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Tom Cringle's Log

by Michael Scott · English · Gutenberg #7281 · 1,319,288 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Tom Cringle's Log

Author: Michael Scott


        
Release date: January 1, 2005 [eBook #7281]
                Most recently updated: November 19, 2016

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/7281

Credits: Produced by John Edward Heaton and David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TOM CRINGLE'S LOG ***




Produced by John Edward Heaton






TOM CRINGLE’S LOG

By Michael Scott

(1789--1835)




CHAPTER I.--The Launching of the Log.


Dazzled by the glories of Trafalgar, I, Thomas Cringle, one fine morning
in the merry month of May, in the year one thousand eight hundred and so
and so, magnanimously determined in my own mind, that the United Kingdom
of Great Britain and Ireland should no longer languish under the want of a
successor to the immortal Nelson, and being then of the great
perpendicular altitude of four feet four inches, and of the mature age of
thirteen years, I thereupon betook myself to the praiseworthy task of
tormenting, to the full extent of my small ability, every man and woman
who had the misfortune of being in any way connected with me, until they
had agreed to exert all their interest, direct or indirect, and
concentrate the same in one focus upon the head and heart of Sir Barnaby
Blueblazes, vice-admiral of the red squadrons a Lord of the Admiralty,
and one of the old plain K.B.’s (for he flourished before the time when a
gallant action or two tagged half of the letters of the alphabet to a
man’s name, like the tail of a paper kite), in order that he might be
graciously pleased to have me placed on the quarterdeck of one of his
Majesty’s ships of war without delay.

The stone I had set thus recklessly a-rolling, had not been in motion
above a fortnight, when it fell with unanticipated violence, and crushed
the heart of my poor mother, while it terribly bruised that of me, Thomas;
for as I sat at breakfast with the dear old woman, one fine Sunday morning,
admiring my new blue jacket and snow white trowsers, and shining well
soaped face, and nicely brushed hair, in the pier glass over the chimney
piece, I therein saw the door behind me open, and Nicodemus, the waiting
man, enter and deliver a letter to the old lady, with a formidable looking
seal.

I perceived that she first ogled the superscription, and then the seal,
very ominously, and twice made as if she would have broken the missive
open, but her heart seemed as often to fail her. At length she laid it
down-heaved a long deep sigh--took off her spectacles, which appeared
dim-wiped them, put them on again, and making a sudden effort, tore open
the letter, read it hastily over, but not so rapidly as to prevent her hot
tears falling with a small tiny tap tap on the crackling paper.

Presently she pinched my arm, pushed the blistered manuscript under my
nose, and utterly unable to speak to me, rose, covered her face with her
hands, and left the room weeping bitterly. I could hear her praying in a
low, solemn, yet sobbing and almost inarticulate voice, as she crossed the
passage to her own dressing-room.--“Even as thou wilt, oh Lord--not mine,
but thy holy will be done--yet, oh! it is a bitter bitter thing for a
widowed mother to part with her only boy.”

Now came my turn--as I read the following epistle three times over, with
a most fierce countenance, before thoroughly understanding whether I was
dreaming or awake--in truth, poor little fellow as I was, I was fairly
stunned.

“Admiralty, such a date.

“DEAR MADAM,
It gives me very great pleasure to say that your son is appointed to the
Breeze frigate, now fitting at Portsmouth for foreign service. Captain
Wigemwell is a most excellent officer, and a good man, and the
schoolmaster on board is an exceedingly decent person I am informed; so I
congratulate you on his good fortune in beginning his career, in which I
wish him all success, under such favourable auspices. As the boy is, I
presume, all ready, you had better send him down on Thursday next, at
latest, as the frigate will go to sea, wind and weather permitting,
positively on Sunday morning.”

“I remain, my dear Madam,”

“Yours very faithfully,”

“BARNABY BLUEBLAZES, K.B.”

However much I had been moved by my mother’s grief, my false pride came to
my assistance, and my first impulse was to chant a verse of some old tune,
in a most doleful manner. “All right--all right,” I then exclaimed, as I
thrust half a doubled up muffin into my gob, but it was all chew, chew,
and no swallow--not a morsel could I force down my parched throat, which
tightened like to throttle me.

Old Nicodemus had by this time again entered the room, unseen and unheard,
and startled me confoundedly, as he screwed his words in his sharp cracked
voice into my larboard ear. “Jane tells me your mamma is in a sad taking,
Master Tom. You ben’t going to leave us, all on a heap like, be you?
Surely your stay until your sister comes from your uncle Job’s? You know
there are only two on ye--You won’t leave the old lady all alone, Master
Thomas, win ye?’ The worthy old fellow’s voice quavered here, and the
tears hopped over his old cheeks through the flour and tallow like peas,
as he slowly drew a line down the forehead of his well-powdered pate,
with his fore-finger.

“No--no--why, yes,” exclaimed I, fairly overcome; “that is--oh Nic, Nic
you old fool, I wish I could cry, man--I wish I could cry!” and
straightway I hied me to my chamber, and wept until I thought my very
heart would have burst.

In my innocence and ignorance, child as I was, I had looked forward to
several months preparation; to buying and fitting of uniforms, and dirks,
and cocked hat, and swaggering therein, to my own great glory, and the
envy of all my young relations; and especially I desired to parade my
fire--new honours before the large dark eyes of my darling little creole
cousin, Mary Palma; whereas I was now to be bundled on board, at a few
days warning, out of a ready-made furnishing shop, with lots of ill-made,
glossy, hard mangled duck trowsers, the creases as sharp as the backs of
knives, and--“oh, it never rains, but it pours,” exclaimed I; “surely all
this promptitude is a little de plus in Sir Barnaby.”

However, away I was trundled at the time appointed, with an aching heart,
to Portsmouth, after having endured the misery of a first parting from a
fond mother, and a host of kind friends; but, miserable as I was,
according to my preconceived determination, I began my journal the very
day I arrived, that nothing connected with so great a man should be lost,
and most weighty did the matters therein related appear to me at the time;
but seen through the long vista of, I won’t say how many years, I really
must confess that the Log, for long long after I first went to sea in the
Breeze, and subsequently when removed to the old Kraaken line-of-battle
ship, both of which were constantly part of blockading squadrons, could be
compared to nothing more fitly than a dish of trifle, anciently called
syllabub, with a stray plum here and there scattered at the bottom. But
when, after several weary years, I got away in the dear old Torch, on a
separate cruise, incidents came fast enough with a vengeance--stem,
unyielding, iron events, as I found to my heavy cost, which spoke out
trumpet-tongued and fiercely for themselves, and whose tremendous
simplicity required no adventitious aid in the narration to thrill through
the hearts of others. So, to avoid yarn-spinning, I shall evaporate my
early Logs, and blow off as much of the froth as I can, in order to
present the residuum free of flummery to the reader--just to give him a
taste here and there, as it were, of the sort of animal I was at that
time. Thus:

Thomas Cringle, his log-book.

Arrived in Portsmouth by the Defiance at ten, A.M. on such a day.
Waited on the Commissioner, to whom I had letters, and said I was
appointed to the Breeze. Same day, went on board and took up my berth;
stifling hot; mouldy biscuit; and so on. My mother’s list makes it
fifteen shirts, whereas I only have twelve.

Admiral made the signal to weigh, wind at S.W. fresh and squally.
Stockings should be one dozen worsted, three of cotton, two of silk; find
only half a dozen worsted, two of cotton, and one of silk.

Fired a gun and weighed.

Sailed for the Fleet off Vigo, deucidly sea-sick was told that fat pork
was the best specific, if bolted half raw; did not find it much of a tonic
passed a terrible night, and for four hours of it obliged to keep watch,
more dead than alive. The very second evening we were at sea, it came on
to blow, and the night fell very dark, with heavy rain. Towards eight
bells in the middle watch, I was standing on a gun well forward on the
starboard side, listening to the groaning of the main-tack, as the
swelling sail, the foot of which stretched transversely right athwart the
ship’s deck in a black arch, struggled to tear it up, like some dark
impalpable spirit of the air striving to burst the chains that held him,
and escape high up into the murky clouds, or a giant labouring to uproot
an oak, and wondering in my innocence how hempen cord could brook such
strain when just as the long waited-for strokes of the bell sounded
gladly in mine ear, and the shrill clear note of the whistle of the
boatswain’s mate had been followed by his gruff voice, grumbling hoarsely
through the gale, “Larboard watch, ahoy!” The look-out at the weather
gangway, who had been relieved, and beside whom I had been standing a
moment before, stepped past me, and scrambled up on the booms “Hillo,
Howard, where away, my man?” said I.

“Only to fetch my”--

Crack!--the main tack parted, and up flew the sail with a thundering flap,
loud as the report of a cannon-shot, through which, however, I could
distinctly hear a heavy smash, as the large and ponderous blocks at the
clew of the sail struck the doomed sailor under the ear, and whirled him
off the booms over the fore-yard-arm into the sea, where he perished, as
heaving-to was impossible, and useless if practicable, as his head must
have been smashed to atoms.

This is one of the stray plums of the trifle, what follows is a whisk of
the froth, written when we looked into Corunna, about a week after the
embarkation of the army:--

     MONODY ON THE DEATH OF SIR JOHN MOORE.

     Farewell, thou pillar of the war,
     Warm-hearted soldier, Moore, farewell,
     In honour’s firmament a star,
     As bright as ere in glory fell.

     Deceived by weak or wicked men,
     How gallantly thou stood’st at bay,
     Like lion hunted to his den,
     Let France tell, on that bloody day.

     No boastful splendour round thy bier,
     No blazon’d trophies o’er thy grave;
     But thou had’st more, the soldier’s tear,
     The heart-warm offering of the brave.

     On Lusitania’s rock-girt coast,
     All coffinless thy relics lie,
     Where all but honour bright was lost,
     Yet thy example shall not die.

     Albeit no funeral knell was rung,
     Nor o’er thy tomb in mournful wreath
     The laurel twined with cypress hung,
     Still shall it live while Britons breathe.

     What though, when thou wert lowly laid,
     Instead of all the pomp of woe,
     The volley o’er thy bloody bed
     Was thunder’d by an envious foe:--

     Inspired by it in after time,
     A race of heroes will appear,
     The glory of Britannia’s clime,
     To emulate thy bright career.

     And there will be, of martial fire,
     Those who all danger will endure;
     Their first, best aim, but to aspire
     To die thy death--the death of Moore.

To return. On the evening of the second day, we were off Falmouth, and
then got a slant of wind that enabled us to lie our course.

Next morning, at daybreak, saw a frigate in the northeast quarter, making
signals;--soon after we bore up. Bay of Biscay--tremendous swell--Cape
Finisterre--blockading squadron off Cadiz--in-shore squadron--and so on,
all trifle and no plums.

At length the Kraaken, in which I had now served for some time, was
ordered home, and sick of knocking about in a fleet, I got appointed to a
fine eighteen-gun sloop, the Torch, in which we sailed on such a day for
the North Sea--wind foul--weather thick and squally; but towards evening
on the third day, being then off Harwich, it moderated, when we made more
sail, and stood on, and next morning, in the cold, miserable, drenching
haze of an October daybreak, we passed through a fleet of fishing-boats
at anchor. “At anchor,” thought I, “and in the middle of the sea,”--but so
it was--all with their tiny cabooses, smoking cheerily, and a solitary
figure, as broad as it was long, stiffly walking to and fro on the
confined decks of the little vessels. It was now that I knew the value of
the saying, “a fisherman’s walk, two steps and overboard.” With regard to
these same fishermen, I cannot convey a better notion of them, than by
describing one of the two North Sea pilots whom we had on board. This
pilot was a tall, raw-boned subject, about six feet or so, with a blue
face--I could not call it red--and a hawk’s-bill nose of the colour of
bronze. His head was defended from the weather by what is technically
called a south-west, pronounced sow-west,--cap, which is in shape like
the thatch of a dustman, composed of canvass, well tarred, with no snout,
but having a long flap hanging down the back to carry the rain over the
cape of the jacket. His chin was embedded in a red comforter that rose to
his ears. His trunk was first of all cased in a shirt of worsted
stocking-net; over this he had a coarse linen shirt, then a thick cloth
waistcoat; a shag jacket was the next layer, and over that was rigged the
large cumbrous pea jacket, reaching to his knees. As for his lower spars,
the rig was still more peculiar;--first of all, he had on a pair of most
comfortable woollen stockings, what we call fleecy hosiery--and the
beauties are peculiarly nice in this respect--then a pair of strong
fearnaught trowsers; over these again are drawn up another pair of
stockings, thick, coarse, rig-and-furrowed as we call them in Scotland,
and above all this were drawn a pair of long, well-greased, and liquored
boots, reaching half-way up the thigh, and altogether impervious to wet.
However comfortable this costume may be in bad weather in board, it is
clear enough that any culprit so swathed, would stand a poor chance of
being saved, were he to fall overboard. The wind now veered round and
round, and baffled, and checked us off, so that it was the sixth night
after we had taken our departure from Harwich before we saw Heligoland
light. We then bore away for Cuxhaven, and I now knew for the first time
that we had a government emissary of some kind or another on board,
although he had hitherto confined himself strictly to the captain’s
cabin.


All at once it came on to blow from the north-east, and we were again
driven back among the English fishing boats. The weather was thick as
buttermilk, so we had to keep the bell constantly ringing, as we could not
see the jib-boom end from the forecastle. Every now and then we heard a
small, hard, clanking tinkle, from the fishing-boats, as if an old pot
had been struck instead of a bell, and a faint hollo, “Fishing-smack,” as
we shot past them in the fog, while we could scarcely see the vessels at
all. The morning after this particular time to which I allude, was darker
than any which had gone before it; absolutely you could not see the
breadth of the ship from you; and as we had not taken the sun for five
days, we had to grope our way almost entirely by the lead. I had the
forenoon watch, during the whole of which we were amongst a little fleet
of fishing-boats, although we could scarcely see them, but being
unwilling to lose ground by lying to, we fired a gun every half hour, to
give the small craft notice of our vicinity, that they might keep their
bells a-going. Every three or four minutes, the marine drum-boy, or some
amateur performer,--for most sailors would give a glass of grog any day to
be allowed to beat a drum for five minutes on end--beat a short roll, and
often as we drove along, under a reefed foresail, and close reefed
topsails, we could hear the answering tinkle before we saw the craft from
which it proceeded; and when we did perceive her as we flew across her
stern, we could only see it, and her mast, and one or two well-swathed,
hardy fishermen, the whole of the little vessel forward being hid in a
cloud.

I had been invited this day to dine with the Captain, Mr Splinter, the
first lieutenant being also of the party; the cloth had been withdrawn,
and we had all had a glass or two of wine a-piece, when the fog settled
down so thickly, although it was not more than five o’clock in the
afternoon, that the captain desired that the lamp might be lit. It was
done, and I was remarking the contrast between the dull, dusky, brown
light, or rather the palpable London fog that came through the skylight,
and the bright yellow sparkle of the lamp, when the second lieutenant, Mr
Treenail, came down the ladder.

“We have shoaled our water to five fathoms, sir--shells and stones.--Here,
Wilson, bring in the lead.”

The leadsman, in his pea-jacket and shag trowsers, with the raindrop
hanging to his nose, and a large knot in his cheek from a junk of tobacco
therein stowed, with pale, wet visage, and whiskers sparkling with
moisture, while his long black hair hung damp and lank over his fine
forehead and the stand-up cape of his coat, immediately presented himself
at the door, with the lead in his claws, an octagonal-shaped cone, like
the weight of a window-sash, about eighteen inches long, and two inches
diameter at the bottom, tapering away nearly to a point at top, where it
was flattened, and a hole pierced for the line to be fastened to. At the
lower end--the but-end, as I would say there was a hollow scooped out,
and filled with grease, so that when the lead was cast, the quality of the
soil, sand, or shells, or mud, that came up adhering to this lard,
indicated, along with the depth of water, our situation in the North Sea;
and by this, indeed, we guided our course, in the absence of all
opportunity of ascertaining our position by observations of the sun.

The Captain consulted the chart--“Sand and shells; why, you should have
deeper water, Mr Treenail. Any of the fishing-boats near you?”

“Not at present, sir; but we cannot be far off some of them.”

“Well, let me know when you come near any of them.”

A little after this, as became my situation, I rose and made my bow, and
went on deck.

By this time the night had fallen, and it was thicker than ever, so that,
standing beside the man at the wheel, you could not see farther forward
than the booms; yet it was not dark, either,--that is, it was moonlight,
so that the haze, thick as it was, had that silver gauze-like appearance,
as if it had been luminous in itself, that cannot be described to any one
who has not seen it. The gun had been fired just as I came on deck, but
no responding tinkle gave notice of any vessel being in the neighbourhood.
Ten minutes, it may have been a quarter of an hour, when a short roll of
the drum was beaten from the forecastle, where I was standing. At the
moment I thought I heard a holla, but I could not be sure. Presently I
saw a small light, with a misty halo surrounding it, just under the
bowsprit.

“Port your helm,” sung out the boatswain,--“port your helm, or we shall be
over a fishing-boat!”

A cry arose from beneath a black object was for an instant distinguishable
and the next moment a crash was heard. The sprit-sail-yard rattled, and
broke off sharp at the point where it crossed the bowsprit; and a heavy
smashing thump against our bows told, in fearful language, that we had run
her down. Three of the men and a boy hung on by the rigging of the
bowsprit, and were brought safely on board; but two poor fellows perished
with their boat. It appeared, that they had broken their bell; and
although they saw us coming, they had no better means than shouting, and
showing a light, to advertise us of their vicinity.

Next morning the wind once more chopped round, and the weather cleared,
and in four-and-twenty hours thereafter we were off the mouth of the
Elbe, with three miles of white foaming shoals between us and the land at
Cuxhaven, roaring and hissing, as if ready to swallow us up. It was low
water, and, as our object was to land the emissary at Cuxhaven, we had to
wait, having no pilot for the port, although we had the signal flying for
one all morning, until noon, when we ran in close to the green mound which
constituted the rampart of the fort at the entrance. To our great
surprise, when we hoisted our colours and pennant, and fired a gun to
leeward, there was no flag hoisted in answer at the flag-staff, nor was
there any indication of a single living soul on shore to welcome us. Mr
Splinter and the Captain were standing together at the gangway--“Why,
sir,” said the former, “this silence somewhat surprises me: what say you,
Cheragoux?” to the government emissary or messenger already mentioned, who
was peering through the glass close by.

“Why, mi Lieutenant, I don’t certain dat all ish right on sore dere.’

