Chapter Four.The Departure of the Convoy.About daybreak the wind veered round and blew a fine, fresh, steady breeze from the northward, enabling the barque to lay her course with flowing sheets; and sunset found her safely anchored in Plymouth Sound, one of a fleet of nearly two hundred merchantmen, which had assembled there for the purpose of being convoyed across the Atlantic.The convoy was to sail on the following day but one; the men-o’-war which constituted their escort were already in the Sound, along with several other ships of the royal navy; and as the cable smoked out through theAurora’shawse-pipe that evening, when she dropped her anchor, George fondly hoped his troubles were at an end.But he was mistaken.As soon as the canvas was furled, Captain Leicester manned a boat, and, proceeding on board the admiral’s ship reported the circumstance of the capture and recapture of his vessel, requesting at the same time to be relieved as soon as possible of the custody of his prisoners. This was speedily arranged. By the admiral’s orders an armed boat’s crew was at once despatched to theAurora, the prisoners were released from their bonds, passed into the man-o’-war’s boat, and in little more than an hour from their arrival in the Sound safely lodged on board a prison-hulk.So far, so good. But George had yet to learn that there was one inconvenient result generally attendant upon a request to a man-o’-war for assistance. The boat, after conveying the Frenchmen to the prison-hulk, duly returned to the admiral’s ship; but, instead of the crew at once passing out of her, they were ordered to remain where they were, the lieutenant in charge alone going on deck and holding a short conference with the captain, after which he re-entered the boat, and she proceeded once more alongside theAurora.George saw her coming, and wondered what could possibly be her errand. He was not left long in doubt.“I am very sorry to trouble you,” remarked the lieutenant, as he encountered George at the gangway, whither the latter had repaired to meet him, “but I must ask you to kindly muster your men.”George knew only too well then what this visit boded, but he was quite helpless; so, putting the best face he could upon the matter, he answered as cheerfully as he could, and directed that all hands should be summoned on deck.“I hope, however,” he remarked to the officer, “that you will not deprive me of any of my crew. I have shipped only just sufficient men to handle her, and I assure you that even with the fine weather we have had in our trip down Channel I have found that we have not a hand too many for the efficient management of the ship.”“Ah, yes,” answered the lieutenant with a laugh; “all you merchant-skippers tell the same story; but we shall see—we shall see. They must be exceptionally good men, however, or you would never have succeeded in recovering possession of your ship. Ah! here they are, and a fine smart crew they look, too. Upon my word I must congratulate you, Mr—a—um—a, upon your good luck in securing so many fine fellows; why, they look capable of taking care of a ship twice your size. I reallymustrelieve you of one or two of them; it would be nothing short of treason to his most gracious Majesty to allow you to keep them all, when the navy is in such urgent want of men.”The crew were by this time assembled on deck, and a very disconcerted and disgusted-looking set of men they were; they had submitted to weeks of voluntary imprisonment in crimps’ houses for the sole purpose of escaping impressment into the navy, and now, when their voyage had actually begun, here was a man-o’-war’s boat alongside, to force them into the service they regarded with so great an abhorrence. No wonder that they looked and felt disgusted.The men were drawn up in line along the deck, in single file, and the lieutenant sauntered leisurely along the line, critically examining each man as he came to him, but without, as George had anticipated, ordering any of them into the boat alongside. At length he reached the last individual in the line, one of the lads, and Leicester was beginning to breathe freely once more, hoping that he was, after all, not to be robbed of any of his crew, when the officer returned to the head of the line, and, touching the second mate lightly on the chest with his finger, said—“You were evidently born to become a man-o’-war’s man, my fine fellow; get your traps together and pass them and yourself into the boat alongside as soon as you have received your wages.”“Excuse me,” said George, “I really must ask you not to take that man; he is my second mate.”“Your second mate!” exclaimed the officer with well-feigned astonishment. “You surely do not mean to say you carry a second mate on board such a cock-boat as this?”“Certainly I do,” retorted George somewhat tartly; “why not, pray?”“Simply, my good man, because such an individual is wholly unnecessary. You can take charge of one watch, yourself, you know, and your mate will of course command the other, so that you can have no possible use for a second mate. Why, a smart, active young fellow like you ought to be ashamed of such an act of laziness as the carrying of a second mate. Pay the man his wages, if you please, and let him pass into the boat.”“I owe him no wages,” answered George; “on the contrary, he—and every other man of the crew, for that matter—has drawn a month’s advance, and owes me three weeks’ service yet before we shall be square. Who is to reimburse me for that loss?”“I am sorry to say I am quite unable to answer that question,” was the reply; “but, giving it—mind you, strictly as my private opinion—I am afraid you will have to suffer the loss. For my part I have never been able to understand why you masters of merchantmenwillpersist in so risky a policy as the payment of a month’s wages in advance, when you can never tell what may occur to prevent the men from working out their time. But this is not business; I must bear a hand and finish my work, or I shall get severely rapped over the knuckles.”Then, turning once more to the men, he ordered the carpenter to get his things ready, and go into the boat.“No,” said George, by this time thoroughly exasperated, “thatI willnotpermit. This man is the ship’s carpenter, and I forbid you, sir, to impress him at your peril.”“Youforbid, eh?” said the lieutenant, turning angrily upon George. “Take care what you are saying, my fine fellow, or I may perhaps find ways and means of impressingyoubefore you sail.”Then, suddenly realising that he had allowed his temper to outrun his discretion, he added in a conciliatory tone—“Well, since you say that this man is the carpenter, I will spare him; but you should have explained that fact to me at first; and as to impressingyou, why, I daresay you know the old joke about impressing a ship-master, and will understand I was only jesting; you are a capital fellow, and have behaved very well over this business, so I will let you off as easily as I can. But of course I must do my duty and take another man or two from you; if I did not, some of the other ships would be sending on board you and leaving you really short-handed.”With that he picked out with unerring eye the two able-seamen, and then, turning to George with a great show of generous forbearance, announced that he would leave him all the rest, though he could hardly reconcile it to his conscience togo awaywith only three men out of so strong and smart a crew as that belonging to theAurora.Cross was by this time with his chest on deck; the other two impressed men soon followed, and the disconsolate trio passed down the ship’s side in moody silence, unmoved alike by the commiserating looks of their late shipmates or the jocular and more than half-ironical congratulations of the man-o’-war’s men in the boat upon their entry into so promising a service as that of the British navy.On the departure of the boat, George held a short consultation with Mr Bowen, the result of which was a very wise determination to “grin and bear it,” rather than risk fresh annoyance by an effort—which he very strongly suspected would be utterly useless—to obtain redress and the restitution of his men. This determination come to, the carpenter was summoned aft, and installed into the duties and the berth of the unfortunate Cross; George thus finding his crew reduced to three men, the officers included, and one lad in each watch, the cook and steward of course being “idlers,” and their services in the working of the ship only to be demanded on occasions of exceptional urgency.On the day but one following that of the impressment of theAurora’smen, a gun was fired at sunrise by the commodore, blue-peter was hoisted at the fore-royal-mastheads, and the fore-topsails were loosed on board the ships of the convoying squadron, and the still morning air immediately began to resound with the songs of seamen and the clanking of windlass-pawls, as the fleet of merchantmen constituting the convoy began to get under weigh. There was a considerable amount of emulation displayed among the merchant-skippers—those of them, at least, whose ships or crews had any pretensions to smartness, and in half an hour a good many of the craft were under weigh and standing out to sea with a light air of wind from the eastward. The oldTremendous, 74, led the van, closely followed by theTorpid, 50; while the frigatesAndromedaandVixen, each of 32 guns, assisted by theDasher,Grampus,Throstle, andMallard, 10-gun-brigs, cruised round and round the laggards, making signals, firing guns, and generally creating a great deal of fuss, noise, and excitement. The leading portion of the fleet was hove-to, hull-down, at sea, before the last craft in the convoy had succeeded in getting her anchor and making a start; but by noon the whole of the fleet was fairly in the Channel, when theTremendousmade the signal to fill, and away they all went, bowling along to the southward and westward, the dull sailers under every rag they could spread to the wind—now settled into a fine steady royal-breeze from east-south-east, while the smarter craft were compelled to show only such a spread of canvas as would enable the dullards to keep pace with them. TheTremendousandTorpid, under double-reefed topsails, led the way about two miles apart; the frigates were posted, one to windward and one to leeward of the merchant-fleet, and the brigs brought up the rear, it being their duty to whip-in the stragglers, urge on the slow-coaches, and keep a sharp lookout for prowling privateers.The English coast was still faintly visible, like a light grey cloud, on the horizon astern, when a strange sail was sighted on the port beam, steering west, a course which brought her gradually nearer to the convoy. She was brig-rigged, and she continued to approach until she had reached a point some six miles from the fleet; when she suddenly hauled her wind, and, without showing any colours, stood away to the southward and eastward, close-hauled, under a heavy press of canvas. There had been a considerable amount of signalling going on between the various men-o’-war from the moment of her first appearance, and now there was still more; but it soon ceased; the last string of flags displayed by theTremendouswas acknowledged by theAndromeda, the weathermost frigate, and the excitement appeared to be at an end.“I’m afraid that means trouble for some of us, unless the men-o’-war keep a good sharp lookout,” observed Mr Bowen to George, jerking his thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the rapidly receding brig, as the two men walked the deck together, criticising the appearance and sailing powers of the various craft in company.“Ah, indeed?” remarked George. “I see you have come to the same conclusion as myself with regard to the stranger, which is that she is a French privateer.”“Just that, sir, and nothing else,” was the reply. “She is French all over; no need for her to show her colours; her rig speaks her nationality plain enough for a blind man to read it. She’s been on the watch for this fleet for the last week or more, you may depend on it, and now she has gone back to report the news to her consorts that the West India convoy has sailed. Mark my words, sir; we shall all have to keep a good sharp lookout, or a few of us will be snapped up yet, in spite of the men-o’-war, before we sight the next land.”“Well,” said George, “we must take care that theAurorais not one of the few, that is all. Luckily, we are not exactly the dullest sailer in the fleet; and we must manage to keep well in the body of it. It is the outsiders that will run the greatest risk.”For the next three or four days an unusual amount of vigilance was observable on board the men-o’-war, especially the frigates and gun-brigs, all of which kept well in the offing during the day, evidently on the lookout for prowling picaroons, and closing in again upon the convoy at night; but nothing was seen to keep alive suspicion; no ships of any description were encountered, save a couple of English frigates, each of which replied to the private signal and exchanged numbers with theTremendous; and on the evening of the tenth day out the lofty, precipitous cliffs of the Azores were sighted and passed.Another week sped away without the occurrence of any incident worthy of record; the wind continued fair and steady; and the convoy, though its rate of travelling was rather slow, made very good progress.On the afternoon of the eighteenth day out from Plymouth, the fleet being at the time in latitude 32 degrees North, longitude 44 degrees 30 minutes West, or about half-way to Jamaica, the wind fell light; the sky, which had hitherto been clear, became overcast, heavy masses of dark, thunderous cloud slowly gathering in the south-western quarter and gradually spreading athwart the sky until the whole of the visible heavens were obscured. The barometer dropped slightly, indicating, in conjunction with the aspect of the sky, a probable change of wind and a consequent interruption to their hitherto highly satisfactory progress.As evening fell, flashes of sheet-lightning were occasionally to be seen along the southern horizon; and Captain Leicester, anticipating a thunder-storm and a probable heavy downfall of rain, made preparations for the refilling of his water-casks.But, though the atmosphere appeared to be heavily charged with electricity, the thunder held off, and when night closed down upon the convoy, the moon being then in her third quarter and rising late, it became as dark as a wolf’s mouth.Lights were of course displayed on board each ship; and the convoy having become somewhat scattered in consequence of the failure of the breeze, the effect was very singular and striking.This being George’s first voyage across the Atlantic, he was naturally a little anxious; and on the night in question he resolved to remain on deck until the weather should have assumed some more decided aspect. There was fortunately still a gentle breeze from about east-south-east fanning the convoy along at a speed of some two knots in the hour, just giving the ships steerage-way; and they were consequently able to keep out of each other’s way, and thus avoid collision, always a great element of danger when a large number of craft happen to be sailing in company.About two bells in the middle watch, George being seated at the time near the companion, smoking a meditative pipe, and thinking somewhat ruefully about Lucy Walford, the carpenter, who was in charge of the deck, approached him and said—“Unless I am greatly mistaken, sir, here’s a large craft without any lights creeping up on our larboard quarter.”“Indeed,” said George, rousing himself and stepping aft to the taffrail with the carpenter; “whereabouts is she?”The carpenter looked intently astern for a moment, then stretched out his arm, saying—“There, sir—ah! now you can see her, she is just about to shut out the first of those four lights that you can see all close together. There! now she has shut it out.”“I see her!” said George. “Whatever does the fellow mean by being without lights on such a pitch-dark night as this; it would serve him right to report him to the commodore in the morning. He has a smart vessel under his feet, though; see how she is overhauling us. Why, it must surely be one of the gun-brigs, judging from her spread of canvas and her lofty spars. But what can she be doing here, in the very middle of the fleet, and without lights, too?”The stranger was by this time little more than a couple of cables’ lengths from theAurora, drawing up to her fast, and apparently intending to pass her very closely. George glanced anxiously at his stern light, thinking it might possibly have gone out, but no, it was burning brightly and must be distinctly visible to those on board the other craft.Gradually the dark, mysterious fabric drew closer and still closer up on the port quarter of theAurora, not the faintest glimmer of light being visible from stem to stern, and not a sound of any kind to be heard on board her.George began to feel a trifle nervous as he watched the silent, stealthy approach of the stranger; and fetching his speaking-trumpet from the beckets in the companion-way, where it always hung in company with the telescope, he stepped aft to the taffrail and hailed—“Ship ahoy!”“Hillo!” was the response, in a tone of voice pitched so low that, though it was distinctly audible to those on board theAurora, it would not penetrate the sluggish atmosphere to any great distance.“What ship is that?” inquired George.“His Britannic Majesty’s brig—” (name unintelligible). “What ship is that?”“TheAurora, of London. Why are you out of your station, and without lights, sir? Is there anything wrong?”“Yes,” was the reply, “but don’t hail any more; there are enemies at hand. I will sheer alongside you presently, and tell you what to do.”“Enemies at hand, eh!” muttered George. “What can it mean, I wonder? And if thereareenemies, by which, I suppose, they mean Frenchmen, in our neighbourhood, those man-o’-war fellows must have eyes like owls to be able to see them in the dark. Just step down into the cabin, if you please, Mr Ritson, and give the mate a call; I don’t half like this.”In little more than a minute Mr Bowen was on deck and listening to George’s statement of what had already passed, and of his uneasiness. George had just finished speaking, when there was a sound as of a falling handspike, or something of the kind, on board the stranger, followed by a loud ejaculation of—“Sacr-r-r-r-ré nom de—”The remainder of the exclamation was promptly suppressed, but it was enough; George’s suspicions were now fully aroused, and he whispered to the two men standing by him—“She is French, beyond a doubt; they intended to surprise us, and very nearly they did it, too. But we will not be caught quite so easily this time. Ritson, go forward, rouse the men, and tell them to creep aft under the shelter of the bulwarks; let not one of them show so much as a hair of his head above the rail; and tell them to look lively. And you, Mr Bowen, be good enough to go below and bring up a cutlass apiece for all hands.”
