Chapter Eight.

Chapter Eight.Caught in a Cyclone.The watch below had been dismissed upon the completion of our work of preparation, but not a man had left the deck, their anxiety to see and know the worst of what was to befall having completely overcome their usual propensity to make the utmost of every moment allotted to them for necessary rest, and they were now all huddled and clustered together upon the forecastle, discussing the situation in low, murmured tones, and holding themselves in readiness, like hounds in the leash, to spring into activity at the first word of command.The moaning and wailing sounds were now floating all round us, and presently, making itself rapidly audible above them, we became conscious of a deep, fierce, bellowing roar that seemed to be approaching us on our starboard beam, the schooner’s head being then about north-west.“Here it comes!” exclaimed Ryan, in a hoarse tone of suppressed excitement. “Get hold of a belaying-pin each, you two, or you will stand a very good chance of being blown overboard. Starboard your helm; hard over with it, my man. Get under the lee of the starboard bulwarks, men. Carpenter, are your axes ready in case we should be obliged to cut anything away?”“All ready, sir,” came the reply, scarcely audible above the roar of the tempest that was now close upon us; and as the man spoke a fierce gust of wind laden with salt mist swooped down upon us and careened the schooner almost to her covering-board as it filled the foresail with a jar and a report like that of a nine-pounder. This blast was only momentary, however, it was upon us and gone again in an instant, but it was quickly succeeded by others; and then, away in the gloom, right abeam of us, appeared a white, spectral glimmer swooping down upon the schooner with the speed of a race-horse, and spreading momentarily wider athwart the blackness as it came. It was a line of white foam churned up on the surface of the sea by the advancing hurricane, and all behind it the ocean was white as milk. The air was now in violent motion all about us, fierce eddies swooping hither and thither, but generally in the same direction as that from which the gale was approaching. Another heavy salt-laden gust struck us, lasting just long enough to give the schooner way and render her obedient to her helm, and then the deep bass roar rose into a deafening, yelling medley of indescribable sounds as the gale struck us, and the poor little schooner bowed beneath the blow until the water poured in over her lee gunwale and I thought that she was going to “turn the turtle” with us. The foresail stood the strain for just an instant, and then it split to ribbons, and was torn from the bolt-ropes as cleanly as though the work had been done with a knife. But the good sail had already done its work before the hurricane proper had struck us, in that it had imparted some life, even though ever so little, to the schooner; she was already paying slowly off when the first stroke of the hurricane beat her down, and she continued to do so until, as she got dead before it, she rose suddenly to an even keel and went scudding away to leeward like a frightened sea-bird. The awful volume of sound given out by the fierce, headlong swoop of the wind as it bore down upon us quite prepared me to see both masts blown clean out of the schooner; but all her gear fortunately happened to be sound and good, and the loss of the foresail was the full extent of the damage sustained by us.Having satisfied myself upon that point, I ventured to raise my head a little above the bulwarks to see how the strange sail was faring. Pierrepoint had reported her as being visible in the north-eastern quarter, and if this were so she ought now to be somewhere astern of us, since we were running off about south-west; and, sure enough, there she was, about a point and a half on our starboard quarter, just visible in the midst of the ghostly glare of the phosphorescent foam. She was, like ourselves, running dead before the gale, and I thought I could make out that her topsails had withstood the tremendous strain of the outburst and were still doing their duty. If this were so, since we were scudding under bare poles, she would soon overtake and pass us quite as closely as would be at all consistent with the safety of the two craft, and we should be afforded an opportunity to learn something of her character, and to judge whether she was the barque that we had been so industriously seeking. I made my way over to Ryan, who was standing—as well as he could against the violence of the wind that threatened to sweep him off his feet—close to the helmsman, pointed toward the stranger, and, clinging to the companion, we stood and watched her for a minute or two, half suffocated with the difficulty of breathing in so furious a tempest. She was now about four miles from us, and it soon became apparent that she was overhauling us fast, although by no means so fast as I expected; and she was so nearly end-on to us that I suggested to Ryan the advisability of our showing a light, as it looked very much as though she had not yet seen us and might approach us so closely as to put both craft in imminent peril.“All in good time,” shouted the captain in my ear, in response to this suggestion. “I do not believe that shehasseen us yet; but that is not of much consequence, since both of us are steering as steadily as pleasure-boats on a river, and I will take care to make her acquainted with our whereabouts if there appears to be the slightest danger of her running over us. But I want her to pass as near us as possible, so that we may have a good view of her. For there seems to me to be a something familiar-looking about her, as though I had seen her before; and, between you and me, Harry, I believe her to be our old friend the barque again. And, if so, we must keep up with her at all costs until the weather moderates sufficiently to bring her to; so just step for’ard, will you, my lad, and get the fore-trysail on deck and bent ready for setting in case we need it. And let one hand bring aft a lantern,notlighted, mind ye; he can take it below, light itthere, and leave it at the foot of the companion-ladder all ready to show a light if yonder stranger seems likely to sheer too close to us in passing.”I went forward, as requested, and found that the watch below had already returned to their hammocks, the crisis having passed, and the schooner scudding as comfortably as could be before the gale. The trysail was got up from below, bent, halliards and sheets hooked on, and, in short, made all ready for setting, and I returned aft to Ryan’s side, having to claw my way to him along the rail in preference to creeping along the deck upon all fours, which seemed to be the only alternative method of making headway against the wind. The sea was by this time getting up, and the air was full of spume and scud-water, caught up from the surface of the sea and the crests of the waves and swept along in a blinding, drenching shower by the gale. My superior officer was still clinging to the companion, with his eyes intently fixed upon the strange sail astern, which, now that the dense masses of cloud overhead were torn into shreds of flying scud by the fury of the wind, was pretty distinctly visible, at a distance of about a mile and a half, by the dim, misty moonlight that filtered through.“I’ve been trying to get a peep at her through my night-glass,” exclaimed Ryan, with a wave of his hand toward the dark blotch in the midst of the white foam, “but there is no holding it in such a breeze as this; you have to keep a tight grip on the thing or the wind will take it away from you altogether. But I’m pretty certain that it is the barque; and if so I’ll stick to her as long as this schooner will hang together.”“Do you think that she has seen us yet?” I asked.“Yes, I fancy so,” answered Ryan. “She appears to me to be edging away a trifle, so as to pass us to starboard, giving us as wide a berth as possible. But even although she may have seen us, I do not believe that we are recognised, as yet; indeed, how should we be? At this distance, and end-on as we are, with no canvas set and our topmasts struck, we must look like little more than a dot on the water.”This was quite true, and I fully believed, with Ryan, that we hadnotbeen recognised, for although our companion had indeed manifested signs of an inclination to edge away from us, the tendency was only to a sufficient extent to insure her passing us in safety. Had she suspected us of being an enemy, it would not have been positively dangerous for her to have altered her course fully a point, although, blowing as it then did, it would have been exceedingly imprudent to have attempted more than that.In about half-an-hour after I had joined Ryan the strange craft overtook us; but while she was yet some half-a-mile astern of us we had made her out to be a barque of just about the same size as the one that we had been hunting for; and when she came up abreast of us at a distance of not more than a quarter of a mile, we saw that her main-topmast had gone just at the cap, and her people were still busy with the wreck of it; a pretty tough job they seemed to be having with it, too. That she was much more strongly-manned than is usually the case with a merchantman of her size was also evident, for we could see that while one gang was at work clearing away the wreck, another was busy securing the fore-topmast by getting up preventer-backstays, and so on. How they managed to work aloft at all in such terrific weather passed my comprehension; but there they were, at leasttryingto do something. And, as Ryan remarked, it showed conclusively what a resolute set of fellows they were on board her, and afforded us a clue as to the sort of resistance we were likely to meet with should it ever come to a game of fisticuffs between them and ourselves.Having once overtaken us she seemed to very quickly pass ahead, and when she was once more about two miles distant, Ryan gave the order to set the storm fore-trysail, a step that we might then very well take without exciting any very strong suspicion on board the barque as to our ulterior intentions, since the sea was by this time getting up to an extent which made the exhibition of a small amount of canvas on board the schooner not only justifiable but absolutely necessary. The sail was accordingly set, and all risk of being pooped was, for the time at least, done away with, and what was almost of equal importance in our eyes, we now appeared to be holding our own with the sail ahead.The watch had just been called when we noticed that the wind was backing further round from the northward—a pretty conclusive indication that it was a cyclone, or revolving storm, that we had encountered—and Ryan began to be exceedingly anxious upon the subject of heaving-to, since, as he explained to me, every mile that we now travelled carried us nearer to the terrible vortex or “eye” of the storm. Still he could not bring himself to do so while the barque held on, thus allowing her to effect her escape from us a second time—assuming, of course, that she really was, as we very strongly suspected, our former acquaintance; it was therefore with a feeling of considerable satisfaction that we shortly afterwards saw her start her fore-topsail sheets with the evident intention of clewing up the sail, if possible, preparatory to heaving-to.“Ah!” exclaimed Ryan, admiringly, “that fellow is no fool; he scents danger ahead; he has been in a cyclone before to-day, I’ll warrant, and seems to know exactly what he is about. There goes his topsail, clean out of the bolt-ropes, as I expected it would; but I do not suppose he ever seriously hoped to save the sail. And now over goes his helm, and there he rounds-to—ah–h! look atthat! on her beam-ends, by all that’s—no—no—she is righting again—good! very prettily done,v-e-r-yprettily done indeed!Nowshe luffs!