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A Pirate of the Caribbees

by Harry Collingwood · English · Gutenberg #21073 · 494,401 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: A Pirate of the Caribbees

Author: Harry Collingwood

Illustrator: Charles John de Lacy


        
Release date: April 13, 2007 [eBook #21073]

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/21073

Credits: Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A PIRATE OF THE CARIBBEES ***




Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England




A Pirate of the Caribbees

By Harry Collingwood
________________________________________________________________________
A very well-written book about the efforts of a young officer,
Courtenay, to bring to book a wicked pirate, Morillo.  It all seems very
likely and believable, despite the usual ration of shipwrecks, captures,
hurricanes, founderings, and so forth.

Makes a very good audiobook. NH.

________________________________________________________________________
A PIRATE OF THE CARIBBEES

BY HARRY COLLINGWOOD



CHAPTER ONE.

A FRIGATE FIGHT IN MID-ATLANTIC.

"Eight bells, there, sleepers; d'ye hear the news?--Rouse and bitt, my
hearties!  Show a leg!  Eight bells, Courtenay! and Keene says he will
be much obliged if you will relieve him as soon as possible!"

These words, delivered in a tone of voice that was a curious alternation
of a high treble with a preternaturally deep bass--due to the fact that
the speaker's voice was "breaking"--and accompanied by the reckless
banging of a tin pannikin upon the deal table that adorned the
midshipmen's berth of H.M. frigate _Althea_, instantly awoke me to the
disagreeable consciousness that my watch below had come to an end,
especially as the concluding portion of the harangue was addressed to me
personally, and accompanied by a most uncompromising thump upon the side
of my hammock.  So I surlily growled an answer--

"All right, young 'un; there's no occasion to make all that hideous row!
Just see if you can make yourself useful by finding Black Peter, will
you, and telling him to brew some coffee."

The lad was turning away to do my bidding when a pattering of naked feet
became audible as their owner approached, while a husky voice
ejaculated--

"Who's dat axin' for Brack Petah?  Was it you, Mistah Courtenay?"  And
at the same instant the shining, good-natured, grinning visage of a
gigantic negro appeared in the narrow doorway, through which the fellow
instantly passed into the berth, bearing a big pot of steaming hot
coffee.

"Ay, you black demon, I it was," answered I.  "Is that coffee you have
there?  Then find my cup and fill it, there's a good fellow, and I'll
owe you a glass of grog."

"Hi, yi!" answered the black, his eyes sparkling and his teeth gleaming
hilariously, "who you call `brack demon,' eh, sah?  Who eber hear of
brack demon turnin' out at four o'clock in de mornin' to make coffee for
young gentermen, eh?  And about de grog, Mistah Courtenay; how many
glasses do dis one make dat you now owe me, eh, sah?  Ansah me dat, sah.
You don' keep no account, I expec's, sah, but _I_ do.  Dis one makes
seben, Mistah Courtenay, and I'd be much obleege, sah, if you'd pay some
of dem off.  It am all bery well to say you'll _owe_ 'em to me, sah, but
what's de use ob dat if you don' nebber _pay_ me, eh?"

"_Pay_ you, you rascal?" shouted I, as I sprang to the deck and began
hastily to scramble into my clothes, "do you mean to say that you have
the impudence to actually expect to _be paid_?  Is it not honour and
reward enough that a gentleman condescends to become _indebted_ to you?
Pay, indeed! why, what is the world coming to, I wonder?"

"Bravo, Courtenay, well spoken!" shouted young Lindsay, the lad who had
so ruthlessly interrupted my slumbers, "how well you express yourself;
you ought to be in Parliament, man!  Give it him again; bring him to his
bearings.  The impudence of the fellow is getting to be past endurance!
Now then, you black swab, where's the sugar?  Do you suppose we can
drink that stuff without sugar?"

After a search of some duration the sugar was eventually found in a
locker, in loving contiguity to an open box of blacking, some boot
brushes, a box of candles, a few fragments of brown windsor,--one of
which had somehow found its way into the bowl,--and a few other fragrant
trifles.  In my haste to get on deck, and betrayed by the feeble light
of the purser's dip, which just sufficed to render the darkness visible,
I managed to convey this stray morsel of soap into my coffee along with
the sugar wherewith I intended to sweeten it, and only discovered what I
had done barely in time to avoid gulping down the soap along with the
scalding liquid into which I had plunged it.  A midshipman, however,
soon loses all sense of squeamishness, so I contented myself with
muttering a sea blessing upon the head of the unknown individual who had
deposited this "matter in the wrong place," and dashed up the hatchway
to relieve the impatient Keene.

I shivered and instinctively buttoned my jacket closely about me as I
stepped out on deck, for, mild and bland as the temperature actually
was, it felt raw and chill after the close, stifling atmosphere of the
midshipman's berth.  It was very dark, for it was only just past the
date of the new moon, and the thin silver sickle--which was all that the
coy orb then showed of herself--had set some hours before; moreover,
there was a thin veil of mist or sea fog hanging upon the surface of the
water, through which only a few of the brighter stars could be faintly
distinguished near the zenith.  There was no wind--it had fallen calm
the night before about sunset, and we were in the Horse latitudes--and
the frigate was rolling uneasily upon a short, steep swell that had come
creeping up out from the north-east during the middle watch, the
precursor, as we hoped, of the north-east trades--for we were in the
very heart of the North Atlantic, and bound to the West Indies.  I duly
received the anathemas of my shipmate Keene at my tardy appearance on
deck, hurled a properly spirited retort after him down the hatchway, and
then made my way up the poop ladder to tramp out my watch on the lee
side of the deck--if there can be such a thing as a lee side when there
is no wind.

It was dreary work, this tramping fore and aft, fore and aft, with
nothing whatever to engage the attention, and nothing to do.  I
therefore eagerly watched for, and hailed with delight, the first faint
pallid brightening of the eastern sky that heralded the dawn; for with
daylight there would at least be the ship's toilet to make--the decks to
holystone and scrub, brasswork and guns to clean and polish, the
paintwork to wash, sheets and braces to flemish-coil, and mayhap
something to see, as well as the possibility that with the rising of the
sun we might get a small slant of wind to push us a few miles nearer to
the region where the trade wind was merrily blowing.

The dawn came slowly--or perhaps it merely _seemed_ to my impatience to
do so--and with daylight the mist that had hung about the ship all night
thickened into a genuine, unmistakable fog, so thick that when standing
by the break of the poop it was impossible to see as far as the jib-boom
end.

The fog made Mr Hennesey, our second lieutenant and the officer of the
watch, uneasy,--as well it might, for we were in the early spring of the
year 1805, and Great Britain was at war with France, Spain, and Holland,
at that time the three most formidable naval powers in the world, next
to ourselves, and the chances were that every second ship we might meet
would be an enemy,--and at length, just as seven bells were being
struck, he turned to me and said--

"Mr Courtenay, you have good eyes; just jump up on to the main-royal
yard, will you, and take a look round.  This fog packs close, but I do
not believe it reaches as high as our mastheads, and I feel curious to
know whether anything has drifted within sight of us during the night."

I touched my hat, and forthwith made my way into the main rigging, glad
of even a journey aloft to break the dismal monotony of the blind, grey,
stirless morning, and in due time swung myself up on to the slender
yard, the sail of which had been clewed up but not furled.  But, alas!
the worthy second luff was mistaken for once in his life; it was every
whit as thick up there as it was down on deck, and not a thing could I
see but the fore and mizzenmasts, with their intricacies of standing and
running rigging, their tapering yards, and their broad spaces of wet and
drooping canvas, hanging limp and looming spectrally through the ghostly
mist-wreaths.  I was about to hail the deck and report the failure of my
experimental journey, but was checked in the very act by feeling
something like a faint stir in the damp, heavy air about me; another
moment and a dim yellow smudge became visible on the port beam, which I
presently recognised as the newly risen sun struggling to pierce with
his beams the ponderous masses of white vapour that were now slowly
working as though stirred by some subtle agency.  By imperceptible
degrees the pallid vision of the sun brightened and strengthened, and
presently I became conscious of a faint but distinct movement of the air
from off the port quarter, to which the cloths of the sail against which
my feet dangled responded with a gentle rustling movement.

"On deck, there!"  I shouted, "it is still as thick as a hedge up here,
sir, but it seems inclined to clear, and I believe we are going to have
a breeze out from the north-east presently."

"So much the better," answered the second luff, ignoring the first half
of my communication; "stay where you are a little longer, if you please,
Mr Courtenay."

"Ay, ay, sir!" answered I, settling myself more comfortably upon the
yard.  And while the words were still upon my lips the stagnant air
about me once more stirred, the great spaces of canvas beneath me
swelled sluggishly out with a small pattering of reef-points from the
three topsails, and a gentle creak of truss and parrel, as the strain of
the filling canvas came upon the yards; and I saw the brightening disc
of the sun begin to sweep round until it bore broad upon our larboard
quarter.  Then some sharp words of command from the poop, in Mr
Hennesey's well-known tones,--dulcet as those of a bullfrog with a bad
cold,--came floating up to me, followed by the shrill notes of the
boatswain's pipe and his hoarse bellow of, "Hands make sail!"  A few
minutes of orderly confusion down on deck and on the yards below me now
ensued, and when it ceased the _Althea_ was running square away before
the languid but slowly strengthening breeze, with studding-sails set on
both sides.

Meanwhile the log was gradually clearing, for it was now possible to see
to a distance of fully three lengths of the ship on either hand, before
the curling and sweeping wreaths of vapour shut out the tiny dancing
ripples that seemed to be merrily racing the ship to port and starboard.
Occasionally a break or clear space in the fog-bank swept down upon and
overtook us, when it would be possible to see for a distance of a
quarter of a mile for a few seconds; then it would thicken again and be
as blinding as ever.  But every break that came was wider than the one
that preceded it, showing that the windward edge of the bank was rapidly
drawing down after us; and as these breaks occurred indifferently on
either side of, or sometimes on both sides at once, with now and then a
clear space right astern to give a spice of variety to the proceedings,
my eyes, as may be guessed, were kept pretty busy.

At length an opening, very considerably wider than any that had thus far
reached us, came sweeping down upon our starboard quarter, and as I
peered into it, endeavouring to pierce the veil of fog that formed its
farther extremity, I suddenly became aware of a vague shape indistinctly
perceptible through the intervening wreaths of mist that were now
sweeping rapidly along before the steadily freshening breeze.  I saw it
but during the wink of an eyelid, when it was shut in again, but I knew
at once what it was; it could be but one thing--a ship, and I forthwith
hailed--

"On deck, there! there's a strange sail about a mile distant, sir, broad
on our starboard quarter!"

"Thank you, Mr Courtenay," promptly responded the "second."

"What do you make her out to be?"

"It is impossible at present to say anything definite about her, sir," I
answered.  "I saw her but for a second, and then only very indistinctly,
but she loomed up through the fog like a craft of about our own size."

"Very well, sir," answered Hennesey; "stay where you are, and keep a
sharp lookout for her next appearance."

Once more I returned the stereotyped, "Ay, ay, sir!" as I sent my
glances searching round the ship for further openings.  The next that
overtook us swept down upon our port quarter; it was fully a mile and a
half wide, and when it bore about four points abaft the beam another
shape slid into it, not vague and shadowy this time, as the other shape
had been, but clearly distinct--a frigate, unmistakably, under a similar
spread of canvas to our own, and as nearly as possible our own size.  So
close indeed was the resemblance that for a second or two I was disposed
to fancy that by some strange trick of light and reflection the fog was
treating me to a picture of the old _Althea_ herself, but a more
steadfast scrutiny soon dispelled the illusion.  There were certain
unmistakable points of difference between this second apparition and
ourselves, some of which were so strongly characteristic that I at once
set her down as a French frigate.

The plot was thickening, and it was not wholly without a certain feeling
of exhilaration that I again hailed the deck--

"A frigate broad on our port quarter, sir, with a very Frenchified look
about her!"

"Thank you again, Mr Courtenay," answered Hennesey, with an
unmistakable ring of delight in his jovial Irish accent, which, by the
way, had a trick of growing more pronounced under the influence of
excitement.  "Ah, true for you, there she is," he continued, "I have
her!  Mr Hudson, have the kindness to jump below and fetch me my glass,
will ye, and look alive, you shmall anatomy!"

A gentle ripple of subdued laughter from the forecastle at this sally of
our genial "second" floated up to me from the forecastle, a glimpse of
which I could just catch under the foot of the fore-topsail, and I could
see that the men were all alive down there with pleasurable excitement
at the prospect of a possible fight.  Young Hudson--a smart little
fellow, barely fourteen years old, and the most juvenile member of our
mess--was soon on deck again with the second lieutenant's telescope; but
by this time the fog had shut the stranger in again, so, for the moment,
friend Hennesey's curiosity had to remain unsatisfied.  Not for long,
however; the presumably French frigate had not been lost sight of more
than two or three minutes when I caught a second glimpse of the other
craft--the one first sighted--on our starboard quarter.

"There is the other fellow, sir!"  I shouted.  "You can see her
distinctly now.  And she too is a frigate, and French, unless I am
greatly mistaken."

"By the powers, Mr Courtenay, I hope you may be right," answered
Hennesey.  "Ay, there she is," he continued, "as plain as mud in a
wineglass!  And if she isn't French her looks belie her.  Mr Hudson,
you spalpeen, slip down below and tell the captain that there are a
brace of suspicious-looking craft within a mile of us.  And ye may call
upon Misther Dawson and impart the same pleasant information to him."
Then, turning his beaming phiz up to me, he continued--

"Mr Courtenay, it's on the stroke of eight bells, but all the same
you'd better stay where you are for the present, until the fog clears,
since you know exactly the bearings of those two craft.  And I'll thank
ye to keep your weather eye liftin', young gentleman; there may be a
whole fleet of Frenchmen within gun-shot of us, for all that we can
tell."

"Ay, ay, sir!"  I cheerfully answered, my curiosity having by this time
got the better of my keen appetite for breakfast; moreover, having been
the discoverer of the two sail already sighted, I was anxious to add to
the prestige thus gained by being the first to sight any other craft
that might happen to be in our neighbourhood.

My stay aloft, however, was not destined to be a long one, for the fog
was now clearing fast, and within ten minutes it had all driven away to
leeward of us, revealing the fact that there were but the two sail
already discovered in sight--unless there might happen to be others so
far ahead as to be still hidden in the fog-bank to leeward.  But before
I left the royal yard I had succeeded in satisfying myself, by means of
my glass--which had been sent up to me bent on to the signal halliards--
that the two strangers were frigates, and almost certainly French.  They
were exchanging signals at a great rate, but we could make nothing of
their flags, which at least proved that they were not British.  To make
assurance doubly sure, however, we had hoisted our private signal, to
which neither ship had been able to reply.  There was no doubt that they
were enemies; and this fact having been satisfactorily established, I
was permitted to descend and snatch a hasty breakfast.

And a hasty one it was, for I had scarcely been below five minutes when
we were piped to clear for action, and I was obliged to hurry on deck
again.  But a hungry midshipman can achieve a good deal in the eating
line in five minutes, and in that brief interval I contrived to stow
away enough food to take the keen edge off my appetite, promising myself
that I would make up my leeway at dinner-time--provided that I was still
alive when the hour for that meal came round.  This last thought sobered
me down somewhat, and to a certain extent subdued my hilarious spirits;
but they rose again as, upon gaining the deck, I looked round and saw
the cheerful yet resolute faces of the captain and officers, and noted
the gaiety with which the men went about their duty.

The strangers had by this time shown their bunting,--the tricolour,--so
there was no further question of their nationality or of the fact that
we were booked for a sharp fight, for they had the heels of us and were
overhauling us in grand style; we could not therefore have escaped, had
we been ever so anxious to do so.  And, had we made the attempt, we
should certainly have been quite justified, for it had now been
ascertained that they were both forty-gun ships, while we mounted only
thirty-six pieces on our gun deck.  Escape, however, was apparently the
very last thought likely to occur to Captain Harrison; for although he
kept the studding-sails abroad while the ship was being prepared for
action, no sooner had the first lieutenant reported everything ready
than the order was given to shorten sail; and a pretty sight it was to
see how smartly and with what beautifully perfect precision everything
was done at once, the studding-sails all collapsing and coming in
together at exactly the same moment that the three royals were clewed up
and the flight of staysails on the main and mizzen masts hauled down.

"Very prettily done, Mr Dawson," said the skipper approvingly.  "Our
friends yonder will see that they have seamen to deal with, at all
events, even though we cannot sport such a clean pair of heels as their
own."

The two Frenchmen were by this time within less than half a mile of us,
converging upon us in such a manner as to range up alongside the
_Althea_ within the toss of a biscuit on either hand, but neither of
them manifested the slightest disposition to follow our example by
shortening sail.  Perhaps they believed that, were they to do so, we
should at once make sail again and endeavour to escape, whereas by
holding on to everything until they drew up alongside us, we should fall
an easy prey to their superior strength, if indeed we did not surrender
at discretion.

And, truly, the two ships formed a noble and a graceful picture as they
came sweeping rapidly down upon us with every stitch of canvas set that
they could possibly spread, their white sails towering spire-like into
the deep, tender blue of the cloudless heavens, with the delicate purple
shadows chasing each other athwart the rounded bosoms of them as the
hulls that up-bore them swung pendulum-like, with a little curl of snow
under their bows, over the low hillocks of swell that chased them,
sparkling in the brilliant sunlight like a heaving floor of sapphire
strewed broadcast with diamonds.

They stood on, silent as the grave, until the craft on our larboard
quarter--which was leading by about a couple of lengths--had reached to
within a short quarter of a mile of us, when, as we all stood watching
them intently, a jet of flame, followed by a heavy burst of white smoke,
leapt out from her starboard bow port, and the next instant the shot
went humming close past us, to dash up the water in a fountain-like jet
a quarter of a mile ahead of us.

"That, I take it, is a polite request to us to heave-to and haul down
our colours," remarked Captain Harrison to the first lieutenant, with a
smile.  "Well, we may as well return the compliment, Mr Dawson.  Try a
shot at each of them with the stern-chasers.  If we could only manage to
knock away an important spar on board either of them it might so cripple
her as to cause her to drop astern, leaving us to deal with the other
one and settle her business out of hand.  Yes, aim at their spars, Mr
Dawson.  It would perhaps have been better had we opened fire directly
they were within range, but I was anxious not to make a mistake.  Now
that they have fired upon us, however, we need hesitate no longer."

The order was accordingly given to open fire with our stern-chasers, and
in less than a minute the two guns spoke out simultaneously, jarring the
old hooker to her keel.  We were unable for a moment to see the effect
of the shots, for the smoke blew in over our taffrail, completely hiding
our two pursuers for a few seconds; but when it cleared away a cheer
broke from the men who were manning the after guns, for it was seen that
the flying-jib stay of our antagonist on the port quarter was cut and
the sail towing from the jib-boom end, a neat hole in her port
foretopmast studding-sail showing where the shot had passed.  The other
gun had been less successful, the shot having passed through the head of
the second frigate's foresail about four feet below the yard and half-
way between the slings and the starboard yardarm, without inflicting any
further perceptible damage.

"Very well-meant!  Let them try again," exclaimed the skipper
approvingly.  And as the words issued from his lips we saw the two
pursuing frigates yaw broadly outward, as if by common consent, and the
next instant they both let drive a whole broadside at us.  I waited
breathlessly while one might have counted "one--two," and then the sound
of an ominous crashing aloft told me that we were wounded somewhere
among our spars.  A block, followed by a shower of splinters, came
hurtling down on deck, breaking the arm of a man at the aftermost
quarter-deck gun on the port side, and then a louder crash aloft caused
me to look up just in time to see our mizzen-topmast go sweeping forward
into the hollow of the maintopsail, which it split from head to foot,
the mizzen-topgallant mast snapping short off at the cap as it swooped
down upon the maintopsail yard.  Two topmen were swept out of the
maintop by the wreckage in its descent, and terribly--one of them
fatally--injured, and there were a few minor damages, which, however,
were quickly repaired.  Then, as some hands sprang aloft to clear away
the wreck, our stern-chasers spoke out again, the one close after the
other, and two new holes in the enemy's canvas testified to the
excellent aim of our gunners; but, unfortunately, that was the extent of
the damage, both shots having passed very close to, but _just missed_,
important spars.