About daybreak the wind veered round and blew a fine, fresh, steady breeze from the northward, enabling the barque to lay her course with flowing sheets; and sunset found her safely anchored in Plymouth Sound, one of a fleet of nearly two hundred merchantmen, which had assembled there for the purpose of being convoyed across the Atlantic.
The convoy was to sail on the following day but one; the men-o’-war which constituted their escort were already in the Sound, along with several other ships of the royal navy; and as the cable smoked out through theAurora’shawse-pipe that evening, when she dropped her anchor, George fondly hoped his troubles were at an end.
But he was mistaken.
As soon as the canvas was furled, Captain Leicester manned a boat, and, proceeding on board the admiral’s ship reported the circumstance of the capture and recapture of his vessel, requesting at the same time to be relieved as soon as possible of the custody of his prisoners. This was speedily arranged. By the admiral’s orders an armed boat’s crew was at once despatched to theAurora, the prisoners were released from their bonds, passed into the man-o’-war’s boat, and in little more than an hour from their arrival in the Sound safely lodged on board a prison-hulk.
So far, so good. But George had yet to learn that there was one inconvenient result generally attendant upon a request to a man-o’-war for assistance. The boat, after conveying the Frenchmen to the prison-hulk, duly returned to the admiral’s ship; but, instead of the crew at once passing out of her, they were ordered to remain where they were, the lieutenant in charge alone going on deck and holding a short conference with the captain, after which he re-entered the boat, and she proceeded once more alongside theAurora.
George saw her coming, and wondered what could possibly be her errand. He was not left long in doubt.
“I am very sorry to trouble you,” remarked the lieutenant, as he encountered George at the gangway, whither the latter had repaired to meet him, “but I must ask you to kindly muster your men.”
George knew only too well then what this visit boded, but he was quite helpless; so, putting the best face he could upon the matter, he answered as cheerfully as he could, and directed that all hands should be summoned on deck.
“I hope, however,” he remarked to the officer, “that you will not deprive me of any of my crew. I have shipped only just sufficient men to handle her, and I assure you that even with the fine weather we have had in our trip down Channel I have found that we have not a hand too many for the efficient management of the ship.”
“Ah, yes,” answered the lieutenant with a laugh; “all you merchant-skippers tell the same story; but we shall see—we shall see. They must be exceptionally good men, however, or you would never have succeeded in recovering possession of your ship. Ah! here they are, and a fine smart crew they look, too. Upon my word I must congratulate you, Mr—a—um—a, upon your good luck in securing so many fine fellows; why, they look capable of taking care of a ship twice your size. I reallymustrelieve you of one or two of them; it would be nothing short of treason to his most gracious Majesty to allow you to keep them all, when the navy is in such urgent want of men.”
The crew were by this time assembled on deck, and a very disconcerted and disgusted-looking set of men they were; they had submitted to weeks of voluntary imprisonment in crimps’ houses for the sole purpose of escaping impressment into the navy, and now, when their voyage had actually begun, here was a man-o’-war’s boat alongside, to force them into the service they regarded with so great an abhorrence. No wonder that they looked and felt disgusted.
The men were drawn up in line along the deck, in single file, and the lieutenant sauntered leisurely along the line, critically examining each man as he came to him, but without, as George had anticipated, ordering any of them into the boat alongside. At length he reached the last individual in the line, one of the lads, and Leicester was beginning to breathe freely once more, hoping that he was, after all, not to be robbed of any of his crew, when the officer returned to the head of the line, and, touching the second mate lightly on the chest with his finger, said—
“You were evidently born to become a man-o’-war’s man, my fine fellow; get your traps together and pass them and yourself into the boat alongside as soon as you have received your wages.”
“Excuse me,” said George, “I really must ask you not to take that man; he is my second mate.”
“Your second mate!” exclaimed the officer with well-feigned astonishment. “You surely do not mean to say you carry a second mate on board such a cock-boat as this?”
“Certainly I do,” retorted George somewhat tartly; “why not, pray?”
“Simply, my good man, because such an individual is wholly unnecessary. You can take charge of one watch, yourself, you know, and your mate will of course command the other, so that you can have no possible use for a second mate. Why, a smart, active young fellow like you ought to be ashamed of such an act of laziness as the carrying of a second mate. Pay the man his wages, if you please, and let him pass into the boat.”
“I owe him no wages,” answered George; “on the contrary, he—and every other man of the crew, for that matter—has drawn a month’s advance, and owes me three weeks’ service yet before we shall be square. Who is to reimburse me for that loss?”
“I am sorry to say I am quite unable to answer that question,” was the reply; “but, giving it—mind you, strictly as my private opinion—I am afraid you will have to suffer the loss. For my part I have never been able to understand why you masters of merchantmenwillpersist in so risky a policy as the payment of a month’s wages in advance, when you can never tell what may occur to prevent the men from working out their time. But this is not business; I must bear a hand and finish my work, or I shall get severely rapped over the knuckles.”
Then, turning once more to the men, he ordered the carpenter to get his things ready, and go into the boat.
“No,” said George, by this time thoroughly exasperated, “thatI willnotpermit. This man is the ship’s carpenter, and I forbid you, sir, to impress him at your peril.”
“Youforbid, eh?” said the lieutenant, turning angrily upon George. “Take care what you are saying, my fine fellow, or I may perhaps find ways and means of impressingyoubefore you sail.”
Then, suddenly realising that he had allowed his temper to outrun his discretion, he added in a conciliatory tone—
“Well, since you say that this man is the carpenter, I will spare him; but you should have explained that fact to me at first; and as to impressingyou, why, I daresay you know the old joke about impressing a ship-master, and will understand I was only jesting; you are a capital fellow, and have behaved very well over this business, so I will let you off as easily as I can. But of course I must do my duty and take another man or two from you; if I did not, some of the other ships would be sending on board you and leaving you really short-handed.”
With that he picked out with unerring eye the two able-seamen, and then, turning to George with a great show of generous forbearance, announced that he would leave him all the rest, though he could hardly reconcile it to his conscience togo awaywith only three men out of so strong and smart a crew as that belonging to theAurora.
Cross was by this time with his chest on deck; the other two impressed men soon followed, and the disconsolate trio passed down the ship’s side in moody silence, unmoved alike by the commiserating looks of their late shipmates or the jocular and more than half-ironical congratulations of the man-o’-war’s men in the boat upon their entry into so promising a service as that of the British navy.
On the departure of the boat, George held a short consultation with Mr Bowen, the result of which was a very wise determination to “grin and bear it,” rather than risk fresh annoyance by an effort—which he very strongly suspected would be utterly useless—to obtain redress and the restitution of his men. This determination come to, the carpenter was summoned aft, and installed into the duties and the berth of the unfortunate Cross; George thus finding his crew reduced to three men, the officers included, and one lad in each watch, the cook and steward of course being “idlers,” and their services in the working of the ship only to be demanded on occasions of exceptional urgency.
On the day but one following that of the impressment of theAurora’smen, a gun was fired at sunrise by the commodore, blue-peter was hoisted at the fore-royal-mastheads, and the fore-topsails were loosed on board the ships of the convoying squadron, and the still morning air immediately began to resound with the songs of seamen and the clanking of windlass-pawls, as the fleet of merchantmen constituting the convoy began to get under weigh. There was a considerable amount of emulation displayed among the merchant-skippers—those of them, at least, whose ships or crews had any pretensions to smartness, and in half an hour a good many of the craft were under weigh and standing out to sea with a light air of wind from the eastward. The oldTremendous, 74, led the van, closely followed by theTorpid, 50; while the frigatesAndromedaandVixen, each of 32 guns, assisted by theDasher,Grampus,Throstle, andMallard, 10-gun-brigs, cruised round and round the laggards, making signals, firing guns, and generally creating a great deal of fuss, noise, and excitement. The leading portion of the fleet was hove-to, hull-down, at sea, before the last craft in the convoy had succeeded in getting her anchor and making a start; but by noon the whole of the fleet was fairly in the Channel, when theTremendousmade the signal to fill, and away they all went, bowling along to the southward and westward, the dull sailers under every rag they could spread to the wind—now settled into a fine steady royal-breeze from east-south-east, while the smarter craft were compelled to show only such a spread of canvas as would enable the dullards to keep pace with them. TheTremendousandTorpid, under double-reefed topsails, led the way about two miles apart; the frigates were posted, one to windward and one to leeward of the merchant-fleet, and the brigs brought up the rear, it being their duty to whip-in the stragglers, urge on the slow-coaches, and keep a sharp lookout for prowling privateers.
The English coast was still faintly visible, like a light grey cloud, on the horizon astern, when a strange sail was sighted on the port beam, steering west, a course which brought her gradually nearer to the convoy. She was brig-rigged, and she continued to approach until she had reached a point some six miles from the fleet; when she suddenly hauled her wind, and, without showing any colours, stood away to the southward and eastward, close-hauled, under a heavy press of canvas. There had been a considerable amount of signalling going on between the various men-o’-war from the moment of her first appearance, and now there was still more; but it soon ceased; the last string of flags displayed by theTremendouswas acknowledged by theAndromeda, the weathermost frigate, and the excitement appeared to be at an end.
“I’m afraid that means trouble for some of us, unless the men-o’-war keep a good sharp lookout,” observed Mr Bowen to George, jerking his thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the rapidly receding brig, as the two men walked the deck together, criticising the appearance and sailing powers of the various craft in company.