—excellent! capital! You are all safe now, my man. We will run down to him, Harry, my bhoy, and heave-to about a mile to leeward of him; then perhaps he will not suspect us; he will gradually settle down towards us, as we shall lie closer than he will; and when the wind drops we shall have him to do as we like with.”It was a very anxious moment with us when, having run down to the spot selected by Ryan, we eased the helm over to bring the schooner toon the starboard tack—that being the correct tack upon which to heave-to in a cyclone in the northern hemisphere—and I shall never forget the feeling of absolute helplessness that seized me when, as our little craft gradually presented her broadside to the gale, I felt her going over—over—over—until the water poured in a raging cataract over her lee rail, and she laid down beneath the strength of the howling blast—that now seemed to have suddenly increased to twice its former fury—until the lee side of her deck was buried almost to the combings of the hatchways. But as her bows came round and presented themselves more obliquely to the gale she righted somewhat, and although she still careened until her lee rail was all but awash, she rode the furious seas as gallantly and buoyantly as a gull.Ryan had displayed a very considerable amount of judgment in conducting the schooner down to the berth he had chosen for her, and had placed her there in so natural a manner that we scarcely believed it possible that our presence so near the barque would be likely to arouse any suspicions of our intentions in the minds of her crew; and as we had never been very near her during the time of our former pursuit of her, we were in hopes that we should not now be recognised. We had taken up a position exactly to leeward of our neighbour; and, as Ryan had anticipated, we soon found that the schooner was looking up a full point higher than the bigger craft; but this was very evenly balanced by the greater amount of lee drift that we made, in consequence of our much lighter draught; we therefore, contrived to maintain our position with almost perfect exactitude, except that the schooner manifested the greater tendency to forge ahead, thus placing herself gradually further upon the barque’s lee bow.The wind continued to blow with unabated fury, and when day broke and we were able to look about us, the scene was grand and awful beyond all power of description. The sky was of an uniform deep, slaty, purple-grey hue, across the face of which careered a constant succession of lighter grey, smoky-looking clouds, all shredded and torn to tatters by the headlong sweep of the gale. The colour of the sea was a dirty green, deepening in tint to purple-black in the hollows, and capped by long ridges of dirty yellowish foam, that was continuously snatched up by the wind and hurled through the air in drenching sheets that cut and stung the skin like the lash of a whip. The sea, although not so high as might have been expected from the force of the wind, was still formidable enough to be almost terrifying in its aspect as it swept down upon the schooner in long, steep, mountain-like ridges, that soared to nearly half the height of our main cross-trees, with a hollow of fully one hundred and eighty feet in width between them, each wave crowned with a roaring, foaming crest that reared itself above our low hull as though eager to hurl itself upon and destroy us.As the day wore on we received a temporary addition to our company, in the shape of a brig. She hove in sight in the eastern quarter, about six bells in the forenoon watch; and the first sight that we got of her revealed that her jib-boom and both her topmasts were gone. She was showing a storm-staysail; and at first sight we supposed her to be hove-to; but she drove down towards us so fast that we soon came to the conclusion that there must be something wrong with her steering-gear, and as she drew nearer it became evident that she was unmanageable, falling off occasionally until she was almost dead before the wind; and we could see that whenever this happened the sea made a clean breach over her. When within about a mile of us she showed the Russian ensign, upside down, in her main-rigging, to which we responded by hoisting Spanish colours—to lull any doubts that might possibly be lurking in the minds of our friends on board the barque, who did not condescend to favour us with a sight of their bunting. As for the brig, she drove straight down towards us, occasioning us a considerable amount of anxiety, for so erratic were her movements that when she had arrived within a couple of cables’ lengths of us it became impossible to say whether she would pass ahead or astern of us. The only thing that we could do to avoid her was to fill upon the schooner and forge ahead out of her way, and this we would have done but for the possibility that after our having done so the brig might take a sheer in the wrong direction and fall foul of us, when the destruction of the schooner, if not of both vessels, must inevitably have happened. At length it became evident that something must be done, for she was settling bodily down upon us, and another two minutes would bring the two craft into collision.Ryan therefore ordered the helm to be shifted, and we were just forging clear, as we thought, and leaving her room to pass under our stern, when a terrific sea swept down upon her, throwing her quarter round, sweeping her from stem to stern, and driving her crew into the rigging, and in an instant there she was, driving along stem-on right for us—or, rather, for the spot that we should occupy when she reached it. There was now only one way of avoiding a disastrous collision, and that was by putting our helm hard up, and, at all risks, jibing round upon the other tack; and this we accordingly did, missing the brig by a hair’s-breadth, but springing our foremast-head so badly as the trysail jibed over, that we had to get in the sail at once, and set a close-reefed main-staysail instead. As for the brig, she was little better than a wreck, for as she drove past us we saw that her rudder was gone, her bulwarks carried away on both sides, from cat-head to taffrail, and her decks swept of everything that was movable. It was of course utterly impossible for us to help them in any way in the wind and sea that then raged; nor could we follow them in their helpless progress to leeward, and stand by them, the damage to our foremast being so serious as to utterly preclude the possibility of getting any headsail upon the schooner until it had been at least temporarily repaired, while the little hooker, having again been brought-to on the starboard tack, absolutely refused to pay off under her staysail only, which was perhaps just as well, so far as we were concerned, since any attempt on our part to run to leeward would almost certainly have resulted in the swamping of the schooner. What became of the brig, and whether she outlived the gale or not, we never knew, for she continued her erratic course to leeward, and we lost sight of her in about an hour and a half from the time when she so nearly fell on board us, and we saw her no more. But she was driving in a direction that would carry her right into the track of the vortex of the storm, to encounter which, in her wrecked and helpless condition, would infallibly mean her destruction.As the day wore on, the wind gradually shifted round further from the eastward, and by nightfall it was blowing from about east-south-east, and showing some signs of moderating, although it still blew very heavily; much too heavily indeed to justify us in sending any hands aloft to fish our sprung mast-head. Nevertheless, every preparation was made for the commencement of the operation at the earliest possible moment, as we had detected signs on board the barque indicative of an intention to send a new main-topmast up without delay; which might or might not mean that a suspicion as to our true character had begun to dawn upon them. By midnight the gale had moderated to a strong breeze, and the sky had cleared sufficiently to permit of a little moonlight percolating through between the denser clouds, and we were then able to make out—to our inexpressible chagrin—that the barque’s people had already got their new topmast aloft and ridded, and were getting their main-topsail-yard across, having been hard at work, doubtless, ever since darkness set in, though how they had managed to perform their task was a puzzle to us. It was, however, another evidence of the resolute character of their skipper; another hint to us that we should have all our work cut out to bag him; and the carpenter was therefore at once sent for, and set forthwith to the task of fishing our mast-head with all possible expedition. The task was not half executed, however, when we had the mortification to see our neighbour sheet home his double-reefed topsails and make sail to the westward. This sight put our men upon their mettle; they could vividly picture to themselves the laugh that the slavers would be enjoying at our expense, should they have suspected our intentions toward them, and before the barque was absolutely out of sight from aloft, Chips had managed to make such a job of his work as enabled us to make sail also.Daylight brought with it a clear sky, dappled with high, fleecy, white, fine-weather clouds, and a moderate breeze from the south-east, with a very heavy, confused sea still running, however; and as the barque’s royals were still in sight above the horizon, we cracked on after her, although the carpenter had warned Ryan that the work done during the night was scarcely as satisfactory as might be, and that the mast-head was hardly to be trusted. But the fellow was a thoroughly good man, and eager to avoid all possibility of it being said that we had lost the chance of a prize through him. As soon therefore as it was light enough to see, he was aloft again; and by eight bells he had finished his work, and reported that we might now pack sail upon the schooner to our hearts’ content, which we forthwith did, giving her everything that would draw, from the royal down, the wind being very nearly aft, that is to say, about two points on the larboard quarter. By noon it became apparent that we were gaining, although but slowly, on the barque, her royals and half her topgallant-sails being by this time above the horizon; and now all was anxiety on board the schooner as to the character of the coming night; for we had no doubt that, seeing, as they now must, that we were following them, the ever-vigilant suspicions of the barque’s people would prompt them to avoid us should the night prove dark enough to permit of such a manoeuvre. The indications were all for fine weather, however; the glass was rising steadily, the sky was becoming of a deeper clearer blue; the white clouds were melting away, promising a clear, star-lit night between the hours of sunset and moonrise, and, what was equally as much in our favour, both wind and sea were going down steadily.Toward eight bells in the afternoon watch we sighted another sail—a schooner this time; she was beating up to the eastward, and crossed the hawse of the barque at no great distance, exchanging signals with her, although what was their nature we could not see, and even had we been near enough to have made out the flags, it is exceedingly improbable that we should have understood them. We had a suspicion, however, that they in some way referred to us; for shortly afterwards the schooner tacked and stood towards us, crossing our bows at a distance of about a mile, and exhibiting the French ensign. We replied by showing Spanish colours, as before; upon which the stranger threw out some signal that we could not understand, and after displaying it for some few minutes hauled it down and hoisted another. We thought it would never do to display a total ignorance of the signals; Ryan therefore ordered the signal-bag to be produced, and we strung some flags together haphazard, and hoisted them. This signal the schooner acknowledged, tacking at the same time and standing toward us once more; but we were far too busy to wait for her, for although she had all the looks of a slaver, we knew, from the course she was steering, that she could have no slaves on board, and was therefore altogether unworthy of our attention with so promising a craft as the barque in plain view. She made no attempt to follow us, and in an hour was out of sight to the northward.By sunset that night the weather was everything that we could wish, and we had risen the chase to her topsails; everybody on board theFelicidadwas therefore in the highest spirits, and hope ran high that by daybreak on the morrow we should have our neighbour under our guns, and be able to give her an overhaul. The stars came out brilliantly, and although the moon would not rise until after midnight—and would not give us much light even then, since she had entered her fourth quarter—we soon found that we should have light enough to prevent the barque from giving us the slip, provided that we kept both eyes open. Nevertheless, darkness had no sooner set in, than she made an effort to do so by edging off to the northward, a couple of points, which move, however, we soon detected and frustrated by steering directly after her.During the night the wind breezed up again somewhat, and this gave the chase so great an advantage that at daybreak she was still about eight miles ahead. Shortly after sunrise, however, it dwindled away again, and gradually dropped to a gentle air that barely fanned us along at a speed of five knots.By noon we had brought the chase to within five miles of us, and Ryan deemed that the time had now arrived for us to declare ourselves; we accordingly hoisted British colours, and fired a gun as a signal to the barque to heave-to; the only notice taken of which was the exhibition of Spanish colours by the chase, and the firing of a shotted gun of defiance; so now at last we knew each other.Meanwhile the wind was very gradually dropping, and the schooner as gradually gaining upon the craft ahead, until at length, late in the afternoon, we had reached within a mile and a half of her. And then began one of those barbarous practices that I had heard of, but had hitherto been scarcely able to credit as sober truth, namely, the throwing of slaves overboard in order to retard pursuit by causing the pursuer to stop and pick up the poor wretches, as British men-o’-war invariably did whenever it was at all practicable.The mode of procedure was generally to launch the unhappy black overboard, securely lashed to a plank or piece of timber large enough to float him, and as he was dropped exactly in the track of the pursuing man-o’-war, he was certain to be seen by some one on board, and an effort made to pick him up. In waters infested by sharks, however, this had been found to be of very doubtful utility, since it happened as often as not that long before the unfortunate wretch had served the purpose for which he was sacrificed, the sharks had found him and torn him to pieces. In order, therefore, that certain hundreds of good dollars—or their value—might not be wasted, and not from any motives of humanity to the slave, or any desire to give him a better chance for his life, but merely that he might last long enough to delay the man-o’-war to the extent of picking him up, an improved plan had been devised for use on occasions where the presence of sharks might be expected; this plan consisting simply inheading the black up in a cask! This was the plan now adopted by the people on board the barque.