“No?” said Captain Deadeye; “why, what do you see?”

“It ish not so mosh vat I shee, as vat I no shee, sir, dat trembles me. It
cannot surely be possib dat de Prussian an’ Hanoverian troop have left de
place, and dat dese dem Franceman ave advance so far as de Elbe autrefois,
dat ish, once more?’

“French!” said Deadeye, “Poo, nonsense; no French hereabouts; none nearer
than those cooped up in Hamburgh with Davoust, take my word for it.”

“I sall take your vord for any ting else in de large vorld, mi Capitain;
but I see someting glance behind dat rampart, parapet you call, dat look
dem like de shako of de infanterie legere of dat willain de Emperor
Napoleon. Ah! I see de red worsted epaulet of de grenadier also; sacre!
vat is dat pof of vite smoke?”

What it was we soon ascertained to our heavy cost, for the shot that had
been fired at us from a long 32-pound gun, took effect right abaft the
foremast, and killed three men outright, and wounded two. Several other
shots followed, but with less sure aim. Returning the fire was of no use,
as our carronades could not have pitched their metal much more than
halfway; or, even if they had been long guns, they would merely have
plumped the balls into the turf rampart, without hurting any one. So we
wisely hauled off, and ran up the river with the young flood for about an
hour, until we anchored close to the Hanoverian bank, near a gap in the
dike, where we waited till the evening.

As soon as the night fell, a boat with muffled oars was manned, to carry
the messenger on shore. I was in it; Mr Treenail, the second lieutenant,
steering. We pulled in right for a breach in the dike, lately cut by the
French, in order to inundate the neighbourhood; and as the Elbe at high
water is hereabouts much higher than the surrounding country, we were soon
sucked into the current, and had only to keep our oars in the water,
pulling a stroke now and then to give the boat steerage way. As we shot
through the gap into the smooth water beyond, we once more gave way, the
boat’s head being kept in the direction of lights that we saw twinkling I
in the distance, apparently in some village beyond the inner embankment,
when all at once we dashed in amongst thousands of wild-geese, which rose
with a clang, and a concert of quacking, screaming, and hissing, that was
startling enough. We skimmed steadily on in the same direction “Oars,
men!” We were by this time close to a small cluster of houses, perched on
the forced ground or embankment, and the messenger hailed in German.

“Qui vive!” sung out a gruff voice; and we heard the clank of a musket, as
if some one had cast it from his shoulder, and caught it in his hands, as
he brought it down to the charge. Our passenger seemed a little taken
aback; but he hailed again, still in German. “Parole,” replied the man.
A pause. “The watchword, or I fire.” We had none to give.

“Pull round, men,” said the lieutenant, with great quickness; “pull the
starboard oars; we are in the wrong box; back water the larboard. That’s
it! give way, men.”

A flash-crack went the sentry’s piece, and ping sung the ball over our
heads. Another pause. Then a volley from a whole platoon. Again all was
dark and silent. Presently a field-piece was fired, and several rockets
were let off in our direction, by whose light we could see a whole company
of French soldiers standing to their arms, with several cannon, but we
were speedily out of the reach of their musketry. Several round shots
were now fired, that hissed, recochetting along the water close by us.
Not a word was spoken in the boat all this time; we continued to pull for
the opening in the dike, although, the current being strong against us, we
made but little way; while the chance of being cut off by the Johnny
Crapeau, getting round the top of the embankment, so as to command the gap
before we could reach it, became every moment more alarming.

The messenger was in great tribulation, and made several barefaced
attempts to stow himself away under the stem sheets.

The gallant fellows who composed the crew strained at their oars until
every thing cracked again; but as the flood made, the current against us
increased, and we barely held our own. “Steer her, out of the current,
man,” said the lieutenant to the coxswain; the man put the tiller to port
as he was ordered.

“Vat you do soch a ting for, Mr Capitain Lieutenant?” said the emissary.
“Oh! you not pershave you are rone in order de igh bank!  How you sall
satisfy me no France infanterie legere dere, too, more as in de fort, eh?
How you sall satisfy me, Mister Capitain Lieutenant, eh?”

“Hold your blasted tongue, will you,” said Treenail, “and the infantry
legere be damned simply. Mind your eye, my fine fellow, or I shall be
much inclined to see whether you will be Legere in the Elbe or no. Hark!”

We all pricked up our ears, and strained our eyes, while a bright,
spitting sparkling fire of musketry opened at the gap, but there was no
ping pinging of the shot overhead.

“They cannot be firing at us, sir,” said the coxswain; “none of them
bullets are telling hereaway.”

Presently a smart fire was returned in three distinct clusters from the
water, and whereas the firing at first had only lit up the dark figures of
the French soldiery, and the black outline of the bank on which they were
posted, the flashes that answered them shewed us three armed boats
attempting to force the passage. In a minute the firing ceased; the
measured splash of oars was heard, as boats approached us.

“Who’s there?” sung out the lieutenant.

“Torches,” was the answer.

“All’s well, Torches,” rejoined Mr Treenail; and presently the jollyboat,
and launch, and cutter of the Torch, with twenty marines, and thirty-six
seamen, all armed, were alongside.

“What cheer, Treenail, my boy?” quoth Mr Splinter.

“Why, not much; the French, who we were told had left the Elbe entirely,
are still here, as well as at Cuxhaven, not in force certainly, just
sufficiently strong to pepper us very decently in the outgoing?”

“What, are any of the people hurt?”

“No,” said the garrulous emissary. “No, not hurt, but some of us
frightened leetle piece--ah, very mosh, je vous assure.”

“Speak for yourself, Master Plenippo,” said Treenail. “But, Splinter, my
man, now since the enemy have occupied the dike in front, how the deuce
shall we get back into the river, tell me that?”

“Why,” said the senior lieutenant, “we must go as we came.”

And here the groans from two poor fellows who had been hit were heard from
the bottom of the launch. The cutter was by this time close to us, on the
larboard side, commanded by Mr Julius Caesar Tip, the senior midshipman,
vulgarly called in the ship Bathos, from his rather unromantic name. Here
also a low moaning evinced the precision of the Frenchmen’s fire.

“Lord, Mr Treenail, a sharp brush that was.”

“Hush!” quoth Treenail. At this moment three rockets hissed up into the
dark sky, and for an instant the hull and rigging of the sloop of war at
anchor in the river glanced in the blue-white glare, and vanished again,
like a spectre, leaving us in more thick darkness than before.

“Gemini! what is that now?” quoth Tip again, as we distinctly heard the
commixed rumbling and rattling sound of artillery scampering along the
dike.

“The ship has sent up these rockets to warn us of our danger,” said Mr
Treenail. “What is to be done? Ah, Splinter, we are in a scrape--there
they have brought up field-pieces, don’t you hear?”

Splinter had heard it as well as his junior officer. “True enough,
Treenail; so the sooner we make a dash through the opening the better.”

“Agreed.”

By some impulse peculiar to British sailors, the men were just about
cheering, when their commanding officer’s voice controlled them. “Hark,
my brave fellows, silence, as you value your lives.”

So away we pulled, the tide being now nearly on the turn, and presently we
were so near the opening that we could see the signal lights in the
rigging of the sloop of war. All was quiet on the dike.

“Thank God, they have retreated after all,” said Mr Treenail.

“Whoo--o, whoo--o,” shouted a gruff voice from the shore.

“There they are still,” said Splinter. “Marines, stand by, don’t throw
away a shot; men, pull like fury. So--give way, my lads, a minute of that
strain will shoot us alongside of the old brig--that’s it--hurrah!”

“Hurrah!” shouted the men in answer, but his and their exclamations were
cut short by a volley of musketry. The fierce mustaches, pale faces,
glazed shakoes, blue uniforms, and red epaulets, of the French infantry,
glanced for a moment, and then all was dark again.

“Fire!” The marines in the three boats returned the salute, and by the
flashes we saw three pieces of field. Artillery in the very act of being
unlimbered. We could distinctly hear the clash of the mounted
artillerymen’s sabres against their horses’ flanks as they rode to the
rear, their burnished accoutrements glancing at every sparkle of the
musketry.

We pulled like fiends, and being the fastest boat, soon headed the launch
and cutter, who were returning the enemy’s fire brilliantly, when crack--a
six-pound shot drove our boat into staves, and all hands were the next
moment squattering in the water. I sank a good bit, I suppose, for when I
rose to the surface, half drowned and giddy and confused, and striking out
at random, the first thing I recollected was a hard hand being wrung into
my neckerchief, while a gruff voice shouted in my ear.

“Rendez vous, mon cher”

Resistance was useless. I was forcibly dragged up the bank, where both
musketry and cannon were still playing on the boats, which had, however,
by this time got a good offing. I soon knew they were safe by the Torch
opening a fire of round and grape on the head of the dike, a contain proof
that the boats had been accounted for. The French party now ceased firing,
and retreated by the edge of the inundation, keeping the dike between them
and the brig, all except the artillery, who had to scamper off, running
the gauntlet on the crest of the embankment until they got beyond the
range of the carronades. I was conveyed between two grenadiers along the
water’s edge so long as the ship was firing; but when that ceased, I was
clapped on one of the limbers of the field-guns, and strapped down to it
between two of the artillerymen.

We rattled along, until we came up to the French bivouac, where, round a
large fire, kindled in what seemed to have been a farmyard, were assembled
about fifty or sixty French soldiers. Their arms were piled under the low
projecting roof of an outhouse, while the fire flickered upon their dark
figures, and glanced on their bright accoutrements, and lit up the wall of
the house that composed one side of the square. I was immediately marched
between a file of men into a small room, where the commanding officer of
the detachment was seated at a table, a blazing wood fire roaring in the
He was a genteel, slender, dark man, with very large black mustaches, and
fine sparkling black eyes, and had apparently just dismounted, for the mud
was fresh on his boots and trowsers. The latter were blue, with a broad
gold lace down the seam, and fastened by a strap under his boot, from
which projected a long fixed spur, which to me was remarkable as an
unusual dress for a Dire, the British army being, at the time I write of,
still in the age of breeches and gaiters, or tall boots, long cues and
pipeclay--that is, those troops which I had seen at home, although I
believe the great Duke had already relaxed a number of these absurdities
in Spain.

His single-breasted coat was buttoned up to his throat, and without an
inch of lace except on his crimson collar, which fitted close round his
neck, and was richly embroidered with gold acorns and oak leaves, as were
the crimson cuffs to his sleeves. He wore two immense and very handsome
gold epaulets.

“My good boy,” said he, after the officer who had captured me had told his
story--“so your Government thinks the Emperor is retreating from the
Elbe?”

I was a tolerable French scholar as times went, and answered him as well
as I could.

“I have said nothing about that, sir; but, from your question, I presume
you command the rear-guard, Colonel?”

“How strong is your squadron on the river?” said he, parrying the
question.

“There is only one sloop of war, sir”--and I spoke the truth.

He looked at me, and smiled incredulously; and then continued “I don’t
command the rear-guard, sir--but I waste time--are the boats ready?”

He was answered in the affirmative.

“Then set fire to the houses, and let off the rockets; they will see them
at Cuxhaven--men,” fall in--march--and off we all trundled towards the
river again.

When we arrived there, we found ten Blankanese boats, two of them very
large, and fitted with sliding platforms. The four fieldpieces were run
on board, two into each; one hundred and fifty men embarked in them and
the other craft, which I found partly loaded with sacks of corn. I was in
one of the smallest boats with the colonel. When we were all ready to
shove off, “Lafont,” he said, “are the men ready with their couteaux?”

“They are, sir,” replied the sergeant.

“Then cut the horses’ throats--but no firing.” A few bubbling groans, and
some heavy falls, and a struggling splash or two in the water, showed that
the poor artillery horses had been destroyed.

The wind was fair up the river, and away we bowled before it. It was
clear to me that the colonel commanding the post had overrated our
strength, and, under the belief that we had cut him off from Cuxhaven, he
had determined on falling back on Hamburgh.

When the morning broke, we were close to the beautiful bank below Altona.
The trees were beginning to assume the russet hue of autumn, and the sun
shone gaily on the pretty villas and bloomin Gartens on the hill side,
while here and there a Chinese pagoda, or other fanciful pleasure-house,
with its gilded trellised work, and little bells depending from the eaves
of its many roofs, glancing like small golden balls, rose from out the
fast thinning recesses of the woods.

But there was no life in the scene--‘twas “Greece, but living Greece no
more,”--not a fishing-boat was near, scarcely a solitary figure crawled
along the beach.

“What is that?” after we had passed Blankanese, said the colonel quickly.
“Who are those?” as a group of three of four men presented themselves at a
sharp turning of the road, that wound along the foot of the hill close to
the shore.

“The uniform of the Prussians,” said one.

“Of the Russians,” said another.


“Poo,” said a third, “it is a picket of the Prince’s;” and so it was, but
the very fact of his having advanced his outposts so far, showed how he
trembled for his position.

After answering their hail, we pushed on, and as the clocks were striking
twelve, we were abreast of the strong beams, that were clamped together
with iron, and constituted the boom or chief water defence of Hamburgh.
We passed through, and found an entire regiment under arms, close by the
Custom-house. Somehow or other, I had drank deep of that John Bull
prejudice, which delights to disparage the physical conformation of our
Gallic neighbours, and hugs itself with the absurd notion, “that on one
pair of English legs doth march three Frenchmen.” But when I saw the
weather-beaten soldierlike veterans, who formed this compact battalion,
part of the elite of the first corps, more commanding in its aspect from
severe service having worn all the gilding and lace away--“there was not a
piece of feather in the host” I felt the reality before me fast overcoming
my preconceived opinion. I had seldom or ever seen so fine a body of men,
tall, square, and muscular, the spread of their shoulders set off from
their large red worsted epaulets, and the solidity of the mass increased
by their wide trowsers, which in my mind contrasted advantageously with
the long gaiters and tight integuments of our own brave fellows.

We approached a group of three mounted officers, and in a few words the
officer, whose prisoner I was, explained the affair to the chef de baton,
whereupon I was immediately placed under the care of’ a sergeant and six
rank and file, and marched along the chief canal for a mile, where I could
not help remarking the numberless large rafts--you could not call them
boats--of unpainted pine timber, which had arrived from the upper Elbe,
loaded with grain: with gardens, absolute gardens, and cowhouses, and
piggeries on board; while their crews of Fierlanders, men, women, and
children, cut a most extraordinary appearance,--the men in their jackets,
with buttons like pot-lids, and trowsers fit to carry a month’s provender
and a couple of children in; and the women with bearings about the
quarters, as if they had cut holes in large cheeses, three feet in
diameter at least, and stuck themselves through them--such sterns--and as
to their costumes, all very fine in a Flemish painting, but the devils
appeared to be awfully nasty in real life.

But we carried on until we came to a large open space fronting a beautiful
piece of water, which I was told was the Alster. As I walked through the
narrow streets, I was struck with the peculiarity of the gables of the
tall houses being all turned towards the thoroughfare, and with the
stupendous size of the churches. We halted for a moment, in the porch of
one of the latter, and my notions of decency were not a little outraged,
by seeing it filled with a squadron of dragoons, the men being in the very
act of cleaning their horses.

At length we came to the open space on the Alster, a large parade, faced
by a street of splendid houses on the left hand, with a row of trees
between them, and the water on the right.

There were two regiments of foot bivouacking here, with their arms piled
under the trees, while, the men were variously employed, some on duty
before the houses, others cleaning their accoutrements, and others again
playing at all kinds of games. Presently we came to a crowd of soldiers
clustered round a particular spot, some laughing, others cracking coarse
jests, but none at all in the least serious. We could not get near enough
to see distinctly what was going on; but we afterwards saw, when the crowd
had dispersed, three men in the dress of respectable burghers, hanging
from a low gibbet,--so low in fact, that although their heads were not six
inches from the beam, their feet were scarcely three from the ground. I
was here placed in a guard-house, and kept there until the evening, when
I was again marched off under my former escort, and we soon arrived at the
door of a large mansion, fronting this parade, where two sentries were
walking backwards and forwards before the door, while five dragoon horses,
linked together, stood in the middle of the street, with one soldier
attending them, but there was no other particular bustle, to mark the
headquarters of the General commanding. We advanced to the entrance--the
sentries carrying arms--and were immediately ushered into a large saloon,
the massive stair winding up along the walls, with the usual heavy wooden
balustrade. We ascended to the first floor, where we were encountered by
three aides-de-camp, in full dress, leaning with their backs against the
hardwood railing, laughing and joking with each other, while two wall-lamps
right opposite cast a bright flashing light on their splendid uniforms.
They were all decorated with one order or another.

We approached.

“Whence, and who have we here?” said one of them, a handsome young man,
apparently not above twenty-two, as I judged, with small tiny black,
jet-black, mustaches, and a noble countenance; fine dark eyes, and curls
dark and clustering.

The officer of my escort answered, “A young Englishman, enseigne de
vaisseau.”

I was no such thing, as a poor middy has no commission, but only his
rating, which even his captain, without a court-martial, can take away at
any time, and turn him before the mast.

At this moment, I heard the clang of a sabre, and the jingle of spurs on
the stairs, and the group was joined by my captor, Colonel----.

“Ah, Colonel!” exclaimed the aides, in a volley, “where the devil have you
come from? We thought you were in Bruxelles at the nearest.”

The colonel put his hand on his lips and smiled, and then slapped the
young officer who spoke first with his glove. “Never mind, boys, I have
come to help you here--you will need help before long;--but how is--?”
 Here he made a comical contortion of his face, and drew his ungloved hand
across his throat. The young officers laughed, and pointed to the door.

He moved towards it, preceded by the youngest of them, who led the way
into a very lofty and handsome room, elegantly furnished, with some fine
pictures on the walls, a handsome sideboard of plate, a rich Turkey carpet
an unusual thing in Germany--on the floor, and a richly gilt pillar, at
the end of the room farthest from us, the base of which contained a stove,
which, through the joints of the door of it, appeared to be burning
cheerily.

There were some very handsome sofas and ottomans scattered through the
room, and a grand piano in one corner, the furniture being covered with
yellow, or amber-coloured velvet, with broad heavy draperies of gold
fringe, like the bullion of an epaulet. There was a small round table
near the stove, on which stood a silver candlestick, with four branches
filled with wax tapers; and bottles of wine, and glasses. At this table
sat an officer, apparently about forty five years of age. There was
nothing very peculiar in his appearance; he Was a middle-sized man, well
made apparently. He sat on one chair, with his legs supported on another.