“Ah, indeed?” remarked George. “I see you have come to the same conclusion as myself with regard to the stranger, which is that she is a French privateer.”
“Just that, sir, and nothing else,” was the reply. “She is French all over; no need for her to show her colours; her rig speaks her nationality plain enough for a blind man to read it. She’s been on the watch for this fleet for the last week or more, you may depend on it, and now she has gone back to report the news to her consorts that the West India convoy has sailed. Mark my words, sir; we shall all have to keep a good sharp lookout, or a few of us will be snapped up yet, in spite of the men-o’-war, before we sight the next land.”
“Well,” said George, “we must take care that theAurorais not one of the few, that is all. Luckily, we are not exactly the dullest sailer in the fleet; and we must manage to keep well in the body of it. It is the outsiders that will run the greatest risk.”
For the next three or four days an unusual amount of vigilance was observable on board the men-o’-war, especially the frigates and gun-brigs, all of which kept well in the offing during the day, evidently on the lookout for prowling picaroons, and closing in again upon the convoy at night; but nothing was seen to keep alive suspicion; no ships of any description were encountered, save a couple of English frigates, each of which replied to the private signal and exchanged numbers with theTremendous; and on the evening of the tenth day out the lofty, precipitous cliffs of the Azores were sighted and passed.
Another week sped away without the occurrence of any incident worthy of record; the wind continued fair and steady; and the convoy, though its rate of travelling was rather slow, made very good progress.
On the afternoon of the eighteenth day out from Plymouth, the fleet being at the time in latitude 32 degrees North, longitude 44 degrees 30 minutes West, or about half-way to Jamaica, the wind fell light; the sky, which had hitherto been clear, became overcast, heavy masses of dark, thunderous cloud slowly gathering in the south-western quarter and gradually spreading athwart the sky until the whole of the visible heavens were obscured. The barometer dropped slightly, indicating, in conjunction with the aspect of the sky, a probable change of wind and a consequent interruption to their hitherto highly satisfactory progress.
As evening fell, flashes of sheet-lightning were occasionally to be seen along the southern horizon; and Captain Leicester, anticipating a thunder-storm and a probable heavy downfall of rain, made preparations for the refilling of his water-casks.
But, though the atmosphere appeared to be heavily charged with electricity, the thunder held off, and when night closed down upon the convoy, the moon being then in her third quarter and rising late, it became as dark as a wolf’s mouth.
Lights were of course displayed on board each ship; and the convoy having become somewhat scattered in consequence of the failure of the breeze, the effect was very singular and striking.
This being George’s first voyage across the Atlantic, he was naturally a little anxious; and on the night in question he resolved to remain on deck until the weather should have assumed some more decided aspect. There was fortunately still a gentle breeze from about east-south-east fanning the convoy along at a speed of some two knots in the hour, just giving the ships steerage-way; and they were consequently able to keep out of each other’s way, and thus avoid collision, always a great element of danger when a large number of craft happen to be sailing in company.
About two bells in the middle watch, George being seated at the time near the companion, smoking a meditative pipe, and thinking somewhat ruefully about Lucy Walford, the carpenter, who was in charge of the deck, approached him and said—
“Unless I am greatly mistaken, sir, here’s a large craft without any lights creeping up on our larboard quarter.”
“Indeed,” said George, rousing himself and stepping aft to the taffrail with the carpenter; “whereabouts is she?”
The carpenter looked intently astern for a moment, then stretched out his arm, saying—
“There, sir—ah! now you can see her, she is just about to shut out the first of those four lights that you can see all close together. There! now she has shut it out.”
“I see her!” said George. “Whatever does the fellow mean by being without lights on such a pitch-dark night as this; it would serve him right to report him to the commodore in the morning. He has a smart vessel under his feet, though; see how she is overhauling us. Why, it must surely be one of the gun-brigs, judging from her spread of canvas and her lofty spars. But what can she be doing here, in the very middle of the fleet, and without lights, too?”
The stranger was by this time little more than a couple of cables’ lengths from theAurora, drawing up to her fast, and apparently intending to pass her very closely. George glanced anxiously at his stern light, thinking it might possibly have gone out, but no, it was burning brightly and must be distinctly visible to those on board the other craft.
Gradually the dark, mysterious fabric drew closer and still closer up on the port quarter of theAurora, not the faintest glimmer of light being visible from stem to stern, and not a sound of any kind to be heard on board her.
George began to feel a trifle nervous as he watched the silent, stealthy approach of the stranger; and fetching his speaking-trumpet from the beckets in the companion-way, where it always hung in company with the telescope, he stepped aft to the taffrail and hailed—
“Ship ahoy!”
“Hillo!” was the response, in a tone of voice pitched so low that, though it was distinctly audible to those on board theAurora, it would not penetrate the sluggish atmosphere to any great distance.
“What ship is that?” inquired George.
“His Britannic Majesty’s brig—” (name unintelligible). “What ship is that?”
“TheAurora, of London. Why are you out of your station, and without lights, sir? Is there anything wrong?”
“Yes,” was the reply, “but don’t hail any more; there are enemies at hand. I will sheer alongside you presently, and tell you what to do.”
“Enemies at hand, eh!” muttered George. “What can it mean, I wonder? And if thereareenemies, by which, I suppose, they mean Frenchmen, in our neighbourhood, those man-o’-war fellows must have eyes like owls to be able to see them in the dark. Just step down into the cabin, if you please, Mr Ritson, and give the mate a call; I don’t half like this.”
In little more than a minute Mr Bowen was on deck and listening to George’s statement of what had already passed, and of his uneasiness. George had just finished speaking, when there was a sound as of a falling handspike, or something of the kind, on board the stranger, followed by a loud ejaculation of—
“Sacr-r-r-r-ré nom de—”
The remainder of the exclamation was promptly suppressed, but it was enough; George’s suspicions were now fully aroused, and he whispered to the two men standing by him—
“She is French, beyond a doubt; they intended to surprise us, and very nearly they did it, too. But we will not be caught quite so easily this time. Ritson, go forward, rouse the men, and tell them to creep aft under the shelter of the bulwarks; let not one of them show so much as a hair of his head above the rail; and tell them to look lively. And you, Mr Bowen, be good enough to go below and bring up a cutlass apiece for all hands.”
Chapter Five.“Choppee for Changee—A Black Dog for a Blue Monkey.”By the time that theAurora’screw were on deck, crouching behind the bulwarks aft on the port side, armed, and instructed by George as to what he required of them, the strange sail was within a dozen fathoms of theAurora’sport quarter.She could now be seen with tolerable distinctness, the outline of the hull and of the lofty canvas showing black as ebony against the dark background of sea and sky; and any doubts which Captain Leicester might have still entertained concerning her, were completely set at rest as he glanced at the cut of her canvas. It was French all over.Foot by foot the brig—for such she was—crept up to theAurora, until her bows were in a line with the barque’s stern and not more than twenty feet distant. George stood by the main-rigging, watching her, cutlass in hand, calm and determined, his plans already formed for action in the event of his suspicions proving correct.In the ordinary course of things the two craft were now quite near enough to each other for any communication, however confidential in its nature, to be made without the possibility of its being overheard; but, though George could see that a figure stood on the brig’s rail by the main-rigging, not a word was uttered.Keeping his gaze steadfastly fixed upon the brig, Captain Leicester saw that her helm had suddenly been ported, for she was sheering strongly in toward his own vessel.“Brig ahoy!” he hailed. “What is it you have to say to me? Do not come too close, sir, or you will be into us.”“Never fear,” answered in perfect English the dark figure on board the brig, “we will not carry away so much as a rope-yarn belonging to you. But I must be on board you before I can venture to give you your instructions.”“Oh! very well,” said George. “If you intend boarding us, you had better do so by way of our fore-rigging, or you may get a nasty fall; we are very much littered up here abaft with spars and so on.”“Ah, thank you very much; I will take your advice,” was the reply.George saw the man motion with his arm, and the brig’s course was altered sufficiently to put her alongside with her gangway even with theAurora’sfore-mast. Another second or two, and the ships gently jarred together, the brig’s quarter dropping alongside the barque at the same moment.“Enfans, allons-nous-en!” exclaimed the voice of the stranger forward, followed by the sound of a leap on to the barque’s deck, and a scramble among the spars which littered it there.“Now is your time, lads; jump for your lives!” exclaimed George in a low, excited tone; and, setting his men the example, he forthwith sprang from his own ship’s bulwarks to those of the brig; and dashing at the helmsman, cut him down with his cutlass before the fellow could recover sufficiently from his astonishment to utter a cry. Then, without a moment’s pause, he seized the wheel and exerting all his strength, sent it with a single twirl spinning hard over to starboard, where he lashed it.The shock of collision, slight as it was, caused the two vessels to recoil from each other, and they were barely alongside when they separated again; George’s manipulation of the brig’s wheel, and a similar manipulation of theAurora’shelm at the last moment before the touching of the two vessels, greatly expediting the separation. By the time, therefore, that George had looked about him, and satisfied himself that the whole of his crew were safely with him on the brig’s deck, the two vessels were a dozen feet apart and increasing their distance every second; their bows diverging from each other at almost a right angle.The Frenchmen, on boarding theAurora, divided into two parties, one of which rushed forward to secure the crew, while the other made a similar rush aft, for the purpose of overpowering the officers and helmsman. In their astonishment and perplexity at finding the decks deserted, they paused for a moment irresolutely, then hurriedly searched the cabin and forecastle, only to find that the ship was utterly deserted. Then, for the first time, a glimmering of the truth presented itself to the mind of the French leader, and his suspicions were instantly confirmed; for Captain Leicester, having at that moment rallied his crew, led them forward, and, finding that, as he had expected, the Frenchmen had boarded theAurorawith all their available strength, leaving only some five-and-twenty men on board the brig to handle her, he, after a short, sharp tussle, drove these men below and secured complete possession of the brig.The party on board theAuroradistinctly heard the sounds of the conflict, and waited in breathless expectancy for its termination. They had not long to wait; in little over a couple of minutes Captain Leicester’s voice was heard giving the order to shift the helm—the brig having in the meantime gone round until she was head to wind with her canvas flat aback—and to trim over the head-sheets. Then a chorus of curses, both loud and deep, from the deck of theAurora, proclaimed the chagrin of the Frenchmen on board her at the—to them—extraordinary and unforeseen result of the adventure.But their captain was a man of indomitable pluck, energy, and readiness of resource, and by no means given to a tame and immediate acceptance of defeat. He realised the situation in a moment, and, determining to make the best of a bad bargain, promptly ordered sail to be crowded upon theAurora, in the hope of effecting his escape. The night being dark, however, and his men new to the ship, the work went on but slowly; and by the time that the topgallantsails were sheeted home, his own brig was once more alongside, with two red lights hoisted to her gaff-end (the alarm-signal), her ports open, guns run out, and the men standing by them ready to open fire.As she drew up abreast theAurora, George hailed—“Barque ahoy! Let fly your sheets and halliards at once, and surrender, or I will fire into you!”“All right,” was the reply from the French captain; “you have won the game, monsieur, so I will not attempt to rob you of the credit of victory. You managed the affair exceedingly well,mon ami, and have taught me a lesson I shall remember for the rest of my life. You may come on board and take possession as soon as you like.”He then gave the necessary orders in French to his crew; the halliards and sheets were let fly on board theAurora, George reducing sail at the same time in the brig, and the two vessels, losing way, began gradually to drop into the rear portion of the convoy.Captain Leicester did not, however, accept the French captain’s invitation to go on board and take possession once more of his own ship; that proceeding would have been just a trifle too risky. He had the game in his own hands, and intended to keep it there; so he quietly waited until one of the men-o’-war should come alongside, as he knew would soon be the case, in response to his signal.In a short time another brig was seen approaching under a perfect cloud of sail, an unmistakably English gun-brig this time, however. Sweeping up on the port quarter of George’s prize, an officer sprang into the main-rigging, and hailed—“Brig ahoy! What brig is that?”“TheJeune Virginie, French privateer,” answered George. “She managed, somehow, to slip in among the fleet unobserved in the darkness, and threw a heavy boarding-party in on the deck of my vessel—theAuroraI suspected her designs just in time, however, and as her crew boarded me, I boarded her, and succeeded in taking possession; the two ships separating immediately and thus preventing the return of the French to their own craft.”“Ah, I see,” remarked the officer. “You effected an exchange of ships—‘choppee for changee—a black dog for a blue monkey,’ eh? And now you want us to get your own ship back for you?”“Not exactly,” answered George with a laugh; “I have already forced her to surrender; that is the craft—the barque immediately under my lee. But I shall feel obliged if you will take charge of the prisoners, and lend me sufficient men to navigate my prize into port.”