The watch below had been dismissed upon the completion of our work of preparation, but not a man had left the deck, their anxiety to see and know the worst of what was to befall having completely overcome their usual propensity to make the utmost of every moment allotted to them for necessary rest, and they were now all huddled and clustered together upon the forecastle, discussing the situation in low, murmured tones, and holding themselves in readiness, like hounds in the leash, to spring into activity at the first word of command.

The moaning and wailing sounds were now floating all round us, and presently, making itself rapidly audible above them, we became conscious of a deep, fierce, bellowing roar that seemed to be approaching us on our starboard beam, the schooner’s head being then about north-west.

“Here it comes!” exclaimed Ryan, in a hoarse tone of suppressed excitement. “Get hold of a belaying-pin each, you two, or you will stand a very good chance of being blown overboard. Starboard your helm; hard over with it, my man. Get under the lee of the starboard bulwarks, men. Carpenter, are your axes ready in case we should be obliged to cut anything away?”

“All ready, sir,” came the reply, scarcely audible above the roar of the tempest that was now close upon us; and as the man spoke a fierce gust of wind laden with salt mist swooped down upon us and careened the schooner almost to her covering-board as it filled the foresail with a jar and a report like that of a nine-pounder. This blast was only momentary, however, it was upon us and gone again in an instant, but it was quickly succeeded by others; and then, away in the gloom, right abeam of us, appeared a white, spectral glimmer swooping down upon the schooner with the speed of a race-horse, and spreading momentarily wider athwart the blackness as it came. It was a line of white foam churned up on the surface of the sea by the advancing hurricane, and all behind it the ocean was white as milk. The air was now in violent motion all about us, fierce eddies swooping hither and thither, but generally in the same direction as that from which the gale was approaching. Another heavy salt-laden gust struck us, lasting just long enough to give the schooner way and render her obedient to her helm, and then the deep bass roar rose into a deafening, yelling medley of indescribable sounds as the gale struck us, and the poor little schooner bowed beneath the blow until the water poured in over her lee gunwale and I thought that she was going to “turn the turtle” with us. The foresail stood the strain for just an instant, and then it split to ribbons, and was torn from the bolt-ropes as cleanly as though the work had been done with a knife. But the good sail had already done its work before the hurricane proper had struck us, in that it had imparted some life, even though ever so little, to the schooner; she was already paying slowly off when the first stroke of the hurricane beat her down, and she continued to do so until, as she got dead before it, she rose suddenly to an even keel and went scudding away to leeward like a frightened sea-bird. The awful volume of sound given out by the fierce, headlong swoop of the wind as it bore down upon us quite prepared me to see both masts blown clean out of the schooner; but all her gear fortunately happened to be sound and good, and the loss of the foresail was the full extent of the damage sustained by us.

Having satisfied myself upon that point, I ventured to raise my head a little above the bulwarks to see how the strange sail was faring. Pierrepoint had reported her as being visible in the north-eastern quarter, and if this were so she ought now to be somewhere astern of us, since we were running off about south-west; and, sure enough, there she was, about a point and a half on our starboard quarter, just visible in the midst of the ghostly glare of the phosphorescent foam. She was, like ourselves, running dead before the gale, and I thought I could make out that her topsails had withstood the tremendous strain of the outburst and were still doing their duty. If this were so, since we were scudding under bare poles, she would soon overtake and pass us quite as closely as would be at all consistent with the safety of the two craft, and we should be afforded an opportunity to learn something of her character, and to judge whether she was the barque that we had been so industriously seeking. I made my way over to Ryan, who was standing—as well as he could against the violence of the wind that threatened to sweep him off his feet—close to the helmsman, pointed toward the stranger, and, clinging to the companion, we stood and watched her for a minute or two, half suffocated with the difficulty of breathing in so furious a tempest. She was now about four miles from us, and it soon became apparent that she was overhauling us fast, although by no means so fast as I expected; and she was so nearly end-on to us that I suggested to Ryan the advisability of our showing a light, as it looked very much as though she had not yet seen us and might approach us so closely as to put both craft in imminent peril.

“All in good time,” shouted the captain in my ear, in response to this suggestion. “I do not believe that shehasseen us yet; but that is not of much consequence, since both of us are steering as steadily as pleasure-boats on a river, and I will take care to make her acquainted with our whereabouts if there appears to be the slightest danger of her running over us. But I want her to pass as near us as possible, so that we may have a good view of her. For there seems to me to be a something familiar-looking about her, as though I had seen her before; and, between you and me, Harry, I believe her to be our old friend the barque again. And, if so, we must keep up with her at all costs until the weather moderates sufficiently to bring her to; so just step for’ard, will you, my lad, and get the fore-trysail on deck and bent ready for setting in case we need it. And let one hand bring aft a lantern,notlighted, mind ye; he can take it below, light itthere, and leave it at the foot of the companion-ladder all ready to show a light if yonder stranger seems likely to sheer too close to us in passing.”

I went forward, as requested, and found that the watch below had already returned to their hammocks, the crisis having passed, and the schooner scudding as comfortably as could be before the gale. The trysail was got up from below, bent, halliards and sheets hooked on, and, in short, made all ready for setting, and I returned aft to Ryan’s side, having to claw my way to him along the rail in preference to creeping along the deck upon all fours, which seemed to be the only alternative method of making headway against the wind. The sea was by this time getting up, and the air was full of spume and scud-water, caught up from the surface of the sea and the crests of the waves and swept along in a blinding, drenching shower by the gale. My superior officer was still clinging to the companion, with his eyes intently fixed upon the strange sail astern, which, now that the dense masses of cloud overhead were torn into shreds of flying scud by the fury of the wind, was pretty distinctly visible, at a distance of about a mile and a half, by the dim, misty moonlight that filtered through.

“I’ve been trying to get a peep at her through my night-glass,” exclaimed Ryan, with a wave of his hand toward the dark blotch in the midst of the white foam, “but there is no holding it in such a breeze as this; you have to keep a tight grip on the thing or the wind will take it away from you altogether. But I’m pretty certain that it is the barque; and if so I’ll stick to her as long as this schooner will hang together.”

“Do you think that she has seen us yet?” I asked.

“Yes, I fancy so,” answered Ryan. “She appears to me to be edging away a trifle, so as to pass us to starboard, giving us as wide a berth as possible. But even although she may have seen us, I do not believe that we are recognised, as yet; indeed, how should we be? At this distance, and end-on as we are, with no canvas set and our topmasts struck, we must look like little more than a dot on the water.”

This was quite true, and I fully believed, with Ryan, that we hadnotbeen recognised, for although our companion had indeed manifested signs of an inclination to edge away from us, the tendency was only to a sufficient extent to insure her passing us in safety. Had she suspected us of being an enemy, it would not have been positively dangerous for her to have altered her course fully a point, although, blowing as it then did, it would have been exceedingly imprudent to have attempted more than that.

In about half-an-hour after I had joined Ryan the strange craft overtook us; but while she was yet some half-a-mile astern of us we had made her out to be a barque of just about the same size as the one that we had been hunting for; and when she came up abreast of us at a distance of not more than a quarter of a mile, we saw that her main-topmast had gone just at the cap, and her people were still busy with the wreck of it; a pretty tough job they seemed to be having with it, too. That she was much more strongly-manned than is usually the case with a merchantman of her size was also evident, for we could see that while one gang was at work clearing away the wreck, another was busy securing the fore-topmast by getting up preventer-backstays, and so on. How they managed to work aloft at all in such terrific weather passed my comprehension; but there they were, at leasttryingto do something. And, as Ryan remarked, it showed conclusively what a resolute set of fellows they were on board her, and afforded us a clue as to the sort of resistance we were likely to meet with should it ever come to a game of fisticuffs between them and ourselves.

Having once overtaken us she seemed to very quickly pass ahead, and when she was once more about two miles distant, Ryan gave the order to set the storm fore-trysail, a step that we might then very well take without exciting any very strong suspicion on board the barque as to our ulterior intentions, since the sea was by this time getting up to an extent which made the exhibition of a small amount of canvas on board the schooner not only justifiable but absolutely necessary. The sail was accordingly set, and all risk of being pooped was, for the time at least, done away with, and what was almost of equal importance in our eyes, we now appeared to be holding our own with the sail ahead.

The watch had just been called when we noticed that the wind was backing further round from the northward—a pretty conclusive indication that it was a cyclone, or revolving storm, that we had encountered—and Ryan began to be exceedingly anxious upon the subject of heaving-to, since, as he explained to me, every mile that we now travelled carried us nearer to the terrible vortex or “eye” of the storm. Still he could not bring himself to do so while the barque held on, thus allowing her to effect her escape from us a second time—assuming, of course, that she really was, as we very strongly suspected, our former acquaintance; it was therefore with a feeling of considerable satisfaction that we shortly afterwards saw her start her fore-topsail sheets with the evident intention of clewing up the sail, if possible, preparatory to heaving-to.

“Ah!” exclaimed Ryan, admiringly, “that fellow is no fool; he scents danger ahead; he has been in a cyclone before to-day, I’ll warrant, and seems to know exactly what he is about. There goes his topsail, clean out of the bolt-ropes, as I expected it would; but I do not suppose he ever seriously hoped to save the sail. And now over goes his helm, and there he rounds-to—ah–h! look atthat! on her beam-ends, by all that’s—no—no—she is righting again—good! very prettily done,v-e-r-yprettily done indeed!Nowshe luffs!—excellent! capital! You are all safe now, my man. We will run down to him, Harry, my bhoy, and heave-to about a mile to leeward of him; then perhaps he will not suspect us; he will gradually settle down towards us, as we shall lie closer than he will; and when the wind drops we shall have him to do as we like with.”

It was a very anxious moment with us when, having run down to the spot selected by Ryan, we eased the helm over to bring the schooner toon the starboard tack—that being the correct tack upon which to heave-to in a cyclone in the northern hemisphere—and I shall never forget the feeling of absolute helplessness that seized me when, as our little craft gradually presented her broadside to the gale, I felt her going over—over—over—until the water poured in a raging cataract over her lee rail, and she laid down beneath the strength of the howling blast—that now seemed to have suddenly increased to twice its former fury—until the lee side of her deck was buried almost to the combings of the hatchways. But as her bows came round and presented themselves more obliquely to the gale she righted somewhat, and although she still careened until her lee rail was all but awash, she rode the furious seas as gallantly and buoyantly as a gull.

Ryan had displayed a very considerable amount of judgment in conducting the schooner down to the berth he had chosen for her, and had placed her there in so natural a manner that we scarcely believed it possible that our presence so near the barque would be likely to arouse any suspicions of our intentions in the minds of her crew; and as we had never been very near her during the time of our former pursuit of her, we were in hopes that we should not now be recognised. We had taken up a position exactly to leeward of our neighbour; and, as Ryan had anticipated, we soon found that the schooner was looking up a full point higher than the bigger craft; but this was very evenly balanced by the greater amount of lee drift that we made, in consequence of our much lighter draught; we therefore, contrived to maintain our position with almost perfect exactitude, except that the schooner manifested the greater tendency to forge ahead, thus placing herself gradually further upon the barque’s lee bow.