His white-topped boots had been taken off, and replaced by a pair of
slipshod slippers; his splashed white kerseymere pantaloons, seamed with
gold, resting on the unfrayed velvet cushion; his blue coat, covered with
rich embroidery at the bosom and collar, was open, and the lapels thrown
back, displaying a crimson-velvet facing, also richly embroidered, and an
embroidered scarlet waistcoat; a large solitary star glittered on his
breast, and the grand cross of the Legion of Honour sparkled at his
buttonhole; his black neckerchief had been taken off; and his cocked hat
lay beside him on a sofa, massively laced, the edges richly ornamented
with ostrich down; his head was covered with a red velvet cap, with a
thick gold cord twisted two or three turns round it, and ending in two
large tassels of heavy bullion; he wore very large epaulets, and his sword
had been inadvertently, as I conjectured, placed on the table, so that the
steel hilt rested on the ornamental part of the metal stove.

His face was good, his hair dark, forehead without a wrinkle, high and
massive, eyes bright and sparkling, nose neither fine nor dumpy--a fair
enough proboscis as noses go. There was an expression about the upper lip
and mouth that I did not like--a constant nervous sort of lifting of the
lip as it were; and as the mustache appeared to have been recently shaven
off, there was a white blueness on the upper lip, that contrasted
unpleasantly with the dark tinge which he had gallantly wrought for on the
glowing sands of Egypt, and the bronzing of his general features from
fierce suns and parching winds. His bare neck and hands were delicately
fair, the former firm and muscular, the latter slender and tapering, like
a woman’s. He was reading a gazette, or some printed paper, when we
entered; and although there was a tolerable clatter of muskets, sabres,
and spurs, he never once lifted his eye in the direction where we stood.
Opposite this personage, on a low chair, with his legs crossed, and eyes
fixed on the ashes that were dropping from the stove, with his brown cloak
hanging from his shoulders, sat a short stout personage, a man about
thirty years of age, with fair flaxen hair, a florid complexion, a very
fair skin, and massive German features. The expression of his face, so
far as such a countenance could be said to have any characteristic
expression, was that of fixed sorrow.

But before I could make any other observation, the aide-de-camp
approached with a good spice of fear and trembling, as I could see.

“Colonel----to wait on your Highness.”

“Ah!”--said the officer to whom he spoke,--“ah, colonel, what do you here?
Has the Emperor advanced again?”

“No,” said the officer, “he has not advanced; but the rear-guard were cut
off by the Prussians, and the light, with the grenadiers, are now in
Cuxhaven.”

“Well,” replied the general, “but how come you here?”

“Why, Marshal, we were detached to seize a depot of provisions in a
neighbouring village, and had made preparations to carry them off, when we
were attacked through a gap in the dike, by some armed boats from an
English squadron, and hearing a distant firing at the very moment, which I
concluded to be the Prussian advance, I conceived all chance of rejoining
the main army at an end, and therefore I shoved off in the grain-boats,
and here I am.”

“Glad to see you, however,” said the general, “but sorry for the cause why
you have returned.--Who have we got here--what boy is that?”

“Why,” responded the colonel, “that lad is one of the British officers of
the force that attacked us.”

“Ha,” said the general again, “how did you capture him?”

“The boat (one of four) in which he was, was blown to pieces by a
six-pound shot. He was the only one of the enemy who swam ashore. The
rest, I am inclined to think, were picked up by the other boats.”

“So,” grumbled the general, “British ships in the Elbe!”

The colonel continued. “I hope, Marshal, you will allow him his parole? he
is, as you see, quite a child.”

“Parole!” replied the Marshall,--“parole! such a mere lad cannot know the
value of his promise.”

A sudden fit of rashness came over me.

“He is a mere boy,” reiterated the Marshall. “No, no--send him to prison;”
 and he resumed the study of the printed paper he had been reading.

I struck in, impelled by despair, for, young as I was, I knew the
character of the man before whom I stood, and I remembered that even a
tiger might be checked by a bold front--“I am an Englishman, sir, and
incapable of breaking my plighted word.”

He laid down the paper he was reading, and slowly lifted his eyes, and
fastened them on me,--“Ha,” said he, “ha--so young--so reckless!”

“Never mind him, Marshal,” said the colonel. “If you will grant him his
parole, I.”--“Take it, colonel--take it--take his parole, not to go beyond
the ditch.”

“But I decline to give any such promise,” said I, with a hardihood which at
the time surprised me, and has always done so.

“Why, my good youth,” said the Marshal in great surprise, “why will you
not take advantage of the offer--a kinder one, let me tell you, than I am
in the habit of making to an enemy?”

“Simply, sir, because I will endeavour to escape on the very first
opportunity.”

“Ha!” said the Marshal once more, “this to my face? Lafontaine,”--; to the
aide-de-camp,--“a file of soldiers.” The handsome young officer
hesitated hung in the wind, as we say, for a moment--moved, as I imagined,
by my extreme youth.

This irritated the Marshal rose, and stamped on the floor. The colonel
essayed to interfere. “Sentry--sentry--a file of grenadiers--take him
forth,” and--here he energetically clutched the steel hilt of his sword,
and instantly dashed it from him--“Sacre!--the devil--what is that?” and
straightway he began to pirouette on one leg round the room, shaking his
right hand, and blowing his fingers.

The officers in waiting could not stand it any longer, and burst into a
fit of laughter, in which their commanding officer, after an unavailing
attempt to look serious--I should rather write fierce joined, and there he
was, the bloody Davoust--Duke of Auerstad Prince of Eckmuhl--the Hamburgh
Robespierre--the terrible Davoust--dancing all around the room, in a
regular guffaw, like to split his sides. The heated stove had made his
sword, which rested on it, nearly red-hot.

All this while the quiet, plain-looking little man sat still. He now
rose; but I noticed that he had been fixing his eyes intently on me. I
thought I could perceive a tear glistening in them as he spoke.

“Marshal, will you intrust that boy to me?”

“Poo,” said the Prince, still laughing, “take him--do what you will with
him;”--then, as if suddenly recollecting himself, “But, Mr----, you must
be answerable for him--he must be at hand if I want him.”

The gentleman who had so unexpectedly patronized me rose, and said,
“Marshal, I promise.”

“Very well,” said Davoust. “Lafontaine, desire supper to be sent up.”

It was brought in, and my new ally and I were shown out.

As we went down stairs, we looked into a room on the ground floor, at the
door of which were four soldiers with fixed bayonets. We there saw, for
it was well lit up, about twenty or five-and-twenty respectable-looking
men, very English in appearance, all to their long cloaks, an unusual sort
of garment to my eye at that time. The night was very wet, and the
aforesaid garments were hung on pegs in the wall all around the room,
which being strongly heated by a stove, the moisture rose up in a thick
mist and made the faces of the burghers indistinct.

They were all busily engaged talking to each other, some to his neighbour,
the others across the table, but all with an expression of the most
intense anxiety.

“Who are these?” said I to my guide.

“Ask no questions here” said he, and we passed on.

I afterwards learned that they were the hostages seized on for the
contribution of fifty millions of francs, which had been imposed on the
doomed city, and that this very night they had been tom from their
families, and cooped up in the way I had seen them, where, they were
advertised, they must remain until the money should be forthcoming.

As we walked along the streets, and crossed the numerous bridges over the
canals and branches of the river, we found all the houses lit up, by order,
as I learned, of the French marshal. The rain descended in torrents,
sparkling past the lights, while the city was a desert, with one dreadful
exception; for we were waylaid at almost every turn by groups of starving
lunatics, their half-naked figures and pale visages glimmering in the
glancing lights, under the dripping rain; and, had it not been for the
numerous sentries scattered along the thoroughfares, I believe we should
have been tom to pieces by bands of moping idiots, now rendered ferocious
from their sufferings, in consequence of the madhouses having been cleared
of their miserable, helpless inmates, in order to be converted into
barracks for the troops. At all of these bridges sentries were posted,
past which my conductor and myself were franked by the sergeant who
accompanied us giving the countersign. At length, civilly touching his
cap, although he did not refuse the piece of money tendered by my friend,
he left us, wishing us good-night, and saying the coast was clear.

We proceeded, without farther challenge, until we came to a very
magnificent house, with some fine trees before it. We approached the door,
and rung the doorbell. It was immediately opened, and we entered a large
desolate, looking vestibule, about thirty feet square, filled in the centre
with a number of bales of goods, and a variety of merchandise, while a
heavy wooden stair, with clumsy oak balustrades, wound round the sides of
it. We ascended, and, turning to the right, entered a large well furnished
room, with a table laid out for supper, with lights, and a comfortable
stove at one end. Three young officers of cuirassiers, in their superb
uniforms, whose breast and back pieces were glittering on a neighbouring
sofa, and a colonel of artillery, were standing round the stove. The
colonel, the moment we entered, addressed my conductor:

“Ah,----, we are devilish hungry--Ich bin dem Verhungern nahe and were
just on the point of ordering in the provender had you not appeared.”

“A little more than that,” thought I; for the food was already smoking on
the table.

Mine host acknowledged the speech with a slight smile.

“But who have we here?” said one of the young dragoons. He waited a
moment “Etes--vous Francais?” I gave him no answer. He then addressed me
in German--“Sprechen sie geldufig Deutsch?”

“Why,” chimed in my conductor, “he does speak a little French
indifferently enough; but still....”

Here I was introduced to the young officers, and we all sat down at table;
the colonel, civility itself, pressing my host to drink his own wine, and
eat his own food and even rating the servants for not being sufficiently
alert in their attendance on their own master.

“Well, my dear----, how have you sped with the Prince?”

“Why, colonel,” said my protector, in his calm way, “as well as I expected.
I was of some service to him when he was here before, at the time he was
taken so very ill, and he has not forgotten it; so I am not included
amongst the unfortunate detainees for the payment of the fine. But that is
not all; for I am allowed to go tomorrow to my father’s, and here is my
passport.”

“Wonders will never cease,” said the colonel; “but who is that boy?”

“He is one of the crew of the English boats which tried to cut off
Colonel----the other evening, near Cuxhaven. His life was saved by a
very laughable circumstance certainly; merely, by the marshal’s sword,
from resting on the stove, having become almost red-hot.” And here he
detailed the whole transaction as it took place, which set the party
a-laughing most heartily.

I will always bear witness to the extreme amenity with which I was now
treated by the French officers. The evening passed over quickly. About
eleven we retired to rest, my friend furnishing me with clothes, and
warning me, that next morning he would call me at daylight, to proceed to
his father’s country-seat, where he intimated that I must remain in the
meantime.

Next morning I was roused accordingly, and a long, low, open carriage
rattled up to the door, just before day--dawn. Presently the reveille was
beaten, and answered by the different posts in the city, and on the
ramparts.

We drove on, merely showing our passport to the sentries at the different
bridges, until we reached the gate, where we had to pun up until the
officer on duty appeared, and had scrupulously compared our personal
appearance with the written description. All was found correct, and we
drove on.

It surprised me very much, after having repeatedly heard of the great
strength of Hamburgh, to look out on the large mound of green turf that
constituted its chief defence.

It is all true that there was a deep ditch and glacis beyond; but there
was no covered way, and both the scarp and counterscarp were simple
earthen embankments; so that, had the ditch been filled up with fascines,
there was no wall to face the attacking force after crossing it,--nothing
but a green mound, precipitous enough, certainly, and crowned with a low
parapet of masonry, and bristling with batteries about half way down, so
that the muzzles of the guns were flush with the neighbouring country
beyond the ditch. Still there was wanting, to my imagination, the
strength of the high perpendicular wall, with its gaping embrasures, and
frowning cannon. All this time it never occurred to me, that to breach
such a defence as that we looked upon was impossible. You might have
plumped your shot into it until you had converted it into an iron mine,
but no chasm could have been forced in it by all the artillery in Europe;
so battering in a breach was entirely out of the question, and this, in
truth, constituted the great strength of the place.

We arrived, after an hour’s drive, at the villa belonging to my
protector’s family, and walked into a large room, with a comfortable
stove, and extensive preparations made for a comfortable breakfast.

Presently three young ladies appeared. They were his sisters,--blue-eyed,
fair-haired, white-skinned, round-sterned, plump little partridges.

“Haben sie gefruhstucht?” said the eldest.

“Pas encore,” said he in French, with a smile. “But, sisters, I have
brought a stranger here, a young English officer, who was recently
captured in the river.”

“An English officer!” exclaimed the three ladies, looking at me, a poor,
little, dirty midshipman, in my soiled linen, unbrushed shoes, dirty
trowsers and jacket, with my little square of white cloth on the collar;
and I began to find the eloquent blood mangling in my cheeks, and tingling
in my ears; but their kindly feelings got the better of a gentle
propensity to laugh, and the youngest said--“Sie sind gerade zu rechter
zeit gekommen:” when, finding that her German was Hebrew to me, she tried
the other tack “Vous arrivez a propos, le dejeuner est pret.”

However I soon found, that the moment they were assured that I was in
reality an Englishman, they all spoke English, and exceedingly well too.
Our meal was finished, and I was standing at the window looking out on a
small lawn, where evergreens of the most beautiful kinds were checkered
with little round clumps of most luxuriant hollyhocks, and the fruit trees
in the neighborhood were absolutely bending to the earth under their loads
of apples and pears. Presently my friend came up to me; my curiosity
could no longer be restrained.

“Pray, my good sir, what peculiar cause, may I ask, have you for showing
me, an entire stranger to you, all this unexpected kindness? I am fully
aware that I have no claim on you.”

“My good boy, you say true; but I have spent the greatest part of my life
in London, although a Hamburgher born, and I consider you, therefore, in
the light of a countryman. Besides, I will not conceal that your gallant
bearing before Davoust riveted my attention, and engaged my good wishes.”

“But how come you to have so much influence with the general, I mean?”

“For several reasons,” he replied. “For those, amongst others, you heard
the colonel--who has taken the small liberty of turning me out of my own
house in Hamburgh--mention last night at supper. But a man like Davoust
cannot be judged of by common rules. He has, in short, taken a fancy to
me, for which you may thank your stars although your life has been
actually saved by the Prince having burned his fingers,--But here comes
my father.”

A venerable old man entered the room, leaning on his stick. I was
introduced in due form.

“He had breakfasted in his own room,” he said, “having been ailing; but he
could not rest quietly, after he had heard there was an Englishman in the
house, until he had himself welcomed him.”

I shall never forget the kindness I experienced from these worthy people.
For three days I was fed and clothed by them as if I had been a member of
the family.

Like a boy as I was, I had risen on the fourth morning at grey dawn, to be
aiding in dragging the fish-pond, so that it might be cleaned out.

This was an annual amusement, in which the young men and women in the
family, under happier circumstances, had been in the invariable custom of
joining; and, changed as these were, they still preserved the fashion.
The seine was cast in at one end, loaded at the bottom with heavy sinks,
and buoyant at the top with cork floats. We hauled it along the whole
length of the pond, thereby driving the fish into an enclosure, about
twenty feet square, with a sluice towards the pond, and another fronting
the dull ditch that flowed past beyond it. Whenever we had hunted the
whole of the finny tribes--(barring those slippery youths the eels, who,
with all their cleverness, were left to dry in the mud)--into the toils,
we filled all the tubs, and pots, and pans, and vessels of all kinds and
descriptions, with the fat, honest looking Dutchmen, the carp and tench,
who really submitted to their captivity with all the resignation of most
ancient and quiet fish, scarcely indicating any sense of its irksomeness,
except by a lumbering sluggish flap of their broad heavy tails.

A transaction of this kind could not take place amongst a group of young
folk without shouts of laughter, and it was not until we had caught the
whole of the fish in the pond, and placed them in safety, that I had
leisure to look about me. The city lay about four miles distant from us.
The whole country about Hamburgh is level, except the right bank below it
of the noble river on which it stands, the Elbe. The house where I was
domiciled stood on nearly the highest point of this bank, which gradually
sloped down into a swampy hollow, nearly level with the river. It then
rose again gently until the swell was crowned with the beautiful town of
Altona, and immediately beyond appeared the ramparts and tall spires of
the noble city itself.

The morning had been thick and foggy, but as the sun rose, the white mist
that had floated over the whole country, gradually concentrated and
settled down into the hollow between us and Hamburgh, covering it with an
impervious veil, which even extended into the city itself, filling the
lower part of it with a dense white bank of fog, which rose so high that
the spires alone, with one or two of the most lofty buildings, appeared a
bove the rolling sea of white fleece-like vapour, as if it had been a
model of the stronghold, in place of the reality, packed in white wool, so
distinct did it appear, diminished as it was in the distance. On the
tallest spire of the place, which was now sparkling in the early sunbeams,
the French flag, the pestilent tricolor, that waved sluggishly in the
faint morning breeze.

It attracted my attention, and I pointed it out to my patron. Presently
it was hauled down, and a series of signals was made at the yard-arm of a
spar, that had been slung across it. Who can they be telegraphing to?
thought I, while I could notice my host assume a most anxious and startled
look, while he peered down into the hollow. But he could see nothing, as
the fog bank still filled the whole of the space between the city and the
acclivity where we stood.

“What is that?” said I; for I heard, or thought I heard, a low rumbling
rushing noise in the ravine. Mr ---- heard it as well as I apparently,
for he put his finger to his lips--as much as to say, “Hold your tongue,
my good boy nous verrons.”

It increased--the clattering of horses hoofs, and the clang of scabbards
were heard, and, in a twinkling, the hussar caps of a squadron of light
dragoons emerged from out the fog bank, as, charging up the road, they
passed the small gate of green basket-work at a hand gallop. I ought to
have mentioned before, that my friend’s house was situated about half way
up the ascent, so that the rising ground behind it in the opposite
direction from the city shut out all view towards the country. After the
dragoons passed, there was an interval of two minutes, when a troop of
flying artillery, with three six-pound field-pieces, rattled after the
leading squadron, the horses all in a lather, at full speed, with the guns
bounding and jumping behind them as if they had been playthings, followed
by their caissons. Presently we could see the leading squadron file to
the right--clear the low hedge--and then disappear over the crest of the
hill. Twenty or thirty pioneers, who had been carried forward behind as
many of the cavalry, were now seen busily employed in filling up the
ditch, and cutting down the short scrubby hedge; and presently, the
artillery coming up also, filed off sharply to the right, and formed on
the very summit of the hill, distinctly visible between us and the grey
cold streaks of morning. By the time we had noticed, this, the clatter in
our immediate neighbourhood was renewed, and a group of mounted officers
dashed past us, up the path, like a whirlwind, followed at a distance of
twenty yards, by a single cavalier, apparently a general officer. These
did not stop, as they rode at speed past the spot where the artillery were
in position, but, dipping over the summit, disappeared down the road, from
which they did not appear to diverge, until they were lost to our view
beyond the crest of the hill. The hum and buzz, and, anon, the “measured
tread of marching men,” in the valley between us and Hamburgh, still
continued. The leading files of a light infantry regiment, now appeared,
swinging along at a round trot, with their muskets poised in their right
hands--no knapsacks on their backs. They appeared to follow the route of
the group of mounted officers, until we could see a puff of white smoke,
then another and a third from the field-pieces, followed by thudding
reports, there being no high ground nor precipitous bank nor water in the
neighborhood to reflect the sound, and make it emulate Jove’s thunder. At
this, they struck across the fields, and forming behind the guns, lay down
flat on their faces, where they were soon hid from our view by the wreaths
of white smoke, as the sluggish morning breeze rolled it down the
hill-side towards us.