“Um; well, I really do not quite know about that. I will man your prize for you to-night; but you must see the commodore about the matter in the morning; if he will authorise me to lend you a prize-crew, of course I shall be very happy. By the way, where did the Frenchman come from?”“When I saw the craft first, she was about a couple of cables’ lengths directly astern of us,” answered Leicester.“She was, eh!” remarked the officer. “Well, there will be a pretty row to-morrow about her being allowed to slip in undetected. I will send a boat on board your own ship at once, to remove the prisoners; and, that done, I will tell off a crew to man your prize for you.”This was accordingly done, and an hour after the arrival of theThrostleupon the scene, George and his crew were once more comfortably established on board their own ship.On the following morning the affair was officially reported to the commodore, who put himself into a tremendous passion about it, declaring that such an occurrence reflected indelible disgrace upon the whole British navy, and that he would bring to court-martial every one of the officers belonging to the convoying ships;—which, however, seeing that at bottom he was a fine, good-hearted old fellow, he never did. And after abusing everybody else, he sent for George, complimented him upon his gallantry publicly on the quarterdeck of theTremendous, offered to obtain a commission for him (an offer which our hero was foolish enough to decline), and gave his hearty consent to the proposed borrowing of a prize-crew.But the affair did not by any means end here; for on the following night, which was almost as dark as the preceding one, three ships belonging to the merchant-fleet under convoy gave an unusual and altogether extraordinary amount of trouble to the captains of the gun-brigs by their persistent straggling; and, suspicion being at length aroused, they were all found to be in the hands of French prize-crews, having been surprised and captured by theJeune Virginieimmediately prior to her unsuccessful attempt upon theAurora. Had they been only a little less anxious to effect their escape, they might, as the event proved, have accomplished it without the slightest difficulty.About 2 p.m. on the day following the recapture of these three vessels, the weather being at the time stark calm, with an overcast sky, the signal to “shorten sail and prepare for bad weather,” was exhibited on board the commodore’s ship—the oldTremendous. It was very difficult to make out the signal, the flags hanging from the masthead in such close, motionless folds that it was almost impossible to identify them; so, after a long and anxious scrutiny of them through his telescope, George, thinking he must surely have misinterpreted the message, dived below to take a look at his barometer. A single glance at it was sufficient to show him that he was not mistaken, the mercury having fallen a full inch in little more than two hours.When he returned to the deck again, which he did immediately, the various ships were lying with their heads all round the compass, the merchantmen showing no signs that they understood the signal; but on board the men-o’-war the crews were seen to be very busy reefing topsails; the topgallant and royal-masts and yards being already sent down on deck.Captain Leicester lost no time in following their example, as far as he was able. To send down on deck any of his top-hamper, with his limited crew, was of course quite out of the question, but he called all hands, and, hurrying them aloft, set them to work, first to furl all the light upper canvas, and then to close-reef both topsails. This done, he ordered them to furl the main and fore courses, which were already clewed up.Part of the crew were already on the main-yard, and the remainder, having completed the reefing of the fore-topsail, had descended from aloft forward and were on their way up the main-rigging to assist in the stowing of the main-sail, when a heavy black, threatening-looking cloud-bank, which lay stretched along the western horizon, was seen to suddenly burst open, revealing a broad copper-tinted rent, which widened with alarming rapidity.George’s quick eye detected the change in an instant, and knowing what it meant, and that there was no time to lose, hailed the crew with a loud shout of—“Now then, my lads, look alive aloft there, and toss up that main-sail smartly. If you are quick about it, you may yet get the gaskets round it before the gale strikes us; if you are not, we shall lose the sail, and very probably some of you, too.”The men answered with a cheery “Ay, ay, sir,” and set to work with a will, Leicester and the chief mate springing aft to the wheel at the same moment.In the meantime the broad yellow rent in the clouds to the westward had spread very considerably, the vapour overhead had gathered way, and was scudding rapidly across the sky in an easterly direction, and already, upon the western horizon, a long, rapidly advancing line of white foaming water gave unmistakable indications of the close proximity of the hurricane. The oldTremendousnow did what she could to hurry up the laggards, by firing rapid signal-guns; and the crews of the several ships, waking up at last, were seen swarming aloft, when it was too late, to shorten sail.TheAurorawas lying with her head pointed to the southward, with her starboard broadside presented square to the wind, when the gale first struck her. Her skipper, anxious to save his canvas, if possible, kept his men aloft as long as he dared, urging and encouraging them with his voice to exert themselves to their utmost; but when he saw the oldTremendousbow under the first stroke of the blast as though she meant to “turn the turtle” altogether, he thought it was high time to look to the safety of his crew.“Make fast, and come down at once, lads,” he shouted; “down with you, for your lives; the canvas must take care of itself now.”Startled by the anxious sharpness of the hail, the men hurriedly knotted the gaskets, just as they were, and scuttled in off the yard like so many frightened squirrels.They were all in the main-rigging when the hurricane burst upon the ship. With a terrific, unearthly streaming roar it rushed upon her, and the barque, as if conscious of her utter inability to withstand its tremendous strength, instantly went over on her beam-ends, with her lower yard-arms dipping into the water. The men in the lee-rigging were almost completely sheltered by the hull of the ship, and they had therefore but little difficulty in holding on. But they were obliged to remain where they were, the lower portion of the shrouds being buried some eight feet deep in water, thus precluding the possibility of the men descending to the deck; whilst to go aloft again and endeavour to descend to windward, was as much as their lives were worth. They had a practical illustration of this in the fact that two of the men in the weather shrouds were actually torn from their hold, and dashed with such violence against the main-top that one man had his arm, and the other, three of his ribs broken.Captain Leicester, on seeing the near approach of the hurricane, had, after hailing his men to come down from aloft, lashed the wheel hard-a-starboard, and then, accompanied by Mr Bowen, he hurried away to the foot of the main-mast, where they cast off the starboard fore-braces and hauled in upon the larboard until they had braced the topsail as sharp up as it was possible for two men to get it. The result of this manoeuvre was that, when the gale struck theAurora, her main-topsail, which was a-shiver, was blown clean out of the bolt-ropes in an instant, as also was the foresail and the partially-stowed main-sail; whilst the fore-topsail was strongly filled at once, and being luckily a new sail, and standing the strain upon it bravely, it quickly began to drag the ship through the water. As soon as she gathered way, her bows began to pay off, and presently she recovered her upright position with a jerk which snapped both her topgallant-masts close off by the caps.The wheel was now righted, and away theAurorawent, scudding dead before it, under her close-reefed fore-topsail only. The crew now made the best of their way down on deck, the head-yards were squared, and an effort was made to clear away the wreck, two of the men volunteering for, and succeeding in, the dangerous task of going aloft to cut away the fore and main-topgallant rigging.George now had time to look about him a little, and observe the state of affairs prevailing outside his own ship. On all sides were to be seen ships—men-o’-war as well as merchantmen—scudding, like his own, before the irresistible fury of the gale. Nearly every ship had suffered damage of some sort, either to sails, spars, or rigging; and out of them all, very few had come better out of the first buffet than theAurora. Here was to be seen a craft with topgallant-masts and jib-boom gone, and her canvas hanging from her yards in long tattered streamers; there another with nothing standing above her lower mastheads; here a barque with her main-yard carried away; there a stately ship with her mizzenmast and all attached still towing astern, and thecrewbusy cutting away at the rigging which held the shattered spar; here another fine ship, totally dismasted; and there, now far astern, more than one dark object lying low in the water, and but imperfectly seen through the flying spindrift, which George Leicester knew only too well were the hulls of ships which had capsized, and whose crews would be left to perish miserably, since no human power could possibly save them in an hour like that.It soon became evident to the crew of theAurora, that though they had so far escaped with comparatively slight damage, they could certainly not regard their ship as by any means free from peril so long as they remained in the company of the rest of the fleet. So many ships scudding together almost helplessly before the fury of the gale could not but prove a very great source of danger to each other, now that it was no longer possible to regulate their rate of sailing; and George soon found himself confronted with a new anxiety, that of being in danger of a collision. The sea was rising with extraordinary rapidity, and the various craft soon began to steer wildly, sheering so rankly, first to one side and then to the other, that many of them threatened to broach-to altogether.TheAurorawas a very smart little vessel under her canvas, as she now proved by keeping pace with two large ships, one of which lay on her port-bow, and the other on her starboard beam. So even was the rate of sailing of the three that neither of them, anxious as each was to accomplish the feat, could draw away from the others; and the strength of the gale was such that it was equally impossible for them either to make or to reduce sail. There they remained, therefore, maintaining exactly the same relative position to each other, now sheering uncontrollably inwards, so that each man held his breath and braced himself for the shock which seemed inevitable, and which, under such circumstances, must result in the total destruction of both ships; and, anon, surging as wildly off in opposite directions.To add still further to Captain Leicester’s embarrassments, the trio of ships were rapidly overhauling a fourth, which was wallowing along dead ahead of theAurora. She was a large craft, apparently of about eight hundred tons measurement; her three topmasts were carried away close off by the caps; the wreckage was all lying inboard, cumbering up her decks; her courses and staysails were blown to ribbons; and she was steering so badly that it was difficult to saywhereshe was going, except that her general direction was to leeward. George saw that, should he overtake this vessel before getting clear of the two which already hampered him so seriously, a catastrophe was inevitable, and he speedily made up his mind that theAurora’sspeedmustbe sufficiently reduced to allow of her dropping astern and into the wake of one or the other of his present consorts. The only means by which, under the circumstances, this could be accomplished was by sacrificing the fore-topsail; and he accordingly called for a volunteer to assist him in the task. Mr Bowen and the carpenter both proffered their services, and, selecting the latter, and requesting the chief mate to take charge of the deck and superintend the conning of the ship, George went forward, followed by the carpenter, and led the way aloft. Now that they were scudding before it, the strength of the wind was no longer felt to its full extent; it was still powerful enough, however, to make the journey aloft full of peril, and the two adventurers were compelled to make frequent pauses on their way, in order to avoid being blown out of the rigging. At length, however, they reached the yard, and, producing their knives, began to work their way outwards from the mast, one toward each yard-arm, cutting the seizings as they came to them. Their task was soon accomplished; for when half the seizings were cut, the wind saved them all further trouble by carrying away the remainder; the sail gave one terrific flap—which sprung the fore-yard—and then, tearing out of its bolt-ropes, went soaring away ahead of them, like a flake of cloud.Thus relieved, theAurora’sspeed sensibly diminished and by the time that George was once more down on deck, they were able, by watching their opportunity, to sheer in under the stern of the ship which had before lain upon their port-bow, and thus place theAuroracomparatively out of harm’s way.They were only just in time. The ship ahead was overtaken, and, in sheering into her new position, theAurorawas compelled to shave close past the stranger’s stern. Glancing up at her as they shot past, with a feeling of deep gratitude at their escape, George saw a little crowd of passengers huddled together upon her poop, like frightened sheep. They were all looking at theAurora, evidently fully aware of the danger from which they had so narrowly escaped; and among them George suddenly recognised a face which he had more than half hoped he would never see again—the face of his successful rival, as he believed him to be, Lieutenant Walford.George waved his hand in recognition, the salutation was half reluctantly returned, and then the two craft separated; but not before George had had time to read the name painted on her stern—thePrincess Royal, of London.
By the time that theAurora’screw were on deck, crouching behind the bulwarks aft on the port side, armed, and instructed by George as to what he required of them, the strange sail was within a dozen fathoms of theAurora’sport quarter.
She could now be seen with tolerable distinctness, the outline of the hull and of the lofty canvas showing black as ebony against the dark background of sea and sky; and any doubts which Captain Leicester might have still entertained concerning her, were completely set at rest as he glanced at the cut of her canvas. It was French all over.
Foot by foot the brig—for such she was—crept up to theAurora, until her bows were in a line with the barque’s stern and not more than twenty feet distant. George stood by the main-rigging, watching her, cutlass in hand, calm and determined, his plans already formed for action in the event of his suspicions proving correct.
In the ordinary course of things the two craft were now quite near enough to each other for any communication, however confidential in its nature, to be made without the possibility of its being overheard; but, though George could see that a figure stood on the brig’s rail by the main-rigging, not a word was uttered.
