. And then she assured him that she could do that as well as he could. And after that, while the surgeon attended to the more serious cases—probing wounds, extracting balls, and even amputating limbs—Britomarte closed and bandaged all the simple flesh wounds with a skill equal to that of the surgeon himself, and with a tenderness that drew from her rough patients many thanks and blessings.
And all this time the roar of battle went on overhead and all around her. Occasionally a ball struck near.
At length, however, the cannonading ceased, and anoise and confusion of another sort was heard above—a mighty cheering and hurrahing and running to and fro.
“What does that mean?” exclaimed the doctor.
But nobody could answer him, and he was too busy with his wounded to go and see for himself.
Britomarte had dressed the last wound of her last patient, and was holding a glass of brandy and water to his lips, for he was faint from the loss of blood, when another injured man—a young midshipman—was brought down.
And he reported that the captain had resolved to carry the enemy by the board.
“And that brave young fellow, Mr. Rosenthal, is foremost among the boarding party, fighting like another Paul Jones,” he added.
Britomarte listened breathlessly; but waited quietly until her patient had drained the glass that she held to his lips, and then she gently laid his head back, put down the glass, and rushed up on deck.
She reached that horrible deck—the scene of the late carnage. It was slippery with human gore, and spattered with brains, and littered with the splinters of shivered timbers and shreds of rent canvas, and fragments of broken weapons, and obstructed with dead bodies; and over all hung a sulphurous smoke of gunpowder that obscured the vision and blackened all the sails and rigging; and above all rang the clash of steel, the report of firearms, the screams of the wounded, and the yells and cheers of the combatants.
Through all these horrors Britomarte rushed to the starboard side of the ship to which theSea Scourgehad been clawed up so closely that any one might easily pass from one to the other.
On the deck of theSea Scourgethe battle was raging fiercely.
At first, her senses all bewildered with horror, Britomarte perceived before her only a pandemonium of clanging, clashing, thundering, smoking, blazing, bleeding, screaming, yelling chaos! But presently her straining eyes made out the figure of Justin.
Conspicuous above all the rest by his great height and strength, and by the grandeur of his inspired countenance,which seemed as that of a god of war, and flinging himself wherever the fight was fiercest, he soon became the one target of the enemy, who struck at him from all sides.
Seeing him thus surrounded and desperately fighting, Britomarte clasped her hands, exclaiming:
“Oh, Heavenly Father protect him! In Thine infinite mercy protect him!”
Then, no longer able to restrain herself, on seeing him in the most imminent peril, she caught up a cutlass from an arm-chest near, and crying:
“Oh, God of battles! give strength to my weak woman’s arm this day!” she rushed over to the deck of theSea Scourge, in the midst of that hell of war, and stood by her lover’s side.
Meanwhile Justin had singled out the pirate Captain Mulligan as his own; and also Mulligan, who was a brave man, had sought out the mighty champion of theXyphias.
And at the moment in which our amazon, cutlass in hand, boarded theSea Scourge, these two met; and Justin’s other assailants fell back at a signal from their captain. And now, between the two, stroke followed stroke in rapid succession, each very adroitly parried. At length Mulligan lost his temper, and with that his presence of mind, and made a fierce lunge at his adversary’s heart, which was quickly parried, and before he could come to his guard again, Justin brought down a crushing stroke upon his head that felled him to the deck.
But as he was in the act of leveling this fatal blow, he caught a glimpse of a seaman with a cocked pistol pointed close to his head. He thought that his time had come; he mentally prayed that his soul might be received in heaven; he heard the report of the pistol, felt the ball whizz through his hair, and thanking the Lord for his preservation, he turned and saw—what? The seaman’s pistol arm resting on the cutlass with which Britomarte had struck it up!
To her, then, he owed his life. But there was not an instant of time to think of that now. Quick as lightning his arm flew up and his steel fell, crunching through the brain of the seaman, who dropped lifeless to the deck.Every act in this passage of arms passed with the rapidity of thought. There was not more than a minute occupied in the felling of Mulligan, the aiming of the pistol, the striking it up by Britomarte, and the braining of the assassin by Justin.
Now heedless of the battle storm that raged around them, Justin dropped upon one knee, as a knight before his queen, and, seizing the hand of his beloved, he exclaimed with deep emotion:
“I owe my life to you!”
“I have owed mine many times to you. Thank Heaven that you are saved!”
After the fall of their captain was known to them, the pirate crew submitted, crying for quarter.
TheSea Scourgewas now the prize of theXyphias.
And down came the Stars and Bars, and up ran the glorious old flag!