The wind continued to blow with unabated fury, and when day broke and we were able to look about us, the scene was grand and awful beyond all power of description. The sky was of an uniform deep, slaty, purple-grey hue, across the face of which careered a constant succession of lighter grey, smoky-looking clouds, all shredded and torn to tatters by the headlong sweep of the gale. The colour of the sea was a dirty green, deepening in tint to purple-black in the hollows, and capped by long ridges of dirty yellowish foam, that was continuously snatched up by the wind and hurled through the air in drenching sheets that cut and stung the skin like the lash of a whip. The sea, although not so high as might have been expected from the force of the wind, was still formidable enough to be almost terrifying in its aspect as it swept down upon the schooner in long, steep, mountain-like ridges, that soared to nearly half the height of our main cross-trees, with a hollow of fully one hundred and eighty feet in width between them, each wave crowned with a roaring, foaming crest that reared itself above our low hull as though eager to hurl itself upon and destroy us.

As the day wore on we received a temporary addition to our company, in the shape of a brig. She hove in sight in the eastern quarter, about six bells in the forenoon watch; and the first sight that we got of her revealed that her jib-boom and both her topmasts were gone. She was showing a storm-staysail; and at first sight we supposed her to be hove-to; but she drove down towards us so fast that we soon came to the conclusion that there must be something wrong with her steering-gear, and as she drew nearer it became evident that she was unmanageable, falling off occasionally until she was almost dead before the wind; and we could see that whenever this happened the sea made a clean breach over her. When within about a mile of us she showed the Russian ensign, upside down, in her main-rigging, to which we responded by hoisting Spanish colours—to lull any doubts that might possibly be lurking in the minds of our friends on board the barque, who did not condescend to favour us with a sight of their bunting. As for the brig, she drove straight down towards us, occasioning us a considerable amount of anxiety, for so erratic were her movements that when she had arrived within a couple of cables’ lengths of us it became impossible to say whether she would pass ahead or astern of us. The only thing that we could do to avoid her was to fill upon the schooner and forge ahead out of her way, and this we would have done but for the possibility that after our having done so the brig might take a sheer in the wrong direction and fall foul of us, when the destruction of the schooner, if not of both vessels, must inevitably have happened. At length it became evident that something must be done, for she was settling bodily down upon us, and another two minutes would bring the two craft into collision.

Ryan therefore ordered the helm to be shifted, and we were just forging clear, as we thought, and leaving her room to pass under our stern, when a terrific sea swept down upon her, throwing her quarter round, sweeping her from stem to stern, and driving her crew into the rigging, and in an instant there she was, driving along stem-on right for us—or, rather, for the spot that we should occupy when she reached it. There was now only one way of avoiding a disastrous collision, and that was by putting our helm hard up, and, at all risks, jibing round upon the other tack; and this we accordingly did, missing the brig by a hair’s-breadth, but springing our foremast-head so badly as the trysail jibed over, that we had to get in the sail at once, and set a close-reefed main-staysail instead. As for the brig, she was little better than a wreck, for as she drove past us we saw that her rudder was gone, her bulwarks carried away on both sides, from cat-head to taffrail, and her decks swept of everything that was movable. It was of course utterly impossible for us to help them in any way in the wind and sea that then raged; nor could we follow them in their helpless progress to leeward, and stand by them, the damage to our foremast being so serious as to utterly preclude the possibility of getting any headsail upon the schooner until it had been at least temporarily repaired, while the little hooker, having again been brought-to on the starboard tack, absolutely refused to pay off under her staysail only, which was perhaps just as well, so far as we were concerned, since any attempt on our part to run to leeward would almost certainly have resulted in the swamping of the schooner. What became of the brig, and whether she outlived the gale or not, we never knew, for she continued her erratic course to leeward, and we lost sight of her in about an hour and a half from the time when she so nearly fell on board us, and we saw her no more. But she was driving in a direction that would carry her right into the track of the vortex of the storm, to encounter which, in her wrecked and helpless condition, would infallibly mean her destruction.

As the day wore on, the wind gradually shifted round further from the eastward, and by nightfall it was blowing from about east-south-east, and showing some signs of moderating, although it still blew very heavily; much too heavily indeed to justify us in sending any hands aloft to fish our sprung mast-head. Nevertheless, every preparation was made for the commencement of the operation at the earliest possible moment, as we had detected signs on board the barque indicative of an intention to send a new main-topmast up without delay; which might or might not mean that a suspicion as to our true character had begun to dawn upon them. By midnight the gale had moderated to a strong breeze, and the sky had cleared sufficiently to permit of a little moonlight percolating through between the denser clouds, and we were then able to make out—to our inexpressible chagrin—that the barque’s people had already got their new topmast aloft and ridded, and were getting their main-topsail-yard across, having been hard at work, doubtless, ever since darkness set in, though how they had managed to perform their task was a puzzle to us. It was, however, another evidence of the resolute character of their skipper; another hint to us that we should have all our work cut out to bag him; and the carpenter was therefore at once sent for, and set forthwith to the task of fishing our mast-head with all possible expedition. The task was not half executed, however, when we had the mortification to see our neighbour sheet home his double-reefed topsails and make sail to the westward. This sight put our men upon their mettle; they could vividly picture to themselves the laugh that the slavers would be enjoying at our expense, should they have suspected our intentions toward them, and before the barque was absolutely out of sight from aloft, Chips had managed to make such a job of his work as enabled us to make sail also.

Daylight brought with it a clear sky, dappled with high, fleecy, white, fine-weather clouds, and a moderate breeze from the south-east, with a very heavy, confused sea still running, however; and as the barque’s royals were still in sight above the horizon, we cracked on after her, although the carpenter had warned Ryan that the work done during the night was scarcely as satisfactory as might be, and that the mast-head was hardly to be trusted. But the fellow was a thoroughly good man, and eager to avoid all possibility of it being said that we had lost the chance of a prize through him. As soon therefore as it was light enough to see, he was aloft again; and by eight bells he had finished his work, and reported that we might now pack sail upon the schooner to our hearts’ content, which we forthwith did, giving her everything that would draw, from the royal down, the wind being very nearly aft, that is to say, about two points on the larboard quarter. By noon it became apparent that we were gaining, although but slowly, on the barque, her royals and half her topgallant-sails being by this time above the horizon; and now all was anxiety on board the schooner as to the character of the coming night; for we had no doubt that, seeing, as they now must, that we were following them, the ever-vigilant suspicions of the barque’s people would prompt them to avoid us should the night prove dark enough to permit of such a manoeuvre. The indications were all for fine weather, however; the glass was rising steadily, the sky was becoming of a deeper clearer blue; the white clouds were melting away, promising a clear, star-lit night between the hours of sunset and moonrise, and, what was equally as much in our favour, both wind and sea were going down steadily.

Toward eight bells in the afternoon watch we sighted another sail—a schooner this time; she was beating up to the eastward, and crossed the hawse of the barque at no great distance, exchanging signals with her, although what was their nature we could not see, and even had we been near enough to have made out the flags, it is exceedingly improbable that we should have understood them. We had a suspicion, however, that they in some way referred to us; for shortly afterwards the schooner tacked and stood towards us, crossing our bows at a distance of about a mile, and exhibiting the French ensign. We replied by showing Spanish colours, as before; upon which the stranger threw out some signal that we could not understand, and after displaying it for some few minutes hauled it down and hoisted another. We thought it would never do to display a total ignorance of the signals; Ryan therefore ordered the signal-bag to be produced, and we strung some flags together haphazard, and hoisted them. This signal the schooner acknowledged, tacking at the same time and standing toward us once more; but we were far too busy to wait for her, for although she had all the looks of a slaver, we knew, from the course she was steering, that she could have no slaves on board, and was therefore altogether unworthy of our attention with so promising a craft as the barque in plain view. She made no attempt to follow us, and in an hour was out of sight to the northward.

By sunset that night the weather was everything that we could wish, and we had risen the chase to her topsails; everybody on board theFelicidadwas therefore in the highest spirits, and hope ran high that by daybreak on the morrow we should have our neighbour under our guns, and be able to give her an overhaul. The stars came out brilliantly, and although the moon would not rise until after midnight—and would not give us much light even then, since she had entered her fourth quarter—we soon found that we should have light enough to prevent the barque from giving us the slip, provided that we kept both eyes open. Nevertheless, darkness had no sooner set in, than she made an effort to do so by edging off to the northward, a couple of points, which move, however, we soon detected and frustrated by steering directly after her.

During the night the wind breezed up again somewhat, and this gave the chase so great an advantage that at daybreak she was still about eight miles ahead. Shortly after sunrise, however, it dwindled away again, and gradually dropped to a gentle air that barely fanned us along at a speed of five knots.

By noon we had brought the chase to within five miles of us, and Ryan deemed that the time had now arrived for us to declare ourselves; we accordingly hoisted British colours, and fired a gun as a signal to the barque to heave-to; the only notice taken of which was the exhibition of Spanish colours by the chase, and the firing of a shotted gun of defiance; so now at last we knew each other.

Meanwhile the wind was very gradually dropping, and the schooner as gradually gaining upon the craft ahead, until at length, late in the afternoon, we had reached within a mile and a half of her. And then began one of those barbarous practices that I had heard of, but had hitherto been scarcely able to credit as sober truth, namely, the throwing of slaves overboard in order to retard pursuit by causing the pursuer to stop and pick up the poor wretches, as British men-o’-war invariably did whenever it was at all practicable.

The mode of procedure was generally to launch the unhappy black overboard, securely lashed to a plank or piece of timber large enough to float him, and as he was dropped exactly in the track of the pursuing man-o’-war, he was certain to be seen by some one on board, and an effort made to pick him up. In waters infested by sharks, however, this had been found to be of very doubtful utility, since it happened as often as not that long before the unfortunate wretch had served the purpose for which he was sacrificed, the sharks had found him and torn him to pieces. In order, therefore, that certain hundreds of good dollars—or their value—might not be wasted, and not from any motives of humanity to the slave, or any desire to give him a better chance for his life, but merely that he might last long enough to delay the man-o’-war to the extent of picking him up, an improved plan had been devised for use on occasions where the presence of sharks might be expected; this plan consisting simply inheading the black up in a cask! This was the plan now adopted by the people on board the barque.