Keeping his gaze steadfastly fixed upon the brig, Captain Leicester saw that her helm had suddenly been ported, for she was sheering strongly in toward his own vessel.
“Brig ahoy!” he hailed. “What is it you have to say to me? Do not come too close, sir, or you will be into us.”
“Never fear,” answered in perfect English the dark figure on board the brig, “we will not carry away so much as a rope-yarn belonging to you. But I must be on board you before I can venture to give you your instructions.”
“Oh! very well,” said George. “If you intend boarding us, you had better do so by way of our fore-rigging, or you may get a nasty fall; we are very much littered up here abaft with spars and so on.”
“Ah, thank you very much; I will take your advice,” was the reply.
George saw the man motion with his arm, and the brig’s course was altered sufficiently to put her alongside with her gangway even with theAurora’sfore-mast. Another second or two, and the ships gently jarred together, the brig’s quarter dropping alongside the barque at the same moment.
“Enfans, allons-nous-en!” exclaimed the voice of the stranger forward, followed by the sound of a leap on to the barque’s deck, and a scramble among the spars which littered it there.
“Now is your time, lads; jump for your lives!” exclaimed George in a low, excited tone; and, setting his men the example, he forthwith sprang from his own ship’s bulwarks to those of the brig; and dashing at the helmsman, cut him down with his cutlass before the fellow could recover sufficiently from his astonishment to utter a cry. Then, without a moment’s pause, he seized the wheel and exerting all his strength, sent it with a single twirl spinning hard over to starboard, where he lashed it.
The shock of collision, slight as it was, caused the two vessels to recoil from each other, and they were barely alongside when they separated again; George’s manipulation of the brig’s wheel, and a similar manipulation of theAurora’shelm at the last moment before the touching of the two vessels, greatly expediting the separation. By the time, therefore, that George had looked about him, and satisfied himself that the whole of his crew were safely with him on the brig’s deck, the two vessels were a dozen feet apart and increasing their distance every second; their bows diverging from each other at almost a right angle.
The Frenchmen, on boarding theAurora, divided into two parties, one of which rushed forward to secure the crew, while the other made a similar rush aft, for the purpose of overpowering the officers and helmsman. In their astonishment and perplexity at finding the decks deserted, they paused for a moment irresolutely, then hurriedly searched the cabin and forecastle, only to find that the ship was utterly deserted. Then, for the first time, a glimmering of the truth presented itself to the mind of the French leader, and his suspicions were instantly confirmed; for Captain Leicester, having at that moment rallied his crew, led them forward, and, finding that, as he had expected, the Frenchmen had boarded theAurorawith all their available strength, leaving only some five-and-twenty men on board the brig to handle her, he, after a short, sharp tussle, drove these men below and secured complete possession of the brig.
The party on board theAuroradistinctly heard the sounds of the conflict, and waited in breathless expectancy for its termination. They had not long to wait; in little over a couple of minutes Captain Leicester’s voice was heard giving the order to shift the helm—the brig having in the meantime gone round until she was head to wind with her canvas flat aback—and to trim over the head-sheets. Then a chorus of curses, both loud and deep, from the deck of theAurora, proclaimed the chagrin of the Frenchmen on board her at the—to them—extraordinary and unforeseen result of the adventure.
But their captain was a man of indomitable pluck, energy, and readiness of resource, and by no means given to a tame and immediate acceptance of defeat. He realised the situation in a moment, and, determining to make the best of a bad bargain, promptly ordered sail to be crowded upon theAurora, in the hope of effecting his escape. The night being dark, however, and his men new to the ship, the work went on but slowly; and by the time that the topgallantsails were sheeted home, his own brig was once more alongside, with two red lights hoisted to her gaff-end (the alarm-signal), her ports open, guns run out, and the men standing by them ready to open fire.
As she drew up abreast theAurora, George hailed—
“Barque ahoy! Let fly your sheets and halliards at once, and surrender, or I will fire into you!”
“All right,” was the reply from the French captain; “you have won the game, monsieur, so I will not attempt to rob you of the credit of victory. You managed the affair exceedingly well,mon ami, and have taught me a lesson I shall remember for the rest of my life. You may come on board and take possession as soon as you like.”
He then gave the necessary orders in French to his crew; the halliards and sheets were let fly on board theAurora, George reducing sail at the same time in the brig, and the two vessels, losing way, began gradually to drop into the rear portion of the convoy.
Captain Leicester did not, however, accept the French captain’s invitation to go on board and take possession once more of his own ship; that proceeding would have been just a trifle too risky. He had the game in his own hands, and intended to keep it there; so he quietly waited until one of the men-o’-war should come alongside, as he knew would soon be the case, in response to his signal.
In a short time another brig was seen approaching under a perfect cloud of sail, an unmistakably English gun-brig this time, however. Sweeping up on the port quarter of George’s prize, an officer sprang into the main-rigging, and hailed—
“Brig ahoy! What brig is that?”
“TheJeune Virginie, French privateer,” answered George. “She managed, somehow, to slip in among the fleet unobserved in the darkness, and threw a heavy boarding-party in on the deck of my vessel—theAuroraI suspected her designs just in time, however, and as her crew boarded me, I boarded her, and succeeded in taking possession; the two ships separating immediately and thus preventing the return of the French to their own craft.”
“Ah, I see,” remarked the officer. “You effected an exchange of ships—‘choppee for changee—a black dog for a blue monkey,’ eh? And now you want us to get your own ship back for you?”
“Not exactly,” answered George with a laugh; “I have already forced her to surrender; that is the craft—the barque immediately under my lee. But I shall feel obliged if you will take charge of the prisoners, and lend me sufficient men to navigate my prize into port.”
“Um; well, I really do not quite know about that. I will man your prize for you to-night; but you must see the commodore about the matter in the morning; if he will authorise me to lend you a prize-crew, of course I shall be very happy. By the way, where did the Frenchman come from?”
“When I saw the craft first, she was about a couple of cables’ lengths directly astern of us,” answered Leicester.
“She was, eh!” remarked the officer. “Well, there will be a pretty row to-morrow about her being allowed to slip in undetected. I will send a boat on board your own ship at once, to remove the prisoners; and, that done, I will tell off a crew to man your prize for you.”
This was accordingly done, and an hour after the arrival of theThrostleupon the scene, George and his crew were once more comfortably established on board their own ship.
On the following morning the affair was officially reported to the commodore, who put himself into a tremendous passion about it, declaring that such an occurrence reflected indelible disgrace upon the whole British navy, and that he would bring to court-martial every one of the officers belonging to the convoying ships;—which, however, seeing that at bottom he was a fine, good-hearted old fellow, he never did. And after abusing everybody else, he sent for George, complimented him upon his gallantry publicly on the quarterdeck of theTremendous, offered to obtain a commission for him (an offer which our hero was foolish enough to decline), and gave his hearty consent to the proposed borrowing of a prize-crew.
But the affair did not by any means end here; for on the following night, which was almost as dark as the preceding one, three ships belonging to the merchant-fleet under convoy gave an unusual and altogether extraordinary amount of trouble to the captains of the gun-brigs by their persistent straggling; and, suspicion being at length aroused, they were all found to be in the hands of French prize-crews, having been surprised and captured by theJeune Virginieimmediately prior to her unsuccessful attempt upon theAurora. Had they been only a little less anxious to effect their escape, they might, as the event proved, have accomplished it without the slightest difficulty.
About 2 p.m. on the day following the recapture of these three vessels, the weather being at the time stark calm, with an overcast sky, the signal to “shorten sail and prepare for bad weather,” was exhibited on board the commodore’s ship—the oldTremendous. It was very difficult to make out the signal, the flags hanging from the masthead in such close, motionless folds that it was almost impossible to identify them; so, after a long and anxious scrutiny of them through his telescope, George, thinking he must surely have misinterpreted the message, dived below to take a look at his barometer. A single glance at it was sufficient to show him that he was not mistaken, the mercury having fallen a full inch in little more than two hours.
When he returned to the deck again, which he did immediately, the various ships were lying with their heads all round the compass, the merchantmen showing no signs that they understood the signal; but on board the men-o’-war the crews were seen to be very busy reefing topsails; the topgallant and royal-masts and yards being already sent down on deck.
Captain Leicester lost no time in following their example, as far as he was able. To send down on deck any of his top-hamper, with his limited crew, was of course quite out of the question, but he called all hands, and, hurrying them aloft, set them to work, first to furl all the light upper canvas, and then to close-reef both topsails. This done, he ordered them to furl the main and fore courses, which were already clewed up.
Part of the crew were already on the main-yard, and the remainder, having completed the reefing of the fore-topsail, had descended from aloft forward and were on their way up the main-rigging to assist in the stowing of the main-sail, when a heavy black, threatening-looking cloud-bank, which lay stretched along the western horizon, was seen to suddenly burst open, revealing a broad copper-tinted rent, which widened with alarming rapidity.
George’s quick eye detected the change in an instant, and knowing what it meant, and that there was no time to lose, hailed the crew with a loud shout of—
“Now then, my lads, look alive aloft there, and toss up that main-sail smartly. If you are quick about it, you may yet get the gaskets round it before the gale strikes us; if you are not, we shall lose the sail, and very probably some of you, too.”
The men answered with a cheery “Ay, ay, sir,” and set to work with a will, Leicester and the chief mate springing aft to the wheel at the same moment.
In the meantime the broad yellow rent in the clouds to the westward had spread very considerably, the vapour overhead had gathered way, and was scudding rapidly across the sky in an easterly direction, and already, upon the western horizon, a long, rapidly advancing line of white foaming water gave unmistakable indications of the close proximity of the hurricane. The oldTremendousnow did what she could to hurry up the laggards, by firing rapid signal-guns; and the crews of the several ships, waking up at last, were seen swarming aloft, when it was too late, to shorten sail.
TheAurorawas lying with her head pointed to the southward, with her starboard broadside presented square to the wind, when the gale first struck her. Her skipper, anxious to save his canvas, if possible, kept his men aloft as long as he dared, urging and encouraging them with his voice to exert themselves to their utmost; but when he saw the oldTremendousbow under the first stroke of the blast as though she meant to “turn the turtle” altogether, he thought it was high time to look to the safety of his crew.
“Make fast, and come down at once, lads,” he shouted; “down with you, for your lives; the canvas must take care of itself now.”
Startled by the anxious sharpness of the hail, the men hurriedly knotted the gaskets, just as they were, and scuttled in off the yard like so many frightened squirrels.
They were all in the main-rigging when the hurricane burst upon the ship. With a terrific, unearthly streaming roar it rushed upon her, and the barque, as if conscious of her utter inability to withstand its tremendous strength, instantly went over on her beam-ends, with her lower yard-arms dipping into the water. The men in the lee-rigging were almost completely sheltered by the hull of the ship, and they had therefore but little difficulty in holding on. But they were obliged to remain where they were, the lower portion of the shrouds being buried some eight feet deep in water, thus precluding the possibility of the men descending to the deck; whilst to go aloft again and endeavour to descend to windward, was as much as their lives were worth. They had a practical illustration of this in the fact that two of the men in the weather shrouds were actually torn from their hold, and dashed with such violence against the main-top that one man had his arm, and the other, three of his ribs broken.
Captain Leicester, on seeing the near approach of the hurricane, had, after hailing his men to come down from aloft, lashed the wheel hard-a-starboard, and then, accompanied by Mr Bowen, he hurried away to the foot of the main-mast, where they cast off the starboard fore-braces and hauled in upon the larboard until they had braced the topsail as sharp up as it was possible for two men to get it. The result of this manoeuvre was that, when the gale struck theAurora, her main-topsail, which was a-shiver, was blown clean out of the bolt-ropes in an instant, as also was the foresail and the partially-stowed main-sail; whilst the fore-topsail was strongly filled at once, and being luckily a new sail, and standing the strain upon it bravely, it quickly began to drag the ship through the water. As soon as she gathered way, her bows began to pay off, and presently she recovered her upright position with a jerk which snapped both her topgallant-masts close off by the caps.
The wheel was now righted, and away theAurorawent, scudding dead before it, under her close-reefed fore-topsail only. The crew now made the best of their way down on deck, the head-yards were squared, and an effort was made to clear away the wreck, two of the men volunteering for, and succeeding in, the dangerous task of going aloft to cut away the fore and main-topgallant rigging.