The French displayed very creditable smartness in getting inboard the
flying-jib that we had cut away for them, and by the time that this was
accomplished they had drawn up so close to us that by bearing away a
point or two to port and starboard respectively, both craft were enabled
to bring their whole broadsides to bear upon us, which they immediately
did, taking in their studding-sails, and otherwise reducing their canvas
at the same time, until we were all three under exactly the same amount
of sail--excepting, of course, that we had lost our mizzen-topsail with
all above it, while theirs still stood intact.  As for us, our guns were
all trained as far aft as the port-holes would permit, and as our
antagonists ranged up on either quarter, within pistol-shot, each gun
was fired point-blank as it was brought to bear.  And now the fight
began in real, grim downright earnest, the crew of each gun loading and
firing as rapidly as possible, while the French poured in their
broadsides with a coolness and precision that extorted our warmest
admiration, despite the disagreeable fact that they were playing havoc
with us fore and aft, one of our guns having been dismounted within
three minutes of the arrival of the enemy alongside us, while the tale
of killed and wounded was growing heavier with every broadside that we
received.  But if we were suffering severely we were paying our
punishment back with interest, as we could see by glancing at the hulls
of our antagonists, the sides of which were torn and splintered and
pierced all along the broad white streak that marked the line of
ports,--some of which were knocked two into one,--while their yellow
sides were here and there broadly streaked with crimson as the blood
drained away through their scuppers.  It is true they were fighting us
two to one, but, after all, their advantage was more apparent than real,
for, running level with us as they were, they could only fight one of
their batteries, while we were fighting both ours, and our guns--every
one of them double-shotted--were being better and more rapidly served
than theirs.

I will not attempt to describe the fight in detail, for indeed any such
attempt could only result in failure.  And as a matter of fact there was
very little to describe.  We simply ran dead away to leeward, the three
of us, fighting almost yardarm to yardarm, and exchanging broadsides as
rapidly as the guns could be loaded and run out.  After the first ten
minutes of the fight there was little or nothing to be seen, for the
wind was fast dropping again, and the three ships were wrapped in a
dense white pall of smoke that effectually concealed everything that was
going on at a greater distance than some fifty feet from the observer.
The most impressive characteristic of the struggle was _noise_--the
incessant crash of the guns, the discharge of which set up a continuous
tremor of the ship throughout the entire fabric of her; the rending and
splintering of timber as the enemy's shot tore its way through the
frigate's sides; the shrieks and groans of the wounded and dying, cut
into at frequent intervals by some sharp order from the captain or the
first lieutenant; the curt commands of the captains of the guns: "Stop
the vent! run in! sponge! load! run out!" and so on; the creak of the
tackle blocks, the rumble of the gun carriages, the clatter of
handspikes, the dull thud of the rammers driving home the shot, the
rattling volleys of musketry from the marines on the poop, the
occasional rending crash of a falling spar, and the terrific babble of
the Frenchmen on either side of us, sounding high and clear in the
occasional brief intervals when all the guns happened to be silent
together for a moment,--I can only compare it all to the horrible
confusion raging through the disordered imagination of one in the
clutches of a fiercely burning fever.  Our people fought grimly and in
silence, save for an occasional cheer at some unusually successful shot;
but the Frenchmen jabbered away incessantly, sometimes reviling us and
shaking their fists at us through their open ports, and more often
squabbling among themselves.

At length, when the fight had lasted about half an hour, the wind
dropped to a dead calm, and the Frenchman on our starboard side, who had
forged somewhat ahead of us, made an effort to lay himself athwart our
bows before he lost way altogether.  But we were too quick for him, for
his mainmast was towing alongside and stopped his way; so we did with
him what he tried to do to us, driving square athwart his bows as his
bowsprit came thrusting in between our fore and main masts, when we lost
not a moment in lashing the spar to our main rigging.  But, after all,
it resolved itself into tit for tat, for the other fellow put his helm
hard aport and just managed to drive square athwart our stern, where he
raked us most unmercifully for fully five minutes, until he drove clear,
bringing down all three of our masts before he left us.  Of course we
could only retaliate upon him with our stern-chasers, which we played
upon him with considerable effect; but what we lacked in the way of
adequate retort to him we amply made up for to his consort, raking her
time after time with such good-will that in a few minutes her bows were
battered into a mere mass of torn and splintered timber.  Somebody on
board her cried out that they had struck, but as her marines kept up
their fire upon us from the poop, while her main-deck guns continued to
blaze away whenever she swung sufficiently for any of them to bear, no
notice was taken of this intimation; and presently our skipper gave the
order to cut her adrift, so that her people might have no chance to
board--a proceeding that would have proved exceedingly awkward for us in
our then weakened condition.

But it presently became evident that they had no thought of boarding us;
on the contrary, their chief anxiety was clearly to escape from the warm
berth that they had thrust themselves into; for a few minutes later, the
fire on both sides having slackened somewhat, we observed that both
craft had their boats in the water and were doing their best to tow off
from us, and almost immediately afterwards the French ceased firing
altogether.  I believe our skipper--fire-eater though he was--felt
unfeignedly thankful at this cessation of hostilities, for he
immediately followed suit, giving the order for the men to leave the
guns and proceed to repair damages.  This was no light task, for not
only were we completely dismasted, but the hull of the ship was terribly
knocked about, the carpenter reporting five feet of water in the hold
and twenty-seven shot-holes between wind and water, apart from our other
damages, which were sufficiently serious.  Moreover, our "butcher's
bill" was appallingly heavy, the list totalling up to no less than
thirty-eight killed and one hundred and six wounded, out of a total of
two hundred and eighty!



CHAPTER TWO.

THE ALTHEA FOUNDERS.

The French having ceased firing, and manifesting an unmistakable anxiety
to withdraw from our proximity, we bestowed but little further attention
on them, for it quickly became clear to us that our own condition was
quite sufficiently serious to tax our energies to the utmost.  The first
task demanding the attention of the carpenter and his mates was of
course the stoppage of our leaks, and a very difficult task indeed it
proved to be, owing to the rapidity with which the water was rising in
the hold; by manning the pumps, however, and employing the entire
available remainder of the crew in baling, we succeeded in plugging all
the shot-holes and clearing the hold of water by noon, when the men were
knocked off to go to their well-earned dinner.  Then, indeed, we found
time to look around us and to ask ourselves and each other where the
French were and what they were doing.  There was no difficulty in
furnishing a reply to either question, for our antagonists were only a
bare four miles off, and close together.  But bad as our own plight was,
theirs was very much worse; for we now saw that the frigate which we had
raked so unmercifully was in a sinking condition, having settled so low
in the water indeed that the sills of her main-deck ports were awash and
dipping with every sluggish heave of her upon the low and almost
imperceptible swell, while her own boats and those of her consort were
busily engaged in taking off her crew.  With the aid of my telescope I
could distinctly see all that was going on, and I saw also that the end
of the gallant craft was so near as to render her disappearance a matter
of but a few minutes.  Hungry, therefore, as I was, I determined to
remain on deck and see the last of her.  Nor had I long to wait; I had
scarcely arrived at the decision that I would do so, when, as I watched
her through my glass, I saw the boats that hung around her shoving off
hurriedly one after the other, until one only remained.  Presently that
one also shoved off, and, loaded down to her gunwale, pulled, as hastily
as her overloaded condition would permit, toward the other frigate.  She
had scarcely placed half a dozen fathoms between herself and the sinking
ship before the latter rolled heavily to port, slowly recovered herself,
and then rolled still more heavily to starboard, completely burying the
whole tier of her starboard ports as she did so.  She hung thus for
perhaps half a minute, settling visibly all the time; finally she
_staggered_, as it were, once more to an even keel, but with her stern
dipping deeper and deeper every second until her taffrail was buried,
while her battered bows lifted slowly into the air, when, the
inclination of her decks rapidly growing steeper, she suddenly took a
sternward plunge and vanished from sight in the midst of a sudden swirl
of water that was distinctly visible through the lenses of the
telescope.  The occupants of the boat that had so recently left her saw
their danger and put forth herculean efforts to avoid it; they were too
near, however, to escape, and despite all their exertions the boat was
caught and dragged back into the vortex created by the sinking ship,
into which she too disappeared.  But a few seconds afterwards I saw
heads popping up above the water again, here and there, while a couple
of boats that had just discharged their cargo of passengers dashed away
to the rescue and were soon paddling hither and thither among the little
black spots that kept popping into view all round them.  I waited until
all had seemingly been picked up, and then went below to secure what
dinner might be remaining for me.

When, after a hurried meal, I again went on deck, the horizon away to
the northward and eastward was darkening to a light air from that
quarter, that came gently stealing along the glassy surface of the
ocean, first in cat's-paws, then as a gentle breathing that caused the
polished undulations to break into a tremor of laughing ripples, and
finally into a light breeze, before which the surviving French frigate
bore up with squared yards, leaving us unmolested.

Meanwhile the crew, having dined, turned to again for a busy afternoon's
work, which consisted chiefly in clearing away the wreck of our fallen
spars, and saving as many of them and as much of our canvas and running
gear as would be likely to be of use to us in fitting the ship with a
jury-rig.  And so well did the men work, that by sunset we were enabled
to cut adrift from the wreck of our lower masts, and to bear up in the
wake of the Frenchman, who by this time had run us out of sight in the
south-western quarter.

But, tired as the men were, there was no rest for them that night, for
it was felt to be imperatively necessary to get the ship under canvas
again without a moment's delay; moreover, despite the fact that the
shot-holes had all been plugged, it was found that the battered hull was
still leaking so seriously as to necessitate a quarter of an hour's
spell at the pumps every two hours.  The hands were therefore kept at
work, watch and watch, all through the night, with the result that when
day broke next morning we had a pair of sheers rigged and on end, ready
to rear into position the spars that had been prepared and fitted as
lower masts.  The end of that day found us once more under sail, after a
fashion, and heading on our course to the southward and westward.

For the following two days all went well with us, save that the ship
continued to make water so freely as to necessitate the use of the pumps
at the middle and end of every watch, a fair breeze driving us along
under our jury-canvas at the rate of five to six knots per hour.  Toward
evening, however, on the second day, signs of a change of weather began
to manifest themselves, the sky to windward losing its rich tint of blue
and becoming pallid and hard, streaked with mares' tails and flecked
with small, smoky-looking, swift-flying clouds, while the setting sun,
as he neared the horizon, lost his radiance and became a mere shapeless
blotch of angry red that finally seemed to dissolve and disappear in a
broad bank of slate-hued vapour.  The sea too changed its colour, from
the clear steel-blue that it had hitherto worn to the hue of indigo
smirched with black.  Moreover, I heard the captain remark to Mr Dawson
that the mercury was falling and that he feared we were in for a dirty
night.

And, indeed, so it seemed; for about the middle of the second dog-watch
the wind lulled perceptibly and we had a sharp rain-squall, soon after
which it breezed up again, the wind coming first of all in gusts and
then in a strong breeze that, as the night wore on, steadily increased
until it was blowing half a gale, with every indication of worse to
come.  The sea, too, rose rapidly, and came rushing down upon our
starboard quarter, high, steep, and foam-crested, causing the frigate to
roll and tumble about most unpleasantly under her jury-rig and short
canvas.  Altogether, the prospects for the night were so exceedingly
unpromising that I must plead guilty to having experienced a selfish joy
at the reflection that it was my eight hours in.

When I went on deck at midnight that night, I found that the wind had
increased to a whole gale, with a very high and confused sea running,
over which the poor maimed _Althea_ was wallowing along at a speed of
about eight and a half knots, with a dismal groaning of timbers that
harmonised lugubriously with the clank of the chain pumps and the swash
of water washing nearly knee-deep about the decks--for the hooker
laboured so heavily that she was leaking like a basket, necessitating
the unremitting use of the pumps throughout the watch.  And--worst of
all--Keene whispered to me that, even with the pumps going constantly,
the water was slowly but distinctly gaining.  And thus it continued all
through the middle watch.

It was hoped that the gale would not be of long duration, but at eight
bells next morning the news was that the mercury was still falling,
while the wind, instead of evincing a disposition to moderate, blew
harder than ever.  And oh, what a dreary outlook it was when, swathed in
oilskins, I passed through the hatchway and stepped out on deck!  The
sky was entirely veiled by an unbroken mass of dark, purplish, slate-
coloured cloud that was almost black in its deeper shadows, with long,
tattered streamers of dirty whitish vapour scurrying wildly athwart it;
a heavy, leaden-hued, white-crested, foam-flecked sea was running, and
in the midst of the picture was the poor crippled frigate, rolling and
labouring and staggering onward like a wounded sea-bird under her jury-
spars and spray-darkened canvas, with a miniature ocean washing hither
and thither athwart her heaving deck, and a crowd of panting, straining,
half-naked men clustering about her pumps, while others were as busily
employed in passing buckets up and down through the hatchways; the whole
set to the dismal harmony of howling wind, hissing spray, the wearisome
and incessant wash of water, and the groaning and complaining sounds of
the labouring hull.  The skipper and the first luff were pacing the
weather side of the poop together in earnest converse, and at each turn
in their walk they both paused for an instant, as by mutual consent, to
cast a look of anxious inquiry to windward.

Presently I saw the carpenter coming along the deck with the sounding-
rod in his hand.  I intercepted him just by the foot of the poop ladder
and remarked--

"Well, Chips, what is the best news you have to tell us?"

"The best news?" echoed Chips, with a solemn shake of the head; "there
ain't _no_ best, Mr Courtenay, it's all worst, sir; there's over four
foot of water in the hold now, and it's gainin' on us at the rate of
five inches an hour; and if this here gale don't break pretty quick I
won't answer for the consequences!"

And up he went to make his report to the skipper.

This was bad news indeed, especially for the unfortunate men who were
compelled by dire necessity to toil unceasingly at the back-breaking
labour of working the pumps; but I felt no apprehension as to our
ultimate safety.  Five inches of water per hour was a formidable gain
for a leak to make in spite of all the pumping and baling that could be
accomplished, yet it would take so many hours at that rate to reduce the
frigate to a water-logged condition that ere the arrival of that moment
the gale would certainly blow itself out, the labouring and straining of
the ship would cease, the leak would be got under control again, and all
would be well.

But when, at noon that day,--the gale showing no symptoms whatever of
abatement,--the captain gave orders for the upper-deck guns to be
launched overboard, I began to realise that our condition was such as
might easily become critical.  And when, about half an hour before
sunset, orders were given to throw the _main-deck_ guns overboard, it
became borne in upon me that matters were becoming mighty serious with
us.

With the approach of night the gale seemed rather to increase in
strength than otherwise, while the sea was certainly considerably
heavier; and the worst of it was that there was no indication of an
approaching change for the better.  As for the poor _Althea_, she
certainly did not labour quite so heavily now that she was relieved of
the weight of her guns, but the water in the hold still gained steadily
upon the pumps, and the more experienced hands among us were beginning
to hint at the possibility of our being compelled to leave her and take
to the boats.  And these hints received something of confirmation when,
shortly after the commencement of the first watch, the carpenter and his
mates were seen going the rounds of the boats and examining into their
condition with the aid of lanterns.  Nevertheless, and despite these
omens, the men stuck resolutely to the pumps and the baling all through
the night, the captain and the first lieutenant animating and
encouraging them by their presence throughout the long, dismal, dreary
hours of darkness.

About three bells in the morning watch the welcome news spread
throughout the ship that the mercury had at length begun to rise again;
and with the approach of dawn it became apparent that the gale was
breaking, the sky to windward gave signs of clearing, and hope once more
sprang up within our breasts.  But the men, although still willing and
even eager to continue the heart-breaking work of pumping and baling,
were by this time utterly worn out; the water in the hold steadily and
relentlessly gained upon them, despite their most desperate efforts, and
by the arrival of breakfast-time it had become perfectly apparent to
everybody that the poor old _Althea_ was a doomed ship!

If, however, there was any doubt as to this in the minds of any of us,
it was quickly dispelled, for after breakfast the order was passed to
knock off baling; and the men thus relieved were at once set to work
under the first and second lieutenants, the one party to prepare a sea
anchor, and the other to attend to the provisioning of the boats and get
them ready for launching.  I was attached to the first lieutenant's
party, or that which undertook the preparation of the sea anchor; and as
the idea impressed me as being rather ingenious, I will describe it for
the benefit of those who may feel interested in such matters, prefacing
my description with the explanation that, in consequence of the
springing up of the gale so soon after our action with the Frenchmen,
our jury-rig was of a very primitive and incomplete character, such as
would enable us to run fairly well before the wind, but not such as
would permit of our lying-to; hence the need for a sea anchor, now that
the necessity had arisen for us to launch our boats in heavy weather.

The sea anchor was the offspring of the first lieutenant's
inventiveness, and it consisted of an old fore-topsail bent to a couple
of booms of suitable length and stoutness.  The head of the sail was
bent to one of the booms with seizings, in much the same manner as it
would have been bent to a topsail yard, while the clews were securely
lashed to the extremities of the other boom.  Then to the boom which
represented the topsail yard was attached, a crow-foot made of two spans
of stout hawser, having an eye in the centre of them to which to bend
the cable.  The lower boom was well weighted by the attachment to it of
a number of pigs of iron ballast, as well as our stream anchor; after
which the starboard cable was paid out and passed along aft, outside the
fore rigging, the end being then brought inboard and bent on to the
crow-foot.  The whole was then made up as compactly as possible with
lashings, after which, by means of tackles aloft, it was hoisted clear
of the bulwarks and lowered down over the side; the lashings were then
cut and the sail dropped into the water, opening out as it did so, when,
the lower boom sinking with the weight attached to it, a broad surface
was exposed, acting as a very efficient sea anchor.  At the moment when
everything was ready to let go, the ship's helm was put hard over,
bringing her broad-side-on to the sea, when, as she drove away to
leeward, she brought a strain upon her cable that at once fetched her up
head to wind.  This part of the process having been successfully
accomplished, it was an easy matter to bend a spring on to the cable and
heave the ship round broadside-on to the sea once more, in which
position she afforded an excellent lee under the shelter of which to
launch our boats, which, but for this contrivance, must have inevitably
been swamped.

By the time that all this was done the boats were ready for launching,
and the captain gave orders for this to be at once proceeded with,
beginning with the launch; this being the heaviest boat in the ship, and
the most difficult to get into the water.  I felt exceedingly doubtful
as to the ability of our jury-spars to support the weight of so heavy a
craft, but, by staying them well, the delicate task was at length
successfully accomplished, when the worst cases among the wounded were
brought on deck and carefully lowered over the side into the boat
beneath, the doctor, with his instruments and medicine-chest, being
already there to receive them.  And as soon as she had received her
complement, the launch was veered away to leeward at the end of a long
line--but still under the shelter of the ship's hull--to make room for
the first cutter.  The rest of the boats followed in succession--the men
preserving to the very last moment the most admirable order and
discipline--until only the captain's gig, of which I was placed in
command, remained.  The proper complement of this boat was six men, in
addition to the coxswain; but in order that the wounded--who were placed
in the launch and the first and second cutters--might be as little
crowded as possible, the remainder of the boats received rather more
than their full complement, in consequence of which my crew numbered
ten, all told, instead of seven.  We were the last boat to leave the
ship, the skipper having gone below to his cabin for some purpose at the
last minute; and I assure you that, the bustle and excitement of getting
the men out of the ship being now all over, I found it rather nervous
and trying work to stand there in the gangway, waiting for the
reappearance of the captain on deck.  For the ship was by this time in a
sinking condition and liable to go down under our feet at any moment,
having settled so low in the water that she rolled her closed main-deck
ports completely under with every sickly lurch of her upon the still
heavy sea that was now continuously breaking over her, while the water
could be distinctly heard washing about down below.

At length the skipper came out of his cabin, bearing in his hand a large
japanned tin box.

"Jump down, Mr Courtenay, and stand by to take this box from me," he
cried; and down the side I went, needing no second bidding.  The box was
carefully passed down to me, and I stowed it away in the stern-sheets.
When I had done so, and looked up at the ship, Captain Harrison was
standing in the gangway with his hat in his hand, looking wistfully and
sorrowfully along the deserted decks and aloft at the jury-spars that,
with their rigging, so pathetically expressed the idea of a mortally
wounded creature gallantly but hopelessly struggling against the death
that was inexorably drawing near.  Some such fancy perhaps suggested
itself to him, for I distinctly saw him dash his hand across his eyes
more than once.  At length he turned, descended the side-ladder, and,
watching his opportunity, sprang lightly into the boat.