Chapter Nine.The Governor’s Communication.At the distance which now separated us from the barque all the movements of her crew were distinctly visible to us with the aid of our glasses—which of course were scarcely off her for a moment—and we accordingly witnessed the launching of the first slave overboard. The unhappy creature was placed in a cask, and, as I have said before, headed up therein, an aperture being cut in the two halves of the head just sufficient to admit his neck; and the cask was then slung by a whip from the main-yard-arm, and secured by a toggle, the withdrawal of which at the right moment, by means of a lanyard, enabled the cask to be dropped gently, right end up, in the water, where it floated, with its inmate a helpless prisoner, to be picked up or not as the case might be. To render this ruse of real service, a smart breeze should be blowing, because under these conditions the pursuer has not only to lower a boat to pick up the floating black, but she has also to heave-to and wait for her boat; and however smartly the operations of lowering, picking up, and hooking on again may be performed, they still absorb quite an appreciable amount of time, during which the fugitive craft increases her lead more or less according to her speed. In the present case, however, the conditions were by no means favourable to the pursued craft; for, since we were only moving through the water at a speed of about three knots, it was an easy matter for us to drop a boat into the water and send her on ahead to pick up the man, and pull alongside again without detaining the schooner for an instant. The slaver tried the trick four times in succession, and then, finding that it did not answer, gave it up.The sun was just dipping beneath the horizon in a magnificent array of light cirrus clouds, painted by his last rays in tinctures of the most brilliant purple and rose and gold, and the wind had died away to the merest zephyr when we arrived within gun-shot of the chase; and Ryan at once ordered the long eighteen between the masts to be cleared away and a shot fired as close to the barque as possible without hitting her, just by way of a gentle hint that we were disposed to stand no more nonsense, and that the time had now arrived for her to surrender without giving us any further trouble. But evidently the last thought in the mind of her skipper was to yield, for instead of hauling down his colours like a good sensible man, he blazed away at us in return with a couple of twelve-pounders that he had run out through his stern-ports. The shots were well aimed, but did not quite reach us, striking the water twice fair in line with us, and then making their final scurry, and sinking within about thirty yards of our bows.“By the piper, I believe the fellow intends to fight us!” exclaimed Ryan. “As a rule these gentlemen are particularly careful of their skins, and have no fancy for hard knocks, giving in when they find that their only choice lies between a fight and surrendering, but there are occasional exceptions to this rule, and I fancy that this fellow will prove to be one of them. Now, Harry, me bhoy, we must be careful what we are after when it comes to boarding and carrying yonder gintleman; for if he happen to be one of the reckless desperado kind he may play us a scurvy trick. I have heard of men who blew their ship and everybody in her into the air rather than allow her to be captured; and, for aught that we can tell to the contrary, the fellow who commands the barque may be one of that stamp. Now, if he is, we may rest assured that he will do nothing desperate until the capture of the ship is certain; until then he will be the foremost man in the fray; so we must both keep a sharp look-out for him and put himhors de combatbefore he has the chance to do any harm. I hope this breeze will hold long enough to enable us to get alongside; should we be becalmed and have to attack him with the boats, it will give him an important advantage, and perhaps result in the loss of some of our men.”This hope of Ryan’s was destined to disappointment; for the wind continued to dwindle after sunset until it finally died away altogether, and left both craft without steerage-way. By this time, however, we had drifted within range of the barque’s guns, and she had opened a rather desultory but well-directed fire upon us whenever any of her guns could be brought to bear, the result of which was that one of our men had already been hurt by a splinter, while the schooner’s rigging was beginning to be a good deal cut up. Meanwhile we were precluded from returning the barque’s fire lest we should injure or kill any of the unhappy wretches pent up in her hold. At length a round-shot entered the schooner’s bows, traversed the decks, and passed out over the taffrail, glancing hither and thither as it went, and, although it did no material damage, affording several of the men a very narrow escape.“Why, this will never do!” exclaimed Ryan, as the shot made its exit after passing between the legs of the man who was standing at the now idle tiller. “A few of those fellows, as well aimed as that one was, would make a very pretty general average among us. We shall have to get out the boats—or, stop!—yes, I think that will be better; we will arm the men and make all ready for boarding; load the guns with a double charge of grape; and then man the sweeps, and sweep the schooner alongside, firing our guns as we heave the grappling-irons, and boarding in the smoke. We shall thus have all hands available when we get alongside, and our bulwarks will meanwhile afford the men a certain amount of protection.”The necessary orders were accordingly given, and a few minutes later the men, stripped to the waist, had rigged out the heavy sweeps and were toiling away at them. And now the advantages of the schooner’s light scantling, light draught, and fine lines made themselves fully apparent, for, having once overcome the inertia of the hull and put it in motion, the men found the little craft very easy on her sweeps, and capable of being moved at quite a respectable pace through the water.The barque was of course much too large and unwieldy a craft to be moved by the same means, and nothing of the kind was even attempted; her crew, however, maintained a smart fire upon us as we approached; but as we were careful to keep her end-on so that only her two stern-chasers could be brought to bear upon us, and as we kept up a hot musketry fire upon that particular part of her, we did not suffer very severely; and without any further casualties we at length arrived near enough, with good way on, to permit of the sweeps being laid in, preparatory to our ranging up alongside. Ryan now divided the boarders into two parties, one to be led by himself from aft, while I was instructed to head the other party from our forecastle, the idea being to pin the slaver’s crew between the two parties, thus attacking them simultaneously in front and rear as it might be.Ryan himself conned the schooner alongside; and when we were within some ten yards of the barque, our guns having previously been trained well forward, the whole of our small broadside was poured in upon her deck, with terribly destructive effect it would seem from the outburst of shrieks and groans and curses that immediately arose on board her. Our fire was instantly returned, but in such a partial irregular way as only tended to confirm the impression that the slaver’s crew had suffered severely, yet it gave us a tolerably clear idea of what would have been the result to us had we withheld our fire for just a second or two longer. Then, while both craft were still enveloped in the motionless smoke-wreaths, we felt the schooner’s sides rasping against those of the barque; and, with a shout to my little party to follow, I sprang upon our own bulwarks, from thence to those of the barque, and so down on the slaver’s deck—for a slaver she was, as our olfactory nerves now assured us beyond dispute.It was by this time quite dark, or at least as dark as it was likely to be at all that night; but the sky was cloudless, the atmosphere was clear, and the stars were shining with a lustre quite unknown in our more temperate clime; we therefore had but little difficulty in seeing what we were about, or in distinguishing friend from foe; still, I must confess that I felt a little awkward, and, having commenced by discharging both my pistols into the thickest of the crowd that I found opposed to me, confined myself pretty much to a random system of slashing right and left with my cutlass, my principle—if I had one—being to strike the blows, leaving to others the task of warding them if they could. The fight that now ensued was brief, but sharp; the slavers disputing every inch of their deck with us; but our fellows were not to be resisted; there was a brief space of time during which the air seemed full of the sound of clashing steel, popping pistols, shouts, shrieks, groans, and execrations, and the barque was ours, her crew throwing away their weapons and crying loudly for quarter, which of course was granted to them.The fight being over I at once made my way aft, and was greatly shocked to find that during the brief struggle poor Ryan had been badly wounded in a hand-to-hand fight with the skipper of the barque, whom he had at once singled out and engaged. It afterwards appeared that as soon as matters seemed to be going badly for the barque’s people her skipper had attempted to slip out of the fight and slink below; but Ryan, suspecting some sinister object in this projected movement, had stuck to the man so closely, getting between him and the companion, that his object, if he had one, was frustrated; and in his desperation he had struck a blow at Ryan that clove the unfortunate Irishman’s skull open, only to be impaled himself upon our dashing captain’s sword at the same moment.Ryan had thus fulfilled his purpose of putting the slaver’s skipperhors de combat, but at serious cost to himself; the poor fellow was so desperately hurt that he could do nothing but murmur his gratification at finding that I had emerged from the fray unhurt, and an injunction to me to take the command, when he fainted, and I at once had him carefully conveyed to his own cabin on board the schooner, where Armstrong the surgeon immediately took him in hand.Our capture was named theSan Sebastian, and hailed from Havana; she had four hundred and twenty-one slaves on board, out of a total of four hundred and seventy-six that she had brought out of the Gaboon river only ten days before; she was a very fine handsome vessel of three hundred and forty-five tons measurement; and our recent experiences with her had proved that she sailed like a witch. We secured our prisoners; conveyed our own wounded—amounting to nine in all—on board the schooner; and then, having put Pierrepoint and a prize-crew on board the barque, both vessels made sail in company for Sierra Leone, where we arrived safely, after a passage of exactly a week, and where we were rejoined by Gowland and the prize-crew of theConquistador, which vessel had arrived six days before us.Here, as the repairing of our damages and the provision of a new foremast for the schooner threatened us with a considerable amount of delay, Ryan went ashore to the hospital, where he made pretty fair progress toward recovery, although the improvement was not so marked or rapid as it had been on board the schooner at sea; the intense heat, he complained, was against him, and his first inquiry every morning when I went to see him was, “When did I think the schooner would be ready for sea again?” It was therefore with a feeling of intense satisfaction that I was at length able to inform him that another day would see us out of the hands of the shipwrights and riggers, and that we might sail on the day following if he so pleased. This news acted like a cordial upon his spirits; he brightened up wonderfully, and improved more rapidly within the ensuing twenty-four hours than he had done during the whole time of his sojourn in hospital, and but for the firmness of the doctor, would at once have taken his discharge, and actually busied himself about the final preparations for our departure. He, however, insisted upon joining me in the acceptance of an invitation to dine with the Governor that evening; and at the appointed hour I called for him, and we sauntered slowly to Government House together. The party was not a very large one, nor did we sit very late; but as the other guests were taking their leave, his Excellency intimated that he desired to have a word or two with us in private, and we accordingly deferred our departure.When at length we were alone, our host invited us to light up another cigar, and, himself setting us the example, proceeded to a cabinet that stood in the corner of the room, opening which he produced a folded document from a drawer, and unfolding it, laid it before us.