George now had time to look about him a little, and observe the state of affairs prevailing outside his own ship. On all sides were to be seen ships—men-o’-war as well as merchantmen—scudding, like his own, before the irresistible fury of the gale. Nearly every ship had suffered damage of some sort, either to sails, spars, or rigging; and out of them all, very few had come better out of the first buffet than theAurora. Here was to be seen a craft with topgallant-masts and jib-boom gone, and her canvas hanging from her yards in long tattered streamers; there another with nothing standing above her lower mastheads; here a barque with her main-yard carried away; there a stately ship with her mizzenmast and all attached still towing astern, and thecrewbusy cutting away at the rigging which held the shattered spar; here another fine ship, totally dismasted; and there, now far astern, more than one dark object lying low in the water, and but imperfectly seen through the flying spindrift, which George Leicester knew only too well were the hulls of ships which had capsized, and whose crews would be left to perish miserably, since no human power could possibly save them in an hour like that.
It soon became evident to the crew of theAurora, that though they had so far escaped with comparatively slight damage, they could certainly not regard their ship as by any means free from peril so long as they remained in the company of the rest of the fleet. So many ships scudding together almost helplessly before the fury of the gale could not but prove a very great source of danger to each other, now that it was no longer possible to regulate their rate of sailing; and George soon found himself confronted with a new anxiety, that of being in danger of a collision. The sea was rising with extraordinary rapidity, and the various craft soon began to steer wildly, sheering so rankly, first to one side and then to the other, that many of them threatened to broach-to altogether.
TheAurorawas a very smart little vessel under her canvas, as she now proved by keeping pace with two large ships, one of which lay on her port-bow, and the other on her starboard beam. So even was the rate of sailing of the three that neither of them, anxious as each was to accomplish the feat, could draw away from the others; and the strength of the gale was such that it was equally impossible for them either to make or to reduce sail. There they remained, therefore, maintaining exactly the same relative position to each other, now sheering uncontrollably inwards, so that each man held his breath and braced himself for the shock which seemed inevitable, and which, under such circumstances, must result in the total destruction of both ships; and, anon, surging as wildly off in opposite directions.
To add still further to Captain Leicester’s embarrassments, the trio of ships were rapidly overhauling a fourth, which was wallowing along dead ahead of theAurora. She was a large craft, apparently of about eight hundred tons measurement; her three topmasts were carried away close off by the caps; the wreckage was all lying inboard, cumbering up her decks; her courses and staysails were blown to ribbons; and she was steering so badly that it was difficult to saywhereshe was going, except that her general direction was to leeward. George saw that, should he overtake this vessel before getting clear of the two which already hampered him so seriously, a catastrophe was inevitable, and he speedily made up his mind that theAurora’sspeedmustbe sufficiently reduced to allow of her dropping astern and into the wake of one or the other of his present consorts. The only means by which, under the circumstances, this could be accomplished was by sacrificing the fore-topsail; and he accordingly called for a volunteer to assist him in the task. Mr Bowen and the carpenter both proffered their services, and, selecting the latter, and requesting the chief mate to take charge of the deck and superintend the conning of the ship, George went forward, followed by the carpenter, and led the way aloft. Now that they were scudding before it, the strength of the wind was no longer felt to its full extent; it was still powerful enough, however, to make the journey aloft full of peril, and the two adventurers were compelled to make frequent pauses on their way, in order to avoid being blown out of the rigging. At length, however, they reached the yard, and, producing their knives, began to work their way outwards from the mast, one toward each yard-arm, cutting the seizings as they came to them. Their task was soon accomplished; for when half the seizings were cut, the wind saved them all further trouble by carrying away the remainder; the sail gave one terrific flap—which sprung the fore-yard—and then, tearing out of its bolt-ropes, went soaring away ahead of them, like a flake of cloud.
Thus relieved, theAurora’sspeed sensibly diminished and by the time that George was once more down on deck, they were able, by watching their opportunity, to sheer in under the stern of the ship which had before lain upon their port-bow, and thus place theAuroracomparatively out of harm’s way.
They were only just in time. The ship ahead was overtaken, and, in sheering into her new position, theAurorawas compelled to shave close past the stranger’s stern. Glancing up at her as they shot past, with a feeling of deep gratitude at their escape, George saw a little crowd of passengers huddled together upon her poop, like frightened sheep. They were all looking at theAurora, evidently fully aware of the danger from which they had so narrowly escaped; and among them George suddenly recognised a face which he had more than half hoped he would never see again—the face of his successful rival, as he believed him to be, Lieutenant Walford.
George waved his hand in recognition, the salutation was half reluctantly returned, and then the two craft separated; but not before George had had time to read the name painted on her stern—thePrincess Royal, of London.
Chapter Six.The Mutiny on board the “Princess Royal.”It now becomes necessary that we should for a short time forsake theAurora, and follow the fortunes of thePrincess Royal.At the moment of our making the acquaintance of this vessel a very unsatisfactory state of affairs happened to prevail on board her. She was, as we have already seen, a large ship, as ships went at that time, being of 870 tons register, and capable of carrying close upon 1200 tons dead-weight. She had saloon accommodation for forty passengers, and carried an armament of twelve 9-pounders upon her main-deck, the intention of her owners being that she should fight her own way, if necessary, to and fro across the ocean, and so be independent of convoy.But on her present voyage this plan had to be abandoned, the activity of the press-gangs, and the consequent scarcity of seamen being such that she cleared out of the port of London with only thirty men in her forecastle; a crew wholly inadequate to successfully defend a ship of her size in the extremely likely event of her encountering an adversary. She was therefore compelled, like many others, to avail herself of the protection of convoy.Upon her arrival at Plymouth, she, like theAurora, received a visit from a man-o’-war’s boat, which carried off four of her best men, reducing her number of seamen to twenty-six. It will thus be seen that, when she finally sailed out of English waters, she was very short-handed.Now, as Jack is to this day, so he ever has been—an inveterate grumbler; hewillfindsomethingto growl about. It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that, with such good cause, there should be constant dissatisfaction in thePrincess Royal’sforecastle.But though Jackis, and always has been, such a grumbler, and though probably nothing on earth will ever cure him of this habit—for habit only it is—yet, even where there is good and sufficient cause for discontent, a little judicious management, forbearance, and sympathy will prevent the mischief from going any further.Unfortunately, however, for thePrincess Royaland all connected with her, the measures adopted by those in authority on board her for the suppression of this quickly-discovered spirit of discontent were the extreme opposite of judicious. The master—as is sometimes the case with masters of very fine ships—was haughty and overbearing, possessed of a highly-exaggerated opinion of his own importance, turning a deaf ear to all the complaints of his crew, and treating them with an impatience and superciliousness of manner which made him heartily detested. The chief mate, an arrant sycophant, taking his cue from his superior officer imitated him to the utmost extent of his ability, with a like result; while the second mate was a blustering bully, whose great pride and boast it was that he could always make one man do the work of two. Hence, from the very commencement of the voyage, the quarterdeck and the forecastle, instead of pulling together and making an united effort to overcome the difficulties of their position, rapidly grew to regard each other with mutual feelings of enmity and distrust.Matters had consequently, as might be expected, been steadily growing from bad to worse, from the first moment of sailing; and on the day before the gale a very unpleasant incident had occurred on board.It arose in this way. On the second mate’s watch being called, one of the men remained in his hammock, sending word by one of his shipmates to the officer of the watch that he was ill and unfit for duty. The second mate, instead of reporting the circumstance to the master, and having it inquired into, as was the proper course, jumped at once to the conclusion that the man was merely feigning sickness, in order to avoid the performance of his proper share of work; and, taking the matter into his own hands, he proceeded to the forecastle, armed with a “colt,” and, dragging the unhappy seaman out of his hammock, drove him on deck, abusing him roundly the while in no measured terms, and setting him to work to grease the main-mast, from the truck downward.The poor fellow, who was really ill, procured a pot of grease and started up the rigging, but, finding himself wholly unequal to the task of going aloft, descended again, and proceeding aft to the poop went up to the captain, who happened to be standing conversing with some of the passengers, and requested to be released from duty, repeating his plea of illness. The second mate had, however, in the meantime mentioned the matter to the captain, putting his own construction upon it; the request was therefore harshly and hastily refused, the refusal being accompanied by the assertion that the pleader was a mean, skulking, mutinous rascal, not worth his salt.Lieutenant Walford happened to be one of the passengers standing near at the moment, and, as the dissatisfied seaman turned away, Walford turned to the captain and said—“We in the army have a very short and simple method of dealing with fellows like that—we flog them; and, I assure you, it proves a never-failing cure.”The sick man heard this remark, so did the man at the wheel, and from that moment Walford was a marked man.The captain turned round sharply.“Do you?” said he. “Then by Jove I’ll see if it will prove equally efficacious here. Mr Thomson, have that man seized up to a grating, and give him two dozen; I’ll be bound he’ll be well enough to go aloft after that; if he isn’t, he shall have another couple of dozen.”Thomson, the second mate, at once sprang upon the man, and, seizing him by the collar, ordered the boatswain to call all hands.This was done. The men were drawn up in the waist of the ship on the lee-side, the sick seaman was seized up at the lee gangway, and in the presence of all on board (except the ladies, who retired to the saloon in indignation and disgust) the unhappy man received his two dozen.But here a further widening of the breach between the officers and the crew of the ship took place. The individual appointed to administer the flogging was the boatswain’s mate, a great brawny Cornishman, named Talbot. This individual, when all was ready, bared his muscular right arm to the shoulder, and, grasping the cat firmly, measured his distance accurately with his eye; then stood waiting the command to begin. The captain, the mates, Walford, and one or two more of the on-lookers smiled their satisfaction as they witnessed these elaborate preparations for the infliction of a severe flogging; and the captain, willing to prolong the man’s suffering as much as possible, allowed a long pause to ensue before giving the word.At length he nodded to Talbot, who at once took a step back, and, giving the tails of the cat a mighty flourish in the air, brought them down upon the man’s naked shoulders so gently that an audible laugh broke spontaneously from the entire crew at the ludicrous sight. The captain turned livid with fury.“You!” he gasped; “what do you mean by that, you lubber? Lay it on, sir; lay it on hot and heavy, or by Jove I’ll haveyouseized up, and will give you five dozen myself.”“Ay, ay, sir,” was the imperturbable reply; and the second stroke was administered with even more threatening preliminaries than the first, but with, if possible, even less effect.“Put that fellow in irons at once!” shouted the captain, “and let him have no food except bread and water until further orders. You hear, steward? If he has anything more, I will make you responsible for it. I will teach him—and everybody else—that when I give an order, I will have it obeyed. Now, Rogers,” to the boatswain, “take the cat, and give that skulking rascal at the grating the two dozen he so richly deserves.”The boatswain stepped forward, and, without removing his jacket or making any other preparation, sullenly took the cat in his hand. The chief mate meanwhile went off for a pair of handcuffs, and, returning, slipped them on the wrists of the rebellious boatswain’s mate.The second mate, who was still looking on, noticing the behaviour of the boatswain, and the ill-concealed triumph of the crew at Talbot’s conduct, now turned to the captain and said—“Letmeplay bo’sun’s mate for once sir; I’ll be bound I’ll give the sneaking lubber his proper ’lowance; he’ll never get it from any of his shipmates, I can see.”“Very well, do so,” said the captain; “let him have it hot and strong; it will show those mutinous scoundrels that we have it in our power to punish them yet.”The second mate waited for no more, but, whipping off his coat and rolling up his shirt-sleeves, snatched the cat out of Rogers’ hand, and began at once to administer the punishment.His first stroke drew blood and forced a shriek of anguish from the quivering lips of his victim, a sound which extorted a laugh of fiendish glee from the captain. A second, third, fourth, and fifth lash followed in slow, deliberate succession, stripping off shreds of skin, and lacerating the back of the sufferer until it presented a sickening sight. At the sixth stroke the shrieks ceased, and the man’s head dropped upon his breast.At this sight the second mate seemed somewhat startled, and looked up inquiringly at the captain.