"Shove off, Mr Courtenay!" he ordered, as he wrapped himself in his
boat cloak.

"Shove off!"  I reiterated in turn, and forthwith away we went, the men
nothing loath, as I could clearly see, for the ship was now liable to
founder at any moment; indeed the wonder to me was that she remained
afloat so long, for she had by this time sunk so deep that her channels
were completely buried, only showing when she rolled heavily away from
us.  Poor old barkie! what a desolate and forlorn object she looked as
we pulled away from her, with little more than her bulwarks showing
above water, with the seas making a clean breach over her bows
continually, as she rolled and plunged with sickening sluggishness to
the great ridges of steel-grey water that incessantly swooped down upon
her and into which her bows, pinned down by the weight of water within
her hull, occasionally bored, as though, tired of the hopeless struggle
for existence, she had at length summoned resolution to take the final
plunge and so end it all.  Again and again I thought she was gone, but
again and yet again she emerged wearily and heavily out of the deluges
of water that sought to overwhelm her; but at length an unusually heavy
sea caught her with her bows pinned down after a plunge into the trough;
clear, green, and unbroken it brimmed to her figure-head and poured in a
foaming cataract over her bows, sweeping the whole length of her from
stem to stern until her hull was completely buried.  As the wave left
her it was seen that her bows were still submerged, and a moment later
it became apparent that the end had come and she was taking her final
plunge.

"There she goes!" shouted one of the men; and as the fellow uttered the
words the captain rose to his feet in the stern-sheets and doffed his
hat, as though he had been standing beside the grave of a dear friend,
watching the dear old barkie as, with her stern gradually rising high,
she slid slowly and solemnly out of sight, the occupants of the boats
giving her a parting cheer as she vanished.  The captain stood
motionless until the swirl that marked her grave had disappeared, then
he replaced his hat, resumed his seat, and remarked--

"Give way, men!  Mr Courtenay, be good enough to put me aboard the
launch, if you please."



CHAPTER THREE.

THE GIG IS CAUGHT IN A HURRICANE.

Upon reaching the launch, the captain's first care was to satisfy
himself as to the well-being and comfort of the poor wounded fellows
aboard her; but the doctor had already attended to this matter, with the
result that they were as comfortable as the utmost care and forethought
could render them.  The master, meanwhile, had been ascertaining the
exact latitude and longitude of the spot where the frigate had gone
down, and he now communicated the result of his calculations to the
captain, who thereupon gave orders for the boats to steer southwest on a
speed trial for the day, the leading boat to heave-to at sunset and wait
for the rest to close.  I had not the remotest notion as to the meaning
of this somewhat singular order, but my obvious duty was to execute it;
so I forthwith made sail upon the gig, and a very few minutes sufficed
to demonstrate that we were the fastest boat of the whole squadron.  Nor
was this at all surprising, for the gig was not an ordinary service
boat; she was the captain's own private property, having been built to
order from his own design, with a special view to the development of
exceptional sailing powers, boat-sailing being quite a hobby with him.
She was a splendid craft of her kind, measuring thirty feet in length,
with a beam of six feet, and she pulled six oars.  She was a most
beautiful model of the whale-boat type, double-ended, with quite an
unusual amount of sheer fore and aft, which gave her a fine, bold,
buoyant bow and stern; moreover, these were covered in with light
turtle-back decks, that forward measuring six feet in length, while the
after turtle-back measured five feet from the stern-post.  She was
fitted with a keel nine inches deep amidships, tapering off to four
inches deep at each end; was rigged as a schooner, with standing fore
and main lug and a small jib, and, with her ordinary crew on board and
sitting to windward, required no ballast even in a fresh breeze.  Small
wonder, therefore, was it that, having such a boat under us, we had run
the rest of the fleet out of sight by midday, the wind still blowing
strong, although it was moderating rapidly.

The first lieutenant was, like the captain, fond of inventing and
designing things, but his speciality took the form of logs for
determining the speed of craft through the water; and in the course of
his experiments he had provided each of the frigate's boats with an
ingenious spring arrangement which, attached to an ordinary fishing-line
with a lead weight secured to its outer end, which was continuously
towed astern, registered the speed of the boat with a very near approach
to perfect accuracy.

The day passed uneventfully away, the wind moderating steadily all the
time, and the sun breaking through considerably before noon, enabling me
to secure a meridian altitude wherefrom to compute my latitude.  The
sea, too, was going down, and when the sun set that night the sky wore a
very promising fine-weather aspect.  As the great golden orb vanished
below the horizon we rounded the boat to, lowered our sails, and moored
her to a sea anchor made of the oars lashed together in a bundle with
the painter bent on to them.  And later on, when it fell dark, we
lighted a lantern and hoisted it to our fore-masthead, as a beacon for
which the other boats might steer.  The gig had behaved splendidly all
through the day, never shipping so much as a single drop of water, and
now that she was riding to her oars she took the sea so easily and
buoyantly that I felt as safe as I had ever done aboard the poor old
_Althea_ herself, and unhesitatingly allowed all hands to turn in as
best they could in the bottom of the boat, undertaking to keep a lookout
myself until the other boats had joined company.

The first boat to make her appearance was the service gig in charge of
Mr Flowers, the third lieutenant; she ranged up alongside and hove-to
about two hours after sunset, soon afterwards following our example by
throwing out a sea anchor.  Then came the first and second cutters, in
command of the first and second lieutenants; the first cutter arriving
about an hour after Mr Flowers, while the second cutter appeared about
a quarter of an hour later.  The launch followed about half an hour
astern of the second cutter; but this was not to be wondered at, the
former being rather deep, owing to the very generous supply of water
that the doctor had insisted on carrying for the comfort of the wounded.
Then, some three-quarters of an hour later, came the jolly-boat in
charge of the boatswain; and finally the dinghy, carrying four hands and
in charge of my friend and fellow-mid, Jack Keene, turned up close upon
midnight.

Long ere this, however, we had each in succession spoken the launch,
reporting the distance that we had traversed up to sunset.  And, with
the data thus supplied, the master had gone to work upon a calculation
which formed the basis of a sort of table showing the ratio of the
speeds of the several boats, with the aid of which the officer in charge
of each boat could estimate with a moderate degree of accuracy the
position of each of the other boats at any given moment--so long, that
is to say, as the wind held fair enough to allow the boats to steer a
given course.  A copy of this table was then furnished to the officer in
command of each boat, after which the captain ordered Mr Flowers to
make the best of his way to Barbadoes, with instructions to report the
loss of the frigate immediately upon his arrival, with a request to the
senior naval officer that a craft of some sort might be forthwith
despatched in search of the other boats.  Similar instructions were next
given to me, except that my port of destination was Bermuda.  Of course
we each carried a written as well as a verbal message to the senior
naval officer of the port to which we were bound; and equally, of
course, it was impressed upon us both that if we happened to encounter a
friendly craft _en route_, and could induce her to undertake the search,
it would be so much the better.  Having received these instructions, and
taken young Lindsay out of the launch, which was a trifle over-crowded,
I at once made sail and parted company, the occupants of the other boats
giving us the encouragement of a farewell cheer as we did so; they also
making sail at the same time on a west-south-westerly course, which
would afford them about an even chance of being picked up by a craft
either from Bermuda or Barbadoes; while, in the event of their being
found by neither, they stood a very good chance of hitting off one or
another of the Leeward Islands.

For the remainder of that night we sped gaily onward, with the wind
about two points free, making splendid progress; although I am bound to
admit that, with the height of sea and the strength of wind that still
prevailed, there were moments when the task of sailing the boat became
exciting enough to satisfy the cravings of even the most exacting
individual.  Lindsay and I relieved each other at the tiller, watch and
watch, with one hand forward to keep a lookout ahead and to leeward, the
rest of the poor fellows being so thoroughly worn out by their long
spell at the pumps that rest and sleep was an even more imperative
necessity for them than it was for us.

By the time of sunrise the wind had dwindled away to a topgallant
breeze, with a corresponding reduction in the amount of sea; we were
therefore enabled to shake out the double reef that we had thus far been
compelled to carry in our canvas, while the aspect of the sky was more
promising than it had been for several days past.  The weather was now
as favourable as we could possibly wish, the wind being just fresh
enough to send us along at top speed, gunwale-to, under whole canvas,
while the sea was going down rapidly.  But, as the day wore on, the
improvement in the weather progressed just a little too far; it became
even finer than we wished it, the wind continuing to drop steadily,
until by noon we were sliding over the long, mountainous swell at a
speed of barely four knots, with the hot sun beating down upon us far
too ardently to be pleasant.  Needless to say, we kept a sharp lookout
for a sail all through the day, but saw nothing; the flying-fish that
sparkled out from the ridges of the swell and went skimming away to port
and starboard, gleaming as brilliantly in the strong sunlight as a
handful of new silver dollars, being the only objects to break the
solitude that environed us.  By sunset that day the wind had died
completely out, leaving the ocean a vast surface of slow-moving, glassy
undulations, and I was reluctantly compelled to order the canvas to be
taken in, the masts to be struck, and the oars to be thrown out.  Then,
indeed, as the night closed down upon us and the stars came winking, one
by one, out of the immeasurable expanse of darkening blue above us, the
silence of the vast ocean solitude that hemmed us in became a thing that
might be felt.  So oppressive was it that, as by instinct, our
conversation gradually dwindled to the desultory exchange of a few
whispered remarks, uttered at lengthening intervals, until it died out
altogether; while the profound stillness of air and ocean seemed to
become accentuated rather than broken by the measured roll of the oars
in the rowlocks, and the tinkling lap of the water under the bows and
along the bends of the boat.  We pulled four oars only instead of six,
in order that we might have two relays, or watches, who relieved each
other every four hours.  The men pulled a long, steady, easy stroke, of
a sort that enabled them to keep on throughout the watch without undue
fatigue, by taking a five minutes' spell of rest about once an hour; but
it was weary work for the poor fellows, after all, and our progress soon
became provokingly slow.

About three bells in the middle watch that night, as I half sat, half
reclined in the stern-sheets, drowsily steering by a star, and
occasionally glancing over my shoulder at the ruddy, glowing sickle of
the rising moon, then in her last quarter, we were all suddenly startled
by the sound of a loud, deep-drawn sigh that came to us from somewhere
off the larboard bow, apparently at no great distance from the boat; and
while we sat wondering and listening, with poised oars, the sound was
repeated close aboard of us, but this time on our starboard quarter,
accompanied by a soft washing of water; and turning sharply, I beheld,
right in the shimmering, golden wake of the moon, a huge, black,
shapeless, gleaming bulk noiselessly upheave itself out of the black
water and slowly glide up abreast of us until it was alongside and all
but within reach of our oars.

"A whale!" whispered one of the men, in tones that were a trifle
unsteady from the startling surprise of the creature's sudden
appearance.

"Ay," replied the man next him, "and that was another that we heard just
now; bull and cow, most likely.  I only hopes they haven't got a calf
with 'em, because if they have, the bull may take it into his head to
attack us; they're mighty short-tempered sometimes when they have young
uns cruisin' in company!  I minds one time when I was aboard the old
_Walrus_--a whaler sailin' out of Dundee--that was afore I was pressed."

Another long sigh-like expiration abruptly interrupted the yarn, and
close under our bows there rose another leviathan, so closely indeed
that, unless it was a trick of the imagination, I felt a slight tremor
thrill through the boat, as though he had touched us!  Involuntarily I
glanced over the side; and it was perhaps well that I did so, for there,
right underneath the boat, far down in the black depths, I perceived a
small, faint, glimmering patch of phosphorescence, that, as I looked,
grew larger and more distinct, until, in the course of a very few
seconds, it assumed the shape of another monster rising plumb underneath
us.

"Back water, men! back water, for your lives!  There is one of them
coming up right under our keel!"  I cried; and, at the words, the men
dashed their oars into the water and we backed out of the way, just in
time to avoid being hove out of the water and capsized, this fellow
happening to come up with something very like a rush.  Meanwhile, others
were rising here and there all around us, until we found ourselves
surrounded by a school of between twenty and thirty whales.  It was a
rather alarming situation for us; for although the creatures appeared
perfectly quiet and well-disposed, there was no knowing at what moment
one of them might gather way and run us down, either intentionally or
inadvertently; while there was also the chance that another might rise
beneath us so rapidly as to render it impossible for us to avoid him.
One of the men suggested that we should endeavour to frighten them away
by making a noise of some sort; but the former whaler strongly vetoed
this proposition, asserting--whether rightly or wrongly I know not--that
if we startled them the chances were that those nearest at hand would
turn upon us and destroy the boat.  We therefore deemed it best to
maintain a discreet silence; and in this condition of unpleasant
suspense we remained, floating motionless for a full half-hour, the
whales meanwhile lying as motionless as ourselves, when suddenly a stir
seemed to thrill through the whole herd, and all in a moment they got
under way and went leisurely off in a northerly direction, to our great
relief.  We gave them a full quarter of an hour to get well out of our
way, and then the oars dipped into the water once more, and we resumed
our voyage.

At daybreak the atmosphere was still as stagnant as it had been all
through the night, the surface of the ocean being unbroken by the
faintest ripple, save where, about a mile away, broad on our starboard
bow, the fin of a solitary shark lazily swimming athwart our course
turned up a thin, blue, wedge-shaped ripple as he swam.  There was,
however, a faint, scarcely perceptible mistiness in the atmosphere that
led me to hope we might get a small breeze from somewhere--I little
cared where--before the day grew many hours older.  At nine o'clock I
secured an excellent set of sights for my longitude,--having taken the
precaution to set my watch by the ship's chronometer before parting
company with the launch,--and it was depressing to find, after I had
worked out my calculations, how little progress we had made during the
twenty-one hours since the previous noon.  As the morning wore on the
mistiness that I had observed in the atmosphere at daybreak passed away,
but the sky lost its rich depth of blue, while the sun hung aloft, a
dazzling but rayless globe of palpitating fire.  A change of some sort
was brewing, I felt certain, and I was somewhat surprised that, with
such a sky above us, the atmosphere should remain so absolutely
stagnant.

As the day wore on, the thin, scarcely perceptible veil of vapour that
had dimmed the richness of the sky tints in the early morning gradually
thickened and seemed to be assuming somewhat of a distinctness of shape.
I just succeeded in securing the meridian altitude of the sun, for the
determination of our latitude, but that was all.  Half an hour after
noon the haze had grown so dense that the great luminary showed through
it merely as a shapeless blur of pale, watery radiance, and within
another hour he had disappeared altogether from the overcast sky.  Still
the wind failed to come to our help; the atmosphere seemed to be dead,
so absolutely motionless was it; and although the sun had vanished
behind the murky vapours that were stealthily and imperceptibly veiling
the firmament, the heat was so distressing that the perspiration
streamed from every pore, the manipulation of the oars grew more and
more languid, and at length, as though actuated by a common impulse, the
men gave in, declaring that they were utterly exhausted and could do no
more.  And I could well believe their assertion, for even I, whose
exertions were limited to the steering of the boat, felt that even such
slight labour was almost too arduous to be much longer endured.  The
oars were accordingly laid in, we went to dinner, and then the men flung
themselves down in the bottom of the boat, and, with their pipes
clenched between their teeth, fell fast asleep, an example which was
quickly followed by Lindsay and myself, despite all our efforts to the
contrary.

When I awoke it was still breathlessly calm, and I thought for a moment
that night had fallen, so dark was it; but upon consulting my watch I
found that it still wanted nearly an hour to sunset.  But, heavens! what
a change had taken place in the aspect of the weather during the four
hours or so that I had lain asleep in the stern-sheets of the boat!  It
is quite possible that, had I remained awake, I should scarcely have
been aware of more than the mere fact that the sky was steadily assuming
an increasingly sombre and threatening aspect; but, awaking as I did to
the abrupt perception of the change that had been steadily working
itself out during the previous four hours, it is not putting it too
strongly to say that I was startled.  For whereas my last conscious
memory of the weather, before succumbing to the blandishments of the
drowsy god, had been merely that of a lowering, overcast sky, that might
portend anything, but probably meant no more than a sharp thunder-
squall, I now awakened to the consciousness that the firmament above
consisted of a vast curtain of frowning, murky, black-grey cloud,
streaked or furrowed in a very remarkable manner from about east-south-
east to west-nor'-west, the lower edges of the clouds presenting a
curious frayed appearance, while the clouds themselves glowed here and
there with patches of lurid, fiery red, as though each bore within its
bosom a fiercely burning furnace, the ruddy light of which shone through
in places.  I had never before beheld a sky like it, but its aspect was
sufficiently alarming to convince the veriest tyro in weather-lore that
something quite out of the common was brewing; so I at once awoke the
slumbering crew to inquire whether any of them could read the signs and
tell me what we might expect.

The newly-awakened men yawned, stretched their arms above their heads,
and dragged themselves stiffly up on the thwarts, gazing with looks of
wonder and alarm at the portentous sky that hung above them.

"Well, if we was in the Chinese seas, I should say that a typhoon was
goin' to bust out shortly," observed one of them--a grizzled, mahogany-
visaged old salt, who had seen service all over the world.  "But," he
continued, "they don't have typhoons in the Atlantic, not as ever I've
heard say."

"No, they don't have typhoons here, but they has hurricanes, which I
take to mean pretty much the same thing," remarked another.

"You are right, Tom," said I, thus put upon the scent, as it were, "a
Chinese typhoon and a West Indian hurricane are the same thing under
different names.  A third name for them is `cyclone'; and as this
threatening sky seems to remind Dunn so powerfully of a Chinese typhoon,
depend upon it we are going to have a taste of a West Indian hurricane,
or cyclone.  I have read somewhere that they frequently originate out
here in the heart of the Atlantic."

"If we're agoin' to have a typhoon, or a hurricane, or a cyclone--
whichever you likes to call it--all I say is, `The Lord ha' mercy upon
us,'" remarked Dunn.  "Big ships has all their work cut out to weather
one o' them gales; so what are we agoin' to do in this here open boat,
I'd like to know?"

"Have you ever been through a typhoon, Dunn?"  I asked.

"Yes, sir, I have, and more than one of 'em," was the reply.  "I was
caught in one off the Paracels, in the old _Audacious_ frigate,--as fine
a sea-boat as ever was launched,--and, in less time than it takes to
tell of it, we was dismasted and hove down on our beam-ends; and it took
us all our time to keep the hooker afloat and get her into Hong-Kong
harbour.  And the very next year I was catched again--in the Bashee
Channel, this time--in the _Lively_ schooner, of six guns.  We knowed it
was comin'; it gived us good warnin' and left us plenty of time to get
ready for it; so Mr Barker--the lieutenant in command--gived orders to
send the yards and both topmasts down on deck, and rig in the jib-boom;
and then he stripped her down to a close-reefed boom foresail.  But we
capsized--reg'larly `turned turtle'--when the gale struck us, and only
five of us lived to tell the tale.  As to this here boat, if a hurricane
anything at all like them Chinee typhoons gets hold of her, why, we
shall just be blowed clean away out o' water and up among the clouds!
And that's just what's goin' to happen, if signs counts for anything."

Wherewith the speaker thrust both hands into his trouser pockets,
disgustedly spat a small ocean of tobacco-juice overboard, and subsided
into gloomy silence.

It was a sufficiently alarming retrospect, in all conscience, to which
we had just listened, and the prophetic utterance wherewith it had been
wound up, while powerfully suggestive of a highly novel and picturesque
experience in store for us, was certainly not attractive enough to cause
us to look forward to its fulfilment with undisturbed serenity;
nevertheless, I did not feel like tamely giving in without making some
effort to save the boat and the lives with which I had been entrusted,
so I set myself seriously to consider how we could best utilise such
time as might be allowed us, in making some sort of preparation to meet
the now confidently-expected outburst.  I looked over our resources, and
found that they consisted, in the main, of eight oars, two boat-hooks,
two masts, two yards, three sails, half a coil of two-inch rope that
some thoughtful individual had pitched into the boat when getting her
ready for launching, half a coil of ratline and two large balls of spun-
yarn, due to the forethought of the same or some other individual, a
painter some ten fathoms long, and the boat's anchor, together with the
gratings, stretchers, and other fittings belonging to the boat, and a
few oddments that might or might not prove useful.