“This, gentlemen,” said he, “is a rough sketch-chart of the embouchure of the Congo. It does not profess to be drawn to scale; but I am told that it shows with approximate accuracy the relative positions of the various creeks and indentations that discharge into the main river, up to the Narrows. Now, the individual from whom I obtained this chart informs me that at a distance of about two and a half miles up a certain creek on the south bank—this one, the mouth of which is indicated by a star—there is a rather considerable native settlement, ruled by a savage, known to the few Europeans who possess the doubtful honour of his acquaintance as King Plenty. And, if my informant is to be depended upon, this potentate, whose chief characteristics are avarice and brutal ferocity, has discovered a very simple method of combining business with pleasure by making ruthless war upon his neighbours, and, after his lust for slaughter is satisfied, disposing of his prisoners to certain slave-dealers, who have established themselves on the southern bank of the creek, where they have erected barracoons, factories, and every convenience for carrying on their nefarious trade. I am told that within the last six months this spot, known only to a select few, has been frequently visited, and large numbers of slaves have been carried away from it; its natural characteristics rendering it especially suitable for the traffic. For instance, it would appear that this creek, like most of the others that discharge into the Congo, and like the African rivers generally, has its own little bar at its mouth, upon which there is only one and three-quarter fathoms of water, and is therefore unapproachable by any of the men-o’-war on the station—excepting perhaps theBarracouta, and she is away cruising just now—while the character of the banks is such as to afford every facility for a galling and continuous fire upon a flotilla of boats advancing up the creek. I have therefore thought that the breaking up and destruction of this slave-trading station would be a piece of work admirably suited to theFelicidadand her gallant crew”—Ryan and I simultaneously bowed our appreciation of the compliment—“because it is especially a case wherein valour and discretion must go hand-in-hand, the service being of an especially hazardous nature; and I feel that in no one are the two qualities that I have mentioned more admirably combined than in the person of Captain Ryan.”Ryan bowed again, and remarked—“I am obliged for your Excellency’s good opinion of me; and still more so for the information that you have been good enough to give us to-night. I have been very fortunate, so far, in the schooner, and I suppose I may reckon upon my promotion as certain; but I am eager to have further opportunities of distinguishing myself, and if we can only be lucky enough to find two or three slavers up that creek, and to capture them, it would afford me just the opportunity that I require. I shall sail to-morrow, and shall hope to be back here again in a month or six weeks, with two or three prizes in company, and the assurance that the establishment in question is completely destroyed.”We sat a few minutes longer, drank a final glass of wine, and then took our leave and walked down to the schooner together, Ryan having determined to sleep on board her that night.We sailed from Sierra Leone on the following day, as Ryan had resolved we should; but, as usually happens when matters are hurried, we met with an endless succession of petty delays at the last moment that detained us at anchor until nearly nightfall, and occasioned us a vast amount of trotting about in the broiling sun to put some life into the dilatory people who were keeping us waiting; the consequence of which was that when at last we lifted the anchor and stood out of the bay with the very last of the sea-breeze, to run into a calm when we had attained an offing of some two miles, I felt altogether too tired and knocked up to eat or drink; while, as for Ryan, he was in a state of high fever once more.We got the land breeze about eight o’clock that night, and stood away to the southward and westward until midnight, in order that we might obtain a good offing, when we hauled up on a south-east course for the Congo. I remained on deck until midnight—at which hour I was relieved by Pierrepoint—and then was obliged to send for the doctor, who, after feeling my pulse, ordered me to my bunk at once, and when I was there administered to me a tremendous dose of some frightfully bitter concoction, telling me at the same time, for my comfort, that he would not be in the least surprised if, when he next visited me, he should find me suffering from a severe attack of coast fever. Happily, his anticipations, so far as I was concerned, were unfounded; but by daybreak poor Ryan was in a state of raving delirium, with three men in his cabin told off to keep him in his bunk and prevent him from inflicting upon himself some injury. As for me, the medicine that I had taken threw me first into a profuse perspiration, and afterwards into a deep sleep, from which I awoke next morning cool, free from pain, and with a quiet, steady pulse, but very weak; and I did not fully recover my strength until a day or two before we made the land about the Congo mouth, which we did after a long passage that was uneventful in everything save the persistency with which we were beset by calms and light, baffling airs. By this time Ryan, too, had recovered to a certain extent; that is to say, he was able to leave his bunk and to stagger up on deck for an hour or so at a time, but he was still frightfully weak; and it often appeared to me, from the rather wild talk in which he sometimes indulged, that he had not thus far fully recovered his mental balance.We made the land about six bells in the forenoon watch, and stood straight in for Shark Point, which we hugged pretty closely, in order to cheat the current, which, as usual at that time of the year, was running out pretty strongly. The sea-breeze was blowing half a gale, however, and despite the current the littleFelicidadslid over the ground bravely, arriving abreast the mouth of the creek to which we were bound about four bells in the afternoon watch. We here cleared the schooner for action, sent the men to their quarters, and, with a leadsman in the fore-chains, both on the port and on the starboard sides, and with Ryan, sketch-chart in hand, conning the vessel, steered boldly into the creek. The soundings which we obtained at the entrance proved the chart to be so far correct, and with our confidence thus strengthened we glided gently forward over the glassy waters of the creek, every eye being directed anxiously ahead, for we knew not at what moment we might encounter our enemy, nor in what force he might be. To me it appeared that we were acting in rather a foolhardy manner in thus rushing blindfold as it were upon the unknown, and earlier in the day—in fact, just after we had entered the river—I had suggested to Ryan the advisability of taking the schooner somewhat higher up the stream and anchoring her in a snug and well-sheltered spot that we had noticed when last in the river in theBarracouta, and sending the boats away at night to reconnoitre. But this happened to be one of the captain’s bad days—by which I mean that it was one of the days when the fever from which he had been suffering seemed to partially regain its hold upon him, making him impatient, irritable, and unwilling to receive anything in the shape of a suggestion from anybody; and my proposal was therefore scouted as savouring of something approaching to timidity. I had long ago got over any such feeling, however; and even now, when we momentarily expected to come face to face with the enemy, I found myself sufficiently calm and collected to note and admire the many beauties of the scene as the creek opened up before us.For the scenewasbeautiful exceedingly with a wild, tropical lavishness of strange and, in some cases, grotesque forms and rich magnificence of colour that no words can adequately describe, and even the artist’s palette would be taxed to its utmost capacity to merely suggest. The creek was, as usual in the Congo, lined with an almost unbroken, impassable belt of mangroves, their multitudinous roots, gnarled and twisted, springing from the thick, mud-stained water, and presenting a confused, inextricable tangle to the eye, from the deep shadows of which flitted kingfishers of many species and brilliant plumage; while above swayed and rustled in the gentle breeze the delicate grey-green foliage of the trees themselves, now in full and luxuriant leaf, affording a delicious contrast of cool green shadow, with the glints of dazzling sunshine that streamed here and there through the verdant masses. Great clusters of magnificent orange-tinted orchids gleamed like galaxies of golden stars between the mangrove trunks at frequent intervals; clumps of feathery bamboo swayed gently in the soft warm breeze; the dense background of bush displayed every conceivable tint of foliage, from brilliant gold to deepest purple bronze; and magnificent forest trees towered in stately majesty over all, rearing their superb heads a hundred and fifty feet into the intense blue of the cloudless sky; while everywhere, over bush and tree and withered stump, blazed in thousands the trailing blossoms of brilliant-hued climbing plants that loaded the air to intoxication with the sweetness of their mingled perfumes. Parrots and other gaily-plumaged birds flitted busily hither and thither with loud and—it must be admitted—more or less discordant cries; inquisitive monkeys swung from branch to branch, and either peered curiously at us as we passed, or dashed precipitately, with loud cries of alarm, into the concealment of the deepest shadows at our approach; and at one point, where the belt of mangroves was interrupted, and a small, open, grassy space reached down to the water’s edge, a stately antelope stepped daintily down into the water, as though to slake his thirst, but catching sight of the approaching schooner, bounded off again into the contiguous bush, where he was instantly lost sight of in the sombre green gloom.At a distance of about two miles from the mouth of the creek we reached a spot where it forked, one arm—the wider of the two—running in a due east-by-south direction, while the other trended away to the west-south-west, communicating—as we afterwards discovered—with another creek which, although too shoal for navigation by sea-going craft, would have afforded us excellent facilities for a reconnaissance with the boats. At this point the southern shore of the creek exhibited signs of cultivation, small patches of bush having been cleared here and there and planted with maize, or sugarcane, or yams, a small reed-hut thatched with palm-leaves usually standing in one corner of the plot, with a tethered goat close by, a few fowls, or other traces of its being inhabited. Of the human inhabitants themselves, however, strangely enough, nothing was to be seen. But it was clear that we were nearing our goal; and word was passed along the deck for the men to hold themselves prepared for instant action.There were several memoranda jotted down upon the chart for our guidance, and among these was an intimation to look out for a clump of exceptionally tall trees on the southern bank of the creek, under the broad shadow of which the slave barracoons were stated to be built. A few minutes after passing the branch creek already referred to we arrived at a bend, and as the schooner glided round it, and entered a new reach, these trees swept into view; there could be no mistaking them, for they lifted their majestic heads—there were five of them—fully fifty feet clear above those of their brethren. Moreover, they stood quite close to the margin of the creek, thus confirming the statement made upon the sketch-chart. But had there been any lurking doubt in our minds about the matter they would have been quickly dispelled, for as we glided forward, a small sandy beach—also referred to in the chart—was made out projecting from the southern bank, at which some twenty or thirty large canoes lay with their bows hauled sufficiently out of the water to prevent their going adrift. That a vigilant watch was being kept upon the waters of the creek became quickly apparent, for we had scarcely made out the canoes when we saw several negroes rush down to one of them, launch it, and paddle swiftly away up the creek and round another bend, while, as we advanced, a crowd of naked blacks, armed with spears, shields, and muskets, gathered upon the beach, and, from their actions, seemed fully prepared to forcibly resist any attempt on our part to effect a landing.Still advancing up the creek, we gradually opened the vista of the reach beyond—that in which the canoe had a few minutes previously vanished—and at length, when only a short half-mile intervened between us and the beach—which projected boldly nearly half-way across the channel—the main-mast of a schooner crept into view beyond the concealment of the hitherto intervening bush and trees; and bringing our glasses to bear upon her, we detected signs of great bustle and confusion on board her, and made out that her crew were busily engaged in tricing up boarding nettings, and otherwise making preparations for her defence.Ryan now ordered our ensign and pennant to be hoisted, thus boldly announcing at once our nationality and the fact of our being an enemy—an announcement which I should have deemed it perfectly justifiable to defer until the last possible moment—and the schooner at once replied by hoisting French colours and firing a gun of defiance. This greatly amused our people, to whom the act seemed a piece of ridiculous braggadocio—for the stranger was no bigger than ourselves—but the laugh left their faces and was succeeded by a look of grim resolution when presently we opened out another and a larger schooner and a heavy, handsome brigantine, the first flying Spanish colours and the brigantinea black flag! But this was not all, for before we arrived abreast the beach we had opened out still another schooner with the Spanish flag floating from her mast-head; and by what we saw going on board the four craft it became evident that we had by no means caught these bold rovers napping, and that we might confidently reckon upon meeting with a very warm reception. Moreover, it was clear that, snug as was their place of concealment, and unlikely as it was to be discovered save, as in our case, by betrayal, they had left nothing to chance, but had taken every possible precaution to insure their safety, the four craft being moored in pairs, with springs on their cables, stern to stern right across the stream, so that, the fair-way being very narrow, they would have to be fought and taken in succession, a necessity which I at once recognised, and which, to my limited experience, seemed to militate very strongly against our chances of success. It was, however, altogether too late now to hesitate or alter our plans; we had plunged headlong and, as it were, blindfold into a hornet’s nest from which nothing but the coolest courage and determination could extricate us, and, while I had long ago completely conquered the feeling of trepidation and anxiety that almost everybody experiences more or less when going into action for the first time, I could not altogether suppress a doubt as to whether Ryan, in his then very indifferent state of health, possessed quite all the coolness and clear-headedness as well as the nerve that I anticipated would be necessary to see us safely out of our present entanglement.