“Go on,” said the latter, with an encouraging nod of the head; “go on and finish the dose; he’s only shamming. Put a little more strength into your blows, man; I’ll be bound you can fetch another howl or two out of him yet, if you feel inclined.”Thus incited, the second mate actually proceeded with and completed his fiendish task, at the end of which the perspiration poured in a stream down his face, so great had been his exertions.But not another cry could he wring from his victim, in spite of all his efforts—the poor fellow was insensible, and in that condition was cast off from the grating, and taken below to his hammock. There was no doctor on board, so the unfortunate seaman was left to the clumsy though well-meant ministrations of his shipmates, who did the best they could for him, the captain refusing to supply salve, lint, or in fact anything else with which to dress his wounds.At dinner that evening the captain was urged by some of the passengers to represent to the commodore of the convoying squadron the insubordinate condition of the crew, and to request his assistance. This, however, he positively refused to do, roundly asserting his ability to command his own ship; but, as a matter of fact, the only reason for his reluctance to take this step arose out of the conviction that an inquiry would certainly follow as to the causes of the insubordination, from which inquiry, as he was very well aware, he and his officers could hope for nothing but a complete revelation of their own culpability.At the moment that this course was being urged upon the captain in the saloon, the incident of the flogging, and, indeed, the whole question of their treatment by their officers, was being discussed on the forecastle by the men; and, singular to relate, although Talbot was believed by his officers to be at that instant in irons below, if either of them had walked forward just then, they would have found him snugly seated on deck, free, on the fore-side of the windlass, taking an active part in the discussion. By the time that eight bells had struck, they had fully made up their minds as to their course of action, and the assembly quietly dispersed.The next day was that on which the gale burst upon the fleet.On the signal being made by theTremendousto “Shorten sail and prepare for bad weather,” thePrincess Royalwas one of the first to manifest signs of obedience. She was at the time under every stitch of canvas she could spread, not because she was a sluggish sailer, for she was the reverse of that, but because, there being a flat calm, it mattered not how much or how little canvas was set, it could make no possible difference in the movements or position of the vessel; and the captain, seeing here a fine opportunity to impose upon his crew—“by way of punishment,” as he put it to himself and his officers—a great deal of unnecessary work, ordered all sail, even to the studding-sails, to be set, for the purpose, as he averred, of giving them an airing.The first thing to be done in the way of shortening sail, therefore, was to take in the studding-sails, which the crew, not being then aware of the danger which threatened the ship, proceeded to do in a very leisurely and deliberate fashion. Their next task was to haul down the smaller staysails, then to clew up and furl royals and topgallantsails. They were all aloft, in the act of stowing these sails, when the hurricane burst upon them. They fortunately saw its approach in time to save themselves, and, leaving the canvas drooping loose from the yards, hurriedly descended to the deck by way of the backstays, and were scarcely there when, with the first furious rush of the wind, the three topmasts went, one after the other in quick succession, the wreckage falling on deck and lumbering it fore and aft.The crew regarded the mishap with stolid satisfaction. The delay which it would occasion in the prosecution of the voyage was nothing to them; the ship was stripped of everything above her lower mastheads, leaving so much the less canvas for her crew to handle, and that was all they cared about at the moment. A little later on in the day they saw that if the gale lasted—of which there was every prospect—the loss of her spars would result in her separation from the remainder of the fleet, and as they remarked upon this to each other, the men smiled grimly, and exchanged certain short pithy remarks which, had they been heard by the occupants of the saloon, would have produced a feeling of grave uneasiness.The crew were, of course, at once set to work to clear away the wreck, and this they forthwith proceeded to do, for their own sakes, however, rather than out of respect to the captain’s orders, the heavy spars dashing about the deck with the roll of the ship in a manner which made it positively dangerous to be there at all.By nightfall the rest of the fleet had passed out of sight to the eastward, scattered like chaff before the angry breath of the hurricane, and thePrincess Royalwas left to fight out her battle alone. By dint of almost superhuman exertions, the shattered spars had been secured, the main-sail cut away from the yard, and such other dispositions made as would allow of her being kept dead before the wind, and out of the trough of the sea during the coming night; and when the captain took his seat at the head of the saloon-table at dinner that evening, he was full of boastful exultation over the prompt obedience of his crew, frequently congratulating his passengers upon their being on board a ship in charge of such capable officers as himself and his mates. Of course he did not actually say this in so many words, but the burden of his remarks amounted to it, and nothing less.The second mate had the middle watch on that eventful night, and just after he had struck four bells, and the wheel had been relieved, he was inexpressibly scandalised by hearing above the howling of the gale loud sounds of singing and jocularity on the forecastle.Such sounds were of so very unusual a character on board thePrincess Royalthat, coupled with the circumstance of their being uttered in the middle watch of all times in the world, he was at first so astonished as to be quite unable to believe his own ears. Very soon, however, they were repeated, one of the men actually breaking into a rollicking song, the burden of which was an invocation to “Let us all be jolly, boys,” under every conceivable combination of circumstances.“Jolly! The scoundrels! How dare they so much as think of such a thing at a time when they were living under the ban of their officers’ severe displeasure? And the ship a perfect wreck aloft, too!” It was simply monstrous; the second mate’s righteous anger blazed up into full fury at once, and, advancing to the break of the poop, he roared out in stentorian tones—“Silence, there, for’ard! What do you mean, you unmannerly swabs, by disturbing the ship fore and aft with your infernal howling at this time of night?”Either the “unmannerly swabs” had not heard him, or they were so utterly lost to all sense of the respect due to their officer as to pay no attention to his polite adjuration, for the song was continued, with some attempt at a chorus.The second mate was not in the habit of speaking twice to those under him, and he did not attempt to do so now. Drawing his knotted “colt” out of his pocket, he descended the poop-ladder, and hurried forward as fast as the heavy rolling of the ship would permit, determined to teach the “howling thieves” a lesson they would not readily forget.Meanwhile, though he was blissfully ignorant of the fact, sharp eyes had been watching his motions for some time; and his foot was scarcely on the top step of the poop-ladder when Jim Martin, the owner of a pair of the aforesaid sharp eyes, exclaimed—“Hurrah, my bullies! Keep it up; here he comes. The shark has bolted the bait without so much as smelling at it.”The group of men clustered on the forecastle made a slight restless movement, as men sometimes will when they are conscious of the approach of a great crisis in their lives, and the voice of the singer quavered the merest trifle. Another moment, and the second mate was among them, his eyes flashing with anger and his colt uplifted to strike.“What the deuce?”Before he could utter another word, his legs were cut from under him by the sweeping blow of a handspike, and he fell with a crash to the deck, the back of his head striking so violently on the planking as to momentarily stun him. In an instant a belaying-pin was thrust between his teeth and secured there with a lashing of spun-yarn; and then, before he had sufficiently recovered to realise his position, he was turned over on his face, his arms drawn behind him, and his wrists and ankles firmly lashed together.“Very neatly managed,” remarked Talbot approvingly, as his gaze rested on the prostrate figure on the deck. “Now, mates, what’s the next move? Come, Ned,” to the boatswain, “you’re to be our new skipper, you know; give us your orders, cap’n, and we’ll be ‘yours obejently.’”“Well, then, if you’re all agreed upon that, shipmates, my first order is for one of you—you Tom—to go aft into the saloon and knock at the ‘old man’s’ door (Note 1), and ask him to come on deck at once, as Mr Thomson have met with a haccident. Two more of you’ll wait for him outside the door, and when he steps out ’pon deck sarve him the same as you’ve sarved our respected friend here. Then do the same with Mr Nicholls (the chief mate).”These orders were so skilfully executed, that in a quarter of an hour the mutineers had the captain and his twoaidesprisoners—bound and helpless in their hands, without the slightest alarm having been given to the other occupants of the saloon. The larboard watch was then called; and from their first eager questions when aroused it became evident that the seizure of the ship was a carefully planned affair, of which all in the forecastle were fully cognisant.The seamen having paraded on deck, and been, with the aid of a lantern, carefully inspected by the boatswain to ascertain that there were no recreant spirits among them now that the crisis had arrived, each man—excepting a half-dozen left in charge of the deck—was provided with a short length of well-stretched ratline, carrying which, they proceeded in a body to the saloon, and, entering the state-rooms, surprised in their sleep and secured without difficulty the whole of the male passengers, pinioned them firmly, and then, after depriving them of such weapons as they happened to possess, locked them up in their own cabins. The ladies were only disturbed so far as was necessary to make them acquainted with the fact that the ship had changed hands, and that, if they had only the good sense to acquiesce in the arrangement, they would be perfectly unmolested. The cook and stewards were also called, and, having been left in ignorance of the proposed mutiny lest they should inadvertently let the secret slip, addressed in somewhat similar terms; whereupon they at once declared their readiness to throw in their lot with the mutineers, and were forthwith sworn in.Note 1. The master of a merchant-ship is frequently spoken of by his crew as “the old man,” whether his years happen to be few or many.
It now becomes necessary that we should for a short time forsake theAurora, and follow the fortunes of thePrincess Royal.
At the moment of our making the acquaintance of this vessel a very unsatisfactory state of affairs happened to prevail on board her. She was, as we have already seen, a large ship, as ships went at that time, being of 870 tons register, and capable of carrying close upon 1200 tons dead-weight. She had saloon accommodation for forty passengers, and carried an armament of twelve 9-pounders upon her main-deck, the intention of her owners being that she should fight her own way, if necessary, to and fro across the ocean, and so be independent of convoy.
But on her present voyage this plan had to be abandoned, the activity of the press-gangs, and the consequent scarcity of seamen being such that she cleared out of the port of London with only thirty men in her forecastle; a crew wholly inadequate to successfully defend a ship of her size in the extremely likely event of her encountering an adversary. She was therefore compelled, like many others, to avail herself of the protection of convoy.
Upon her arrival at Plymouth, she, like theAurora, received a visit from a man-o’-war’s boat, which carried off four of her best men, reducing her number of seamen to twenty-six. It will thus be seen that, when she finally sailed out of English waters, she was very short-handed.
Now, as Jack is to this day, so he ever has been—an inveterate grumbler; hewillfindsomethingto growl about. It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that, with such good cause, there should be constant dissatisfaction in thePrincess Royal’sforecastle.
But though Jackis, and always has been, such a grumbler, and though probably nothing on earth will ever cure him of this habit—for habit only it is—yet, even where there is good and sufficient cause for discontent, a little judicious management, forbearance, and sympathy will prevent the mischief from going any further.
Unfortunately, however, for thePrincess Royaland all connected with her, the measures adopted by those in authority on board her for the suppression of this quickly-discovered spirit of discontent were the extreme opposite of judicious. The master—as is sometimes the case with masters of very fine ships—was haughty and overbearing, possessed of a highly-exaggerated opinion of his own importance, turning a deaf ear to all the complaints of his crew, and treating them with an impatience and superciliousness of manner which made him heartily detested. The chief mate, an arrant sycophant, taking his cue from his superior officer imitated him to the utmost extent of his ability, with a like result; while the second mate was a blustering bully, whose great pride and boast it was that he could always make one man do the work of two. Hence, from the very commencement of the voyage, the quarterdeck and the forecastle, instead of pulling together and making an united effort to overcome the difficulties of their position, rapidly grew to regard each other with mutual feelings of enmity and distrust.
Matters had consequently, as might be expected, been steadily growing from bad to worse, from the first moment of sailing; and on the day before the gale a very unpleasant incident had occurred on board.
It arose in this way. On the second mate’s watch being called, one of the men remained in his hammock, sending word by one of his shipmates to the officer of the watch that he was ill and unfit for duty. The second mate, instead of reporting the circumstance to the master, and having it inquired into, as was the proper course, jumped at once to the conclusion that the man was merely feigning sickness, in order to avoid the performance of his proper share of work; and, taking the matter into his own hands, he proceeded to the forecastle, armed with a “colt,” and, dragging the unhappy seaman out of his hammock, drove him on deck, abusing him roundly the while in no measured terms, and setting him to work to grease the main-mast, from the truck downward.
The poor fellow, who was really ill, procured a pot of grease and started up the rigging, but, finding himself wholly unequal to the task of going aloft, descended again, and proceeding aft to the poop went up to the captain, who happened to be standing conversing with some of the passengers, and requested to be released from duty, repeating his plea of illness. The second mate had, however, in the meantime mentioned the matter to the captain, putting his own construction upon it; the request was therefore harshly and hastily refused, the refusal being accompanied by the assertion that the pleader was a mean, skulking, mutinous rascal, not worth his salt.
Lieutenant Walford happened to be one of the passengers standing near at the moment, and, as the dissatisfied seaman turned away, Walford turned to the captain and said—
“We in the army have a very short and simple method of dealing with fellows like that—we flog them; and, I assure you, it proves a never-failing cure.”
The sick man heard this remark, so did the man at the wheel, and from that moment Walford was a marked man.