“What the deuce can all this mean--is it a review?” said I, in my
innocence.

“A reconnoissance in force,” groaned my friend. “The Allied troops must
be at hand--now, God help us!”

The women, like frightened hares, paused to look up in their brother’s
face, as he kept his eye steadily turned towards the ridge of the hill,
and, when he involuntarily wrung his hands, they gave a loud scream, a
fearful concerto, and ran off into the house.

The breeze at this moment “aside the shroud of battle cast” and we heard a
faint bugle-call, like an echo, wail in the distance, from beyond the
hill. It was instantly answered by the loud, startling blare of a dozen of
the light infantry bugles above us on the hill-side, and we could see
them suddenly start from their lair, and form; while between us and the
clearing morning sky, the cavalry, magnified into giants in the strong
relief on the outline of the hill, were driven in straggling patrols, like
chaff, over the summit--their sabres sparkling in the level sunbeams, and
the reports of the red flashes of their pistols crackling down upon us.

“They are driven in on the infantry,” said Mr ---- He was right but the
light battalion immediately charged over the hill, with a loud hurrah,
after admitting the beaten horse through their intervals, who, however, to
give the devils their due, formed again in a instant, under the shelter of
the high ground. The artillery again opened their fire the cavalry once
more advanced, and presently we could see nothing but the field-pieces,
with their three separate groups of soldiers standing quietly by them,--a
sure proof that the enemy’s pickets were now out of cannon-shot, and had
been driven back on the main body, and that the reconnoissance was still
advancing.

What will not an habitual exposure to danger do, even with tender women?

“The French have advanced, so let us have our breakfast, Julia, my dear,”
 said Mr----as we entered the house. “The Allied Forces would have been
welcome, however; and surely, if they do come, they will respect our
sufferings and helplessness.”

The eldest sister, to whom he spoke, shook her head mournfully; but,
nevertheless, betook herself to her task of making coffee.

“What rumbling and rattling is that?” said to an old servant who had just
entered the room.

“Two wagons with wounded men, sir, have passed onwards towards the town.”

“Ah!” said mine host, in great bitterness of spirit.

But allons, we proceeded to make the best use of our time--ham, good--fish,
excellent eggs, fresh--coffee, superb--when we again heard the fieldpieces
above us open their fire, and in the intervals we could distinguish the
distant rattle of musketry. Presently this rolling fire slackened, and,
after a few scattering shots here and there, ceased altogether; but the
cannon on the hill still continued to play.

We were by this time all standing in a cluster in the porch of the villa,
before which stood the tubs with the finny spoil of the fish-pond, on a
small paddock of velvet grass, about forty yards square, separated from
the high-road by a low ornamental fence of green basket-work, as already
mentioned. The firing from the great guns increased, and every now and
then I thought I heard a distant sound, as if the reports of the guns
above us had been reflected from some precipitous bank.

“I did not know that there was any echo here,” said the youngest girl.

“Alas, Janette!” said her brother, “I fear that is no echo;” and he put up
his hand to his ear, and listened in breathless suspense. The sound was
repeated.

“The Russian cannon replying to those on the hill!” said Mr with startling
energy. “God help us! it can no longer be an affair of posts; the heads
of the Allied columns must be in sight, for the French skirmishers are
unquestionably driven in.”

A French officer at this moment rattled past us down the road at speed,
and vanished in the hollow, taking the direction of the town.

His hat fell off, as his horse swerved a little at the open gate as he
passed. He never stopped to pick it up. Presently a round shot, with a
loud ringing and hissing sound, pitched over the hill, and knocked one of
the fish-tubs close to us to pieces, scattering the poor fish all about
the lawn. With the recklessness of a mere boy I dashed out, and was busy
picking them up, when Mr----called to me to come back.

“Let us go in and await what may befall; I dread what the ty”--here he
prudently checked himself, remembering, no doubt, “that a bird of the air
might carry the matter,”--“I dread what he may do, if they are really
investing the place. At any rate, here, in the very arena where the
struggle will doubtless be fiercest, we cannot abide. So go, my dear
sisters, and pack up whatever you may have most valuable, or most
necessary. Nay, no tears; and I will attend to our poor old father, and
get the carriage ready, if, God help me, I dare use it.”

“But where, in the name of all that is fearful, shall we go?” said his
second sister. “Not back to Hamburgh--not to endure another season of such
deep degradation--not to be exposed to the Oh brother, you saw we all
submitted to our fate without a murmur, and laboured cheerfully on the
fortifications, when compelled to do so, by that inhuman monster Davoust,
amidst the ribaldry of a licentious soldiery, merely because poor Janette
had helped to embroider a standard for the brave Hanseatic Legion you know
how we bore this”--here the sweet girl held out her delicate hands, galled
by actual and unwonted labour and many other indignities, until that awful
night, when--“No, brother, we shall await the arrival of the Russians, even
should we see our once happy home converted into a field of battle; but
into the city we shall not go.”

“Be it so, then, my dearest, sister.--Wilhehn, put up the stuhl wagen.”

He had scarcely returned into the breakfast-room, when the door opened,
and the very handsome young officer, the aide-de-camp of the Prince,
whom I had seen the night I was carried before Davoust, entered, splashed
up to the eyes, and much heated and excited. I noticed blood on the hilt
of his sword. His orderly sat on his foaming steed, right opposite where
I stood, wiping his bloody sabre on his horse’s mane. The women grew
pale; but still they had presence of mind enough to do the honours with
self-possession.

The stranger wished us a good morning; and on being asked to sit down to
breakfast, he unbuckled his sword, threw it from him with a clash on the
floor, and then, with all the grace in the world, addressed himself to
discuss the comestibles. He tried a slight approach to jesting now and
then; but seeing the heaviness of heart which prevailed amongst the women,
he, with the good breeding of a man of the world, forbore to press his
attentions.

Breakfast being finished, and the ladies having retired, he rose, buckled
on his sword again, drew on his gloves, and taking his hat in his hand, he
advanced to the window, and desired his men to “fall in.”

“Men--what men?” said poor Mr----.

“Why, the Marshal has had a company of sapeurs for these three days back
in the adjoining village--they are now here.”

“Here!” exclaimed----; “what do the sappers here?” Two of the soldiers
carried slow matches in their hands, while their muskets were slung at
their backs. “There is no mine to be sprung here?”

The young officer heard him with great politeness, but declined giving any
answer. The next moment he turned towards the ladies, and was making
himself as agreeable as time and circumstances would admit; when a shot
came crashing through the roof, broke down the ceiling, and knocking the
flue of the stove to pieces, rebounded from the wall, and rolled
harmlessly beneath the table. He was the only person who did not start,
or evince any dread. He merely cast his eyes upward and smiled. He then
turned to poor----, who stood quite collected, but very pale, near where
the stove had stood, and held out his hand to him.

“On my honour,” said the young soldier, “it grieves me to the very heart;
but I must obey my orders. It is no longer an affair of posts; the enemy
is pressing on us in force. The Allied columns are in sight; their
cannon shot have but now penetrated your roof; we have but driven in their
pickets; very soon they will be here; and in the event of their advance,
my orders are to burn down this house and the neighbouring village.”

A sudden flush rushed into Mr----‘s face.

“Indeed! does the Prince really--”

The young officer bowed, and with something more of sternness in his
manner than he had yet used, he said, “Mr----, I duly appreciate your
situation, and respect your feelings; but the Prince of Eckmuhl is my
superior officer, and under other circumstances”--Here he slightly touched
the hilt of his sword.

“For myself I don’t care,” said----, “but what is to become of my
sisters?”

“They must proceed to Hamburgh.”

“Very well--let me order the stuhl wagen, and give us, at all events, half
an hour to move our valuables.”

Here Mr----exchanged looks with his sisters.

“Certainly,” said the young officer; “and I will myself see you safe into
the city.”

Who says that eels cannot be made used to skinning? The poor girls
continued their little preparations with an alacrity and presence of mind
that truly surprised me. There was neither screaming nor fainting, and by
the time the carriage was at the door, they, with two female domestics,
were ready to mount. I cannot better describe their vehicle, than by
comparing it to a canoe mounted on four wheels, connected by a long perch,
with a coachbox at the bow, and three gig bodies hung athwart ships, or
slung inside of the canoe, by leather thongs. At the moment we were
starting, Mr ---- came close to me and whispered, “Do you think your ship
will still be in the river?”

I answered that I made no doubt she was.

“But even if she be not,” said he, “the Holstein bank is open to us.
Anywhere but Hamburgh now.” And the scalding tears ran down his cheeks.

At this moment there was a bustle on the hill top, and presently the
artillery began once more to play, while the musketry breezed up again in
the distance. A mounted bugler rode half way down the hill, and sounded
the recall. The young officer hesitated. He man waved his hand, and blew
the advance.

“It must be for us--answer it.” His bugle did so. “Bring the pitch, men
the flax--so now--break the windows, and let the air in--set the house on
fire; and, Sergeant Guido, remain to prevent it being extinguished I shall
fire the village as we pass through.”

He gave the word to face about; and, desiring the men to follow at the
same swinging run with which the whole of the infantry had originally
advanced, he spurred his horse against the hill, and soon disappeared.

My host’s resolution seemed now taken. Turning to the sergeant, “My good
fellow, the reconnoissance will soon be returning; I shall precede it into
the town.”

The man, a fine vieux moustache, hesitated.

My friend saw it, and hit him in a Frenchman’s most assailable quarter.

“The ladies, my good man--the ladies!--You would not have them drive in
pell-mell with the troops, exposed most likely to the fire of the
Prussian advanced-guard, would you?”

The man grounded his musket, and touched his cap--“Pass on.” Away we
trundled, until, coming to a cross-road, we turned down towards the
river; and at the angle we could see thick wreaths of smoke curling up
into the air, showing that the barbarous order had been but too effectually
fulfilled.

“What is that?” said----.

A horse, with his rider entangled and dragged by the stirrup, passed us at
full speed, leaving a long track of blood on the road.

“Who is that?”

The coachman drove on, and gave no answer; until, at a sharp turn, we came
upon the bruised and now breathless body of the young officer, who had so
recently obeyed the savage behests of his brutal commander. There was a
musket-shot right in the middle of his fine forehead, like a small blue
point, with one or two heavy black drops of blood oozing from it. His pale
features wore a mild and placid expression, evincing that the numberless
lacerations and bruises, which were evident through his tom uniform, had
been inflicted on a breathless corpse.

The stuhl wagen had carried on for a mile farther or so, but the firing
seemed to approximate, whereupon our host sung out, “Fahrt Zu,
Schwager--Wir Kommen nicht weiter.”

The driver of the stuhl wagen skulled along until we arrived at the
beautiful, at a mile off, but the beastly, when close to, village of
Blankanese.

When the voiture stopped in the village, there seemed to be a
nonplusation, to coin a word for the nonce, between my friend and his
sisters. They said something very sharply, and with a degree of
determination that startled me. He gave no answer. Presently the
Amazonian attack was renewed.

“We shall go onboard,” said they. “Very well,” said he; “but have
patience, have patience!”

“No, no. Wann wird man sich einschiffen mussen?”

By this time we were in the heart of the village, and surrounded with a
whole lot, forty at the least, of Blankanese boatmen. We were not long
in selecting one of the fleetest-looking of those very fleet boats, when
we all trundled on board; and I now witnessed what struck me as being an
awful sign of the times. The very coachman of the stuhl wagen, after
conversing a moment with his master, returned to his team, tied the legs
of the poor creatures as they stood, and then with a sharp knife cut their
jugular veins through and through on the right side, having previously
reined them up sharp to the left, so that, before starting, we could see
three of the team, which consisted of four superb bays, level with the
soil and dead; the near wheeler only holding out on his fore-legs.

We shoved off at eleven o’clock in the forenoon; and after having twice
been driven into creeks on the Holstein shore by bad weather, we arrived
about two next morning safely on board the Torch, which immediately got
under weigh for England. After my story had been told to the Captain, I
left my preserver, his father, and his sisters in his hands, and I need
scarcely say that they had as hearty a welcome as the worthy old soul
could give them, and dived into the midshipmen’s berth for a morsel of
comfort, where, in a twinkling, I was far into the secrets of a pork pie.



CHAPTER II.--The Cruise of the Torch.

     Sleep, gentle sleep--
     Wilt thou, upon the high and giddy mast,
     Seal up the shipboy’s eyes, and rock his brains,
     In cradle of the rude imperious surge;
     And in the visitation of the winds,
     Who take the ruffian billows by the top,
     Curling their monstrous heads, and hanging them
     With deafning clamour in the slippery clouds,
     That, with the hurry, death itself awakes--
     Canst thou, O partial sleep! give thy repose
     To the wet sea-boy in an hour so rude?

     2 HENRY IV, Ill. 1. 5, 18--27.


Heligoland light-north and by west--so many leagues--wind baffling
weather hazy--Lady Passengers on deck for the first time.

Arrived in the Downs--ordered by signal from the guard--ship to proceed to
Portsmouth. Arrived at Spithead--ordered to fit to receive a general
officer, and six pieces of field artillery, and a Spanish Ecclesiastic,
the Canon of----. Plenty of great guns, at any rate--a regular park of
artillery.

Received General ---- and his wife, and aide-de-camp, and two poodle
dogs, one white man-servant, one black ditto, and the Canon of ----, and
the six nine-pound field-pieces, and sailed for the Cove of Cork.

It was blowing hard as we stood in for the Old Head of Kinsale pilot boat
breasting the foaming surge like a sea gull--“Carrol Cove” in her tiny
mainsail-pilot jumped into the main channel a bottle of rum swung by the
lead line into the boat--all very clever.

Ran in, and anchored under Spike Island. A line-of-battle ship, three
frigates, and a number of merchantmen at anchor-men of war lovely craft,
bands playing--a good deal of the pomp and circumstance of war. Next
forenoon, Mr Treenail, the second lieutenant, sent for me.

“Mr Cringle,” said he, “you have an uncle in Cork, I believe?”

I said I had.

“I am going there on duty to-night; I daresay, if you asked the Captain to
let you accompany me, he would do so.” This was too good an offer not to be
taken advantage of. I plucked up courage, made my bow, asked leave, and
got it; and the evening found my friend the lieutenant, and myself, after a
ride of three hours, during which I, for one, had my bottom sheathing
grievously rubbed, and a considerable botheration at crossing the Ferry at
Passage, safe in our inn at Cork. I soon found out that the object of my
superior officer was to gain information amongst the crimp shops, where ten
men, who had run from one of the West Indiamen, waiting at Cove for convoy,
were stowed away, but I was not let farther into the secret; so I set out
to pay my visit, and after passing a pleasant evening with my friends, Mr
and Mrs Job Cringle, the lieutenant dropped in upon us about nine o’clock.
He was heartily welcomed, and under the plea of our being obliged to return
to the ship early next morning, we soon took leave, and returned to the
inn. As I was turning into the public room, the door was open, and I could
see it full of blowsy-faced monsters, glimmering and jabbering, through
the mist of hot brandy grog and gin twist; with poodle Benjamins, and
greatcoats, and cloaks of all sorts and sizes, steaming on their pegs, with
Barcelonas and comforters, and damp travelling caps of seal-skin, and blue
cloth, and tartan, arranged above the same.

Nevertheless, such a society in my juvenile estimation, during my short
escapade from the middy’s berth, had its charms, and I was rolling in with
a tolerable swagger, when Mr Treenail pinched my arm.

“Mr Cringle, come here, into my room.”

From the way in which he spoke, I imagined, in my innocence, that his room
was at my elbow; but no such thing--we had to ascend a long, and not
overclean staircase, to the fourth floor, before we were shown into a
miserable little double-bedded room. So soon as we had entered, the
lieutenant shut the door.

“Tom,” said he, “I have taken a fancy to you, and therefore I applied for
leave to bring you with me; but I must expose you to some danger, and, I
will allow, not altogether in a very creditable way either. You must enact
the spy for a short space.”

I did not like the notion certainly, but I had little time for
consideration.

“Here,” he continued--“here is a bundle.” He threw it on the floor. “You
must rig in the clothes it, contains, and make your way into the celebrated
crimp shop in the neighbourhood, and pick up all the information you can
regarding the haunts of the pressable men at Cove, especially with regard
to the ten seamen who have run from the West Indiaman we left below. You
know the Admiral has forbidden pressing in Cork, so you must contrive to
frighten the blue jackets down to Cove, by representing yourself as an
apprentice of one of the merchant vessels, who had run from his indentures,
and that you had narrowly escaped from a press-gang this very night here.”

I made no scruples, but forthwith arrayed myself in the slops contained in
the bundle; in a pair of shag trowsers, red flannel shirt, coarse blue
cloth jacket, and no waistcoat.

“Now,” said Mr Treenail, “stick a quid of tobacco in your cheek, and take
the cockade out of your hat; or stop, leave it, and ship this striped
woollen night-cap--so--and come along with me.”

We left the house, and walked half a mile down the Quay.

Presently we arrived before a kind of low grog-shop--a bright lamp was
flaring in the breeze at the door, one of the panes of the glass of it
being broken.