At the distance which now separated us from the barque all the movements of her crew were distinctly visible to us with the aid of our glasses—which of course were scarcely off her for a moment—and we accordingly witnessed the launching of the first slave overboard. The unhappy creature was placed in a cask, and, as I have said before, headed up therein, an aperture being cut in the two halves of the head just sufficient to admit his neck; and the cask was then slung by a whip from the main-yard-arm, and secured by a toggle, the withdrawal of which at the right moment, by means of a lanyard, enabled the cask to be dropped gently, right end up, in the water, where it floated, with its inmate a helpless prisoner, to be picked up or not as the case might be. To render this ruse of real service, a smart breeze should be blowing, because under these conditions the pursuer has not only to lower a boat to pick up the floating black, but she has also to heave-to and wait for her boat; and however smartly the operations of lowering, picking up, and hooking on again may be performed, they still absorb quite an appreciable amount of time, during which the fugitive craft increases her lead more or less according to her speed. In the present case, however, the conditions were by no means favourable to the pursued craft; for, since we were only moving through the water at a speed of about three knots, it was an easy matter for us to drop a boat into the water and send her on ahead to pick up the man, and pull alongside again without detaining the schooner for an instant. The slaver tried the trick four times in succession, and then, finding that it did not answer, gave it up.

The sun was just dipping beneath the horizon in a magnificent array of light cirrus clouds, painted by his last rays in tinctures of the most brilliant purple and rose and gold, and the wind had died away to the merest zephyr when we arrived within gun-shot of the chase; and Ryan at once ordered the long eighteen between the masts to be cleared away and a shot fired as close to the barque as possible without hitting her, just by way of a gentle hint that we were disposed to stand no more nonsense, and that the time had now arrived for her to surrender without giving us any further trouble. But evidently the last thought in the mind of her skipper was to yield, for instead of hauling down his colours like a good sensible man, he blazed away at us in return with a couple of twelve-pounders that he had run out through his stern-ports. The shots were well aimed, but did not quite reach us, striking the water twice fair in line with us, and then making their final scurry, and sinking within about thirty yards of our bows.

“By the piper, I believe the fellow intends to fight us!” exclaimed Ryan. “As a rule these gentlemen are particularly careful of their skins, and have no fancy for hard knocks, giving in when they find that their only choice lies between a fight and surrendering, but there are occasional exceptions to this rule, and I fancy that this fellow will prove to be one of them. Now, Harry, me bhoy, we must be careful what we are after when it comes to boarding and carrying yonder gintleman; for if he happen to be one of the reckless desperado kind he may play us a scurvy trick. I have heard of men who blew their ship and everybody in her into the air rather than allow her to be captured; and, for aught that we can tell to the contrary, the fellow who commands the barque may be one of that stamp. Now, if he is, we may rest assured that he will do nothing desperate until the capture of the ship is certain; until then he will be the foremost man in the fray; so we must both keep a sharp look-out for him and put himhors de combatbefore he has the chance to do any harm. I hope this breeze will hold long enough to enable us to get alongside; should we be becalmed and have to attack him with the boats, it will give him an important advantage, and perhaps result in the loss of some of our men.”

This hope of Ryan’s was destined to disappointment; for the wind continued to dwindle after sunset until it finally died away altogether, and left both craft without steerage-way. By this time, however, we had drifted within range of the barque’s guns, and she had opened a rather desultory but well-directed fire upon us whenever any of her guns could be brought to bear, the result of which was that one of our men had already been hurt by a splinter, while the schooner’s rigging was beginning to be a good deal cut up. Meanwhile we were precluded from returning the barque’s fire lest we should injure or kill any of the unhappy wretches pent up in her hold. At length a round-shot entered the schooner’s bows, traversed the decks, and passed out over the taffrail, glancing hither and thither as it went, and, although it did no material damage, affording several of the men a very narrow escape.

“Why, this will never do!” exclaimed Ryan, as the shot made its exit after passing between the legs of the man who was standing at the now idle tiller. “A few of those fellows, as well aimed as that one was, would make a very pretty general average among us. We shall have to get out the boats—or, stop!—yes, I think that will be better; we will arm the men and make all ready for boarding; load the guns with a double charge of grape; and then man the sweeps, and sweep the schooner alongside, firing our guns as we heave the grappling-irons, and boarding in the smoke. We shall thus have all hands available when we get alongside, and our bulwarks will meanwhile afford the men a certain amount of protection.”

The necessary orders were accordingly given, and a few minutes later the men, stripped to the waist, had rigged out the heavy sweeps and were toiling away at them. And now the advantages of the schooner’s light scantling, light draught, and fine lines made themselves fully apparent, for, having once overcome the inertia of the hull and put it in motion, the men found the little craft very easy on her sweeps, and capable of being moved at quite a respectable pace through the water.

The barque was of course much too large and unwieldy a craft to be moved by the same means, and nothing of the kind was even attempted; her crew, however, maintained a smart fire upon us as we approached; but as we were careful to keep her end-on so that only her two stern-chasers could be brought to bear upon us, and as we kept up a hot musketry fire upon that particular part of her, we did not suffer very severely; and without any further casualties we at length arrived near enough, with good way on, to permit of the sweeps being laid in, preparatory to our ranging up alongside. Ryan now divided the boarders into two parties, one to be led by himself from aft, while I was instructed to head the other party from our forecastle, the idea being to pin the slaver’s crew between the two parties, thus attacking them simultaneously in front and rear as it might be.

Ryan himself conned the schooner alongside; and when we were within some ten yards of the barque, our guns having previously been trained well forward, the whole of our small broadside was poured in upon her deck, with terribly destructive effect it would seem from the outburst of shrieks and groans and curses that immediately arose on board her. Our fire was instantly returned, but in such a partial irregular way as only tended to confirm the impression that the slaver’s crew had suffered severely, yet it gave us a tolerably clear idea of what would have been the result to us had we withheld our fire for just a second or two longer. Then, while both craft were still enveloped in the motionless smoke-wreaths, we felt the schooner’s sides rasping against those of the barque; and, with a shout to my little party to follow, I sprang upon our own bulwarks, from thence to those of the barque, and so down on the slaver’s deck—for a slaver she was, as our olfactory nerves now assured us beyond dispute.

It was by this time quite dark, or at least as dark as it was likely to be at all that night; but the sky was cloudless, the atmosphere was clear, and the stars were shining with a lustre quite unknown in our more temperate clime; we therefore had but little difficulty in seeing what we were about, or in distinguishing friend from foe; still, I must confess that I felt a little awkward, and, having commenced by discharging both my pistols into the thickest of the crowd that I found opposed to me, confined myself pretty much to a random system of slashing right and left with my cutlass, my principle—if I had one—being to strike the blows, leaving to others the task of warding them if they could. The fight that now ensued was brief, but sharp; the slavers disputing every inch of their deck with us; but our fellows were not to be resisted; there was a brief space of time during which the air seemed full of the sound of clashing steel, popping pistols, shouts, shrieks, groans, and execrations, and the barque was ours, her crew throwing away their weapons and crying loudly for quarter, which of course was granted to them.

The fight being over I at once made my way aft, and was greatly shocked to find that during the brief struggle poor Ryan had been badly wounded in a hand-to-hand fight with the skipper of the barque, whom he had at once singled out and engaged. It afterwards appeared that as soon as matters seemed to be going badly for the barque’s people her skipper had attempted to slip out of the fight and slink below; but Ryan, suspecting some sinister object in this projected movement, had stuck to the man so closely, getting between him and the companion, that his object, if he had one, was frustrated; and in his desperation he had struck a blow at Ryan that clove the unfortunate Irishman’s skull open, only to be impaled himself upon our dashing captain’s sword at the same moment.

Ryan had thus fulfilled his purpose of putting the slaver’s skipperhors de combat, but at serious cost to himself; the poor fellow was so desperately hurt that he could do nothing but murmur his gratification at finding that I had emerged from the fray unhurt, and an injunction to me to take the command, when he fainted, and I at once had him carefully conveyed to his own cabin on board the schooner, where Armstrong the surgeon immediately took him in hand.

Our capture was named theSan Sebastian, and hailed from Havana; she had four hundred and twenty-one slaves on board, out of a total of four hundred and seventy-six that she had brought out of the Gaboon river only ten days before; she was a very fine handsome vessel of three hundred and forty-five tons measurement; and our recent experiences with her had proved that she sailed like a witch. We secured our prisoners; conveyed our own wounded—amounting to nine in all—on board the schooner; and then, having put Pierrepoint and a prize-crew on board the barque, both vessels made sail in company for Sierra Leone, where we arrived safely, after a passage of exactly a week, and where we were rejoined by Gowland and the prize-crew of theConquistador, which vessel had arrived six days before us.

Here, as the repairing of our damages and the provision of a new foremast for the schooner threatened us with a considerable amount of delay, Ryan went ashore to the hospital, where he made pretty fair progress toward recovery, although the improvement was not so marked or rapid as it had been on board the schooner at sea; the intense heat, he complained, was against him, and his first inquiry every morning when I went to see him was, “When did I think the schooner would be ready for sea again?” It was therefore with a feeling of intense satisfaction that I was at length able to inform him that another day would see us out of the hands of the shipwrights and riggers, and that we might sail on the day following if he so pleased. This news acted like a cordial upon his spirits; he brightened up wonderfully, and improved more rapidly within the ensuing twenty-four hours than he had done during the whole time of his sojourn in hospital, and but for the firmness of the doctor, would at once have taken his discharge, and actually busied himself about the final preparations for our departure. He, however, insisted upon joining me in the acceptance of an invitation to dine with the Governor that evening; and at the appointed hour I called for him, and we sauntered slowly to Government House together. The party was not a very large one, nor did we sit very late; but as the other guests were taking their leave, his Excellency intimated that he desired to have a word or two with us in private, and we accordingly deferred our departure.

When at length we were alone, our host invited us to light up another cigar, and, himself setting us the example, proceeded to a cabinet that stood in the corner of the room, opening which he produced a folded document from a drawer, and unfolding it, laid it before us.

“This, gentlemen,” said he, “is a rough sketch-chart of the embouchure of the Congo. It does not profess to be drawn to scale; but I am told that it shows with approximate accuracy the relative positions of the various creeks and indentations that discharge into the main river, up to the Narrows. Now, the individual from whom I obtained this chart informs me that at a distance of about two and a half miles up a certain creek on the south bank—this one, the mouth of which is indicated by a star—there is a rather considerable native settlement, ruled by a savage, known to the few Europeans who possess the doubtful honour of his acquaintance as King Plenty. And, if my informant is to be depended upon, this potentate, whose chief characteristics are avarice and brutal ferocity, has discovered a very simple method of combining business with pleasure by making ruthless war upon his neighbours, and, after his lust for slaughter is satisfied, disposing of his prisoners to certain slave-dealers, who have established themselves on the southern bank of the creek, where they have erected barracoons, factories, and every convenience for carrying on their nefarious trade. I am told that within the last six months this spot, known only to a select few, has been frequently visited, and large numbers of slaves have been carried away from it; its natural characteristics rendering it especially suitable for the traffic. For instance, it would appear that this creek, like most of the others that discharge into the Congo, and like the African rivers generally, has its own little bar at its mouth, upon which there is only one and three-quarter fathoms of water, and is therefore unapproachable by any of the men-o’-war on the station—excepting perhaps theBarracouta, and she is away cruising just now—while the character of the banks is such as to afford every facility for a galling and continuous fire upon a flotilla of boats advancing up the creek. I have therefore thought that the breaking up and destruction of this slave-trading station would be a piece of work admirably suited to theFelicidadand her gallant crew”—Ryan and I simultaneously bowed our appreciation of the compliment—“because it is especially a case wherein valour and discretion must go hand-in-hand, the service being of an especially hazardous nature; and I feel that in no one are the two qualities that I have mentioned more admirably combined than in the person of Captain Ryan.”