Was it possible to do anything with these?  After considering the matter
carefully I thought it was.  The greatest danger to which we were likely
to be exposed seemed to me to consist in our being swamped by the flying
spindrift and scud-water or by the breaking seas, and if we could by any
means contrive to keep the water out there was perhaps a bare chance
that we might be able to weather the gale.  And, after a little further
consideration, I thought that what I desired to do might possibly be
accomplished by means of the boat's sails, which were practically new,
and made of very light, but closely woven canvas, that ought to prove
water-tight.  So, having unfolded my ideas to the men, we all went to
work with alacrity to put them to the test of actual practice.

Of course it was utterly useless to think of scudding before the gale;
our only hope of living through what was impending depended upon our
ability to keep the boat riding bows-on to the sea, and to do this it
became necessary for us to improvise a sea anchor again.  This was
easily done by lashing together six of our eight oars in a bundle, three
of the blades at one end and three at the other, with the boat anchor
lashed amidships to sink the oars somewhat in the water and give them a
grip of it.  A span, made by doubling a suitable length of our two-inch
rope, was bent on to the whole affair, and the boat's painter was then
bent on to the span, when the apparatus was launched overboard, and our
sea anchor was ready for service.

Our next task was to cut the two lug-sails adrift from their yards.  The
mainsail was then doubled in half, and one end spread over the fore
turtle-back and drawn taut.  Over this, outside the boat and under her
keel, we then passed a length of our two-inch rope, girding the boat
with it and confining the fore end of the sail to the turtle-back, when,
with the aid of one of the stretchers, we were able to heave this girth-
rope so taut as to render it impossible for the sail to blow away.  But
before heaving it taut, we passed a second girth-rope round the boat
over the after turtle-back, next connecting both girth-ropes together by
lengths of rope running fore and aft along the outside of the boat
underneath the edge of the top strake.  The doubled mainsail was then
strained taut across the boat, and its edges tucked underneath the fore-
and-aft lines outside the boat; the foresail was treated in the same
way, but with its fore edge overlapped by about a foot of the after edge
of the mainsail.  Our girth-ropes were then hove taut, with the finished
result that we had a canvas deck covering the boat from the fore turtle-
back to within about six feet of the after one.  The edges of the sails
were next turned up and secured by seizings on either side, and our deck
was complete.  But, as it then stood, I was not satisfied with it, for
at the after extremity of it there was an opening some six feet long,
and as wide as the boat, through which a very considerable quantity of
water might enter--quite enough, indeed, to swamp the boat.  And with
our canvas deck lying flat, as it then was, there was no doubt that very
large quantities of water would wash over it, and pour down through the
opening, should the sea run heavily.  Our deck needed to be sloped
upward from the forward to the after end of the boat, so that any water
which might break over it would flow off on either side before reaching
the opening to which I have referred.  We accordingly laid the boat's
mainmast along the thwarts fore and aft, amidships, and lashed the heel
firmly to the middle of the foremost thwart.  Then, by lashing our two
longest stretchers together, we made a crutch for the head or after end
of the mast to rest in; when, by placing this crutch upright in the
stern-sheets against the back-board, we were able to raise the mast
underneath the sails until it not only formed a sort of ridge-pole,
converting the sails into a sloping roof, but it also strained the
canvas as tight as a drum-head, rendering it so much the less liable to
blow away, while it at the same time afforded a smooth surface for the
water to pour off, and it also possessed the further advantage that it
gave us a little more headroom underneath the canvas deck or roof.  This
completed our preparations--none too soon, for it was now rapidly
growing dark, and the light of our lantern was needed while putting the
finishing touches to our work.

Our task accomplished, we of course at once extinguished our lantern,--
for candles were scarce with us,--and we then for the first time became
aware of the startling rapidity with which the night seemed to have
fallen; for with the extinguishment of the lantern we found ourselves
enwrapped in darkness so thick that it could almost be felt.  This,
however, proved to be only transitory, for with the lapse of a few
minutes our eyes became accustomed to the gloom, and we were then able
not only to discern the shapes of the vast pile of clouds that
threateningly overhung us, but also their reflections in the oil-smooth
water, the latter made visible by the dull, ruddy glow emanating from
the clouds themselves, which was even more noticeable now than it had
been before nightfall, and which was so unnatural and appalling a sight
that I believe there was not one of us who was not more or less affected
by it.  It was the first time that I had ever beheld such a sight, and I
am not ashamed to confess that the sensation it produced in me was, for
a short time, something very nearly akin to terror, so dreadful a
portent did it seem to be, and so profoundly impressed was I with our
utter helplessness away out there in mid-ocean, in that small, frail
boat, with no friendly shelter at hand, and nothing to protect us from
the gathering fury of the elements--nothing, that is to say, but the
hand of God; and--I say it with shame--I thought far too little of Him
in those days.

Not the least trying part of it all was the painful tension of the
nerves produced by the suspense--the enforced _waiting_ for the awful
ordeal that lay before us.  There was nothing for us to do, nothing to
distract our attention from that awful, threatening sky, that looked as
though it might momentarily be expected to burst into a devastating
flame that would destroy the world!  Some of the men, indeed, frankly
avowed that the sight was too terrible for them, and crept away under
the canvas, where they disposed themselves in the bottom of the boat,
and strove to while away the time in sleep.

At length--it would be about the close of the second dog-watch--we
became conscious that the swell, which had almost entirely subsided, was
gathering weight again, coming this time out from the north-west.  At
first the heave was only barely perceptible, but within half an hour it
had grown into a succession of long, steep undulations, running at right
angles athwart the old swell, causing the boat to heave and sway with a
singularly uneasy movement, and frequent vicious, jerky tugs at her
painter.  Then we noticed that the clouds--which had hitherto been
motionless, or so nearly so that their movement was not to be detected--
were working with a writhing motion, as though they were chained giants
enduring the agonies of some dreadful torture, while the awful ruddy
light which they emitted glowed with a still fiercer and more lurid
radiance, lighting up the restlessly heaving ocean until it burned like
the flood of Phlegethon.  Anon there appeared a few scattered shreds of
smoky scud speeding swiftly athwart the fiery canopy, and almost
immediately afterwards, with a low, weird, wailing sound, there swept
over us a scurrying blast that came and was gone again in a second.  It
came out from the north-west, and judging that this was probably the
direction from which the gale itself would come, we at once rigged out
over the stern one of the two oars remaining in the boat, and swept the
bows of the gig round until they pointed due north-west.  Scarcely had
we accomplished this when a second scuffle came whistling down upon us
from the same direction, and before it had swept out of hearing astern
there arose a low moaning to windward, that increased in strength and
volume with appalling rapidity.  The sky suddenly grew black as ink
ahead, a lengthening line of ghostly white appeared stretching along the
horizon ahead and bearing down upon us with frightful speed; the moan
grew into a deep, thunderous, howling roar, and from that to a yell
which might have issued from the throats of a million fiends in torment;
the white wall of foam and the yelling fury of wind struck us at the
same instant; and the next thing I knew was that I was lying flat in the
stern-sheets, hatless, and with my face stinging as though it had been
cut with a whip; while the boat trembled and quivered from stem to stern
with the scourging of wind and water, and the spray blew in a continuous
sheet over the opening above me and into the sea astern, not a drop
falling into the boat.  The long-expected hurricane was upon us; and now
all that remained was to see how long our frail craft could withstand
the onslaught of the terrific forces arrayed against her.



CHAPTER FOUR.

WE FALL IN WITH AND CAPTURE A SCHOONER.

The air was thick with scud-water, so thick, indeed, that it was like
fog, it being impossible to see farther than some twenty fathoms from
the boat.  This scud-water swept horizontally along in a perfect deluge,
and stung like shot when, by way of experiment, I exposed one of my
hands to it.  As for the wind, it was like an invisible wall driving
along; it was simply impossible to stand up against it; it scourged the
surface of the ocean into a level plain of white froth, which was torn
away and hurled along like a shower of bullets.  Our sea anchor
fortunately maintained a sufficient hold upon the water to keep the gig
riding head to wind, but that was as much as it could do; with the
painter strained taut for its whole length, the boat was driving away to
leeward, stern-first, at a speed of--according to my estimate--fully
seven miles an hour!  And it was, perhaps, a fortunate thing for us that
such was the case; for had we been riding to a sea anchor powerful
enough, and sunk deep enough in the water to have held us nearly
stationary, I believe we should have been swamped within five minutes of
the outburst of the hurricane.  Even as it was, and despite all the
precautions that we had taken to make our canvas covering perfectly
secure, the wind tugged at it and beat upon it with such vehement fury
that I momentarily expected to see it torn bodily off the boat and go
driving away to leeward in tatters.  Probably the thorough soaking that
it almost instantly received--and which caused the fabric to shrink up
and strain still tighter than it was before--may have had something to
do with the stubborn resistance that it offered to the gale.  Be that as
it may, it held intact; and to that circumstance I attribute the fact
that the gig was not instantly swamped.  But no woven fabric, however
stout,--scarcely wood itself,--could long withstand such a furious
pelting of scud-water as our sails were now enduring, and in about ten
minutes the water began to drip through, first in single drops, here and
there, then in a few small streams, that rapidly increased in number
until there seemed in the thick darkness to be hundreds of them; for in
endeavouring to avoid one stream we only succeeded in encountering two
or three more.  To add to the unpleasantness of the situation, it was
impossible for us to light the lantern; for although we were sheltered
from the direct violence of the gale by the canvas, the wind somehow
managed to penetrate beneath, creating quite a formidable little scuffle
there, and easily frustrating all our efforts to obtain a light.  And
very soon we had another annoyance to contend with, in the shape of a
gradual accumulation of water in the boat, whether caused by a leak in
the hull, or by the drainage of the water through the canvas we knew
not; but it obliged us to have recourse to baling, which proved to be a
singularly awkward operation in such cramped quarters and such pitchy
darkness.

The first mad fury of the outburst lasted for about three-quarters of an
hour,--it _seemed_ a perfect eternity to us, in our condition of
overpowering suspense, but I do not believe it was longer than three-
quarters of an hour at the utmost,--and then it subsided into a heavy
gale of wind, and the sea began to get up so rapidly that within another
hour we were being flung hither and thither with such terrific violence
that in a very short time our bodies were covered with bruises, while
some of the men actually became sea-sick!  And now, too, a new danger
threatened us; for as the sea rose it commenced to break, and it was not
long ere we had the seas washing, in rapidly increasing volume, over the
boat, and pouring down through the opening over the stern-sheets.  This
kept us baling in good earnest, not only with our solitary bucket but
with hats and boots as well, to save the boat from being swamped.  And
the bitterest hardship of it all was that there was no relief, not a
moment's intermission throughout the whole of that dreadful,
interminable night.  We were in continuous peril of death with every
breath that we drew; every second saw us trembling upon the verge of
eternity, and escaping destruction as by a constantly recurring
succession of miracles.  It was a frightful experience, so frightful
that language is utterly powerless to describe it; the most eloquent pen
could do no more than convey a poor, feeble, and miserably inadequate
idea of the terror and suffering of it.  No one who has not undergone
such an experience can form the remotest conception of its horrors.

All things mundane have an end, however, sooner or later; and at length
the welcome light of day once more made its appearance, piercing slowly
and with seeming reluctance through the dense canopy of black, storm-
torn cloud and flying scud that overhung us.  And then we almost wished
that it had remained night, so dreary and awe-inspiring was the scene
that met our aching gaze.  The heavens gave no sign of relenting, the
sky looked wild as ever,--although the awful ruddy glow had long since
faded out from the clouds,--while the ocean seemed to be lashed and
goaded by the furious wind into an endless succession of rushing
mountain waves, every one of which, as it swept with hissing, foam-white
crest down upon us, seemed mercilessly bent upon our destruction.  As I
stood up and gazed about me,--for I could do so now, by leaning well
forward against the wind,--it seemed a marvellous thing to me that the
gig continued to live through it; for, light and buoyant though she was,
every sea she met swept her from stem to stern; and it was plain enough
to us all now that it was nothing but the canvas covering that saved
her.  As it was, we shipped so much water that it was as much as three
of us could do--that being all who could work in the opening at one
time--to keep her from filling.  To add still further to our misery, we
were one and all by this time dead tired, worn out, in fact, with the
terror and anxiety of the past night; yet we dared not yet attempt to
seek the comfort and refreshment of sleep, for our critical situation
continued to demand our utmost watchfulness and our unremitting
exertions; and when at length we sought to renew our strength by means
of a meal, the grievous discovery was made that the whole of our small
stock of ship's bread was spoiled and rendered uneatable by the salt
water.  And, as though this misfortune was not in itself sufficiently
serious, when we sought to quench our thirst we discovered that the bung
of the water-breaker had somehow got out of the bung-hole, allowing so
much salt water to mingle with our small stock of fresh that the latter
had been rendered almost undrinkable.

Our first gleam of hope and encouragement came to us about half an hour
before noon that day, when our anxious watching was rewarded by the
appearance of a small, momentary break in the sky, low down toward the
horizon to windward; it showed but for a moment, and then was lost
again.  But presently a wider and more pronounced break appeared which
did _not_ vanish; on the contrary, it widened, until presently a fitful
gleam of wan and watery sunshine pierced through it and lighted up the
bleak, desolate expanse of raging ocean for a few seconds.  And almost
simultaneously with the welcome appearance of this transient but welcome
gleam of pallid sunshine, we became aware of a slight but unmistakable
diminution in the fury of the gale; a change productive of such profound
relief to us, worn out as we all were by long-protracted toil and
anxiety, that we actually greeted it with a feeble cheer!  Nor was the
hope thus aroused fallacious; for from this moment the sky began to
clear, until within a couple of hours the storm-clouds had all swept
away to leeward, leaving the sky a clear, pure blue, streaked here and
there, it is true, with a tattered, trailing streamer of pinky grey,
that, however, soon vanished; and once more we revelled in the glorious
warmth and radiance of the unclouded sunlight, while the wind dropped so
rapidly that, but for the sea, which still ran with dangerous weight, we
might have made sail again by sunset.  As it was, we were all so
completely worn out that I think we were really thankful for an excuse
to leave the boat riding to her sea anchor a few hours longer, while we
sought and obtained what was even more necessary to us than food and
drink--sleep.

All actual danger was by this time past, so we arranged that each of us
should keep a look out for an hour while the rest slept, there being
sufficient of us to carry us through the night at this rate; and I
undertook to keep the first look out.  That hour was, I think, the
longest sixty minutes I had ever up to then experienced; for, now that
constant watchfulness was no longer necessary to insure our safety, the
incentive to watchfulness was gone, and overtaxed nature craved so
vehemently for repose that the effort, to remain awake was absolutely
painful.  I continued, however, to perform the task that I had
undertaken, and, when my hour had expired, flung myself down in the
stern-sheets, where I instantly sank into a profound and dreamless
sleep, having first, of course, aroused young Lindsay, and cautioned him
to maintain a bright lookout for passing ships--a caution which I gave
orders should be passed on from man to man throughout the night.

When I awoke I found that I had maintained all through the night the
precise attitude in which I had flung myself down to sleep some hours
before; it appeared to me that I had not stirred by so much as a hair's-
breadth all through those hours of unconsciousness.  I awoke
spontaneously, with the light of the sun shining strongly through my
still closed eyelids.  The first thing after that of which I became
conscious was that the boat was rising and falling easily with a long,
steady, swinging motion; then I opened my eyes, and immediately noticed
that the sun was some two hours high.  A very soft, warm, gentle breeze
fanned my cheek, and the only audible sounds were the snores and snorts
of many sleepers near me, mingling with the gentle lap of water along
the boat's planking.  All hands save myself were sound asleep!  I was
not greatly surprised at this, though naturally a trifle vexed that my
orders as to the maintenance of a lookout had not been more strictly
observed.  But it was not until I had risen to my feet and flung an
inquiring glance round the horizon that I realised how miserably
unfortunate this negligence had been.  For there, away in the western
board, distant some fourteen miles, gleamed the sails of a large ship;
and a more intent scrutiny revealed the tantalising circumstance that
she was steering such a course as had undoubtedly carried her past us
about an hour before daybreak at a distance of little more than three
miles; and, had a proper watch been maintained, we could have
intercepted and boarded her without difficulty.  Whether she happened to
be a friend or an enemy was a matter of very secondary import just then,
in our miserable plight as regarded our stock of provisions and water;
our situation was such that even to have fallen into the hands of the
enemy would have been better than to be left as we were.

I at once roused all hands, and we forthwith went to work to cut adrift
the sails that had served us so well, and to bend them afresh to the
yards; while the others hauled aboard our sea anchor, cut its lashings
adrift, and took to the oars with the object of going in pursuit of the
distant sail.  For there was yet a chance for us.  If we could keep her
in sight long enough there was just a possibility that some one or
another of her crew, working aloft, might cast a glance astern and catch
sight of our tiny sail, when he would at once recognise it as that of a
boat, and report it; when, if the skipper happened to be a humane man,
he would assuredly heave-to and wait for us to close.  So we all went to
work with a will, and soon had the boat all ataunto once more, and in
pursuit of the stranger as fast as oars and sails together could put her
through the water.  But the experience of the first hour sufficed to
demonstrate beyond all question the hopelessness of our attempt to
overtake the ship; she was leaving us rapidly, and unless someone aloft
happened to sight us, our prospects of rescue, so far as she was
concerned, were not worth a moment's consideration.  The men, partially
restored by their night's sound sleep, toiled like tigers at the oars,
in their anxiety to prolong the chance of our being sighted to the
latest possible moment, frequently relieving each other.  But it was all
of no avail; strive as they would, the stranger steadily increased her
distance from us until, after we had been in pursuit of her for fully
three hours, the heads of her royals sank below the western horizon, and
we lost her for good and all.  Then the men sullenly laid in their oars,
declaring that they were worn out and could do no more.  Then they began
to savagely inquire among themselves who was the individual to whose
culpable carelessness we were all indebted for our present
disappointment.  The culprit was soon discovered in the person of a
little Welshman--the man whose watch followed Lindsay's.  This man
declared that he had remained awake throughout his watch, and had duly
called his successor before resuming his slumbers.  But there was some
reason to doubt this statement; and even if it happened to be true, he
was still culpable, according to his own showing, for he was obliged to
confess that he had not waited to assure himself that his successor was
properly awakened, but had satisfied himself with a single shake of the
sleeper's shoulder, accompanied by the curt announcement that it was
time to turn out, and had then flung himself down and gone to sleep.  As
for the man whom the Welshman was supposed to have awakened, he
disclaimed all responsibility upon the ground that, if called at all--
which he did not believe--he had been called so ineffectively as to be
quite unconscious of the circumstance.  At the conclusion of the
inquiry, his comrades were so furiously incensed with the Welshman for
his culpable--almost criminal--neglect, that they seemed strongly
disposed to take summary vengeance upon him; and it needed the exertion
of all my authority to protect the fellow from their violence, which
broke out anew when at noon we went to dinner, and were compelled to
make out the best meal we could upon raw salt beef washed down with
water so brackish that we could scarcely swallow it.  Reduced to such a
condition as this, it will scarcely be wondered at that I should be
brought to something very nearly approaching despair when my
observations that day revealed the disconcerting fact that, thanks to
our excessive drift during the gale, we were still fully six hundred
miles from our port of destination--a distance which we scarce dared to
hope might be covered, even under the most favourable circumstances, in
less than five days.

But it soon appeared as though even this protracted period of privation
and exposure was to be increased, for, as the afternoon wore on, the
wind, still continuing to drop, grew so light that our speed dwindled
down to a bare three knots by the hour of sunset; and by midnight it had
still further fallen to such an extent that our sails became useless to
us, and the oars had once more to be resorted to.

The return of daylight found us in the midst of a stark calm, under a
cloudless sky, out of which the sun soon began to dart his scorching
beams so pitilessly that the task of pulling shortly became a labour
little less than torture to people in our exhausted condition; indeed,
so severe did the men find it, that, after persevering until about four
bells in the afternoon watch, they gave it up, declaring themselves to
be quite incapable of further exertion.  And thus, for the remainder of
the day, we lay motionless upon that oil-smooth sea, under the
blistering rays of the burning sun, with our tongues cleaving to our
palates as we began to experience the first fierce torments of
unquenchable thirst.  For our supply of water--all but undrinkable as it
was--was growing so short that it became imperatively necessary to
husband it with the most jealous care, and to reduce our allowance to
the very smallest quantity upon which life could possibly be sustained.
The men sought to forget their sufferings in sleep, disposing themselves
in the bottom of the boat, under the shelter of the now useless sails;
but I was far too anxious to be able to sleep, for I began to realise
that our boat voyage threatened to develop into an adventure that might
easily terminate in a ghastly tragedy.