Before I entered, Mr Treenail took me to one side--“Tom, Tom Cringle, you
must go into this crimp shop; pass yourself off for an apprentice of the
Guava, bound for Trinidad, the ship that arrived just as we started, and
pick up all the knowledge you can regarding the whereabouts of the men, for
we are, as you know, cruelly ill manned, and must replenish as we best
may.” I entered the house, after having agreed to rejoin my superior
officer, so soon as I considered I had obtained my object. I rapped at the
inner door, in which there was a small unglazed aperture cut, about four
inches square; and I now, for the first time, perceived that a strong glare
of light was cast into the lobby, where I stood, by a large argand with a
brilliant reflector, that like a magazine lantern had been mortised into
the bulkhead, at a height of about two feet above the door in which the
spy-hole was cut. My first signal was not attended to; I rapped again,
and looking round I noticed Mr Treenail flitting backwards and forwards
across the doorway, in the rain with his pale face and his sharp nose, with
the sparkling drop at the end on’t, glancing in the light of the lamp. I
heard a step within, and a very pretty face now appeared at the wicket.

“Who are you saking here, an’ please ye?”

“No one in particular, my dear; but if you don’t let me in, I shall be
lodged in jail before five minutes be over.”

“I can’t help that, young man,” said she; “but where are ye from, darling?”

“Hush!--I am run from the Guava, now lying at the Cove.”

“Oh,” said my beauty, “come in;” and she opened the door, but still kept it
on the chain in such a way, that although, by bobbing, I creeped and slid
in beneath it, yet a common-sized man could not possibly have squeezed
himself through. The instant I entered, the door was once more banged to,
and the next moment I was ushered into the kitchen, a room about fourteen
feet square, with a well sanded floor, a huge dresser on one side, and over
against it a respectable show of pewter dishes in racks against the wall.
There was a long stripe of a deal, table in the middle of the room--but no
tablecloth--at the bottom of which sat a large, bloated, brandy, or rather
whisky-faced savage, dressed in a shabby great-coat of the hodden grey
worn by the Irish peasantry, dirty swan down vest, and greasy corduroy
breeches, worsted stockings, and well-patched shoes; he was smoking a long
pipe. Around the table sat about a dozen seamen, from whose wet jackets
and trowsers the heat of the blazing fire, that roared up the chimney, sent
up a smoky steam that cast a halo round the lamp, that depended from the
roof, and hung down within two feet of the table, stinking abominably of
coarse whale oil. They were, generally speaking, hardy, weather beaten
men, and the greater proportion half, or more than half drunk. When I
entered, I walked up to the landlord.

“Yo ho, my young un, whence and whither bound, my hearty?”

“The first don’t signify much to you,” said I, “seeing I have wherewithal
in the locker to pay my shot; and as to the second, of that hereafter; so,
old boy, let’s have some grog, and then say if you can ship me with one of
them cowers that are lying alongside the quay?”

“My eye, what a lot of brass that small chap has!” grumbled mine host.

“Why, my lad, we shall see to-morrow morning; but you gammons so bad about
the rhino, that we must prove you a bit; so, Kate, my dear,”--to the pretty
girl who had let me in--“score a pint of rum against--why, what is your
name?”


“What’s that to you?” rejoined I, “let’s have the drink, and don’t doubt
but the shiners  shall be forthcoming.”

“Hurrah!” shouted the party, most of them now very tipsy. So the rum was
produced forthwith, and as I lighted a pipe and filled a glass of swizzle,
I struck in, “Messmates, I hope you have all shipped?”

“No, we haven’t,” said some of them.

“Nor shall we be in any hurry, boy,” said others.

“Do as you please, but I shall, as soon as I can, I know; and I recommend
all of you making yourselves scarce to-night, and keeping a bright
look-out.”

“Why, boy, why?”

“Simply because I have just escaped a press-gang, by bracing sharp up at
the corner of the street, and shoving into this dark alley here.”

This called forth another volley of oaths and unsavoury exclamations, and
all was bustle and confusion, and packing up of bundles, and settling of
reckonings.

“Where,” said one of the seamen,--“where do you go to, my lad?”

“Why, if I can’t get shipped to-night, I shall trundles down to Cove
immediately, so as to cross at Passage before daylight, and take my chance
of shipping with some of the outward-bound that are to sail, if the wind
holds, the day after to-morrow. There is to be no pressing when blue
Peter flies at the fore--and that was hoisted this afternoon, I know, and
the foretopsail will be loose to-morrow.”

“D--n my wig, but the small chap is right,” roared one.

“I’ve a bloody great mind to go down with him,” stuttered another, after
several unavailing attempts to weigh from the bench, where he had brought
himself to anchor.

“Hurrah!” yelled a third, as he hugged me, and nearly suffocated me with
his maudling caresses, “I trundles wid you too, my darling, boy the piper!”

“Have with you, boy--have with him,” shouted half-a-dozen other voices,
while each stuck his oaken twig through the handkerchief that held his
bundle, and shouldered it, clapping his straw or tarpaulin hat, with a slap
on the crown, on one side of his head, and staggering and swaying about
under the influence of the poteen, and slapping his thigh, as he bent
double, laughing like to split himself, till the water ran over his cheeks
from his drunken half-shut eyes, while jets of tobacco juice were
squirting in all directions.

I paid the reckoning, urging the party to proceed all the while, and
indicating Pat Doolan’s at the Cove as a good rendezvous; and promising to
overtake them before they reached passage, I parted company at the corner
of the street, and rejoined the lieutenant.

Next morning we spent in looking about the town--Cork is a fine town,
contains seventy thousand inhabitants, more or less-safe in that--and
three hundred thousand pigs, driven by herdsmen, with coarse grey
greatcoats. The pigs are not so handsome as those in England, where the
legs are short, and tails curly; here the legs are long, the flanks sharp
and thin, and tails long and straight.

All classes speak with a deuced brogue, and worship graven images; arrived
at Cove to a large dinner and here follows a great deal of nonsense of the
same kind.

By the time it was half-past ten o’clock, I was preparing to turn in, when
the master at arms called down to me,--“Mr Cringle, you are wanted in the
gunroom.”

I put on my jacket again, and immediately proceeded thither, and on my way
I noticed a group of seamen, standing on the starboard gangway, dressed in
pea jackets, under which, by the light of a lantern, carried by one of
them, I could see they were all armed with pistol and cutlass. They
appeared in great glee, and as they made way for me, I could hear one
fellow whisper, “There goes the little beagle.” When I entered the gunroom,
the first lieutenant, master, and purser, were sitting smoking and enjoying
themselves over a glass of cold grog--the gunner taking the watch on deck
the doctor was piping any thing but mellifluously on the double flageolet,
while the Spanish priest, and aide-de-camp to the general, were playing
at chess, and wrangling in bad French. I could hear Mr Treenail rumbling
and stumbling in his stateroom as he accoutred himself in a jacket similar
to those of the armed boat’s crew whom I had passed, and presently he
stepped into the gunroom, armed also with cutlass and pistol.

“Mr Cringle, get ready to go in the boat with me, and bring your arms with
you.”

I now knew whereabouts he was, and that my Cork friends were the quarry at
which we aimed. I did as I was ordered, and we immediately pulled on shore,
where, leaving two strong fellows in charge of the boat, with instructions
to fire their pistols and shove off a couple of boat-lengths, should any
suspicious circumstance indicating an attack take place, we separated, like
a pulk of Cossacks coming to the charge, but without the hourah, with
orders to meet before Pat Doolan’s door, as speedily as our legs could
carry us. We had landed about a cable’s length to the right of the high
precipitous bank--up which we stole in straggling parties--on which that
abominable congregation of the most filthy huts ever pig grunted in is
situated, called the Holy Ground. Pat Doolan’s domicile was in a little
dirty lane, about the middle of the village. Presently ten strapping
fellows, including the lieutenant, were before the door, each man with his
stretcher in his hand. It was a very tempestuous, although moonlight
night, occasionally clear, with the moonbeams at one moment sparkling
brightly in the small ripples on the filthy puddles before the door, and
on the gem like water-drops that hung from the eaves of the thatched roof,
and lighting up the dark statue like figures of the men, and casting their
long shadows strongly against the mud wall of the house; at another, a
black cloud as it flew across her disk, cast every thing into deep shade,
while the only noise we heard was the hoarse dashing of the distant surf,
rising and falling on the fitful gusts of the breeze. We tried the door.
It was fast.

“Surround the house, men,” said the lieutenant, in a whisper. He rapped
loudly. “Pat Doolan, my man, open the door, will ye?” No answer. “If you
don’t, we shall make free to break it open, Patrick, dear.”

All this while the light of a fire, or of candles, streamed through the
joints of the door. The threat at length appeared to have the desired
effect. A poor decrepid old man undid the bolt and let us in. “Ohon a reel
Ohon a reel What make you all this boder for--come you to help us to wake
poor ould Kate there, and bring you the whisky wid you?”

“Old man, where is Pat Doolan?” said the lieutenant.

“Gone to borrow whisky, to wake ould Kate, there--the howling will begin
whenever Mother Doncannon and Mistress Conolly come over from Middleton,
and I look for dem every minute.”

There was no vestige of any living thing in the miserable hovel, except the
old fellow. On two low trestles, in the middle of the floor, lay a coffin
with the lid on, on the top of which was stretched the dead body of an old
emaciated woman in her grave-clothes, the quality of which was much finer
than one could have expected to have seen in the midst of the surrounding
squalidness. The face of the corpse was uncovered, the hands were crossed
on the breast, and there was a plate of salt on the stomach.

An iron cresset, charged with coarse rancid oil, hung from the roof, the
dull smoky red light flickering on the dead corpse, as the breeze streamed
in through the door and numberless chinks in the walls, making the cold,
rigid, sharp features appear to move, and glimmer, and gibber as it were,
from the changing shades. Close to the head, there was a small door
opening into an apartment of some kind, but the coffin was placed so near
it, that one could not pass between the body and the door.

“My good man,” said Treenail, to the solitary mourner, “I must beg leave to
remove the body a bit, and have the goodness to open that door.”

“Door, yere honour!  It’s no door o’mine--and it’s not opening that same,
that old Phil Carrol shall busy himself wid.”

“Carline,” said Mr Treenail, quick and sharp, “remove the body.” It was
done.

“Cruel heavy the old dame is, sir, for all her wasted appearance,” said one
of the men.

The lieutenant now ranged the press-gang against the wall fronting the
door, and stepping into the middle of the room, drew his pistol and cocked
it. “Messmates,” he sung out, as if addressing the skulkers in the other
room, “I know you are here--the house is surrounded--and unless you open
that door now, by the power, but I’ll fire slap into you.” There was a
bustle, and a rumbling tumbling noise within. “My lads, we are now sure of
your game,” sung out Treenail, with great animation. “Sling that clumsy
bench there.” He pointed to an oaken form about eight feet long, and nearly
three inches thick. To produce a two-inch rope, and junk it into three
lengths, and rig the battering-ram, was the work of an instant. “One,
two, three,”--and bang the door flew open, and there were our men stowed
away, each sitting on the top of his bag, as snug as could be, although
looking very much like condemned thieves. We bound eight of them, and
thrusting a stretcher across their backs, under their arms, and lashing
the fins to the same by good stout lanyards, we were proceeding to stump
our prisoners off to the boat, when, with the innate devilry that I have
inherited, I know not how, but the original sin of which has more than
once nearly cost me my life, I said, without addressing my superior
officer, or any one else, directly--“I should like now to scale ‘my pistol
through that coffin. If I miss, I can’t hurt the old woman; and an eyelet
hole in the coffin itself, will only be an act of civility to the worms.”

I looked towards my superior officer, who answered me with a knowing shake
of the head. I advanced, while all was silent as death--the sharp click of
the pistol lock now struck acutely on my own ear. I presented, when--crash
the lid of the coffin, old woman and all, was dashed off in an instant, the
corpse flying up in the air, and then falling heavily on the floor, rolling
over and over, while a tall handsome fellow, in his stripped flannel shirt
and blue trowsers, with the sweat pouring down over his face in steams, sat
up in the shell.

“All right,” said Mr Treenail--“help him out of his berth.”

He was pinioned like the rest, and forthwith we walked them all off to the
beach. By this time there was an unusual bustle in the Holy Ground, and we
could hear many an anathema, curses, not loud but deep, ejaculated from
many a half-opened door as we passed along. We reached the boat, and time
it was we did so, for a number of stout fellows, who had followed us in a
gradually increasing crowd, until they amounted to forty at the fewest, now
nearly surrounded us, and kept closing in. As the last of us jumped into
the boat, they made a rush, so that if we had not shoved off with the speed
of light, I think it very likely that we should have been overpowered.
However, we reached the ship in safety, and the day following we weighed,
and stood out to sea  with our convoy.

It was a very large fleet nearly three hundred sail of merchant vessel
and a noble sight truly.

A line-of-battle ship led--and two frigates and three sloops of our class
were stationed on the outskirts of the fleet, whipping them in as it were.
We made Madeira in fourteen days, looked in, but did not anchor; superb
island--magnificent mountains--white town,--and all very fine, but nothing
particular happened for three weeks. One fine evening, (we had by this
time progressed into the trades, and were within three hundred miles of
Barbadoes,) the sun had set bright and clear, after a most beautiful day,
and we were bowling along right before it, rolling like the very devil; but
there was no moon, and although the stars sparkled brilliantly, yet it was
dark, and as we were the sternmost of the men of war, we had the task of
whipping in the sluggards. It was my watch on deck. A gun from the
commodore, who showed a number of lights. “What is that, Mr Kennedy?”
 said the captain to the old gunner.--“The commodore has made the night
signal for the sternmost ships to make more sail and close, sir.” We
repeated the signal--and stood on hailing the dullest of the merchantmen in
our neighbourhood to make more sail, and firing a musket-shot now and then
over the more distant of them. By and by we saw a large West Indiaman
suddenly haul her wind, and stand across our bows.

“Forward there!” sung out Mr Splinter, “stand by to fire a shot at that
fellow from the boat gun if he does not bear up. What can he be after?
Sergeant Armstrong,”--to a marine, who was standing close by him in the
waist--“get a musket, and fire over him!”

It was done, and the ship immediately bore up on her course again; we now
ranged alongside of him on his larboard quarter.

“Ho, the ship, ahoy!”--“Hillo!” was the reply.--“Make more sail, sir, and
run into the body of the fleet, or I shall fire into you; why don’t you,
sir, keep in the wake of the commodore?” No answer. “What meant you by
hauling your wind, just now, sir?”

“Yesh, Yesh,” at length responded a voice from the merchantman.

“Something wrong here,” said Mr Splinter. “Back your maintopsail, sir, and
hoist a light at the peak; I shall send a boat on board of you.
Boatswain’s mate, pipe away the crew of the jolly boat.” We also hove to,
and were in the act of lowering down the boat, when the officer rattled
out. “Keep all fast, with the boat; I can’t comprehend that chap’s
manoeuvres for the soul of me. He has not hove to.” Once more we were
within pistol-shot of him. “Why don’t you heave to, sir?” All silent.

Presently we could perceive a confusion and noise of struggling on board,
and angry voices, as if people were trying to force their way up the
hatchways from below; and a heavy thumping on the deck, and a creaking of
the blocks, and rattling of the cordage, while the mainyard was first
braced one way, and then another, as if two parties were striving for the
mastery. At length a voice hailed distinctly “We are captured by a”--A
sudden sharp cry, and a splash overboard, told of some fearful deed.

“We are taken by a privateer or pirate,” sung out another voice. This was
followed by a heavy crunching blow, as when the spike of a butcher’s axe is
driven through a bullock’s forehead deep into the brain.

By this time all hands had been called, and the word had been passed to
clear away two of the foremost carronades on the starboard side, and to
load them with grape.

“On board there--get below, all you of the English crew, as I shall fire
with grape,” sung out the captain.

The hint was not taken. The ship at length came to the wind--we rounded
to, under her lee--and an armed boat, with Mr Treenail, and myself, and
sixteen men, with cutlasses, were sent on board.

We jumped on deck, and at the gangway, Mr Treenail stumbled, and fell over
the dead body of a man, no doubt the one who had hailed last, with his
scull cloven to the eyes, and a broken cutlass blade sticking in the gash.
We were immediately accosted by the mate, who was lashed down to a ringbolt
close by the bits, with his hands tied at the wrists by sharp cords, so
tightly that the blood was spouting from beneath his nails.

“We have been surprised by a privateer schooner, sir; the lieutenant of
her, and twelve men, are now in the cabin.”

“Where are the rest of the crew?”

“All secured in the forecastle, except the second mate and boatswain, the
men who hailed you just now; the last was knocked on the head, and the
former was stabbed and thrown overboard.”

We immediately released the men, eighteen in number, and armed them with
boarding pikes. “What vessel is that astern of us?” said Treenail to the
mate. Before he could answer, a shot from the brig fired at the privateer
showed she was broad awake. Next moment Captain Deadeye hailed. “Have you
mastered the prize crew, Mr Treenail?”--“Aye, aye, sir.”--“Then keep your
course, and keep two lights hoisted at your mizzen peak during the night,
and blue Peter at the main topsail yardarm when the day breaks; I shall
haul my wind after the suspicious sail in your wake.”

Another shot, and another, from the brig--the time between each flash and
the report increasing with the distance. By this the lieutenant had
descended to the cabin, followed by his people, while the merchant crew
once more took the charge of the ship, crowding sail into the body of the
fleet.

I followed him close, pistol and cutlass in hand, and I shall never forget
the scene that presented itself when I entered. The cabin was that of a
vessel of five hundred tons, elegantly fitted up; the panels filled with
crimson cloth, edged with gold mouldings, with superb damask hangings
before the stem windows and the side berths, and brilliantly lighted up by
two large swinging lamps hung from the deck above, which were reflected
from, and multiplied in, several plate glass mirrors in the panels. In the
recess, which in cold weather had been occupied by the stove, now stood a
splendid grand piano, the silk in the open work above the keys
corresponding with the crimson cloth of the panels; it was open, a Leghom
bonnet with a green veil, a parasol, and two long white gloves, as if
recently pulled off, lay on it, with the very mould of the hands in them.

The rudder case was particularly beautiful; it was a richly carved and
gilded palm tree, the stem painted white, and interlaced with golden
fretwork, like the lozenges of a pine-apple, while the leaves spread up
and abroad on the roof.

The table was laid for supper, with cold meat, and wine, and a profusion of
silver things, all sparkling brightly; but it was in great disorder, wine
spilt, and glasses broken, and dishes with meat upset, and knives, and
forks, and spoons, scattered all about. She was evidently one of those
London West Indiamen, on board of which I knew there was much splendour and
great comfort. But, alas! the hand of lawless violence had been there.
The captain lay across the table, with his head hanging over the side of it
next to us, and unable to help himself, with his hands tied behind his
back, and a gag in his mouth; his face purple from the blood running to
his head, and the white of his eyes turned up, while his loud stentorous
breathing but too clearly indicated the rupture of a vessel on the brain.