Ryan bowed again, and remarked—

“I am obliged for your Excellency’s good opinion of me; and still more so for the information that you have been good enough to give us to-night. I have been very fortunate, so far, in the schooner, and I suppose I may reckon upon my promotion as certain; but I am eager to have further opportunities of distinguishing myself, and if we can only be lucky enough to find two or three slavers up that creek, and to capture them, it would afford me just the opportunity that I require. I shall sail to-morrow, and shall hope to be back here again in a month or six weeks, with two or three prizes in company, and the assurance that the establishment in question is completely destroyed.”

We sat a few minutes longer, drank a final glass of wine, and then took our leave and walked down to the schooner together, Ryan having determined to sleep on board her that night.

We sailed from Sierra Leone on the following day, as Ryan had resolved we should; but, as usually happens when matters are hurried, we met with an endless succession of petty delays at the last moment that detained us at anchor until nearly nightfall, and occasioned us a vast amount of trotting about in the broiling sun to put some life into the dilatory people who were keeping us waiting; the consequence of which was that when at last we lifted the anchor and stood out of the bay with the very last of the sea-breeze, to run into a calm when we had attained an offing of some two miles, I felt altogether too tired and knocked up to eat or drink; while, as for Ryan, he was in a state of high fever once more.

We got the land breeze about eight o’clock that night, and stood away to the southward and westward until midnight, in order that we might obtain a good offing, when we hauled up on a south-east course for the Congo. I remained on deck until midnight—at which hour I was relieved by Pierrepoint—and then was obliged to send for the doctor, who, after feeling my pulse, ordered me to my bunk at once, and when I was there administered to me a tremendous dose of some frightfully bitter concoction, telling me at the same time, for my comfort, that he would not be in the least surprised if, when he next visited me, he should find me suffering from a severe attack of coast fever. Happily, his anticipations, so far as I was concerned, were unfounded; but by daybreak poor Ryan was in a state of raving delirium, with three men in his cabin told off to keep him in his bunk and prevent him from inflicting upon himself some injury. As for me, the medicine that I had taken threw me first into a profuse perspiration, and afterwards into a deep sleep, from which I awoke next morning cool, free from pain, and with a quiet, steady pulse, but very weak; and I did not fully recover my strength until a day or two before we made the land about the Congo mouth, which we did after a long passage that was uneventful in everything save the persistency with which we were beset by calms and light, baffling airs. By this time Ryan, too, had recovered to a certain extent; that is to say, he was able to leave his bunk and to stagger up on deck for an hour or so at a time, but he was still frightfully weak; and it often appeared to me, from the rather wild talk in which he sometimes indulged, that he had not thus far fully recovered his mental balance.

We made the land about six bells in the forenoon watch, and stood straight in for Shark Point, which we hugged pretty closely, in order to cheat the current, which, as usual at that time of the year, was running out pretty strongly. The sea-breeze was blowing half a gale, however, and despite the current the littleFelicidadslid over the ground bravely, arriving abreast the mouth of the creek to which we were bound about four bells in the afternoon watch. We here cleared the schooner for action, sent the men to their quarters, and, with a leadsman in the fore-chains, both on the port and on the starboard sides, and with Ryan, sketch-chart in hand, conning the vessel, steered boldly into the creek. The soundings which we obtained at the entrance proved the chart to be so far correct, and with our confidence thus strengthened we glided gently forward over the glassy waters of the creek, every eye being directed anxiously ahead, for we knew not at what moment we might encounter our enemy, nor in what force he might be. To me it appeared that we were acting in rather a foolhardy manner in thus rushing blindfold as it were upon the unknown, and earlier in the day—in fact, just after we had entered the river—I had suggested to Ryan the advisability of taking the schooner somewhat higher up the stream and anchoring her in a snug and well-sheltered spot that we had noticed when last in the river in theBarracouta, and sending the boats away at night to reconnoitre. But this happened to be one of the captain’s bad days—by which I mean that it was one of the days when the fever from which he had been suffering seemed to partially regain its hold upon him, making him impatient, irritable, and unwilling to receive anything in the shape of a suggestion from anybody; and my proposal was therefore scouted as savouring of something approaching to timidity. I had long ago got over any such feeling, however; and even now, when we momentarily expected to come face to face with the enemy, I found myself sufficiently calm and collected to note and admire the many beauties of the scene as the creek opened up before us.

For the scenewasbeautiful exceedingly with a wild, tropical lavishness of strange and, in some cases, grotesque forms and rich magnificence of colour that no words can adequately describe, and even the artist’s palette would be taxed to its utmost capacity to merely suggest. The creek was, as usual in the Congo, lined with an almost unbroken, impassable belt of mangroves, their multitudinous roots, gnarled and twisted, springing from the thick, mud-stained water, and presenting a confused, inextricable tangle to the eye, from the deep shadows of which flitted kingfishers of many species and brilliant plumage; while above swayed and rustled in the gentle breeze the delicate grey-green foliage of the trees themselves, now in full and luxuriant leaf, affording a delicious contrast of cool green shadow, with the glints of dazzling sunshine that streamed here and there through the verdant masses. Great clusters of magnificent orange-tinted orchids gleamed like galaxies of golden stars between the mangrove trunks at frequent intervals; clumps of feathery bamboo swayed gently in the soft warm breeze; the dense background of bush displayed every conceivable tint of foliage, from brilliant gold to deepest purple bronze; and magnificent forest trees towered in stately majesty over all, rearing their superb heads a hundred and fifty feet into the intense blue of the cloudless sky; while everywhere, over bush and tree and withered stump, blazed in thousands the trailing blossoms of brilliant-hued climbing plants that loaded the air to intoxication with the sweetness of their mingled perfumes. Parrots and other gaily-plumaged birds flitted busily hither and thither with loud and—it must be admitted—more or less discordant cries; inquisitive monkeys swung from branch to branch, and either peered curiously at us as we passed, or dashed precipitately, with loud cries of alarm, into the concealment of the deepest shadows at our approach; and at one point, where the belt of mangroves was interrupted, and a small, open, grassy space reached down to the water’s edge, a stately antelope stepped daintily down into the water, as though to slake his thirst, but catching sight of the approaching schooner, bounded off again into the contiguous bush, where he was instantly lost sight of in the sombre green gloom.

At a distance of about two miles from the mouth of the creek we reached a spot where it forked, one arm—the wider of the two—running in a due east-by-south direction, while the other trended away to the west-south-west, communicating—as we afterwards discovered—with another creek which, although too shoal for navigation by sea-going craft, would have afforded us excellent facilities for a reconnaissance with the boats. At this point the southern shore of the creek exhibited signs of cultivation, small patches of bush having been cleared here and there and planted with maize, or sugarcane, or yams, a small reed-hut thatched with palm-leaves usually standing in one corner of the plot, with a tethered goat close by, a few fowls, or other traces of its being inhabited. Of the human inhabitants themselves, however, strangely enough, nothing was to be seen. But it was clear that we were nearing our goal; and word was passed along the deck for the men to hold themselves prepared for instant action.

There were several memoranda jotted down upon the chart for our guidance, and among these was an intimation to look out for a clump of exceptionally tall trees on the southern bank of the creek, under the broad shadow of which the slave barracoons were stated to be built. A few minutes after passing the branch creek already referred to we arrived at a bend, and as the schooner glided round it, and entered a new reach, these trees swept into view; there could be no mistaking them, for they lifted their majestic heads—there were five of them—fully fifty feet clear above those of their brethren. Moreover, they stood quite close to the margin of the creek, thus confirming the statement made upon the sketch-chart. But had there been any lurking doubt in our minds about the matter they would have been quickly dispelled, for as we glided forward, a small sandy beach—also referred to in the chart—was made out projecting from the southern bank, at which some twenty or thirty large canoes lay with their bows hauled sufficiently out of the water to prevent their going adrift. That a vigilant watch was being kept upon the waters of the creek became quickly apparent, for we had scarcely made out the canoes when we saw several negroes rush down to one of them, launch it, and paddle swiftly away up the creek and round another bend, while, as we advanced, a crowd of naked blacks, armed with spears, shields, and muskets, gathered upon the beach, and, from their actions, seemed fully prepared to forcibly resist any attempt on our part to effect a landing.

Still advancing up the creek, we gradually opened the vista of the reach beyond—that in which the canoe had a few minutes previously vanished—and at length, when only a short half-mile intervened between us and the beach—which projected boldly nearly half-way across the channel—the main-mast of a schooner crept into view beyond the concealment of the hitherto intervening bush and trees; and bringing our glasses to bear upon her, we detected signs of great bustle and confusion on board her, and made out that her crew were busily engaged in tricing up boarding nettings, and otherwise making preparations for her defence.

Ryan now ordered our ensign and pennant to be hoisted, thus boldly announcing at once our nationality and the fact of our being an enemy—an announcement which I should have deemed it perfectly justifiable to defer until the last possible moment—and the schooner at once replied by hoisting French colours and firing a gun of defiance. This greatly amused our people, to whom the act seemed a piece of ridiculous braggadocio—for the stranger was no bigger than ourselves—but the laugh left their faces and was succeeded by a look of grim resolution when presently we opened out another and a larger schooner and a heavy, handsome brigantine, the first flying Spanish colours and the brigantinea black flag! But this was not all, for before we arrived abreast the beach we had opened out still another schooner with the Spanish flag floating from her mast-head; and by what we saw going on board the four craft it became evident that we had by no means caught these bold rovers napping, and that we might confidently reckon upon meeting with a very warm reception. Moreover, it was clear that, snug as was their place of concealment, and unlikely as it was to be discovered save, as in our case, by betrayal, they had left nothing to chance, but had taken every possible precaution to insure their safety, the four craft being moored in pairs, with springs on their cables, stern to stern right across the stream, so that, the fair-way being very narrow, they would have to be fought and taken in succession, a necessity which I at once recognised, and which, to my limited experience, seemed to militate very strongly against our chances of success. It was, however, altogether too late now to hesitate or alter our plans; we had plunged headlong and, as it were, blindfold into a hornet’s nest from which nothing but the coolest courage and determination could extricate us, and, while I had long ago completely conquered the feeling of trepidation and anxiety that almost everybody experiences more or less when going into action for the first time, I could not altogether suppress a doubt as to whether Ryan, in his then very indifferent state of health, possessed quite all the coolness and clear-headedness as well as the nerve that I anticipated would be necessary to see us safely out of our present entanglement.

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