Half an hour before sunset I called the men, and we went to supper; and
with the going down of the sun the oars were once more thrown out, and
we resumed our weary voyage, all hands of us being equally anxious to
avail ourselves to the utmost of the comparatively cool hours of
darkness, to shorten, as much as possible, the distance that still
intervened between us and deliverance.  All through the hot and
breathless night we toiled, in an unspeakable agony of thirst, and when
morning once more dawned out of a brilliant and cloudless sky, my
companions presented so wild and haggard an appearance, with their
cheeks sunken with famine and their eyes ablaze with the fever of thirst
and starvation, that they were scarcely recognisable.  Half an hour
after sunrise we partook of our loathsome breakfast of putrid meat and
nauseous water, and then composed ourselves to sleep--if we could--
through the long hours of the blazing day, maintaining, however, a one-
man hourly watch, in order that we might be duly warned of any change in
the weather.

And, late that afternoon, a change came--a change of so welcome a
character that I believe I may, without exaggeration, say it saved our
lives.  For, about noon, when I was aroused by the man on watch to get
the meridian altitude of the sun for the determination of the latitude,
I observed a bank of purple-grey clouds gathering in the south-western
quarter, their rounded edges as sharply denned as though they had been
cut out of paper.  There was no mistaking their character; they
portended a thunderstorm.  And a thunderstorm we had about four o'clock
that afternoon, of truly tropical violence.  There was not a breath of
wind with it, but it brought us a perfect deluge of rain,--thrice-
welcome and blessed rain,--pouring from the overcharged clouds in sheets
of warm water, soft and sweet as nectar.  We let not a drop escape us
that it was possible to save; we saw that it was coming, and prepared
for it by spreading the sails across the boat, and caught the welcome
stream in the depressions that we had arranged for its reception,
drinking out of the hollowed canvas until we could drink no more.  Then,
as the rain still continued to fall, we did a desperate deed; we threw
away every drop of our drinking water, in the hope of being able to
refill our breakers with the sweet, fresh rain-water.  And we were
successful.  God in His infinite mercy allowed the floodgates of heaven
to remain open until we had filled every available receptacle at our
disposal; and then the rain ceased, the storm drifted away to the north-
eastward, and the sun disappeared below the horizon in a blaze of
cloudless splendour.

But our sufferings were not yet over; for now that the hellish torments
of thirst were assuaged, the pangs of hunger assailed us with redoubled
fury, hourly growing in intensity, until sometime during the night--
while Lindsay and I were asleep, and the boat was in charge of one of
the men--they became so utterly unendurable that, in a fit of madness,
the famished crew fell upon the slender remainder of our stock of
eatables, devouring the whole at one fell swoop, except Lindsay's and my
own portion, which, despite their famished condition, they loyally set
aside for us!

Another day of breathless calm; another twelve hours of scorching heat
under the rays of the pitiless sun; and then, with nightfall, the men
once more threw out their oars and resumed the heart-breaking task of
shortening by a few miles the still formidable stretch of ocean that lay
between us and safety.  But nothing that we could say would induce a
single one of them to accept ever so small a share of the provisions
that they had apportioned as the share belonging to Lindsay and myself;
they declared that their last meal had so far satisfied and
reinvigorated them, that they were no longer hungry, while one or two of
them spoke hopefully of the possibility that they might catch a fish or
two on the morrow.

It was somewhere about ten o'clock that night that we detected the first
symptoms of another change in the weather, the first subtle indication
that the long period of calm which had so nearly destroyed us was about
to end.  And, best of all, the indication was of such a character as
permitted us to indulge the hope that, although the calm was about to
give way to a breeze, we were likely to be favoured with weather fine
enough to permit of our pursuing our voyage under the most favourable
conditions.  This symptom of approaching change merely consisted in the
gathering in the heavens of a thin veil of mottled, fine-weather cloud,
just dense enough to obscure most of the lesser stars and render the
night rather dark, while a few of the brighter stars peeped through the
openings between the clouds at tolerably frequent intervals, permitting
us to steer our course without having recourse to the lantern or
compass.  The prospect of a coming breeze seemed to cheer the men and
endow them with renewed vigour, for they gave way with something like a
will, while they occasionally went so far as to exchange a muttered
ejaculation of encouragement one with another.

It happened to be my trick at the yoke-lines until midnight, I having
relieved young Lindsay at four bells.  I was sitting in the stern-
sheets, with my eyes intently fixed upon a particularly bright star that
gleamed out through the clouds at frequent intervals right over the
boat's nose, at an altitude of about thirty degrees above the horizon,
and which I had consequently selected as a suitable guide to steer by.

It is a curious fact, well-known to sailors, that an object can be
better seen on a dark night at sea by looking at the sky slightly
_above_ or to one side of it, rather than directly _at_ it; hence it was
that, as I kept my eye intently fixed upon the star immediately ahead, I
suddenly became aware of the presence of a small, dark object some three
points on our starboard bow.  I immediately looked straight at it, but
could then see nothing; whereupon I looked into the sky rather above the
point where I knew it to be, when I again caught sight of it.  To make
quite sure, I sheered the boat some four points off her course, when it
became quite distinct, although only as a small, black, shapeless shadow
against the dark sky immediately ahead.

I held up my hand warningly to the men, and at the same moment gave the
order, "Oars!"

The men, somewhat wonderingly, instantly obeyed, staring hard at me
inquiringly, while two or three who were lying down in the bottom of the
boat, trying unavailingly to sleep, raised themselves upon their elbows,
as though to ascertain what was the matter.

"Lads," said I, in low, cautious tones, "not a sound, for your lives!
There is a small craft of some sort out there becalmed, and it is my
intention to run her alongside.  But we cannot of course tell whether
she is a friend or an enemy, so I think it will be well for us to get
alongside without attracting the attention of her crew, if we can manage
it.  If she proves to be a friend, well and good; but if she is an
enemy, we must take her at all costs; for we are in a starving
condition, as you are all aware, while we are still five days distant
from Bermuda, and I do not believe we could possibly live to reach the
island without provisions.  So muffle your oars as well as you can; have
your cutlasses ready; and I will put you alongside.  H-u-s-h! not a
sound!  That craft is a good three miles away, but sounds travel far on
such a night as this, and we must not allow the crew of her to discover
that we are in their neighbourhood.  Now muffle your oars, and we will
soon find out who and what she is."

Without a moment's hesitation, the men forthwith proceeded to muffle
their oars with portions of their clothing; and in another five minutes
we were heading for the small, dark blot.  When we had been pulling
silently for about a quarter of an hour, a small, thin sound came
creeping across the water to us, that within another five minutes had
resolved itself into the strains of the Marseillaise played upon an
accordion and sung by a fairly good tenor voice, to which several others
were almost instantly added.  That was sufficient; the craft, whatever
else she might be, was assuredly French, and we were relieved of the
anxiety of approaching a vessel uncertain as to whether she was friend
or foe.  The song was sung through to the end with great enthusiasm, and
then, after a slight pause, another song was started, also French, so
far as could be made out.  It was cut short, however, before a dozen
bars had been reached, by a hoarse, gruff voice loudly demanding, in
clear, unmistakable French, "what, in the name of all the saints, the
singer meant by arousing all hands at that hour of the night with his
miserable braying?"  This rendered assurance doubly sure, and we
proceeded with increased caution--if that were possible--laying in all
but a single pair of oars, with the double object of resting the men as
much as possible prior to the attack, and at the same time approaching
our quarry slowly enough to allow her crew to coil away about the decks,
and go to sleep again if they would.

Paddling slowly and with the utmost circumspection, taking care that the
oars entered and left the water without the slightest splash, we were a
full hour and more traversing the distance that separated us from the
stranger; but long ere we reached her we had made her out to be a
schooner of somewhere about one hundred and forty tons, and by her taunt
spars, as well as by the fact of her being where she was,--nicely in the
track of our homeward-bound West Indiamen,--I judged her to be a
privateer.  When first discovered she must have been lying nearly
broadside-on to us, but the swing of the swell gradually slewed her, as
we stealthily approached, until she presented her stern fairly at us,
affording us an admirable opportunity to get alongside her undetected.
And this we did, gliding up under her starboard quarter and alongside,
and actually climbing in on deck over her low bulwarks before the alarm
was raised.  Then, from the neighbourhood of the wheel, there suddenly
arose a muttered execration in French, followed by a sharp inquiry in
the same language of, "Who goes there?"

"British," I answered, in the inquirer's own lingo.  "Surrender, or we
will drive every man of you overboard!"

"The British! ah, sac-r-r-re!  Yes, monsieur, oh yes, we surrender,"
gurgled the man, as I seized him by the throat and threatened him with
my cutlass, while Lindsay led the hands forward to the forecastle.
There were a few drowsily muttered ejaculations in that direction,
quickly succeeded by a volley of execrations, a scuffling of feet, the
slamming of the hatch over the fore-scuttle, and Lindsay sang out that
the schooner was ours.  Even as he did so, two figures in rather scanty
clothing, rushed up on deck through the companion; and before I could
fully realise what was happening, one of them snapped his pistol at me,
while the other aimed a blow at my head with a sword.  Fortunately the
bullet missed me, finding its billet in the body of the man whose throat
I still grasped, while I managed to catch the blow of the other fellow
on my own blade; and in a moment we were at it "hammer and tongs"--that
is to say, the swordsman and myself, the other fellow making a dash at
me now and then, aiming fierce blows at me with the butt-end of his
pistol, until, in self-defence, I seized my opportunity and cleft his
skull with my cutlass at the same instant that I launched out with my
left hand and sent his companion reeling to the deck with a blow planted
fairly between the eyes.

At this moment young Lindsay came rushing aft, with half a dozen of our
fellows at his heels, to know what was the matter; so, bidding a couple
of the men to securely bind the prisoners, I descended the companion
ladder, with Lindsay at my heels, to see whether there were any more
Frenchmen to be fought.  There were not, however; the close, stuffy
little cabin was empty; so we went on deck again, and, leaving two men
to keep watch and ward at the after end of the ship, went forward, where
I personally superintended the operation of effectually securing the
crew, who we afterwards passed down into the hold.  The cook, however,
we left free, and, being ravenously hungry, gave him orders to at once
light the galley fire and cook us the best meal the ship could afford,
all hands taking the keen edge off our appetites, meanwhile, by munching
some excellent biscuits that Lindsay discovered snugly stored away in
the pantry.  Our next care was to hoist in the gig that had served us so
well; and, this done, we settled down to wait for our dinner and the
breeze that promised to come ere long.



CHAPTER FIVE.

WE PROCEED IN SEARCH OF THE ALTHEA'S BOATS.

He wind came away about an hour and a half before sunrise, a gentle
breeze out from the north-east, coming down to us first of all in the
form of a few wandering cats'-paws, that just wrinkled the oil-smooth
surface of the ocean and were gone again, and finally settling into a
true breeze that fanned us along at a speed of some four knots, the
schooner proving to be a fairly speedy little vessel.

Long ere this, however, I had carefully thought out a line of action for
myself, in order that when the wind came I might be prepared for it.  It
will be remembered that before parting company with the launch I had
been furnished by the master with a table showing the relative speeds of
the various boats, and from that moment I had, with the assistance of
the table, carefully calculated the supposed position of each boat at
noon; so that I now knew, to within a few miles, where any particular
boat ought to be looked for, upon the assumption that all had gone well
with them.  And somehow I thought it had; I was very strongly impressed
with the belief that the gale which we had encountered had not extended
far enough to the south-east to reach the launch and the rest of the
squadron.  Flowers it _might_ have overtaken, but my observations upon
the bearings of the centre of the storm and its direction led me to
entertain a very strong hope that the rest of the boats had escaped.
This being so, I determined to act upon the assumption that they had
done so, and to proceed in search of them in the direction where they
ought, upon that assumption, to be found.  Of course, with their
different rates of sailing, they would now be strung out in a fairly
long line; and the question that exercised me most strongly was whether
I should first seek the leading boat, and, having found her, dodge about
in waiting for the others, or whether I should first seek the dinghy,
and, having found her, run down the wind in the track of the others.
The direction from which the wind might happen to spring up would
necessarily influence my decision to a great extent; but when it came
away out from the north-east, and I discovered that the schooner could
fetch, upon an easy bowline, the spot where the sternmost boat might be
expected to be found, I hesitated no longer, but at once made up my mind
to first look for the dinghy.

As the morning wore on the breeze freshened somewhat, and the schooner's
speed increased to fully seven knots.  I employed the early part of the
forenoon in satisfying myself that the prisoners were properly
secured,--taking the precaution to have them all put in irons, as, in
the exhausted condition of my own crew, I could not afford to run any
unnecessary risks,--and as soon as I had eased my mind of that anxiety,
I personally investigated the condition of the schooner's storeroom.  To
my great joy I discovered that we possessed an ample supply of
provisions and water, together with a liberal quantity of wines,
spirits, and other luxuries--enough of everything, in fact, to maintain
the whole of the survivors of the _Althea_ upon full allowance for at
least a month.  The schooner, moreover,--she proved to be the _Susanne_,
privateer, of Saint Malo,--was nearly new, a stout, substantially built
little craft of one hundred and thirty-four tons register, as tight as a
bottle, well found, and armed with six long six-pounders in her
batteries, with a long nine-pounder mounted on a pivot on her
forecastle, and her magazine nearly full.

Nothing of any importance happened, either on that day or the next,
except that the sky gradually became overspread with those peculiar
patches of fleece-like clouds called "trade-clouds"--showing that at
length we had hit off the north-east trade winds that seemed to have
been evading us for so long.  According to my reckoning, and upon the
assumption that the wind would now hold fairly steady, we ought to hit
off the track of the boats about six bells in the morning watch, on the
third morning after the capture of the schooner, which would allow us
some eleven hours of daylight in which to prosecute our search; and, to
give ourselves the best possible chance of finding the objects of our
quest, I took care, on the preceding midnight, to haul the schooner as
close to the wind as she would lie, so that there should be no
possibility of hitting upon their track to leeward instead of to
windward of them, and so running _away_ from instead of _after_ them.
And at six bells on that morning I was called, in accordance with
previous instructions, in order that I might work up the reckoning to
the very last moment, and so make certain of getting as accurately as
possible upon the track.  My calculations now showed that it would be
nearly eight bells instead of six before we should reach the imaginary
line for which we were making; and at a quarter to eight--having
previously sent a hand aloft to take a careful look round--I gave the
order to up helm and bear away upon a west-south-west course, and to
pack the studding-sails upon the little hooker.  The men--thanks to good
feeding and all the rest I could give them consistent with the
maintenance of proper discipline--had by this time completely recovered
from the effects of our boat voyage, and were one and all as keen as
needles on the lookout for the boats from the moment that we squared
away, the watch, all but the helmsman, taking to the rigging--without
any orders from me--immediately that they had finished breakfast, and
disposing themselves upon the royal and topgallant yards in their
eagerness to catch the earliest possible glimpse of their shipmates.  I
calculated that at about five bells in the forenoon watch we ought to
overtake the dinghy,--the slowest boat in the fleet,--and as that moment
drew near our anxiety reached a most painful pitch, the men on the yards
straining their eyes to the utmost as they peered intently into the
distance from right ahead to broad on either beam, carefully and slowly
scanning the horizon for the little blot of gleaming canvas that should
proclaim the success of our quest.  But the fateful moment came and
went, leaving the horizon a blank.  Noon arrived, and I secured an
excellent observation for my latitude, by means of which I was enabled
to check my previous dead reckoning, which tallied to within less than a
mile of what it ought to be; and still there was no sign of the missing
boat, although my calculations showed that we had overrun by some
fifteen miles the spot where we expected to find her.  I hailed the
yards, inquiring whether there was any possibility of our having run
past the dinghy without observing her; but the men assured me that they
had maintained so bright a lookout that had she been anywhere within the
boundaries of our horizon they would assuredly have seen her.

This was rather disconcerting, yet I felt that I had no real cause for
disappointment; the boats might have met with rather fresher winds than
I had estimated for, in which case the likelihood was that they were
still many miles ahead of us.  My calculations had been based upon the
supposition that they had been evenly maintaining the same rate of speed
from the moment when we parted with them, and I knew that this was in
the last degree improbable.  Yet it was the only basis I had upon which
to make my calculations; for it was impossible for me to judge by the
weather which we had ourselves experienced.  Of one thing I felt
tolerably well convinced, which was that, keeping so much farther to the
southward than we had done in the gig, the other boats would not have
met with the calms that had so seriously delayed us; and that
consequently--unless they too had been caught in the hurricane that had
so nearly proved our destruction--they must be somewhere directly ahead
of us as we were then steering.  There was nothing for it, therefore,
but to keep all on as we were until we found them.

In this condition of anxiety and suspense we continued to run away to
the west-south-west until sunset, without sighting anything; and then,
fearful of running past one or more of the objects of our quest during
the night-time without seeing them, I hove the schooner to under
foresail and jib, with the topsail aback, so that we might remain as
nearly as possible where we were--excepting for our lee drift--all
through the night.  I also caused three lanterns to be hoisted, one over
the other, from our maintopmast stay, as a fairly conspicuous signal,
pretty certain to attract attention in the event of either of the boats
coming within sight of us during the hours of darkness, and of course
gave the strictest injunctions for the maintenance of a bright lookout
all through the night.

The night passed uneventfully, and at daybreak, after having first gone
aloft and personally but unavailingly examined the horizon and the
entire visible expanse of the ocean through the ship's telescope,--an
excellent instrument, by the way,--we made sail again upon the schooner,
and resumed our search.

Shortly after breakfast I secured an observation for my longitude, and,
having worked out my calculations, found that, if the boats were still
afloat, and had continued to steer the course which I had been told they
would, we must certainly find them that day.  As on the preceding day,
the men spent their watch upon the yards, maintaining so keen a lookout
that even I, anxious as I was, felt satisfied they would allow nothing
to escape them.  Yet the day passed, and evening arrived without the
discovery of any sign of the missing boats; while my anxiety grew more
painfully intense with the lapse of every hour of daylight.  And when at
length the night closed down upon us, and the stars came winking mistily
out from between the driving clouds, the conviction came to me that
something had gone lamentably wrong, and that to continue the search any
further in the direction that we had been pursuing would be useless.

The question was: What had happened?  I could think of but two possible
explanations of our failure to find the boats; one of which was that
they had been fallen in with and been picked up by a passing ship, while
the other was that they had experienced bad weather, which had driven
them out of their course.  If the first explanation happened to be the
correct one, well and good--our missing comrades were safe; but if the
second explanation was to account for our non-success, in what direction
ought we to continue our search?  The question was a very difficult one
to answer with any approach to accuracy, but an approximation to the
truth might be arrived at.  I reasoned thus: The boats were undoubtedly
within the limits of the trade wind when we parted with them, and the
only disturbing influence that they would be likely to meet with in that
region would be that of the hurricane that we had encountered.
Reasoning thus, I went below and produced a chart of the North
Atlantic,--it was a French one, reckoning its longitude from the
meridian of Paris; but that difficulty was to be easily overcome,--and
upon it I forthwith proceeded to prick off, as accurately as the data in
my possession would permit, first, the spot where we had parted company
with the other boats; secondly, our own course and distance up to the
moment when the hurricane struck us; and thirdly, the supposititious
course and distance of each of the boats up to the moment when the
hurricane would probably strike them.  The observations I had personally
made as to the bearing and course of the centre of the storm had
originally led me to the conclusion that the other boats had probably
escaped it altogether; and now, as I went over the matter afresh, I
could not persuade myself that they had encountered anything worse than
a mere fringe of it, a breeze strong enough perhaps to compel them to
run before it for a few hours, but nothing more.  Assuming, then, this
to be the case, I calculated as nearly as I could the probable direction
of the wind when the gale struck them, and the number of hours during
which they would be likely to be compelled to run before it, pricking
off upon the chart their probable whereabouts at the moment when they
would be likely to find themselves once more able to head for, say,
Saint Thomas or Saint Kitts.  From this point I laid off a course for
the former island, and then calculated their probable position on that
line at the moment, compared this with the position then occupied by the
schooner, and thus arrived at the new direction in which I ought to seek
for them.  Having reached thus far, I went on deck, set the new course,
and then, with Lindsay's assistance, went over all my calculations
again, verifying every figure of them.