He was a stout portly man, and, although we released him on the instant,
and had him bled, and threw water on his face, and did all we could for
him, he never spoke afterwards, and died in half an hour.

Four gentlemanly-looking men were sitting at table, lashed to their
chairs, pale and trembling, while six of the most ruffian-looking
scoundrels I ever beheld, stood on the opposite side of the table in a row
fronting us, with the light from the lamps shining full on them. Three of
them were small, but very square mulattoes; one was a South American
Indian, with the square high-boned visage, and long, lank, black glossy
hair of his cast. These four had no clothing besides their trowsers, and
stood with their arms folded, in all the calmness of desperate men, caught
in the very fact of some horrible atrocity, which they knew shut out all
hope of mercy. The two others were white Frenchmen, tall,
bushy-whiskered, sallow desperadoes, but still, wonderful to relate,
with, if I may so speak, the manners of gentlemen. One of them squinted,
and had a hair-lip, which gave him a horrible expression. They were
dressed in white trowsers and shirts, yellow silk sashes round their
waists, and a sort of blue uniform jacket, blue Gascon caps, with the
peaks, from each of which depended a large bullion tassel, hanging down on
one side of their heads. The whole party had apparently made up their
minds that resistance was vain, for their pistols and cutlasses, some of
them bloody, had all been laid on the table, with the buts and handles
towards us, contrasting horribly with the glittering equipage of steel,
and crystal, and silver things, on the snow-white damask table-cloth.
They were immediately seized and ironed, to which they submitted in
silence. We next released the passengers, and were overpowered with
thanks, one dancing, one crying, one laughing, and another praying. But,
merciful Heaven! what an object met our eyes!  Drawing aside--the curtain
that concealed a sofa, fitted into a recess, there lay, more dead than
alive, a tall and most beautiful girl, her head resting on her left arm,
her clothes disordered and tom, blood on her bosom, and foam on her mouth,
with her long dark hair loose and dishevelled, and covering the upper part
of her deadly pale face, through which her wild sparkling black eyes,
protruding from their sockets, glanced and glared with the fire of a
maniac’s, while her blue lips kept gibbering an incoherent prayer one
moment, and the next imploring mercy, as if she had still been in the
hands of those who knew not the name; and anon, a low hysterical laugh
made our very blood freeze in our bosoms, which soon ended in a long
dismal yell, as she rolled off the couch upon the hard deck, and lay in a
dead faint.

Alas the day!--a Maniac she was from that hour. She was the only daughter
of the murdered master of the ship, and never awoke, in her unclouded
reason, to the fearful consciousness of her own dishonour and her parent’s
death.

The Torch captured the schooner, and we left the privateer’s men at
Barbadoes to meet their reward, and several of the merchant sailors were
turned over to the guardship, to prove the facts in the first instance, and
to serve his Majesty as impressed men in the second, but scrimp measure of
justice to the poor ship’s crew.

Anchored at Carlisle Bay, Barbadoes.--Town seemed built of cards--black
faces--showy dresses of the negroes--dined at Mr C----‘s, capital dinner
little breeze mill at the end of the room, that pumped a solution of
saltpetre and water into a trough of tin, perforated with small holes,
below which, and exposed to the breeze, were ranged the wine and liqueurs,
all in cotton bags; the water then flowed into a well, where the pump was
stepped, and thus was again pumped up and kept circulating.

Landed the artillery, the soldiers, officers, and the Spanish Canon
discharged the whole battery.

Next morning, weighed at day--dawn, with the trade for Jamaica, and soon
lost sight of the bright blue waters of Carlisle Bay, and the smiling fields
and tall cocoa-nut trees of the beautiful island. In a week after we
arrived off the east end of Jamaica, and that same evening, in obedience to
the orders of the admiral on the Windward Island station, we hove to in
Bull Bay, in order to land despatches, and secure our tithe of the crews of
the merchant-vessels bound for Kingston, and the ports to leeward, as they
passed us. We had fallen in with a pilot canoe off Morant Bay with four
negroes on board, who requested us to hoist in their boat, and take them
all on board, as the pilot schooner, to which they belonged, had that
morning bore up for Kingston, and left instructions to them to follow her
in the first vessel appearing afterwards. We did so, and now, as it was
getting dark, the captain came up to Mr Treenail.

“Why, Mr Treenail, I think we had better heave-to for the night, and in
this case I shall want you to go in the cutter to Port Royal to deliver the
despatches on board the flag-ship.”

“I don’t think the admiral will be at Port Royal, sir,” responded the
lieutenant; “and, if I might suggest, these black chaps have offered to
take me ashore here on the Palisadoes, a narrow spit of land, not above one
hundred yards across, that divides the harbour from the ocean, and to haul
the canoe across, and take me to the agent’s house in Kingston, who will
doubtless frank me up to the pen, where the admiral resides, and I shall
thus deliver the letters, and be back again by day--dawn.”

“Not a bad plan,” said old Deadeye; “put it in execution, and I will go
below and get the despatches immediately.”

The canoe was once more hoisted out; the three black fellows, the pilot of
the ship continuing on board, jumped into her alongside.

“Had you not better take a couple of hands with you, Mr Treenail?” said the
skipper.

“Why, no, sir, I don’t think I shall want them; but if you will spare me Mr
Cringle I will be obliged, in case I want any help.”

We shoved off, and as the glowing sun dipped under Portland Point, as the
tongue of land that runs out about four miles to the southward, on the
western side of Port Royal harbour, is called, we arrived within a hundred
yards of the Palisadoes. The surf, at the particular spot we steered for,
did not break on the shore in a rolling curling wave, as it usually does,
but smoothed away under the lee of a small sandy promontory that ran out
into the sea, about half a cable’s length to windward, and then slid up the
smooth white sand, without breaking, in a deep clear green swell, for the
space of twenty yards, gradually shoaling, the colour becoming lighter and
lighter, until it frothed away in a shallow white fringe, that buzzed as it
receded back into the deep green sea, until it was again propelled forward
by the succeeding billow.

“I say, friend Bungo, how shall we manage? You don’t mean to swamp us in a
shove through that surf, do you?” said Mr Treenail.

“No fear, massa, if you and toder leetle man-of-war buccra, only keep dem
seat when we rise on de crest of de swell dere.”

We sat quiet enough. Treenail was coolness itself, and I aped him as well
as I could. The loud murmur, increasing to a roar, of the sea, was trying
enough as we approached, buoyed on the last long undulation.

“Now sit still, massa, bote.”

We sank down into the trough, and presently were hove forwards with a
smooth sliding motion up on the beach--until grit, grit, we stranded on the
cream-coloured sand, high and dry.

“Now jomp, massa, jomp.”

We leapt with all our strength, and thereby toppled down on our noses; the
sea receded, and before the next billow approached, we had run the canoe
twenty yards beyond high water mark.

It was the work of a very few minutes to haul the canoe across the
sandbank, and to launch it once more in the placid waters of the harbour
of Kingston. We pulled across towards the town, until we landed at the
bottom of Hanover Street; the lights from the cabin windows of the
merchantmen glimmering as e passed, and the town only discernible from a
solitary sparkle here and there. But the contrast when we landed was very
striking. We had come through the darkness of the night in comparative
quietness; and in two hours from the time we had left the old Torch, we
were transferred from her orderly deck to the bustle of a crowded town.


One of our crew undertook to be the guide to the agent’s house. We arrived
before it. It was a large mansion, and we could see lights glimmering in
the ground floor; but it was gaily lit up aloft. The house itself stood
back about twenty feet from the street, from which it was separated by an
iron railing.

We knocked at the outer-gate, but no one answered. At length our black
guide found out a bell-pull, and presently the clang of a bell resounded
throughout the mansion. Still no one answered. I pushed against, the
door, and found it was open, and Mr Treenail and myself immediately
ascended a flight of six marble steps, and stood in the lower piazza,
with the hall, or lower vestibule, before us. We entered. A very
well-dressed brown woman, who was sitting at her work at a small table,
along with two young girls of the same complexion, instantly rose to
receive us.

“Beg pardon,” said Mr Treenail, “pray, is this Mr----‘s house?” “Yes,
sir, it is.”

“Will you have the goodness to say if he be at home?”

“Oh yes, sir, he is dere upon dinner wid company,” said the lady.

“Well,” continued the lieutenant, “say to him, that an officer of his
Majesty’s sloop Torch is below, with despatches for the admiral.”

“Surely, sir,--surely,” the dark lady continued;--“Follow me, sir; and dat
small gentleman,--[Thomas Cringle, Esquire, no less!]--him will better
follow me too.”

We left the room, and, turning to the right, landed in the lower piazza of
the house, fronting the north. A large clumsy stair occupied the
easternmost end, with a massive mahogany balustrade, but the whole affair
below was very ill lighted. The brown lady preceded us; and planting
herself at the bottom of the staircase, began to shout to some one above.

“Toby!--Toby!--buccra gentlemen arrive, Toby.” But no Toby responded to
the call.

“My dear madam,” said Treenail, “I have little time for ceremony. Pray
usher us up into Mr----‘s presence.”

“Den follow me, gentlemen, please.”

Forthwith we all ascended the dark staircase until we reached the first
landing-place, when we heard a noise as of two negroes wrangling on the
steps above us.

“You rascal!” sang out one, “take dat; larn you for teal my wittal!”--then
a sharp crack, as if he had smote the culprit across the pate; whereupon,
like a shot, a black fellow, in a handsome livery, trundled down, pursued
by another servant with a large silver ladle in his hand, with which he
was belabouring the fugitive over his flinthard skull, right against our
hostess, with the drumstick of a turkey in his hand, or rather in his
mouth.

“Top, you tief--top, you tief!--for me piece dat,” shouted the pursuer.

“You dam rascal!” quoth the dame. But she had no time to utter another
word, before the fugitive pitched, with all his weight, right against her;
and at the very moment another servant came trundling down with a large
tray-full of all kinds of meats--and I especially remember that two large
crystal stands of jellies composed part of his load--so there we were
regularly capsized, and caught all of a heap in the dark landing-place,
half way up the stair; and down the other flight tumbled our guide, with Mr
Treenail and myself, and the two blackies, on the top of her, Tolling in
our descent over, or rather into, another large mahogany tray which had
just been carried out, with a tureen of turtle soup in it, and a dish of
roast-beef, and platefulls of land-crabs, and the Lord knows what all
besides.

The crash reached the ear of the landlord, who was seated at the head of
his table in the upper piazza, a long gallery about fifty feet long by
fourteen wide, and he immediately rose and ordered his butler to take a
light. When he came down to ascertain the cause of the uproar, I shall
never forget the scene.

There was, first of all, mine host, a remarkably neat personage, standing
on the polished mahogany stair, three steps above his servant, who was a
very well-dressed respectable elderly negro, with a candle in each hand;
and beneath him, on the landing-place, lay two trays of viands, broken
tureens of soup, fragments of dishes, and fractured glasses, and a chaos of
eatables and drinkables, and table gear scattered all about, amidst which
lay scrambling my lieutenant and myself, the brown housekeeper, and the two
negro servants, all more or less covered with gravy and wine dregs.
However, after a good laugh, we gathered ourselves up, and at length we
were ushered on the scene. Mine host, after stifling his laughter the
best way he could, again sat down at the head of his table, sparkling with
crystal and wax lights, while a superb lamp hung overhead. The company was
composed chiefly of naval and military men, but there was also a sprinkling
of civilians, or Muftees, to use a West India expression. Most of them
rose as we entered, and after they had taken a glass of wine, and had their
laugh at our mishap, our landlord retired to one side with Mr Treenail,
while I, poor little middy as I was, remained standing at the end of the
room, close to the head of the stairs. The gentleman who sat at the foot
of the table had his back towards me, I and was not at first aware of my
presence. But the guest at his right hand, a happy-looking, red-faced,
well-dressed man, soon drew his attention towards me. The party to whom I
was thus indebted seemed a very jovial-looking personage, and appeared to
be well known to all hands, and indeed the life of the party, for, like
Falstaff, he was not only witty in himself, but the cause of wit in others.

The gentleman to whom he had pointed me out immediately rose, made his bow,
ordered a chair, and made room for me beside himself, where the moment it
was known that we were direct from home, such a volley of questions was
fired off at me, that I did not know which to answer first. At length,
after Treenail had taken a glass or two of wine, the agent started him off
to the admiral’s pen in his own gig, and I was desired to stay where I was
until he returned.

The whole party seemed very happy, my boon ally was fun itself, and I was
much entertained with the mess he made when any of the foreigners at table
addressed him in French or Spanish. I was particularly struck with a small,
thin, dark Spaniard, who told very feelingly how the night before, on
returning home from a party to his own lodgings, on passing through the
piazza, he stumbled against something heavy that lay in his grass-hammock,
which usually hung there. He called for a light, when, to his horror, he
found the body of his old and faithful valet lying in it, dead and cold,
with a knife sticking under his fifth rib--no doubt intended for his
master. The speaker was Bolivar. About midnight, Mr Treenail returned, we
shook hands with Mr----, and once more shoved off; and, guided by the
lights shown on board the Torch, we were safe home again by three in the
morning, when we immediately made sail, and nothing particular happened
until we arrived within a day’s sail of New Providence. It seemed, that
about a week before, a large American brig, bound from Havanna to Boston,
had been captured in this very channel by one of our men-of-war
schooners, and carried into Nassau; out of which port, for their own
security, the authorities had fitted a small schooner, carrying six guns
and twenty-four men. She was commanded by a very gallant fellow--there
is no disputing that--and he must needs emulate the conduct of the officer
who had made the capture--for in a fine clear night, when all the officers
were below rummaging in their kits for the killing things they should
array themselves in on the morrow, so as to smite the Fair of New
Providence to the heart at a blow--Whiss--a shot flew over our mast-head.

“A small schooner lying-to right ahead, sir,” sung out the boatswain from
the forecastle.

Before we could beat to quarters, another sung between our masts. We kept
steadily on our course, and as we approached our pigmy antagonist, he bore
up. Presently we were alongside of him.

“Heave-to,” hailed the strange sail; “heave-to or I’ll sink you.”

The devil you will, you midge, thought I.

The captain took the trumpet--“Schooner, ahoy”--no answer “D--n your blood,
sir, if you don’t let every thing go by the run this instant, I’ll fire a
broadside. Strike, sir, to his Britannic Majesty’s sloop Torch.”

The poor fellow commanding the schooner had by this time found out his
mistake and immediately came on board, where, instead of being lauded for
his gallantry, I am sorry to say he was roundly rated for his want of
discernment in mistaking his Majesty’s cruiser for a Yankee merchantman.

Next forenoon we arrived at Nassau.


In a week after we again sailed for Bermuda, having taken on board ten
American skippers, and several other Yankees, as prisoners of war.

For the first three days after we cleared the Passages. We had fine
weather. Wind at east south-east; but after that it came on to blow from
the north-west, and so continued without intermission during the whole of
the passage to Bermuda. On the fourth morning after we left Nassau, we
descried a sail in the south-east quarter, and immediately made sail in
chase. We overhauled her about noon; she hove-to, after being fired at
repeatedly; and, on boarding her, we found she was a Swede from Charleston,
bound to Havre-de-Grace. All the letters we could find on board were
very unceremoniously broken open, and nothing having transpired that could
identify the cargo as enemy’s property, we were bundling over the side,
when a nautical looking subject, who had attracted my attention from the
first, put in his oar.

“Lieutenant,” said he, “will you allow me to put this barrel of New York
apples into the boat as a present to Captain Deadeye, from Captain----of
the United States navy?”

Mr Treenail bowed, and said he would; and we shoved off and got on board
again, and now there was the devil to pay, from the perplexity old Deadeye
was thrown into, as to whether, here in the heat of the American war, he
was bound to take this American captain prisoner or not. I was no party to
the councils of my superiors, of course, but the foreign ship was finally
allowed to continue her course.

The next day I had the forenoon watch; the weather had lulled unexpectedly,
nor was there much sea, and the deck was all alive, to take advantage of
the fine blink, when the man at the mast-head sung out--“Breakers right
ahead, sir.”

“Breakers!” said Mr Splinter, in great astonishment. “Breakers! why the
man must be mad--I say, Jenkins!”

“Breakers close under the bows,” sung out the boatswain from forward.

“The devil,” quoth Splinter, and he ran along the gangway, and ascended the
forecastle, while I kept close to his heels. We looked out a-head, and
there we certainly did see a splashing, and boiling, and white foaming of
the ocean, that unquestionably looked very like breakers. Gradually, this
splashing and foaming appearance took a circular whisking shape, as if the
clear green sea, for a space of a hundred yards in diameter, had been
stirred about by a gigantic invisible spurtle, until every thing hissed
again; and the curious part of it was, that the agitation of the water
seemed to keep ahead of us, as if the breeze which impelled us had also
floated it onwards. At length the whirling circle of white foam ascended
higher and higher, and then gradually contracted itself into a spinning
black tube, which wavered about, for all the world, like a gigantic
loch-leech, held by the tail between the finger and thumb, while it was
poking its vast snout about in the clouds in search of a spot to fasten on.

“Is the boat gun on the forecastle loaded?” said Captain Deadeye.

“It is, sir.”

“Then luff a bit--that will do--fire.”

The gun was discharged, and down rushed the black wavering pillar in a
watery avalanche, and in a minute after the dark, heaving billows rolled
over the spot whereout it arose, as if no such thing had ever been.

This said troubling of the waters was neither more nor less than a
waterspout, which again is neither more nor less than a whirlwind at sea,
which gradually whisks the water round and round, and up and up, as you see
straws so raised, until it reaches a certain height, when it invariably
breaks. Before this I had thought that a waterspout was created by some
next to supernatural exertion of the power of the Deity, in order to suck
up water into the clouds, that they, like the wine-skins in Spain, may be
filled with rain.

The morning after the weather was clear and beautiful, although the wind
blew half-a-gale. Nothing particular happened until about seven o’clock in
the evening. I had been invited to dine with the gunroom officers this day,
and every thing was going on smooth and comfortable, when Mr Splinter
spoke. “I say, master, don’t you smell gunpowder?”

“Yes I do,” said the little master, “or something deuced like it.”

To explain the particular comfort of our position, it may be right to
mention that the magazine of a brig sloop is exactly under the gunroom.
Three of the American skippers had been quartered on the gunroom mess, and
they were all at table. Snuff, snuff, smelled one, and another sniffled,

“Gunpowder, I guess, and in a state of ignition.”