The captain turned round sharply.
“Do you?” said he. “Then by Jove I’ll see if it will prove equally efficacious here. Mr Thomson, have that man seized up to a grating, and give him two dozen; I’ll be bound he’ll be well enough to go aloft after that; if he isn’t, he shall have another couple of dozen.”
Thomson, the second mate, at once sprang upon the man, and, seizing him by the collar, ordered the boatswain to call all hands.
This was done. The men were drawn up in the waist of the ship on the lee-side, the sick seaman was seized up at the lee gangway, and in the presence of all on board (except the ladies, who retired to the saloon in indignation and disgust) the unhappy man received his two dozen.
But here a further widening of the breach between the officers and the crew of the ship took place. The individual appointed to administer the flogging was the boatswain’s mate, a great brawny Cornishman, named Talbot. This individual, when all was ready, bared his muscular right arm to the shoulder, and, grasping the cat firmly, measured his distance accurately with his eye; then stood waiting the command to begin. The captain, the mates, Walford, and one or two more of the on-lookers smiled their satisfaction as they witnessed these elaborate preparations for the infliction of a severe flogging; and the captain, willing to prolong the man’s suffering as much as possible, allowed a long pause to ensue before giving the word.
At length he nodded to Talbot, who at once took a step back, and, giving the tails of the cat a mighty flourish in the air, brought them down upon the man’s naked shoulders so gently that an audible laugh broke spontaneously from the entire crew at the ludicrous sight. The captain turned livid with fury.
“You!” he gasped; “what do you mean by that, you lubber? Lay it on, sir; lay it on hot and heavy, or by Jove I’ll haveyouseized up, and will give you five dozen myself.”
“Ay, ay, sir,” was the imperturbable reply; and the second stroke was administered with even more threatening preliminaries than the first, but with, if possible, even less effect.
“Put that fellow in irons at once!” shouted the captain, “and let him have no food except bread and water until further orders. You hear, steward? If he has anything more, I will make you responsible for it. I will teach him—and everybody else—that when I give an order, I will have it obeyed. Now, Rogers,” to the boatswain, “take the cat, and give that skulking rascal at the grating the two dozen he so richly deserves.”
The boatswain stepped forward, and, without removing his jacket or making any other preparation, sullenly took the cat in his hand. The chief mate meanwhile went off for a pair of handcuffs, and, returning, slipped them on the wrists of the rebellious boatswain’s mate.
The second mate, who was still looking on, noticing the behaviour of the boatswain, and the ill-concealed triumph of the crew at Talbot’s conduct, now turned to the captain and said—
“Letmeplay bo’sun’s mate for once sir; I’ll be bound I’ll give the sneaking lubber his proper ’lowance; he’ll never get it from any of his shipmates, I can see.”
“Very well, do so,” said the captain; “let him have it hot and strong; it will show those mutinous scoundrels that we have it in our power to punish them yet.”
The second mate waited for no more, but, whipping off his coat and rolling up his shirt-sleeves, snatched the cat out of Rogers’ hand, and began at once to administer the punishment.
His first stroke drew blood and forced a shriek of anguish from the quivering lips of his victim, a sound which extorted a laugh of fiendish glee from the captain. A second, third, fourth, and fifth lash followed in slow, deliberate succession, stripping off shreds of skin, and lacerating the back of the sufferer until it presented a sickening sight. At the sixth stroke the shrieks ceased, and the man’s head dropped upon his breast.
At this sight the second mate seemed somewhat startled, and looked up inquiringly at the captain.
“Go on,” said the latter, with an encouraging nod of the head; “go on and finish the dose; he’s only shamming. Put a little more strength into your blows, man; I’ll be bound you can fetch another howl or two out of him yet, if you feel inclined.”
Thus incited, the second mate actually proceeded with and completed his fiendish task, at the end of which the perspiration poured in a stream down his face, so great had been his exertions.
But not another cry could he wring from his victim, in spite of all his efforts—the poor fellow was insensible, and in that condition was cast off from the grating, and taken below to his hammock. There was no doctor on board, so the unfortunate seaman was left to the clumsy though well-meant ministrations of his shipmates, who did the best they could for him, the captain refusing to supply salve, lint, or in fact anything else with which to dress his wounds.
At dinner that evening the captain was urged by some of the passengers to represent to the commodore of the convoying squadron the insubordinate condition of the crew, and to request his assistance. This, however, he positively refused to do, roundly asserting his ability to command his own ship; but, as a matter of fact, the only reason for his reluctance to take this step arose out of the conviction that an inquiry would certainly follow as to the causes of the insubordination, from which inquiry, as he was very well aware, he and his officers could hope for nothing but a complete revelation of their own culpability.
At the moment that this course was being urged upon the captain in the saloon, the incident of the flogging, and, indeed, the whole question of their treatment by their officers, was being discussed on the forecastle by the men; and, singular to relate, although Talbot was believed by his officers to be at that instant in irons below, if either of them had walked forward just then, they would have found him snugly seated on deck, free, on the fore-side of the windlass, taking an active part in the discussion. By the time that eight bells had struck, they had fully made up their minds as to their course of action, and the assembly quietly dispersed.
The next day was that on which the gale burst upon the fleet.
On the signal being made by theTremendousto “Shorten sail and prepare for bad weather,” thePrincess Royalwas one of the first to manifest signs of obedience. She was at the time under every stitch of canvas she could spread, not because she was a sluggish sailer, for she was the reverse of that, but because, there being a flat calm, it mattered not how much or how little canvas was set, it could make no possible difference in the movements or position of the vessel; and the captain, seeing here a fine opportunity to impose upon his crew—“by way of punishment,” as he put it to himself and his officers—a great deal of unnecessary work, ordered all sail, even to the studding-sails, to be set, for the purpose, as he averred, of giving them an airing.
The first thing to be done in the way of shortening sail, therefore, was to take in the studding-sails, which the crew, not being then aware of the danger which threatened the ship, proceeded to do in a very leisurely and deliberate fashion. Their next task was to haul down the smaller staysails, then to clew up and furl royals and topgallantsails. They were all aloft, in the act of stowing these sails, when the hurricane burst upon them. They fortunately saw its approach in time to save themselves, and, leaving the canvas drooping loose from the yards, hurriedly descended to the deck by way of the backstays, and were scarcely there when, with the first furious rush of the wind, the three topmasts went, one after the other in quick succession, the wreckage falling on deck and lumbering it fore and aft.
The crew regarded the mishap with stolid satisfaction. The delay which it would occasion in the prosecution of the voyage was nothing to them; the ship was stripped of everything above her lower mastheads, leaving so much the less canvas for her crew to handle, and that was all they cared about at the moment. A little later on in the day they saw that if the gale lasted—of which there was every prospect—the loss of her spars would result in her separation from the remainder of the fleet, and as they remarked upon this to each other, the men smiled grimly, and exchanged certain short pithy remarks which, had they been heard by the occupants of the saloon, would have produced a feeling of grave uneasiness.
The crew were, of course, at once set to work to clear away the wreck, and this they forthwith proceeded to do, for their own sakes, however, rather than out of respect to the captain’s orders, the heavy spars dashing about the deck with the roll of the ship in a manner which made it positively dangerous to be there at all.
By nightfall the rest of the fleet had passed out of sight to the eastward, scattered like chaff before the angry breath of the hurricane, and thePrincess Royalwas left to fight out her battle alone. By dint of almost superhuman exertions, the shattered spars had been secured, the main-sail cut away from the yard, and such other dispositions made as would allow of her being kept dead before the wind, and out of the trough of the sea during the coming night; and when the captain took his seat at the head of the saloon-table at dinner that evening, he was full of boastful exultation over the prompt obedience of his crew, frequently congratulating his passengers upon their being on board a ship in charge of such capable officers as himself and his mates. Of course he did not actually say this in so many words, but the burden of his remarks amounted to it, and nothing less.
The second mate had the middle watch on that eventful night, and just after he had struck four bells, and the wheel had been relieved, he was inexpressibly scandalised by hearing above the howling of the gale loud sounds of singing and jocularity on the forecastle.
Such sounds were of so very unusual a character on board thePrincess Royalthat, coupled with the circumstance of their being uttered in the middle watch of all times in the world, he was at first so astonished as to be quite unable to believe his own ears. Very soon, however, they were repeated, one of the men actually breaking into a rollicking song, the burden of which was an invocation to “Let us all be jolly, boys,” under every conceivable combination of circumstances.
“Jolly! The scoundrels! How dare they so much as think of such a thing at a time when they were living under the ban of their officers’ severe displeasure? And the ship a perfect wreck aloft, too!” It was simply monstrous; the second mate’s righteous anger blazed up into full fury at once, and, advancing to the break of the poop, he roared out in stentorian tones—
“Silence, there, for’ard! What do you mean, you unmannerly swabs, by disturbing the ship fore and aft with your infernal howling at this time of night?”
Either the “unmannerly swabs” had not heard him, or they were so utterly lost to all sense of the respect due to their officer as to pay no attention to his polite adjuration, for the song was continued, with some attempt at a chorus.
The second mate was not in the habit of speaking twice to those under him, and he did not attempt to do so now. Drawing his knotted “colt” out of his pocket, he descended the poop-ladder, and hurried forward as fast as the heavy rolling of the ship would permit, determined to teach the “howling thieves” a lesson they would not readily forget.
Meanwhile, though he was blissfully ignorant of the fact, sharp eyes had been watching his motions for some time; and his foot was scarcely on the top step of the poop-ladder when Jim Martin, the owner of a pair of the aforesaid sharp eyes, exclaimed—
“Hurrah, my bullies! Keep it up; here he comes. The shark has bolted the bait without so much as smelling at it.”
The group of men clustered on the forecastle made a slight restless movement, as men sometimes will when they are conscious of the approach of a great crisis in their lives, and the voice of the singer quavered the merest trifle. Another moment, and the second mate was among them, his eyes flashing with anger and his colt uplifted to strike.
“What the deuce?”
Before he could utter another word, his legs were cut from under him by the sweeping blow of a handspike, and he fell with a crash to the deck, the back of his head striking so violently on the planking as to momentarily stun him. In an instant a belaying-pin was thrust between his teeth and secured there with a lashing of spun-yarn; and then, before he had sufficiently recovered to realise his position, he was turned over on his face, his arms drawn behind him, and his wrists and ankles firmly lashed together.
“Very neatly managed,” remarked Talbot approvingly, as his gaze rested on the prostrate figure on the deck. “Now, mates, what’s the next move? Come, Ned,” to the boatswain, “you’re to be our new skipper, you know; give us your orders, cap’n, and we’ll be ‘yours obejently.’”
“Well, then, if you’re all agreed upon that, shipmates, my first order is for one of you—you Tom—to go aft into the saloon and knock at the ‘old man’s’ door (Note 1), and ask him to come on deck at once, as Mr Thomson have met with a haccident. Two more of you’ll wait for him outside the door, and when he steps out ’pon deck sarve him the same as you’ve sarved our respected friend here. Then do the same with Mr Nicholls (the chief mate).”
These orders were so skilfully executed, that in a quarter of an hour the mutineers had the captain and his twoaidesprisoners—bound and helpless in their hands, without the slightest alarm having been given to the other occupants of the saloon. The larboard watch was then called; and from their first eager questions when aroused it became evident that the seizure of the ship was a carefully planned affair, of which all in the forecastle were fully cognisant.
The seamen having paraded on deck, and been, with the aid of a lantern, carefully inspected by the boatswain to ascertain that there were no recreant spirits among them now that the crisis had arrived, each man—excepting a half-dozen left in charge of the deck—was provided with a short length of well-stretched ratline, carrying which, they proceeded in a body to the saloon, and, entering the state-rooms, surprised in their sleep and secured without difficulty the whole of the male passengers, pinioned them firmly, and then, after depriving them of such weapons as they happened to possess, locked them up in their own cabins. The ladies were only disturbed so far as was necessary to make them acquainted with the fact that the ship had changed hands, and that, if they had only the good sense to acquiesce in the arrangement, they would be perfectly unmolested. The cook and stewards were also called, and, having been left in ignorance of the proposed mutiny lest they should inadvertently let the secret slip, addressed in somewhat similar terms; whereupon they at once declared their readiness to throw in their lot with the mutineers, and were forthwith sworn in.
Note 1. The master of a merchant-ship is frequently spoken of by his crew as “the old man,” whether his years happen to be few or many.