Luckily for our anxiety, the trade wind was now blowing so fresh that,
on an easy bowline as we were, a whole mainsail, foresail, and topsail,
with royal and topgallant sails stowed, was as much as we could stagger
under, the little witch dancing along at a good, clean eleven knots
under this canvas; the consequence being that in thirty-eight hours from
the moment of bearing up we had reached the spot where I intended that
my new search for the missing boats should begin.

This time, however, I intended to adopt a course of procedure exactly
opposite to that which I had followed while prosecuting my former
search.  Then, I had gone to windward of the spot when I expected to
find the boats, and had run down to leeward along the course which I
thought it probable they had taken; but now my uncertainty as to their
precise position necessitated a search over a belt of ocean several
miles in width.  I therefore determined to get well to leeward of the
spot where my calculations indicated that I ought to find them, and from
there work to windward on an easy bowline, making stretches of some
twenty-six miles in length.  I had already ascertained the height of our
royal yard above the sea-level, and from that had calculated that a
lookout stationed at that elevation would command a circular area having
a radius of thirteen miles.  If, therefore, I made stretches across a
circle of twenty-six miles' diameter, I should practically command a
belt of ocean of fifty-two miles in width; and this I deemed sufficient
for my purpose.

Accordingly, having reached our cruising-ground at two bells in the
forenoon watch, and having one hand on the royal yard as a lookout, with
two more on the topsail yard by way of additional precaution, we made
our first reach of thirteen miles in a south-easterly direction.  Then,
nothing being in sight, we tacked and stood to the northward for twenty-
six miles.  Still nothing in sight; so we hove about again, and this
time reached to the southward and eastward for a distance of twenty-six
miles, continuing our search thus throughout the entire day, without
success.  At sunset we hove about again, and, reaching to the northward,
until we had arrived at the track which the boats, if still afloat,
would probably pass over, we hove-to for the night, hoisting three
lanterns, as before, to attract their attention should they happen to
arrive within sight of us during the hours of darkness.  It was some
relief to us that the night was tolerably clear, with a fair sprinkling
of stars and a moon well advanced in her first quarter; so that, during
the first half of the night, we had a very fair amount of light.

I did not keep the lookout men aloft at night, deeming it useless, as
the light, although--as I have said--fairly good, was not bright enough
to reveal a small object like a boat at a greater distance than some two
or three miles, and up to that distance it was possible to see really
better from the level of the deck than from the more lofty elevation of
the yards; but I had three men continuously on the lookout at the same
time, namely, one on the jib-boom end, and one each to port and
starboard in the waist.  We were hove-to on the starboard tack.
Needless to say, that although we had these three men thus stationed for
the express purpose of keeping a lookout and doing nothing else, Lindsay
and I also kept our eyes well skinned, going even to the length of
blinding the skylight with an old sail in order that our eyes might not
be dazzled by even the dim light of the cabin lamp.

It happened to be my eight hours in that night, and I had taken
advantage of the circumstance to turn in early, for the anxiety
attending upon this dishearteningly fruitless search was beginning to
tell upon me, and I had suffered for the last night or two from an
inability to sleep.  On this particular occasion, however, I felt
somewhat drowsy, and therefore went to my bunk in the hope of getting
two or three hours' rest; and, as a matter of fact, I did sleep, but my
rest was so disturbed by frightful dreams of men enduring unheard-of
suffering in open boats, that at length, awaking in a paroxysm of
horror, I turned out and went on deck, to find that it was seven bells,
and that under any circumstances I should have been called in another
half-hour.

The moon was within a very short time of setting when I reached the
deck, and I stood watching her half-disc creeping insensibly nearer and
nearer to the horizon, lighting up the sky that way with a soft,
mysterious, brownish-green light, and casting a long, tremulous wake of
ruddy gold athwart the tops of the running surges.  Lindsay was standing
beside me, yawning the top of his head nearly off, poor lad; for
although he too was anxious as to the fate of those who we were seeking,
his anxiety had not, thus far, interfered with his rest, and his watch
was now so nearly up that he was quite ready for the four hours' sleep
that awaited him.

I was in the very act of telling him that, as I should not go below
again, he might turn in if he chose,--my eyes being all the while fixed
upon the setting moon,--when suddenly, almost immediately under the
luminary, I caught a momentary glimpse of a small black object--small as
a pin-head--as it were hove-up on the back of a sea against the luminous
sky.  Stopping short in what I was saying, I sprang to the rail, and
from thence into the main rigging, half a dozen ratlines of which I
ascended in order to gain a horizon clear of the run of the nearer seas.
From this elevation I again looked out, instinctively shading my eyes
under my hand, and in another moment I had again caught sight of the
object, and not only so, but had also detected an intermittent flashing,
as of the moonlight off the wet blades of oars.

"A boat! a boat!"  I shouted, in the fulness of my delight.  "Hurrah,
lads! we have one of them at last!  Let draw the jib-sheet!  Fill the
topsail!  Up helm there, my man, and let her go broad off!"

As I rapidly issued these orders I swung myself out of the rigging, and,
running to the binnacle, took the bearing of the moon, allowing half a
point to the northward of her as the course to steer for the boat.

"Where is the gunner?"  I shouted; "pass the word for Mr Robbins!"

"Here I am, sir," answered Robbins--for my words had thrilled through
the little craft like an electric shock, and already the watch below
were scrambling up through the hatchway, carrying their clothing in
their hands, in their eagerness to get a glimpse of the newly discovered
boat.

"Mr Robbins," said I, "have the goodness to clap a blank cartridge into
one of the guns, and fire it as an encouragement to those poor fellows
out there; they will guess, by our firing, that we have seen them."

"Ay, ay, sir," answered Robbins, shambling away with alacrity upon his
errand; and a few minutes later one of our guns rang out what I hoped
would prove a thrice-welcome message to our shipmates.  Somehow I never
for a moment doubted that it was one of the frigate's boats that I had
seen; I felt as sure of it as though we had her already alongside,
although of course I could form no sort of surmise as to which of them
it would prove to be.

It took us but a very few minutes to run down to the boat, when, judging
our distance, we rounded-to and laid the topsail aback, so close to
windward of the little craft that one of our people was able to heave a
rope's-end into her, and we hauled her alongside.  Then, to our supreme
disappointment, we discovered that it was _not_ either of the boats that
we were looking for, but the long-boat of a merchantman, with eleven
people in her, all of whom were in a very wasted and exhausted
condition, partly from famine and partly from wounds, most of them being
swathed about the head or limbs with bloodstained bandages.

Concealing our disappointment as well as we could, we helped the poor
creatures up over the side,--discovering, during the process, that the
rescued party were our fellow-countrymen,--and then, having removed
everything from the boat that promised to prove of the slightest value,
we cast her adrift, having no room on our decks for her.  Meanwhile, the
unhappy strangers, being too weak to stand, had sunk down upon the deck,
pointing to their parched throats and feebly gasping the word "water";
in response to which appeal some of our own people had gone to work,
under my supervision, to supply them cautiously with small quantities of
water slightly dashed with brandy.  This treatment had a wonderfully
stimulative and revivifying effect upon them, so much so, indeed, that
they managed to stagger to their feet and earnestly beg for food.  This,
of course, we supplied them with forthwith, in the form of ship's bread
broken small and softened by steeping in weak brandy and water.  I gave
them this pending the preparation of a more substantial and appetising
meal by the cook; and it was perhaps well that circumstances obliged me
to do so, for I afterwards learned that the administration of a solid,
substantial meal to people in their famished condition would probably
have had fatal results.  Having satisfied to some small extent their
first ravenous craving for food and drink, we got them below and
provided them with such makeshift sleeping accommodation as the
resources of the schooner would permit, that they might seek in sleep
such further recuperation as was to be obtained, pending the production
of the meal in preparation for them.  Having thus disposed of the
rescued men, nothing remained for us but to await, with such patience as
we could muster, the return of daylight, to enable us to resume the
search for the lost frigate's boats.

It was nearly noon next day ere any of the rescued party appeared on
deck, the first to do so being a fine, sailorly-looking man of some
forty or forty-five years of age, who introduced himself to me as
"Captain" Tucker of the late British barque _Wyvern_, of Bristol,
outward-bound to the West Indies with a general cargo of considerable
value.  He informed me that all had gone well with him until eight days
previously, when, about noon, a strange sail was sighted in the south-
western board, standing to the northward, close-hauled on the starboard
tack.

"You may be sure," said Tucker, "that I kept a sharp eye upon her, for I
knew that, for _every_ honest merchantman that I happened to meet down
here, I was likely to meet with a dozen rogues, in the shape of
picaroons, privateers, or other craft of the enemy, or even our own men-
o'-war--no offence meant to _you_ in saying so, Mr Courtenay; but _you_
know, sir, as well as I do, that some of our men-o'-war treat British
merchantmen pretty nearly as bad as if they were enemies, boarding them
and impressing all their best men, and leaving them with so few hands
that if they happen to meet with bad weather it's ten chances to one of
their being able to take their ship to her destination.  Well, knowing
this, I kept both eyes on the stranger, which I soon made out to be an
uncommonly smart and heavy brigantine, that, close-hauled as she was,
seemed to be travelling three feet to our one.  She had a particularly
wicked look about her that I didn't half like; and I liked it still less
when, having drawn well up on our larboard beam, at a distance of some
five miles, I suddenly discovered that she was edging away for us.  We
were already under stunsails, so I could do no more in the way of making
sail; but we mounted eight brass nine-pounders,--very pretty pieces they
were, too,--so I had them cleared away and loaded, in readiness for the
worst; for I took her to be a French or Spanish privateer, and I had no
notion of yielding my ship to any such vermin without making a fight for
it; and my own lads were quite of the same mind as myself, not liking
the idea of being locked up for years in a French or a Spanish prison.

"Well, sir, that brigantine came bowling along at such a pace that
within half an hour of the time when I noticed her to be edging down for
us she was within gun-shot; and no sooner was this the case than, yawing
broad off for a moment, she pitched a shot--an eighteen-pounder I took
it to be--across our fore-foot, as a polite hint to us to heave-to.  But
I wasn't in the humour for heaving-to just then, so I hoisted my ensign
and kept all on as I was going.

"I expected that, seeing this, the brigantine would give us a sight of
her bunting, and open fire upon us in good earnest; but she didn't do
either.  She just kept edging away, until in another five minutes she
was broad on our larboard quarter, running the same way that we were,
and creeping up with the evident intention of running us alongside.
Seeing this, I ordered Mr Thomson, my mate, to ram an extra shot down
upon the top of those we had already loaded our guns with, and to
depress the muzzles, so that we could fire down upon the brigantine's
low deck as she ranged up alongside.  But I tell you, sir, that I didn't
half like the look of things; for by this time the craft was so close to
us that we saw down upon her decks quite distinctly, and she seemed to
be full of men--swarthy, greasy, black-bearded cut-throats, _every_ one
of them, if looks went for anything.  In another minute or so she was
within biscuit-toss of us,--so close that we could hear the hissing
shear of her sharp stem through the water, and the moan of the wind in
the hollows of her canvas,--when up jumps a fellow upon her rail and
hailed us in what I took to be Spanish,--it wasn't French, I know,
because I can speak a little of that lingo,--at the same time pointing
to his gaff-end, up to which another ruffian at once began to hoist a
_black flag_.

"`So ho!' thinks I; `so it's _pirates_ we have to deal with, eh?  Well,
that means neck or nothing, so here goes!'  And with that I sings out to
the mate to throw open the ports--we'd kept them closed until now--and
let the rascals have it hot.  No sooner said than done.  Thomson gave
the word, the ports were thrown open, the nine-pounders run out, and the
next second four of our shot went smashing through the brigantine's
bulwarks, bowling over like ninepins every man that happened to be
standing in their way.  The man on the rail jumped down off his perch as
nimbly as if he was scalded, and I heard him shout `Car-r-r-r-amba!' or
something like it, as he waved his hand to the man at the wheel.  At the
same moment the brigantine delivered her broadside, and before the smoke
had time to clear away I heard and felt the crash of her as she dropped
alongside us fair in the waist.  The next second--so it seemed to me--
our rail was alive with the dirty, garlic-smelling blackguards, who came
swarming over upon our decks until it seemed that there was no room for
more.  Well, I had a pair of pistols and a sword, and each of our lads
had his cutlass, and for three or four minutes there was as pretty a
fight as you'd wish to see going on aboard the old _Wyvern_.  Then,
while I was doing my best to hold my own against four of the rascals who
came crowding round me, I got a knock on the head from behind that made
me see about a million stars before I dropped senseless to the deck."



CHAPTER SIX.

WE FIND THE LAUNCH.

How long I remained unconscious I don't know, but it must have been at
least half an hour, I should say; for when at length I came round I
found myself lying, bound hand and foot, on the deck, along with such of
my crew as had not been killed in the defence of the ship, while the
_Wyvern_ was hove-to under topsails, with her hatches off, and a regular
mob of the dirty, greasy Spaniards swarming round the main hatchway and
hoisting out the cargo that another gang was breaking out down below.
They had hoisted out all our boats, too, I soon found, and were using
them to transfer such goods as they required to the brigantine--all,
that is to say, except the long-boat, which, for some reason that I did
not then understand, was lying unused in the starboard gangway.  They
took their time over the job of picking and choosing from among the
stuff that we carried, but I noticed that all the while they had a hand
aloft on the main-royal yard keeping a lookout.  They kept at it until
it was too dark to see what they were about, and then they left us, one
boat remaining alongside for fully twenty minutes after the rest had
gone, while some of her people were busy down below.  At length,
however, they shoved off as well, leaving me and my people lying on the
deck trussed up like so many chickens.  Two or three minutes later I
heard some orders given, immediately followed by the cheeping of blocks
and the creaking of yard parralls, by which I knew that they were
filling upon the brigantine and leaving us.

"I could not understand why they had left us all there, alive, but bound
hand and foot as we were.  I suspected some villainy, however, and my
first idea was that they had set the barque on fire.  But I could not
detect any smell of burning, and then the thought came to me that
perhaps they had scuttled her, intending us to go down with the ship.
The idea of either fairly made my blood run cold, I can tell you; but it
stirred me up too, and I went to work to see if I could work my hands
free.  I might just as well have tried to fly; the scoundrels had made
sure work of me, and no mistake.  Then I sang out to the others to try
if they could work themselves adrift; and after a bit first one and then
another answered that it was no use, they were lashed altogether too
securely.

"`Well, lads,' says I, `if none of us can work ourselves free, I'm
afraid it's all up with us; for my notion is that those Spanish devils
have scuttled the ship, and if so it won't be so very long before she'll
founder, taking us with her.'

"That set the men muttering among themselves, and presently the man that
was lying nearest me said--

"`If you can manage to work your way near enough to me, sir, for me to
get a feel of your lashings with my fingers, I'll see what I can do
towards loosenin' of 'em for yer.'

"`All right, my lad,' says I, `I will!'  No sooner said than done.  I
worked and wriggled myself up alongside of him somehow, and presently I
felt his fingers fumbling about with my lashings.  This particular chap,
I ought to tell you, was uncommonly clever with his fingers, especially
in the matter of handling rope; and sure enough, in about twenty
minutes, I'm blessed if he hadn't worked those lashings so loose that I
presently managed to slip my hands clear of 'em altogether.  The moment
that I was free I set to work to chafe my fingers and get the life back
into them,--for they had lashed me so tight that I had lost all feeling
in my hands,--and as soon as I was able to tell once more that I'd got a
complete set of fingers, I whipped a knife out of my pocket and cut the
lashings off my feet, after which I went the round of the party, cutting
them adrift as quick as I could.  Then, while they were getting the
benumbed feeling out of their limbs, I swung myself down through the
open hatchway to investigate.  It was as I had feared; they had scuttled
the ship, for already there was something like three feet of water in
the hold.  You may be sure I didn't waste much time down below after
making that discovery; I just scrambled up on deck again as quick as
ever I could, and told the men what had happened.  The barque was bound
to go, of course,--we could do nothing to keep her afloat,--so I jumped
to the side to see after the boats.  They were gone, all but the long-
boat, which, as I told you just now, was lying in the starboard gangway.
I crossed the deck to take a look at her, and then saw why the pirates
had left her there unused; she was stove in on the starboard side, her
planks being crushed and her timbers broken over a space measuring some
six feet by two.  As she was then she would not float two minutes; she
would have filled the moment we dropped her into the water.  But when
Chips came to overhaul her he had a notion that he could patch her up
enough to make her carry us.  As a matter of fact, it rested between
that and the whole lot of us drowning; for the barque was filling so
fast that there was no time for us to put a raft together.  So the
carpenter fetched his tools and went to work there and then, the rest of
us lending a hand and fetching things as Chips sung out for them.  First
of all, he gently coaxed the broken timbers and planking back into their
places, as nearly as he could get them; then he got a couple of strips
of canvas big enough to cover the hole, one of which he dressed with
tallow on both sides, working the grease well into the fabric.  Then,
with small, flat-headed tacks, spaced close together, he nailed this
first piece of canvas over the hole, allowing it plenty of overlap.
Then he took the other piece of canvas,--which was cut an inch larger
each way than the first piece,--tarred it well, and strained it tightly
over the first piece.  Then he cut a third piece of canvas, which he
fixed over the hole on the _inside_ of the boat, nailing the bottom and
two ends of the canvas so that it formed a sort of pocket.  Then he got
a lot of oakum, which he first soaked in tar and then stuffed into this
pocket arrangement until it was packed as tightly as it was possible to
pack it.  This was to keep the broken planks and timbers in place.  And
finally he nailed up the top of the pocket, declaring, as he flung down
his tools, that the boat was now ready for hoisting out.  And it was
high time, too, for by the time that the job was finished the barque had
settled to her chain-plates, and was liable to go down under our feet at
any moment.  Accordingly, we hooked on the tackles, and, watching the
roll of the ship, managed to hoist out the boat and get her into the
water without accident.  Then we hurriedly pitched into her a couple of
breakers of water and such provisions as we could lay our hands upon,--
and that wasn't much, for by this time the cabin was all afloat and the
lazarette under water,--and tumbled over the side into her, I only
waiting long enough behind the others to secure the ship's papers and
the chronometer.  We shoved off in a hurry, I can tell you, for while I
was securing those few matters that I've just mentioned the poor old
hooker gave an ugly lurch or two that told me her time was up; and, sure
enough, we hadn't pulled above fifty fathoms away from her when down she
went, stern-first.

"Our first anxiety was, of course, as to the carpenter's repairing job;
but we soon found that we needn't greatly trouble ourselves about that.
There was just a draining of water that somehow worked its way through,
but a few minutes' spell with the baler about once an hour was
sufficient to keep the boat fairly dry and comfortable.  All the same, I
wasn't very keenly anxious for a long boat voyage in such a craft as
that, so we shaped a course to the west'ard, hoping to fall in with and
be picked up by an outward-bounder of some sort.  But not a blessed sail
did we see for seven mortal days, until we sighted your upper canvas
last night, and pulled so as to cut you off.  And if you hadn't picked
us up, I believe we should all have been dead by this time, for our
provisions soon ran out; and when it was too late, we discovered that
both our breakers were full of _salt_ instead of fresh water!"

Such was the tragic story related by the skipper of the ill-fated
_Wyvern_, a story that was replete with every element necessary for the
weaving of a thrilling romance; yet it was told baldly and concisely,
without the slightest attempt at embellishment; told precisely as though
to be attacked by pirates, to have one's ship rifled and scuttled, one's
boats stolen, and then to be left, bound hand and foot on deck, to
helplessly perish, were one of the most ordinary and commonplace
incidents imaginable.  Truly, they who go down to the sea in ships, and
do business on the great waters, meet with so many extraordinary
experiences, and see so many strange and unaccountable sights, that the
capacity for wonder is soon lost, and the most astonishing and--to
shore-abiding folk--incredible occurrences are accepted as a matter of
course.