“Will you not send for the gunner, sir?” said the third.

Splinter did not like it, I saw, and this quailed me.

The captain’s bell rang. “What smell of brimstone is that, steward?” “I
really can’t tell,” said the man, trembling from head to foot; “Mr Splinter
has sent for the gunner, sir.”

“The devil!” said Deadeye, as he hurried on deck. We all followed. A
search was made.

“Some matches have caught in the magazine,” said one.

“We shall be up and away like sky-rockets,” said another.

Several of the American masters ran out on the jib-boom, coveting the
temporary security of being so far removed from the seat of the expected
explosion, and all was alarm and confusion, until it was ascertained that
two of the boys, little skylarking vagabonds, had stolen some pistol
cartridges, and had been making lightning, as it is called, by holding a
lighted candle between the fingers, and putting some loose powder into the
palm of the hand, and then chucking it up into the flame. They got a sound
flogging, on a very unpoetical part of their corpuses, and once more the
ship subsided into her usual orderly discipline. The northwester still
continued, with a clear blue sky, without a cloud overhead by day, and a
bright cold moon by night. It blew so hard for the three succeeding days,
that we could not carry more than close reefed topsails to it, and a reefed
foresail. Indeed, towards six bells in the forenoon watch, it came
thundering down with such violence, and the sea increased so much, that we
had to hand the fore-topsail.

This was by no means an easy job. “Ease her a bit,”  said the first
lieutenant, “there--shake the wind out of her sails for a moment, until the
men get the canvass”--whirl, a poor fellow pitched off the lee fore yardarm
into the sea. “Up with the helm--heave him the bight of a rope.” We kept
away, but all was confusion, until an American midshipman, one of the
prisoners on board, hove the bight of a rope at him. The man got it under
his arms, and after hauling him along for a hundred yards at the least--and
one may judge of the velocity with which he was dragged through the water,
by the fact that it took the united strain of ten powerful men to get him
in--he was brought safely on board, pale and blue, when we found that the
running of the rope had crushed in his broad chest below his arms, as if it
had been a girl’s waist, cutting into the very muscles of it and of his
back half an inch deep. He had to be bled before he could breathe, and it
was an hour before the circulation could be restored, by the joint
exertions of the surgeon and gunroom steward, chafing him with spirits and
camphor, after he had been stripped and stowed away between the blankets in
his hammock.

The same afternoon we fell in with a small prize to the squadron in the
Chesapeake, a dismasted schooner, manned by a prize crew of a midshipman
and six men. She had a signal of distress, an American ensign, with the
union down, hoisted on the jury-mast, across which there was rigged a
solitary lug-sail. It was blowing so hard that we had some difficulty in
boarding her, when we found she was a Baltimore pilot-boat--built
schooner, of about 70 tons burden, laden with flour, and bound for
Bermuda. But three days before, in a sudden squall, they had carried away
both masts short by the board, and the only spar which they had been able
to rig, was a spare topmast which they had jammed into one of the pumps
fortunately she was as tight as a bottle--and stayed it the best way they
could. The captain offered to take the little fellow who had charge of
her, and his crew and cargo, on board, and then scuttle her; but no--all
he wanted was a cask of water and some biscuit; and having had a glass of
grog, he trundled over the side again, and returned to his desolate
command. However, he afterwards brought his prize safe into Bermuda.

The weather still continued very rough, but we saw nothing until the second
evening after this. The forenoon had been even more boisterous than any of
the preceding, and we were all fagged enough with “make sail,” and “shorten
sail,” and “all hands,” the whole day through; and as the night fell, I
found myself, for the fourth time, in the maintop. The men had just lain
in from the main topsail yard, when we heard the watch called on deck,
“Starboard watch, ahoy,”--which was a cheery sound to us of the larboard,
who were thus released from duty on deck and allowed to go below.

The men were scrambling down the weather shrouds, and I was preparing to
follow them, when I jammed my left foot in the grating of the top, and
capsized on my nose. I had been up nearly the whole of the previous night,
and on deck the whole of the day, and actively employed too, as during the
greatest part of it it blew a gale. I stooped down in some pain, to see
what had bolted me to the grating, but I had no sooner extricated my foot,
than, over-worked and over fatigued as I was, I fell over in the soundest
sleep that ever I have enjoyed before or since, the back of my neck resting
on a coil of rope, so that my head hung down within it.

The rain all this time was beating on me, and I was drenched to the skin. I
must have slept for four hours or so, when I was awakened by a rough thump
on the side from the stumbling foot of the captain of the top, the word
having been passed to shake a reef out of the topsails, the wind having
rather suddenly gone down. It was done; and now broad awake, I determined
not to be caught napping again, so I descended, and swung myself in on deck
out of the main rigging, just as Mr Treenail was mustering the crew at
eight bells. When I landed on the quarterdeck, there he stood abaft the
binnacle, with the light shining on his face, his glazed hat glancing, and
the rain-drop sparkling at the brim of it. He had noticed me the moment I
descended.

“Heyday, Master Cringle, you are surely out of your watch. Why, what are
you doing here, eh?”

I stepped up to him, and told him the truth, that, being over fatigued, I
had fallen asleep in the top.

“Well, well, boy,” said he, “never mind, go below, and turn in; if you
don’t take your rest, you never will be a sailor.”

“But what do you see aloft?” glancing his eye upwards, and all the crew on
deck as I passed them looked anxiously up also amongst the rigging, as if
wondering what I saw there, for I had been so chilled in my noose, that my
neck, from resting in the cold on the coil of rope, had become stiffened
and rigid to an intolerable degree; and although, when I first came on
deck, I had by a strong exertion brought my caput to its proper bearings,
yet the moment I was dismissed by my superior officer, I for my own
comfort was glad to conform to the contraction of the muscle, whereby I
once more staved along the deck, glowering up into the heavens, as if I
had seen some wonderful sight there.

“What do you see aloft?” repeated Mr Treenail, while the crew, greatly
puzzled, continued to follow my eye, as they thought, and to stare up into
the rigging.

“Why, sir, I have thereby got a stiff neck--that’s all, sir.”

“Go and turn in at once, my good boy--make haste, now--tell our steward to
give you a glass of hot grog, and mind your hand that you don’t get sick.”

I did as I was desired, swallowed the grog, and turned in; but I could not
have been in bed above an hour, when the drum beat to quarters, and I had
once more to bundle out on the cold wet deck, where I found all excitement.
At the time I speak of, we had been beaten by the Americans in several
actions of single ships, and our discipline had improved in proportion as
we came to learn by sad experience that the enemy was not to be
undervalued. I found that there was a ship in sight, right a-head of us
apparently carrying all sail. A group of officers were on the forecastle
with night-glasses, the whole crew being stationed in dark clusters round
the guns at quarters. Several of the American skippers were forward
amongst us, and they were of opinion that the chase was a man-of-war,
although our own people seemed to doubt this. One of the skippers
insisted that she was the Hornet, from the unusual shortness of her lower
masts, and the immense squareness of her yards. But the puzzle was, if it
were the Hornet, why she did not shorten sail. Still this might be
accounted for, by her either wishing to make out what we were before she
engaged us, or she might be clearing for action. At this moment a whole
cloud of studdingsails were blown from the yards as if the booms had been
carrots; and to prove that the chase was keeping a bright look-out, she
immediately kept away, and finally bore up dead before the wind, under the
impression, no doubt, that she would draw a-head of us, from her gear
being entire, before we could rig out our light sails again.

And so she did for a time, but at length we got within gun-shot. The
American masters were now ordered below, the hatches were clapped on, and
the word passed to see all clear. Our shot was by this time flying over
and over her, and it was evident she was not a man-of-war. We peppered
away--she could not even be a privateer; we were close under her
lee-quarter, and yet she had never fired a shot; and her large swaggering
Yankee ensign was now run up to the peak, only to be hauled down the next
moment. Hurrah! a large cotton ship, from Charlestown to Bourdeaux, prize
to H.M.S. Torch.

She was taken possession of, and proved to be the Natches, of four hundred
tons burden, fully loaded with cotton.

By the time we got the crew on board, and the second lieutenant, with a
prize crew of fifteen men, had taken charge, the weather began to lour
again, nevertheless we took the prize in tow, and continued on our voyage
for the next three days, without any thing particular happening. It was
the middle watch, and I was sound asleep, when I was startled by a violent
jerking of my hammock, and a cry “that the brig was amongst the breakers.”
 I ran on deck in my shirt, where I found all hands, and a scene of
confusion such as I never had witnessed before. The gale had increased,
yet the prize had not been cast off, and the consequence was, that by some
mismanagement or carelessness, the swag of the large ship had suddenly hove
the brig in the wind, and taken the sails a-back. We accordingly fetched
stern way, and ran foul of the prize, and there we were, in a heavy sea,
with our stern grinding against the cotton ship’s high quarter.

The main boom, by the first rasp that took place after I came on deck, was
broken short off, and nearly twelve feet of it hove right in over the
taffril; the vessels then closed, and the next rub ground off the ship’s
mizzen channel as clean as if it had been sawed away. Officers shouting,
men swearing, rigging cracking, the vessels crashing and thumping together,
I thought we were gone, when the first lieutenant seized his trumpet
“Silence, men,--hold your tongues, you cowards, and mind the word of
command!”

The effect was magical.--“Brace round the foreyard; round with it--set the
jib--that’s it--fore-topmast stay-sail--haul--never mind if the gale
takes it out of the bolt rope”--a thundering flap, and away it flew in
truth down to leeward, like a puff of white smoke.--“Never mind, men, the
jib stands. Belay all that--down with the helm, now don’t you see she has
sternway yet? Zounds! we shall be smashed to atoms if you don’t mind your
hands, you lubbers--main-topsail sheets let fly--there she pays off, and
has headway once more, that’s it--right your helm now--never mind his
spanker-boom, the forestay will stand it--there--up with the helm, sir
we have cleared him hurrah!”--And a near thing it was too but we soon had
every thing snug; and although the gale continued without any intermission
for ten days, at length we ran in and anchored with our prize in Five
Fathom Hole, off the entrance to St George’s Harbour.

It was lucky for us that we got to anchor at the time we did, for that same
afternoon, one of the most tremendous gales of wind from the westward came
on that I ever saw. Fortunately it was steady and did not veer about, and
having good ground-tackle down, we rode it out well enough. The effect
was very uncommon; the wind was howling over our mast-heads, and amongst
the cedar bushes on the cliffs above, while on deck it was nearly calm, and
there was very little swell, being a weather shore; but half a mile out at
sea all was white foam, and the tumbling waves seemed to meet from north
and south, leaving a space of smooth water under the lee of the island,
shaped like the tail of a comet, tapering away, and gradually roughening
and becoming more stormy, until the roaring billows once more owed
allegiance to the genius of the storm.

There we rode, with three anchors a-head, in safety through the night; and
next day, availing of a temporary lull, we ran up, and anchored off the
Tanks. Three days after this, the American frigate President was brought
in by the Endymion, and the rest of the squadron.

I went on board, in common with every officer in the fleet, and certainly I
never saw a more superb vessel; her scantling was that of a seventy-four,
and she appeared to have been fitted with great cares. I got a week’s
leave at this time, and, as I had letters to several families, I contrived
to spend my time pleasantly enough.

Bermuda, as all the world knows, is a cluster of islands in the middle of
the Atlantic. There are Lord knows how many of them, but the beauty of the
little straits and creeks which divide them, no man can describe who has
not seen them. The town of Saint George’s, for instance, looks as if the
houses were cut out of chalk; and one evening the family where I was on a
visit proceeded to the main island, Hamilton, to attend a ball there. We
had to cross three ferries, although the distance was not above nine miles,
if so far. The Mudian women are unquestionably beautiful--so thought
Thomas Moore, a tolerable judge, before me. By the by, touching this Mudian
ball, it was a very gay affair--the women pleasant and beautiful; but all
the men, when they speak, or are spoken to, shut one eye and spit;--a lucid
and succinct description of a community.

The second day of my sojourn was fine--the first fine day since our arrival
and with several young ladies of the family, I was prowling through the
cedar wood above St George’s, when a dark good-looking man passed us; he
was dressed in tight worsted net pantaloons and Hessian boots, and wore a
blue frock-coat and two large epaulets, with rich French bullion, and a
round hat. On passing he touched his hat with much grace, and in the
evening I met him in society. It was Commodore Decatur. He was very much
a Frenchman in manner, or, I should rather say, in look, for although very
well bred, he, for one ingredient, by no means possessed a Frenchman’s
volubility; still, he was an exceedingly agreeable and very handsome man.

The following day we spent in a pleasure cruise amongst the three hundred
and sixty-five islands, many of them not above an acre in extent--fancy an
island of an acre in extent!--with a solitary house, a small garden, a
red-skinned family, a piggery, and all around clear deep pellucid water.
None of the islands, or islets, rise to any great height, but they all
shoot precipitously out of the water, as if the whole group, had originally
been one huge platform of rock, with numberless grooves subsequently
chiselled out in it by art.


We had to wind our way amongst these manifold small channels for two hours
before we reached the gentleman’s house where we had been invited to dine;
at length, on turning a corner, with both latteen sails drawing
beautifully, we ran bump on a shoal; there was no danger, and knowing that
the Mudians were capital sailors, I sat still. Not so Captain K----, a
round plump little homo,--“Shove her off, my boys, shove her off.” She
would not move, and thereupon he in a fever of gallantry jumped overboard
up to the waist in full fig; and one of the men following his example, we
were soon afloat. The ladies applauded, and the Captain sat in his wet
breaks for the rest of the voyage, in all the consciousness of being
considered a hero. Ducks and onions are the grand staple of Bermuda, but
there was a fearful dearth of both at the time I speak of; a knot of young
West India merchants, who, with heavy purses and large credits on England,
had at this time domiciled themselves in St George’s, to batten on the
spoils of poor Jonathan, having monopolized all the good things of the
place. I happened to be acquainted with one of them, and thereby had less
reason to complain, but many a poor fellow, sent ashore on duty, had to put
up with but Lenten fair at the taverns. At length, having refitted, we
sailed, in company with the Rayo frigate, with a convoy of three
transports, freighted with a regiment for New Orleans, and several
merchantmen, bound for the West Indies.

“The still vexed Bermoothes”--I arrived at them in a gale of wind, and I
sailed from them in a gale of wind. What the climate may be in the summer
I don’t know; but during the time I was there, it was one storm after
another.

We sailed in the evening with the moon at full, and the wind at
west-north-west. So soon as we got from under the lee of the land, the
breeze struck us, and it came on to blow like thunder, so that we were
all soon reduced to our storm staysails; and there we were, transports,
merchantmen, and men-of-war, rising on the mountainous billows one
moment, and the next losing sight of every thing but the water and sky
in the deep trough of the sea, while the seething foam was blown over us
in showers from the curling manes of the roaring waves. But overhead,
all this while, it was as clear as a lovely winter moon could make it,
and the stars shone brightly in the deep blue sky; there was not even a
thin fleecy shred of cloud racking across the moon’s disk. Oh, the
glories of a northwester!

But the devil seize such glory!  Glory, indeed! with a fleet of transports,
and a regiment of soldiers on board!  Glory! why, I daresay five hundred
rank and file, at the fewest, were all cascading at one and the same
moment, a thousand poor fellows turned outside in, like so many pairs of
old stockings. Any glory in that? But to proceed.

Next morning the gale still continued, and when the day broke, there was
the frigate standing across our bows, rolling and pitching, as she tore her
way through the boiling sea, under a close-reefed main-topsail and reefed
foresail, with topgallant-yards and royal masts, and every thing that
could be struck with safety in war time, down on deck. There she lay with
her clear black bends, and bright white streaks and long tier of cannon on
the maindeck, and the carronades on the quarterdeck and forecastle grinning
through the ports in the black bulwarks, while the white hammocks,
carefully covered by the hammock-cloths, crowned the defences of the
gallant frigate fore and aft, as she delved through the green surge,--one
minute rolling and rising on the curling white crest of a mountainous sea,
amidst a hissing snowstorm of spray, with her bright copper glancing from
stem to stem, and her scanty white canvass swelling aloft, and twenty feet
of her keel forward occasionally hove into the air clean out of the water,
as if she had been a sea-bird rushing to take wing,--and the next, sinking
entirely out of sight, hull, masts, and rigging, behind an intervening sea,
that rose in hoarse thunder between us, threatening to overwhelm both us
and her. As for the transports, the largest of the three had lost her fore
topmast, and had bore up under her foresail; another was also scudding
under a close reefed fore-topsail; but the third or head-quarter ship was
still lying to windward, under her storm stay-sails. None of the merchant
vessels were to be seen, having been compelled to bear up in the night, and
to run before it under bare poles.

At length, as the sun rose, we got before the wind, and it soon moderated
so far, that we could carry reefed topsails and foresail; and away we all
bowled, with a clear, deep, cold, blue sky, and a bright sun overhead, and
a stormy leaden-coloured ocean, with whitish green-crested billows,
below. The sea continued to go down, and the wind to slacken, until the
afternoon, when the Commodore made the signal for Torch to send, a boat’s
crew, the instant it could be done with safety, on board the dismasted
ship, to assist in repairing damages, and in getting up a
jury-fore-topmast.

The damaged ship was at this time on our weather-quarter; we accordingly
handed the fore-topsail, and presently she was alongside. We hailed her,
that we intended to send a boat on board, and desired her to heave-to, as
we did, and presently she rounded to under our lee. One of the
quarter-boats was manned, with three of the carpenter’s crew, and six good
men over and above her complement; but it was no easy matter to get on
board of her, let me tell you, after she had been lowered, carefully
watching the rolls, with four hands in. The moment she touched the water,
the tackles were cleverly unhooked, and the rest of us tumbled on board,
shin leather growing scarce, when we shoved off. With great difficulty,
and not without wet jackets, we, the supernumeraries, got on board, and the
boat returned to the Torch. The evening when we landed in the lobsterbox,
as Jack loves to designate a transport, was too far advanced for us to do
anything towards refitting that night; and the confusion, and uproar, and
numberless abominations of the crowded craft, were irksome to a greater
degree than I expected even, after having been accustomed to the strict and
orderly discipline of a man-of-war. The following forenoon the Torch was
ordered by signal to chase in the south-east quarter, and hauling out from
the fleet, she was soon out of sight.

“There goes my house and home,” said I, and a feeling of desolateness came
over me, that I would have been ashamed at the time to have acknowledged.
We stood on, and worked hard all day in repairing the damage sustained
during the gale.