During the whole of that day we continued to make short tacks to
windward as before, with half the watch aloft on the look out; but
nothing was sighted, and at nightfall we again hove-to, maintaining our
position as nearly as possible in the same spot until the next morning.

With the first sign of daylight I sent aloft the keenest-sighted man we
had on board, that he might take a good look round ere we filled upon
the schooner to resume our disheartening search.  So eager was I, that
when the man reached the royal yard, the stars were still blinking
overhead and down in the western sky, and it was too dark to see to any
great distance.  But the dawn was paling the sky to windward, and as the
cold, weird, mysterious pallor of the coming day spread upward, and
warmed into pinkish grey, and from that into orange, and from orange to
clearest primrose, dyeing the weltering undulations of the low-running
sea with all the delicate, shifting tints of the opal, I saw the fellow
aloft suddenly rise to his feet and stand upon the yard, with one arm
round the masthead to steady himself against the quick, jerky plunges of
the schooner, while he shielded his eyes with the other hand, as he
steadfastly gazed into the distance to windward.

"Royal yard, there, do you see anything?"  I hailed eagerly; and the
sudden ecstasy of renewed hope which sprang up within my breast now
fully revealed to me how nearly I had been driven to the confines of
despair by the long-protracted non-success of the search upon which I
had so confidently entered.

"I ain't quite sure, sir," was the unsatisfactory reply that came down
to me; "it's still a trifle dusky away out there, but I thought just now
that--ay, there it is again!  There's _something_ out there, sir, about
six or seven mile away, but I can't yet tell for certain whether it's a
boat or no; it's somewheres about the size of a boat, sir."

"Keep your eye on it," I answered.  "I will get the glass and have a
look for myself."

So saying, I went hastily to the companion, removed the ship's telescope
from the beckets in which it hung there, and quickly made my way aloft.

"Now," said I, as I settled myself upon the yard, "where is the object?"

"D'ye see that long streak of light shootin' up into the sky from behind
that bank of cloud, sir?" responded the man.  "Well, it's about half a
p'int, or maybe nearer a p'int, to the south'ard of that."

"Ah, I see it!" ejaculated I, as I caught sight for a moment of a small,
scarcely distinguishable speck that appeared for an instant and then
vanished again, apparently in the hollow between two waves.  A few
seconds later I caught it again, and presently I had it dancing
unsteadily athwart the field of the instrument.  But even then I was
unable to definitely settle whether it was or was not a boat; as the man
at my side had remarked, it looked like a boat, it was about the size of
a boat, as seen nearly end-on, but there was no indication of life or
movement about it; it seemed to be floating idly to the run of the seas.
Just at this moment the sun's upper limb flashed into view over the
edge of the cloud-bank, darting a long gleam of golden radiance athwart
the heaving welter to the schooner, and I looked again, half expecting
to catch the answering flash of wet oar-blades; but there was nothing of
the kind to be seen.  Undoubtedly, however, there was _something_ out
there,--something that might prove to be a boat,--and I determined to
give it an overhaul without loss of time.  So, carefully noting its
bearing and distance, and cautioning the lookout not to lose sight of it
for an instant, I descended to the deck and straightway gave the
necessary orders for making sail and beating up to it.

The object being nearly dead to windward, it was a full hour before we
reached it, but little more than half that time sufficed to satisfy us
that it really was a boat, and a further quarter of an hour established
the fact that it was none other than the _Althea's_ launch; but my heart
was full of foreboding as I observed that, although we fired gun after
gun to attract attention, there was no answering sign of life to be
discovered on board her, although from the moment when she became
visible from the deck, either Lindsay or I kept the telescope constantly
bearing upon her.  Yet the depth at which she floated in the water
showed that she was not empty.  Lindsay suggested that her crew might
have been taken out of her by some craft that had fallen in with her,
and that the reason why she floated so deep was that she was half-full
of water.  But I could not agree with this view; there was a buoyancy of
movement about her as she rose and fell upon the surges, which was
convincing proof to my mind that she was loaded down with something much
more stable than water.

At length, when we had drawn up to within a cable's length of her, the
man on the royal yard sang out that there were people in her, but that
they were all lying down in the bottom of the boat, and appeared to be
dead.

"We shall have to pick her up ourselves," said I to Lindsay.  "Let one
hand stand by to drop into her from the fore chains with a rope's-end as
we bring her alongside.  Lay your topsail aback, Mr Lindsay, and let
your jib-sheet flow, if you please."

And as I sprang up on the rail to con the schooner alongside, Lindsay
gave the necessary orders.

With the topsail aback, and the mainsheet eased well off, the schooner
went drifting slowly down toward the launch, that, as we now approached
her, looked old, battered, and weather-stained almost out of
recognition.  We steered so as to shave past her close to windward, and
as she came drifting in under our fore chains, the man who was waiting
there with a rope's-end dropped neatly into her, and, springing lightly
along the thwarts into the eyes of her, deftly made fast the rope to the
iron ring bolt in her stem.  Then he turned himself, and looked at the
ghastly cargo that the boat carried, and as he gazed he whitened to the
lips, and a look of unspeakable horror crept into his eyes as he
involuntarily thrust out his hands as though to ward off the sight of
some dreadful object.  And well he might, for as I gazed down into that
floating charnel-house I turned deadly sick and faint, as much at what
met my sight as at the horrible odour that rose up out of her and filled
my nostrils.  The boat seemed to be full of dead, lying piled upon one
another, as though they had been flung there; yet the first glance
assured me that some of those who were on board her, on the night when I
parted company in the gig, were now missing.  The captain and the doctor
were lying side by side in the stern-sheets; the rest of the ill-fated
party were lying heaped one upon the other, or doubled up over the
thwarts in the other part of the boat.  The two masts were standing, but
the sails were lowered and lay, unfurled, along the thwarts, on top of
the oars and boathook.  There was no trace of food of any kind to be
seen, and the water-breakers were without bungs, and to all appearance
empty.

So ghastly and repulsive was the sight which the boat presented, that
our people hung in the wind for a moment or two when I ordered them to
jump down into her and pass the bodies up over the side; but they
rallied at once and followed me when I led the way.  The skipper and the
doctor were both lying upon their faces, and as I raised the former and
turned him over, it is difficult to say which shocked me most, whether
the startling ease with which I lifted his wasted body, or the sight of
his withered, drawn, and shrunken features--which were so dreadfully
altered that for a moment I was doubtful whether it really was or was
not the body of Captain Harrison that I held in my arms.  I passed him
up out of the boat without difficulty, and then did the same with the
doctor.  It struck me that the latter was not quite dead, and I sang out
to Lindsay to get some _very_ weak brandy and water and moisten the lips
of each man as he was passed up on deck; for if life still lingered in
any of them, it might be possible to save them even now by judicious and
careful treatment.  Ten of our inanimate shipmates we singled out as
possibly alive, but with the rest the indications of dissolution were so
unmistakable that I deemed it best not to interfere with them, but to
cover the bodies with a sail, weight it well down with ballast pigs, and
then pull the plug out of the boat and cast her adrift, after reading
the burial service over the poor relics of humanity that she contained.

That, however, was a duty that might be deferred until _we_ had attended
to those who had been passed up out of her as possibly alive; we
therefore dropped her under the stern, and allowed her to tow at the
full scope of a complete coil of line, while we devoted ourselves to the
task of attempting to resuscitate the other ten.  As I had suspected,
the doctor proved to be alive, for after diligently painting his blue
and shrivelled lips for about a quarter of an hour with a feather dipped
in weak brandy and water, his eyelids quivered, a fluttering sigh passed
his lips, followed by a feeble groan, and his eyes opened, fixing
themselves upon Lindsay and myself in a glassy, unrecognising stare.

"Water! water, for the love of God!" he murmured in a thick, dry, husky
whisper.

I raised his head gently and rested it against my shoulder, while
Lindsay held the pannikin of weak grog to his lips.  For a few seconds
he seemed to be incapable of swallowing, then, like a corpse galvanised
into the semblance of life, he suddenly seized the edge of the pannikin
between his clenched teeth as in a vice, and held it until he had
drained it to the dregs.  Luckily, there were but two or three spoonfuls
left in it, or--as he afterwards assured me--that draught would probably
have been his last.

"Ah!" he ejaculated, with a sigh of unspeakable relief, "nectar! nectar!
Give me more."  Adding quickly, "No, no; not yet, not yet!  A single
teaspoonful every five minutes!  Oh, my God, what anguish!  Why did I
not die?  Is that Courtenay, or am I dreaming?  Where is the captain?"

I whipped off my jacket and placed it under his head, as I allowed him
to sink gently back on the deck, for at this moment Lindsay whispered to
me that the captain was coming round, and I turned to render what
assistance I could.  Captain Harrison's eyes were now open, but it was
perfectly plain to us both that his wandering glances were as yet devoid
of recognition; and it was not until some ten minutes later that he
began to evince some understanding of who we were and what had happened.
His first inquiry was after the well-being of those who had been with
him in the boat, and to this I felt constrained to give an evasive but
encouraging reply, as he was so terribly weak that I feared the effect
upon him of a straightforward answer giving the actual state of the
matter.  We got him and the doctor down below and put them to bed as
quickly as possible, and by the time that this was done the other eight
poor souls had also been successfully brought round, when they too were
conveyed below and made as comfortable as circumstances would permit.
This done, we disposed of the dead with all due reverence, and then
resumed our search to windward with renewed hope arising out of the
happy discovery of the launch.

It was drawing well on toward eight bells in the afternoon watch that
day when the man whom.  I had stationed in the cabin to keep an eye upon
the captain and the doctor came up on deck with the news that both were
now awake, and that the captain wished to see me.  I at once obeyed the
summons, and was greatly rejoiced to find that both of my patients were
much stronger, and wonderfully the better in every way for their long
sleep.  They lost no time in explaining that they were ravenously
hungry; whereupon I sent word forward to the galley, and in less than
five minutes both were busily engaged in disposing of a bowl of strong
broth, prepared from two of the small remaining stock of chickens that
we had found on board the schooner when we took her.

The moment that the soup had disappeared the captain began to ask me
questions, in reply to which I gave him a succinct account of our
adventures from the moment when we parted company from the rest of the
boats; and when I had finished he paid me a high compliment upon what he
was pleased to term the skill and judgment that I had displayed
throughout.  He then recounted what had befallen the launch, from which
I learned that the entire flotilla of boats had remained together--the
faster boats accommodating their pace to the slower craft--until caught
in the tail-end of the hurricane,--which with them only reached the
strength of a moderate gale,--when they were perforce compelled to
separate, from which time the launch had seen none of the others again.
It appeared that the launch, deeply loaded as she was, suffered very
nearly as much as we in the gig did; the few in her who were capable of
doing any work having their hands full in keeping her above water.  The
sea had broken over them heavily, all but swamping them upon several
occasions, and destroying the greater part of their provisions, so that
within three days after the cessation of the gale they found themselves
without food and face to face with starvation.  Then followed a terrible
story of protracted suffering, ending in many cases in madness and
death, of fruitless effort to work the heavy boat, and finally of utter
helplessness, despair, and--oblivion.  The captain informed me that he
had little hope that any of the other boats had outlived the gale, but
believed that if they were still afloat they would be found some forty
miles or so to the northward and eastward of where we had fallen in with
the launch.

In that direction therefore we continued our search, scouring the whole
ocean thereabout over an area of fully one hundred miles square, but we
found none of the other boats; and at length, when we had been cruising
for a full week, the captain, who by this time was rapidly regaining
strength, reluctantly gave the order for us to desist and bear up for
Jamaica.  And I may as well here mention that none of the other boats
were ever again heard of, there being little doubt that they all
foundered during the gale.



CHAPTER SEVEN.

A DARING ACT OF PIRACY.

The captain, having thus sorrowfully and reluctantly abandoned all hope
of finding the missing boats, at once became keenly anxious to reach
Port Royal with all possible expedition, in order that the painful
business of our trial by court-martial for the loss of the frigate might
be got over without delay.  We therefore carried on night and day; and
so smartly did the little schooner step out, that on the seventh day
after bearing up we found ourselves at daybreak within sight of Turk's
Island, running in for the Windward Passage before the rather languid
trade wind.  Most of the people were by this time getting about once
more, so that, with our own men and the _Wyvern_ party, our decks looked
rather crowded; and as we went below to breakfast the captain remarked
upon it, expressing his satisfaction that the time was so near at hand
when we could exchange our cramped quarters aboard the schooner for the
more roomy ones to be found in the Kingston hotels or the houses of the
hospitable Jamaica planters.

We were still dawdling over breakfast in the close, stuffy little cabin
of the schooner, when Lindsay, who was looking out for me, poked his
head through the open skylight to report that there were two sail
ahead--a ship and a brigantine--hove-to in somewhat suspicious
proximity; and that Captain Tucker--who had been aloft to get a better
view of the strangers--declared his belief that the brigantine was none
other than the piratical craft the crew of which had pillaged and
destroyed the _Wyvern_.

"How do they bear, Mr Lindsay?" demanded the captain.

"Straight ahead, sir," answered Lindsay.

"And how far distant?" was the next question.

"About ten miles, sir," replied Lindsay.

"And what are we going at the present moment?" asked the captain.

Lindsay withdrew his head from the skylight to glance over the rail, and
then replaced it again to answer, "A bare five, sir, I should say; the
wind seems to be growing more scant.  Shall I heave the log, sir?"

"No, thank you," answered the captain; "I have no doubt your judgment is
nearly enough correct for all practical purposes, Mr Lindsay.  Let a
hand be sent aloft to keep an eye on the strangers, and tell him to
report anything unusual that he may see.  I shall be on deck myself in a
few minutes."

Excusing myself, I slipped up on deck to have a look at the two craft,
the upper canvas of which was visible above the horizon directly ahead
of us.  As Lindsay had said, the one was a full-rigged ship, while the
other was a fine big brigantine; both were hove-to, and in such close
proximity that the merest tyro might shrewdly guess at what was going on
there just beyond the horizon.  But, to make assurance doubly sure, I
took the ship's glass, and went up on the topgallant yard, from whence I
was able to obtain a full view of them.  It was as I had expected; boats
were passing rapidly to and fro between the two craft, those which left
the ship being heavily laden, while those which left the brigantine were
light.

I was still aloft, working away with the telescope, when the captain
emerged from the companion-way, and at once catching sight of me,
hailed--

"Well, Mr Courtenay, what do you make of them?"

"It is undoubtedly a case of piracy, sir," I replied.  "The brigantine
is rifling the ship, and the latter has all the appearance of a British
West Indiaman."

"Whew!"  I heard the skipper whistle, as he walked to the rail and
looked thoughtfully down at the foam bubbles that were gliding past our
bends.  "If she is an Indiaman she will have passengers aboard her," he
remarked to the doctor, who at that moment joined him.

The doctor seemed to acquiesce, although he spoke in so low a tone that
I could not catch his words.  The two stood talking together for a few
minutes, and then the captain hailed me again.

"What do you judge our distance from those two craft to be, Mr
Courtenay?" he asked.

"A good eight miles, sir, I should say," answered I.

"Thank you, Mr Courtenay; you may come down, sir," returned the
skipper, which I took to be a hint that he wanted me.  I accordingly
slung the glass over my shoulder, swung myself off the yard on to the
backstay, and so descended to the deck.

"Did you notice whether they seemed to have more wind than we have?"
inquired the captain, as I joined him.

"Pretty much the same, sir, I should think," answered I.  "It looks as
though it would fall calm before long."

"I am afraid not; no such luck," remarked the skipper, cocking his
weather eye skyward and carefully studying the aspect of the heavens.
"I fervently wish it would; then we could nab that fellow beautifully
with the boats."

"Might we not try, sir, as it is?" inquired I eagerly.  "We have enough
people--that is, counting the _Wyvern's_ men, who, I have no doubt,
would all volunteer," I hastened to add, as my eye fell upon three or
four of those whom we had taken out of the launch, and who, what with
starvation and their still unhealed wounds, looked more fit for a
hospital than for boat duty.

"Thank you, Mr Courtenay," answered the skipper, with a smile,
evidently reading my unspoken thoughts.  "No, I am afraid it would not
do.  In the first place, I question whether we really _have_ sufficient
men to justify such an attempt; and, in the next place, if we had, it
would still be desirable, in my opinion, to defer the attempt until we
are much nearer.  At present nobody can tell what we are.  The schooner
is such a small affair that I am in hopes the brigantine will take no
notice of us until we are within striking distance of her; while, if I
were to send the boats away, she would probably make off at once.  No;
it is rather trying to the patience to remain idly aboard here, drifting
along at this snail's pace, but I am convinced that it is the correct
thing to do.  Perhaps, if we show only a few men about the decks, the
brigantine may be tempted to tackle us."

"Ah! if only she would, sir!"  I ejaculated, with such intensity of
feeling that the captain laughed.

"Why, I declare you are developing into a regular fire-eater!" he
exclaimed.

"Think of the passengers, sir, some of them women, most likely!"  I
said.

"I _am_ thinking of them, sir!" answered the captain through his
clenched teeth, and with a sudden glitter in his eye that foreboded evil
to the brigantine's people, should we be fortunate enough to get within
striking distance of them.

I turned away and walked forward to where I saw Black Peter, the whilom
servant of the midshipmen's mess aboard the _Althea_.  He was one of
those whom we had found still alive in the launch, and he had picked up
wonderfully since then, having become almost his old self again.  He was
lounging on the forecastle near the port cat-head, with his bare, brawny
arms crossed on the rail as he gazed ahead at the two craft, with which
we were slowly closing.

"Peter," said I, "get the grindstone ready.  And Green, get the
cutlasses up on deck and give them a thorough good sharpening.  We may
want them by and by."

"Ay, ay, sir," answered Green, with a grin, as he shambled away to get
the weapon, while Peter bestirred himself with alacrity to prepare the
grindstone for its work by drawing a bucket of water and pouring it into
the trough.  A few minutes later Peter, his eyes gleaming with
excitement and every one of his ivories bared in a broad grin of
delight, was whirling the handle round at a furious speed, as Green and
another hand stood on either side of the stone, each pressing a bare
blade to its fiercely buzzing disc.

We continued to drift along at an exasperatingly slow pace before the
languid breeze until we had arrived within about four miles of the two
craft, when the skipper gave orders to clear the decks and cast loose
the guns; but he instructed me that the galley fire was not to be
extinguished and the magazine opened until the last moment.  Apparently
he had his doubts as to the probability of the brigantine attacking us.
And, if so, his doubts were soon confirmed; for when we had reduced the
distance by another mile the lookout aloft reported that the brigantine
was filling away; and in another minute or two she turned her stern to
us, rigged out her studding-sail booms, and went off before the wind,
setting her studding-sails as she went.

"Ah!" ejaculated the captain, "it is as I feared!  She smells a rat, and
does not mean to wait for us!  Hoist out the gig at once, Mr Courtenay,
and pull for your life to that ship; too probably it is a case of the
_Wyvern_ over again, and if there are any people left aboard her they
must be saved.  Let the men go fully armed, but do not take more than
the boat's proper complement, as you are not likely to have any fighting
to do, while you may want all the room in the boat that you can spare."

We were by this time moving so slowly that it was unnecessary to heave-
to in order to hoist out the gig.  No time, therefore, was lost in
getting her into the water, and within five minutes of the issuing of
the order by the captain we were afloat and away from the schooner, with
the men--a picked crew, consisting of the strongest and smartest men in
the ship--bending their backs as they drove the beautifully modelled
boat at racing speed through the water.

We had barely got away, however, before I detected light wreaths of
smoke curling up between the masts of the distant ship; and at the same
moment I observed that although her mainyards were still braced aback
she seemed to be no longer hove-to, for, as I watched, her bows fell off
until she was nearly before the wind, and she went drifting slowly away
to leeward, sometimes heading in one direction and sometimes in another,
yawing about all over the place, with a difference of fully four points
on either side of the general direction in which she was driving.  This
was most exasperating, as although she was drifting slowly she was still
drifting, and that, too, in the same general direction that we were
steering, thus prolonging the time that must necessarily elapse ere we
could overtake her, while it would greatly increase the expenditure of
energy on the part of the oarsmen to enable us to get alongside.

"Give way with a will, men," I cried.  "The rascals have not only set
fire to the ship, but they have also cast loose her wheel, so that she
is now running away from us to leeward.  The harder you pull the sooner
shall we catch her, and the better chance will there be for us to put
out the fire.  And remember, for aught that we know, her crew may be
lying there upon her deck, bound hand and foot, utterly helpless, to
roast alive, unless we can get alongside in time to save them!"

This appeal was not without effect upon the men; hard as they had been
pulling, they now put out every available ounce of strength they
possessed, their brawny muscles standing out like ropes upon their bare
arms, while the perspiration literally poured off them, and the stout
ash blades bent like wands, as they all but lifted the gig clean out of
the water at every stroke.  We tore along over the low, oil-like ridges
of the swell at the speed of the dolphin, leaving the schooner as though
she were at anchor; yet to my eager impatience our headlong pace seemed
to be little better than a crawl, for the light wreaths of smoke that I
had seen winding lazily upward from the ship's hull and twining about
her spars increased in volume with startling rapidity, while it
momentarily grew darker in colour, until, within ten minutes of its
first appearance, it had become a dense cloud of dun-coloured smoke,
completely enveloping the ship, in the heart of which long, forking
tongues of flickering flame presently appeared.  They had apparently set
fire to the poor old barkie in at least half a dozen places, and she was
burning like match-wood.

"Pull, men, pull!"  I cried, "or we shall be too late; she is well
alight even now, and in another quarter of an hour she will be a blazing
furnace if she goes on at her present rate.  Heaven above! if there are
people aboard her what must their feelings be now?"

A groan of sympathy burst from the men in response to this ejaculation
of mine, and they tugged at the oars with a strength and energy that
filled me with amazement.  We were coming up with the ship hand over
hand; but, fast as the boat flew, the fire grew still faster, and
presently I saw the flames climbing aloft by way of the well-tarred
shrouds until they reached the sails, when there arose a sudden blaze of
flame among the spars, and in two or three minutes every shred of canvas
had been consumed, and the crawling tongues of fire were circling about
the masts and yards, feebly at first, but steadily increasing until they
were all ablaze.  Meanwhile the ship, deprived of her canvas, gradually
fell broadside-on to the wind, and from that position as gradually
drifted round until she lay bows-on to us.  By this time we were within
three-quarters of a mile of her, and now that she was no longer driven
to leeward by her sails, we neared her rapidly.  But my heart sank
within me as I watched her, for the destruction of her sails, which I
had at first thought a fortunate circumstance,--inasmuch as she no
longer blew away from us,--I now recognised as a dreadful happening;
for, stationary as she now lay on the water, the light draught of wind
had full power to fan the fire that raged aboard her, and by the time
that we drew up under her bows and hooked on to her bobstay, she was a
roaring mass of flames from stem to stern.

I shinned up the bobstay and so got on to her bowsprit, and from there
made my way into her head; but I could go no farther, for the fore part
of her deck was a sheet of fire, upon which no living thing could exist
for more than a few seconds of unspeakable torment, and even where I
stood the heat was all but unendurable.  I could not see very far aft
for the flames and smoke.  Her fore-scuttle was open, and a pillar of
flame roared out of it as from a chimney on fire; and some ten feet
abaft it was her foremast, ablaze from the deck to the truck; and
immediately abaft it again was the blazing framework of what had shortly
before been a deck-house.  Beyond that I could see nothing.  One thing
was quite certain, and that was that if there were living people still
aboard her--which I could not believe possible--they must be aft, and it
was there that we must seek them.  So I scrambled down into the gig
again, and ordered the men to back off and pull round under the ship's
stern.

They lost no time in obeying my order; and it was well for us all that
they exhibited so much alacrity, for as we swept round and gave way an
ominous cracking and rending sound was heard aboard the ship, and a
moment later her blazing foremast toppled over and fell with a crash
into the sea, missing the gig by a bare boathook's length.

"Look out for the other masts; they'll be comin' down too in a jiffy!"
sang out one of the men; and they all pulled for their lives.  But the
alarm was a false one, the main and mizzen masts standing for full ten
minutes longer.

But when we got under the ship's stern it became perfectly clear that no
living thing could be aboard her, for she was even more fiercely ablaze
aft than she was for'ard, the whole of her, from the mainmast to the
taffrail, being a veritable furnace of roaring flame, with tongues and
jets of fire leaping from her cabin windows and from every port and
scuttle.  It was impossible to board her in this direction; it would
have simply been an act of suicide to have attempted it; even her
outside planking, right down to the water's edge, was so hot that it was
unbearable to the touch; and it was beyond all doubt that if those
fiends in the brigantine had left the crew, or any portion of them, on
board, the unhappy creatures must have perished long ere we had reached
the ill-fated craft.  I therefore took a note of her name,--the
_Kingston Trader_ of Bristol,--and reluctantly gave the word to haul off
to a safe distance to wait until the schooner should run down and pick
us up.

This occurred about a quarter of an hour later, and the moment that the
gig was fairly clear of the water we crowded sail after the brigantine;
but, fast as the schooner was, the pirate craft easily ran away from us,
and by sunset had vanished below the horizon.

Nothing further of importance happened to us until our arrival at Port
Royal, which occurred on the evening of the following day, when we just
saved the last of the sea breeze into the harbour.  The captain went
ashore and reported himself that same night, dining with the admiral
afterwards; but I did not go ashore until late the next day, as there
was a great deal of business that I had to attend to.  Captain Harrison
was of course most anxious that our trial by court-martial for the loss
of the frigate should take place as speedily as possible, because he
could not hope for another command until that was over; and it happened
by a quite exceptional piece of luck that there were enough ships in the
harbour to allow of its being held at once.  It was consequently
arranged to take place on board the flag-ship, on the fourth day
following our arrival.  It was, of course, only a formal affair, the
loss of the frigate being due to causes quite beyond our control,--
unless, indeed, we had chosen to run from the two French ships instead
of fighting them,--so it was soon over, and before noon we were all
honourably acquitted, and our side-arms returned to us with much
congratulatory handshaking on the part of the officers present.  Captain
Harrison, the doctor, Lindsay, and I were invited to dine with the
admiral at his Pen that evening, and we accordingly drove out with the
last of the daylight, arriving at the house just as the sun was setting
over Hunt Bay.  The admiral was the very soul of hospitality, and we
were therefore a large party, several officers from Up Park Camp and a
sprinkling of civilians being present "to take off the salt flavour"
likely to prevail from a too exclusive gathering of the naval element,
as our host laughingly put it.

Somewhat to my surprise, I found myself the lion of the evening, Captain
Harrison having most generously made the utmost of my exploit in
capturing the French schooner and my subsequent search for the frigate's
boats; and so many compliments were paid me that, being still young and
comparatively modest, I had much difficulty in maintaining my self-
possession and making suitable replies.

After dinner, and while the rest of us were chatting and smoking over
our wine, the admiral, apologising for being obliged to temporarily
absent himself, withdrew, taking Captain Harrison with him.  They were
absent for nearly an hour, and when they returned there was noticeable
in the skipper's manner a subdued but joyous exultation that told of
good news.  I did not, however, learn what it was until we had left the
Pen and were driving back to our hotel in Kingston by the dazzling
silver radiance of a tropical full moon.  And, prior to that, the
admiral had said to me, as I bade him good-night--

"Come and see me in my office to-morrow about noon, Mr Courtenay; I
want to have a talk to you."

As soon as we were clear of the Pen grounds and fairly on our road to
Kingston, the skipper said to me--

"Mr Courtenay, do you happen to have noticed that fine frigate, the
_Minerva_, lying just inshore of the flag-ship?"

"Yes, sir, I have," said I.  "She is a beauty, and is said to be a
wonderful sailer, especially on a taut bowline.  I heard yesterday that
her captain is ashore, down with yellow fever."

"Very true," answered the skipper.  "The poor fellow died this morning,
and the admiral has been pleased to give the command of her to me."

"I congratulate you with all my heart, sir," said I.  "I thought I could
read good news in your face this evening when you returned to the
dining-room.  She is a magnificent vessel, and I sincerely hope that you
will have abundant opportunity to distinguish yourself in her.  And I
hope, sir, that you will take me with you."

"Thank you, Courtenay, thank you!" exclaimed the skipper, evidently
touched by the sincerity of my congratulations; "if we can only manage
to fall in with the enemy frequently enough, never fear but I will
distinguish myself--if I live.  As to taking you with me, I would do so
with the greatest pleasure, and as a matter of course, were I permitted
to have my own way; but I believe, from what the admiral let drop to me
to-night, that he has his own plans for you, and, if so, you may rest
assured that they will be far more to your advantage than would be your
accompanying me to the _Minerva_.  Let me see--how much longer have you
to serve before you are eligible for examination?"

"Only four days more, sir," I answered, with a laugh; "then I shall go
up as early as possible."

"Only four days more?" exclaimed the skipper in surprise; "I thought it
was more like two months!"

"Only four days, I assure you, sir," repeated I.

"Um! well, I suppose you know best," was the answer, given in a musing
tone, to which was presently added, "So much the better!  So much the
better!"

"May I ask, sir, whether that remark has any reference to me?"  I
inquired.

"Certainly, Courtenay, certainly; there cannot be any possible objection
to your asking, but I am not bound to answer, am I?" replied the
skipper, with a laugh.  "No," he continued, "I must not tell you
anything, except that I have reason to believe that the admiral is very
much pleased with your behaviour, and that he contemplates marking his
approval in a manner which, I am sure, will be very pleasing to
yourself."

And that was all I could get out of the gallant captain; but it was
sufficient to cause me to pass a sleepless night of pleasurable
speculation.

Prompt to the second I presented myself at the admiral's office next
morning, and was at once shown into the great man's presence.

"Morning, Mr Courtenay!" exclaimed he, as I entered.  "Bring yourself
to an anchor for a minute or two, will ye, until I have signed these
papers; then I shall be free to have a talk to you.  Jenkins, clear away
a chair for Mr Courtenay."

The orderly sergeant reverently removed a pile of books and papers from
a chair, dusted it, and placed it near an open window, and I amused
myself by looking out upon the busy scene in the harbour, while the
admiral proceeded to scrawl his signature upon document after document.

"There!" he exclaimed, with a sigh of relief, as he signed the last one
and pushed it away from him, "thank goodness that job is finished!  Now,
Mr Courtenay--by the way, Captain Harrison told me last night that he
believed you would soon be eligible for your examination.  Is that so?"

"Yes, sir," answered I; "I shall have served my full time in three days
more."

"Three days!" exclaimed the admiral.  "Is that all?"

I replied that it was.

"And I understand that you are a good seaman and navigator," resumed the
admiral.  "I suppose you have no fear of failing when you go up for your
examination?"  I modestly replied that I had not, provided that I was
treated fairly, and had not a lot of catch-questions put to me.

"Just so," responded the admiral musingly.  "Your navigation, I have no
doubt, is all right," he continued, "and of course you can work a ship
when she is all ataunto.  But suppose you belonged, let us say, to a
frigate, and at the end of an engagement you found yourself in command,
and your ship unrigged, what is the first thing you would do?"

I considered for a moment, and then proceeded to describe the steps I
should take under such circumstances, the admiral listening all the time
intently, but uttering no word and giving no sign of any kind to
indicate whether my reply was satisfactory or not, until I had finished,
when he said--

"Very good, Mr Courtenay, very good indeed--on the whole.  Have you
ever helped to fit out a ship?"

"Yes, sir," answered I, "I was aboard the poor old _Althea_ during the
whole time that she was in the hands of the riggers."

"Ah!" he exclaimed, "and you heartily wished yourself anywhere else than
there, I'll be bound.  But it has done you good, young gentleman; you
have profited by your experience, I can see, and will perhaps some day
be deeply thankful for the knowledge you then gained.  Now, supposing
that you found yourself on a lee shore, in a heavy gale of wind, with
all your masts gone, what steps would you take for the preservation of
the ship and the lives of your crew?"

Again I replied at length, stating that I should anchor the moment that
the ship drifted into a suitable depth of water, letting go both bowers,
backing them up with the sheet anchors, and shackling the remainder of
the bower cables on to those of the sheet anchors, which latter I should
then veer away upon to within a few fathoms of the clinch.

"And suppose that, having done this, your ship dragged, or parted her
cables, what then?" persisted the admiral.

"Then, sir," said I, "we could only trust in God's mercy, while standing
by to take care of ourselves and each other as soon as the ship should
strike."

"Good!" exclaimed the admiral; "a very excellent and proper answer, Mr
Courtenay.  Now," he continued, "I have been asking you these questions
with a purpose.  I wanted to ascertain for myself whether I should be
justified in sending you away in command of that little schooner that
you took so cleverly, and I think I shall.  I believe you will do
exactly for the work I have in my mind for you.  Sickness and casualties
together have played havoc among the officers on this station of late,
to such an extent that I have not nearly as many as I want; consequently
I am only too glad to meet with young gentlemen like yourself, who have
made good use of their opportunities.  These waters are swarming with
the enemy's privateers,--with a sprinkling of pirates thrown in, it
would appear, from what the skipper of the unfortunate _Wyvern_ says,--
and they must be put down--sunk, burned, destroyed by any means that can
best be compassed, or, better still, captured.  I therefore propose to
fit out that little schooner of yours, and to place you in command of
her, for the especial purpose of suppressing these pests, and
incidentally capturing as many of the enemy's merchantmen as you can
fall in with.  Now, how d'ye think you'll like the job?"

I replied, delightedly, that nothing could possibly suit me better; that
I was inexpressibly grateful for the confidence he was about to repose
in me, and that I would leave nothing undone to prove that such
confidence was justified.

"Very well, then, that is settled," observed the admiral genially.  "We
will have the schooner overhauled at once, and made ready for sea as
quickly as may be.  Then you can go to sea for a month; there will be an
examination next month, for which you must arrange to be in port, and
then--having passed, as I feel certain you will--you shall have your
commission, and be off to sea again to win your next step."



CHAPTER EIGHT.

WE CAPTURE A SPANISH INDIAMAN.

The schooner was turned over to the dockyard people that same afternoon,
and duly surveyed; and on the following day, when I presented myself at
the admiral's office, the old boy handed me a list, as long as the main
bowline, setting forth the several alterations deemed necessary to fit
the little craft for His Majesty's service.

"Here, Mr Courtenay, just run your eye over that list, and tell me what
you think of it," he cried, as he passed it to me across the table.

I "ran my eye over it."

"New gang of rigging fore and aft--new bulwarks, six feet high, fitted
with hammock rail, etcetera, complete--deck strengthened by doubling the
deck-beams--new coamings to hatchways,"--and so on, and so on, until my
imagination had conjured up a picture of the trim little _Susanne_
transmogrified out of recognition, and so stiffened and hampered by her
extra deck-beams and new rigging, that we should have reason to deem
ourselves fortunate should we ever succeed in screwing six knots out of
her on a bowline.

The admiral must have beheld my face growing ever longer as I worked my
way through this precious list to the end of it, for when I had finished
it, and looked up at him blankly, he laughed aloud, as he exclaimed--

"Why, boy, what is the matter with you?  Your face is as long as a
fiddle!"

"Oh, sir," I exclaimed, in accents of despair, "you surely will not
allow those--those--dockyard people to completely ruin the poor little
hooker by making all these alterations and additions to her?  She is a
new vessel, sir--I understood from the mate of her that this was her
first voyage.  She is as sound and strong as wood and iron can make her,
and any attempt to further strengthen her can only result in the
destruction of her sailing powers.  Then, as to those high bulwarks,
sir, what will be the use of them?  They will not afford us an atom of
protection, while they will make her sag away to leeward like a barge!
And this new gang of rigging--"

The admiral again burst out laughing.  "There, there," he said
soothingly, as he held up his hand to stop me, "don't distress yourself
any further, Mr Courtenay; I'll go aboard her myself this afternoon,
and see how much of this she really requires before signing the order.
Meanwhile, go aboard yourself and draw up a list of such alterations and
additions as you may think needful, and hand it to me when I come down
to have a look round."

I did so, and the upshot of it all was that I eventually wheedled the
admiral into consenting that the schooner should remain absolutely
untouched above the deck, the only alterations made in her consisting in
an extension of the cabin and forecastle accommodation, the enlargement
of the magazine, and the substitution of iron ballast for the stones
which the Frenchmen had considered good enough to keep the little hooker
on her feet.  I had some difficulty in gaining my patron's consent to
the retention of the low, light bulwarks with which the craft was
fitted, the admiral being strongly of opinion that they ought to be high
enough and stout enough to shelter us from musketry fire.  Moreover, I
think he considered that we looked altogether too rakish and piratical
as we then were; but I represented to him that under certain conditions
this might be advantageous rather than otherwise, and in the end the
kind-hearted old fellow indulgently let me have my way.  The result of
this was that within a fortnight of our arrival we were at sea again,
with the little ship--rechristened by the name of the _Tern_--smelling
outrageously of fresh paint, to the unmitigated disgust of the thirty-
six stout fellows who were quartered in her forecastle.  Young Lindsay,
with many apologies to Captain Harrison, elected to unite his fortunes
with mine, rather than turn over to the _Minerva_; and I was also given
another lad--a very quiet, lady-like young fellow named Christie--to
bear us both company and do duty as master.  Black Peter, also came to
the conclusion that there would be more scope for his talents aboard the
schooner than in the frigate, and without asking anybody's leave,
installed himself, unceremoniously and as a matter of course, in the
position of cabin servant.

We weighed about five o'clock in the evening, with the last of the sea
breeze,--a very smart, handsome privateer schooner named the _Coquette_
being in company,--and just managed to sneak through the narrow channel
between Gun and Rackum Cays, when the wind dropped dead, and left us in
the East Channel in the midst of a glassy calm, rolling our rails under
to the furious swell that came sweeping along past Plum Point.  The
_Coquette_ was within biscuit-toss of us, and she too was rolling and
tumbling about to such an extent that I every minute expected to see her
roll her sticks away.  This lasted for close upon two hours, during
which the sun went down in a blaze of splendour and lavish magnificence
of colour such as I have never beheld outside the limits of the West
Indian waters.  Then, just as the burning glories of the west were
fading into sober grey, while Hesperus beamed softly out with
momentarily increasing effulgence in the darkening blue of the eastern
sky, a gentle breeze came stealing to us off the land, to which both
schooners, with a mutual challenge to each other, gladly trimmed their
canvas, and away we both went, hugging the Palisades closely, for the
sake of the smoother water, until Plum Point was passed, when we
gradually drew away from each other, the _Coquette_ shaping a course for
Morant Point, while I edged away for the island of Martinique, having
formed the opinion that some of the more knowing of the enemy's
homeward-bound merchant skippers might endeavour to slip out of the
Caribbean between the islands of Martinique and Dominica, in the hope of
thereby eluding our cruisers and privateers, most of which chose the
neighbourhood of the Windward Passages for their cruising-ground.  By
the end of the second dog-watch the breeze had freshened so much that it
became necessary to hand our royal and topgallant sail; and soon
afterwards the wind hauled gradually round until it became the true
trade wind, piping up to the strength of half a gale, and compelling us
to haul down a single reef in our big mainsail and two reefs in our
topsail, under which the little beauty lay down and thrashed through it
with all the life and go of a thorough-bred racer.  The _Coquette_ was
still in sight, some eight miles away to windward, and, famous as she
was for her speed, I had the supreme delight of observing that we had
head-reached upon her to the extent of quite two miles.  And now we
began to discover the great advantage of having exchanged our stone
ballast for iron, the schooner being not only much stiffer under her
canvas, but also more lively than before.  It was grand sailing weather,
the breeze, although strong, being perfectly steady, while the sea was
long and regular, allowing the little hooker plenty of time to rise to
each as it came rushing down upon her with hissing crest all agleam with
sparkling sea-fire.  And it was exhilarating to stand right away aft,
close by the weather taffrail, and watch the little beauty as she tore
along with breathless speed through the dusky night.  The sky was clear
as a bell, save for a few detached fleeces of trade-cloud that came
swooping along at frequent intervals athwart the stars, so that there
was plenty of light to see by; and it was as intoxicating as wine to
merely stand abaft there, as I did, feeling the strong rush of the wind
past me, and drinking in its invigorating freshness and coolness, as the
deck heaved and plunged beneath my feet, and the bending masts swayed
and reeled to and fro, the trucks sweeping long arcs among the dancing
stars, and the wind piping high and shrill through the rigging, as the
schooner leaped and plunged irresistibly forward, with a storm

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