At length dinner was announced, and I was invited, as the officer in charge
of the seamen, to go down. The party in the cabin consisted of an old
gizzened Major with a brown wig, and a voice melodious as the sharpening of
a saw--I fancied sometimes that the vibration created by it set the very
glasses in the steward’s pantry a-ringing three captains and six
subalterns, every man of whom, as the devil would have it, played on the
flute, and drew bad sketches, and kept journals. Most of them were very
white and blue in the gills when we sat down, and others of a dingy sort
of whitey-brown, while they ogled the viands in a most suspicious manner.
Evidently most of them had but small confidence in their moniplies; and one
or two, as the ship gave a heavier roll than usual, looked wistfully
towards the door, and half rose from their chairs, as if in act to bolt.
However, hot brandy grog being the order of the day, we all, landsmen and
sailors, got on astonishingly, and numberless long yarns were spun of what
“what’s-his-name of this, and so-and-so of t’other, did or did not do.”

About half-past five in the evening, the captain of the transport, or
rather the agent, an old lieutenant in the navy, and our host, rang his
bell for the steward.

“Whereabouts are we in the fleet, steward?” said the ancient.

“The stern most ship of all, sir,” said the man.

“Where is the Commodore?” “About three miles a-head, sir.”

“And the Torch, has she rejoined us?”

“No, sir; she has been out of sight these two hours; when last seen she was
in chase of something in the south-east quarter, and carrying all the sail
she could stagger under.”

“Very well, very well.”

A song from Master Waistbelt, one of the young officers. Before he had
concluded, the mate came down. By this time it was near sun-down.

“Shall we shake a reef out of the main and mizzen-topsails, sir, and set
the mainsail and spanker? The wind has lulled, sir, and there is a strange
sail in the northwest that seems to be dodging us--but she may be one of
the merchantmen after all, sir.”

“Never mind, Mr Leechline,” said our gallant captain. “Mr Bandalier--a
song if you please.”

Now the young soldiers on board happened to be men of the world, and
Bandalier, who did not sing, turned off the request with a good-humoured
laugh, alleging his inability with much suavity; but the old rough Turk of
a tar-bucket chose to fire at this, and sang out--“Oh, if you don’t choose
to sing when you are asked, and to sport your damned fine airs....”

“Mr Crowfoot.”

“Captain,” said the agent, piqued at having his title by courtesy withheld.

“By no mean,” said Major Sawrasp, who had spoken--“I believe I am speaking
to Lieutenant Crowfoot, agent for transport No.--, wherein it so happens I
am commanding officer--so”--

Old Crowfoot saw he was in the wrong box, and therefore hove about, and
backed out in good time--making the amende as smoothly as his gruff nature
admitted, and trying to look pleased.

Presently the same bothersome mate came down again--“The strange sail is
creeping up on our quarter, sir.”

“Ay?” said Crowfoot, “how does she lay?”

“She is hauled by the wind on the starboard tack, sir,” continued the mate.

We now went on deck, and found that our suspicious friend had shortened
sail, as if he had made us out, and wag afraid to approach, or was lying by
until nightfall.

Sawrasp had before this, with the tact and ease of a soldier and a
gentleman, soldered his feud with Crowfoot, and, with the rest of the
lobsters, was full of fight. The sun at length set, and the night closed
in when the old major again addressed Crowfoot.

“My dear fellow, can’t you wait a bit, and let us have a rattle at that
chap?” And old Crowfoot, who never bore a grudge long, seemed much inclined
to fall in with the soldier’s views; and, in fine, although the weather was
now moderate, he did not make sail. Presently the Commodore fired a gun,
and showed lights. It was the signal to close. “Oh, time enough,” said
old Crowfoot--“what is the old man afraid of?” Another gun and a fresh
constellation on board the frigate. It was “an enemy in the northwest
quarter.”

“Hah, hah,” sung out the agent, “is it so? Major, what say you to a brush
let her close, eh?--should like to pepper her--wouldn’t you--three hundred
men, eh?”

By this time we were all on deck--the schooner came bowling along under a
reefed mainsail and jib, now rising, and presently disappearing behind the
stormy heavings of the roaring sea, the rising moon shining brightly on her
canvass pinions, as if she had been an albatross skimming along the surface
of the foaming water, while her broad white streak glanced like a silver
ribbon along her clear black side. She was a very large craft of her class,
long and low in the water, and evidently very fast; and it was now clear,
from our having been unable as yet to sway up our fore-topmast, that she
took us for a disabled merchantman, which might be cut off from the convoy.

As she approached, we could perceive by the bright moonlight, that she had
six guns of a side, and two long ones on pivots, the one forward on the
forecastle, and the other choke up to the mainmast.

Her deck was crowded with dark figures, pike and cutlass in hand; we were
by this time so near that we could see pistols in their belts, and a
trumpet in the hand of a man who stood in the fore rigging, with his feet
on the hammock netting, and his back against the shrouds. We had cleared
away our six eighteen-pound carronades, which composed our starboard
broadside, and loaded them, each with a round shot, and a bag of two
hundred musket-balls, while three hundred soldiers in their foraging
jackets, and with their loaded muskets in their hands, were lying on the
deck, concealed by the quarters, while the blue jackets were sprawling in
groups round the carronades.

I was lying down beside the gallant old Major, who had a bugler close to
him, while Crowfoot was standing on the gun nearest us; but getting tired
of this recumbent position, I crept aft, until I could see through a spare
port.

“Why don’t the rascals fire?” quoth Sawrasp.

“Oh, that would alarm the Commodore. They intend to walk quietly on board
of us; but they will find themselves mistaken a little,” whispered
Crowfoot.

“Mind, men, no firing till the bugle sounds,” said the Major.

The word was passed along.

The schooner was by this time ploughing through it within half pistolshot,
with the white water dashing away from her bows, and buzzing past her
sides her crew as thick as peas on her deck. Once or twice she hauled her
wind a little, and then again kept away from us, as if irresolute what to
do. At length, without hailing, and all silent as the grave, she put her
helm a-starboard, and ranged alongside.

“Now, my boys, give it him,” shouted Crowfoot--“Fire!”

“Ready, men,” shouted the Major--“Present--fire!”

The bugles sounded, the cannon roared, the musketry rattled, and the men
cheered, and all was hurra, and fire, and fury. The breeze was strong
enough to carry all the smoke forward, and I saw the deck of the schooner,
where the moment before all was still and motionless, and filled with dark
figures, till there scarcely appeared standing room, at once converted into
a shambles. The blasting fiery tempest had laid low nearly the whole mass,
like a maize plant before a hurricane; and such a cry arose, as if “Men
fought on earth, and fiends in upper air.”

Scarcely a man was on his legs, the whole crew seemed to have been levelled
with the deck, many dead, no doubt, and most wounded, while we could see
numbers endeavouring to creep towards the hatches, while the black blood,
in horrible streams, gushed and gurgled through her scuppers down her
sides, and across the bright white streak that glanced in the moonlight.

Some one on board of the privateer now hailed, “We have surrendered; cease
firing, sir.” But devil a bit--we continued blazing away--a lantern was run
up to his main gaff, and then lowered again.

“We have struck, sir,” shouted another voice, “don’t murder us don’t fire,
sir, for Godsake.”

But fire we still did; no sailor has the least compunction at even running
down a privateer. Mercy to privateersmen is unknown. “Give them the
stem,” is the word, the curs being regarded by Jack at the best as
highwaymen; so, when he found we still peppered away, and sailing two feet
for our one, the schooner at length, in their desperation, hauled her
wind, and speedily got beyond range of our carronades, having all this
time never fired a shot. Shortly after this we ran--under the Rayo’s stern
she was lying to.

“Mr Crowfoot what have you been after? I have a great mind to report you,
sir.”

“We could not help it, sir,” sung out Crowfoot in a most dolorous tone, in
answer to the captain of the frigate; “we have been nearly taken, sir, by
a privateer, sir--an immense vessel, sir, that sails, like a witch, sir.”

“Keep close in my wake then, sir,” rejoined the captain, in a gruff tone,
and immediately the Rayo bore up.

Next morning we were all carrying as much sail as we could crowd. By this
time we had gotten our jury-fore-topmast up, and the Rayo, having kept
astern in the night, was now under topsails, and top-gallant sails, with
the wet canvass at the head of the sails, showing that the reefs had been
freshly shaken out--rolling wedge like on the swell, and rapidly shooting
a-head, to resume her station. As she passed us, and let fall her
foresail, she made the signal to make more sail, her object being to get
through the Caicos Passage, into which we were now entering, before
nightfall. It was eleven o’clock in the forenoon. A fine clear breezy day,
fresh and pleasant, sometimes cloudy overhead, but always breaking away
again, with a bit of a sneezer, and a small shower. As the sun rose there
were indications of squalls in the north-eastern quarter, and about noon
one of them was whitening to windward. So “hands by the topgallant
clew-lines” was the word, and we were all standing by to shorten sail,
when the Commodore came to the wind as sharp and suddenly as if he had
anchored; but on a second look, I saw his sheets were let fly, haulyards
let go, and apparently all was confusion on board of her. I ran to the
side and looked over. The long hearing dark blue swell had changed into a
light green hissing ripple.

“Zounds, Captain Crowfoot, shoal water--why it breaks--we shall be ashore!”

“Down with the helm-brace round the yards,” shouted Crow foot; “that’s it
steady--luff, my man;” and the danger was so imminent that even the
studding-sail haulyards were not let go and the consequence was, that the
booms snapped off like carrots, as we came to the wind.

“Lord help us, we shall never weather that foaming reef there set the
spanker--haul out--haul down the foretopmast--staysail--so, mind your luff,
my man.”

The frigate now began to fire right and left, and the hissing of the shot
overhead was a fearful augury of what was to take place; so sudden was the
accident, that they had not had time to draw the round shot. The other
transports were equally fortunate with ourselves, in weathering the shoal,
and presently we were all close hauled to windward of the reef, until we
weathered the easternmost prong, when we bore up. But, poor Rayo! she had
struck on a coral reef, where the Admiralty charts laid down fifteen
fathoms water; and although there was some talk at the time of an error in
judgment, in not having the lead going in the chains, still do I believe
there was no fault lying at the door of her gallant captain. By the time
we had weathered the reef, the frigate had swung off from the pinnacle of
rock on which she had been in a manner impaled, and was making all the sail
she could, with a fothered sail under her bows, and chain-pumps clanging,
and whole cataracts of water gushing from them, clear white jets spouting
from all the scuppers, fore and aft. She made the signal to close. The
next, alas! was the British ensign, seized, union down in the main rigging,
the sign of the uttermost distress. Still we all bowled along together,
but her yards were not squared, nor her sails set with her customary
precision, and her lurches became more and more sickening, until at length
she rolled so heavily, that she dipped both yardarms alternately in the
water, and reeled to and fro like a drunken man.

“What is that splash?”

It was the larboard-bow long eighteen-pound gun hove overboard, and
watching the roll, the whole broadside, one after another, was cast into
the sea. The clang of the chain-pumps increased, the water rushed in at
one side of the main-deck, and out at the other, in absolute cascades from
the ports. At this moment the whole fleet of boats were alongside, keeping
way with the ship, in the light breeze. Her main-topsail was hove aback,
while the captain’s voice resounded through the ship.

“Now, men--all hands--bags and hammocks--starboard watch, the starboard
side--larboard watch, the larboard side--no rushing now--she will swim this
hour to come.”

The bags, and hammocks, and officers’ kits, were handed into the boats; the
men were told off over the side, as quietly by watches as if at muster, the
officers last. At length the first lieutenant came down. By this time she
was settling perceptibly in the water; but the old captain still stood on
the gangway, holding by the iron stanchion, where, taking off his hat, he
remained uncovered for a moment, with the tears standing in his eyes. He
then replaced it, descended, and took his place in the ship’s launch--the
last man to leave the ship; and there was little time to spare, for we had
scarcely shoved off a few yards, to clear the spars of the wreck, when she
sended forward, heavily and sickly, on the long swell.--She never rose to
the opposite heave of the sea again, but gradually sank by the head. The
hull disappeared slowly and dignifiedly, the ensign fluttered and vanished
beneath the dark ocean--I could have fancied reluctantly as if it had been
drawn down through a trap-door. The topsails next disappeared, the
fore-topsail sinking fastest; and last of all, the white pennant at the
main-topgallant-mast head, after flickering and struggling in the wind,
flew up in the setting sun as if imbued with--life, like a stream of white
fire, or as if it had been the spirit leaving the body, and was then drawn
down into the abyss, and the last vestige of the Rayo vanished for ever.
The crew, as if moved by one common impulse, gave three cheers.

The captain now stood up in his boat--“Men, the Rayo is no more, but it is
my duty to tell you, that although you are now to be distributed amongst
the transports, you are still amenable to martial law; I am aware, men,
this hint may not be necessary, still it is right you should know it.”

When the old hooker clipped out of sight, there was not a dry eye in the
whole fleet. “There she goes, the dear old beauty,” said one of her crew.
“There goes the blessed old black b----h,” quoth another. “Ah, many a
merry night have we had in the clever little craft,” quoth a third; and
there was really a tolerable shedding of tears and squirting of tobacco
juice. But the blue ripple had scarcely blown over the glasslike
surface of the sea where she had sunk, when the buoyancy of young
hearts, with the prospect of a good furlough amongst the lobster boxes
for a time, seemed to be uppermost amongst the men. The officers, I saw
and knew, felt very differently.

“My eye!” sung out an old quartermaster incur boat, perched well forward
with his back against the ring in the stem, and his arms crossed, after
having been busily employed rummaging in his bag, “my eye, what a pity--oh,
what a pity!”

Come, there is some feeling, genuine, at all events, thought I.

“My,” said Bill Chestree, the captain of the foretop, “what is can’t be
helped, old Fizgig; old Rayo has gone down, and”--“Old Rayo be d----d,
Master Bill,” said the man; “but may I be flogged, if I han’t forgotten
half a pound of negro head baccy in Dick Catgut’s bag.”

“Launch ahoy!” hailed a half drunken voice from one of the boats astern of
us. “Hillo,” responded the coxswain. The poor skipper even pricked up his
ears. “Have you got Dick Catgut’s fiddle among ye?” This said Dick Catgut
was the corporal of marines, and the prime instigator of all the fun
amongst the men. “No, no,” said several voices, “no fiddle here.” The hail
passed round among the other boats, “No fiddle.” “I would rather lose three
days grog than have his fiddle mislaid,” quoth the man who pulled the bow
oar.

“Why don’t you ask Dick himself?” said our coxswain.

“Aye--true enough--Dick, Dick Catgut!” but no one answered. Alas! poor
Dick was nowhere to be found; he had been mislaid as well as his fiddle.
He had broken into the spirit room, as it turned out, and having got drunk,
did not come to time when the frigate sunk.

Our ship, immediately after the frigate’s crew had been bestowed, and the
boats got in, hoisted the Commodore’s light, and the following morning we
fell in with the Torch, off the east end of Jamaica, which, after seeing
the transports safe into Kingston, and taking out me and my people, bore up
through the Gulf, and resumed her cruising ground on the edge of the Gulf
stream, between 25 degrees and 30 degrees north latitude.



CHAPTER III.--The Quenching of the Torch.


     “Then rose from sea to sky, the wild farewell.”
      BYRON, DON JUAN, II. 409


The evening was closing in dark and rainy, with every appearance of a gale
from the westward, and the weather had become so thick and boisterous, that
the lieutenant of the watch had ordered the look-out at the mast-head
down on deck. The man, on his way down, had gone into the maintop to bring
away some things he had placed there in going aloft, and was in the act of
leaving it, when he sung out,--“A sail on the weather-bow.”

“What does she look like?”

“Can’t rightly say, sir; she is in the middle of the thick weather to
windward.”

“Stay where you are a little.--Jenkins, jump forward, and see what you can
make of her from the foreyard.”

Whilst the topman was obeying his instructions, the look-out again hailed
“She is a ship, sir, close-hauled on the same tack----the weather clears,
and I can see her now.”

The wind, ever since noon, had been blowing in heavy squalls, with
appalling lulls between them. One of these gusts had been so violent as to
bury in the sea the lee-guns in the waist, although the brig had nothing
set but her close-reefed main-topsail, and reefed foresail. It was now
spending, its fury, and she was beginning to roll heavily, when, with a
suddenness almost incredible to one unacquainted with these latitudes, the
veil of mist that had hung to windward the whole day was rent and drawn
aside, and the red and level rays of the setting sun flashed at once,
through a long arch of glowing clouds, on the black hull and tall spars of
his Britannic Majesty’s sloop, Torch. And, true enough, we were not the
only spectators of this gloomy splendour; for, right in the wake of the
moon-like sun, now half sunk in the sea, at the distance of a mile or more,
lay a long warlike-looking craft, apparently a frigate or heavy corvette,
rolling heavily and silently in the trough of the sea, with her masts,
yards, and the scanty sail she had set, in strong relief against the
glorious horizon.

Jenkins now hailed from the foreyard--“The strange sail is bearing up, sir.”

As he spoke, a flash was seen, followed, after what seemed a long interval,
by the deadened report of the gun, as if it had been an echo, and the
sharp, half-ringing half-hissing sound of the shot. It fell short, but
close to us, and was evidently thrown from a heavy cannon, from the length
of the range.

Mr Splinter, the first lieutenant, jumped from the gun he stood on.

“Quartermaster, keep her away a bit”--and dived into the cabin to make his
report.

Captain Deadeye was a staid, stiff-rumped, wall-eyed, old first
lieutenantish-looking veteran, with his coat of a regular Rodney cut,
broad skirts, long waist, and standup collar, over which dangled either a
queue, or a marlinspike with a tuft of oakum at the end of it,--it would
have puzzled Old Nick to say which. His lower spars were cased in tight
unmentionables of what had once been white kerseymere, and long boots, the
coal-skuttle tops of which served as scuppers to carry off the drainings
from his coat-flaps in bad weather; he was, in fact, the “last of the
sea-monsters,” but, like all his tribe, as brave as steel, and, when put
to it, as alert as a cat.

He no sooner heard Splinter’s report, than he sprung up the ladder,
brushing the tumbler of swizzle he had just brewed clean out of the fiddle
into the lap of Mr Saveall, the purser, who had dined with him, and nearly
extinguishing the said purser, by his arm striking the bowl of the pipe he
was smoking, thereby forcing the shank half-way down his throat.

“My glass, Wilson,” to his steward.

“She is close to, sir; you can see her plainly without it,” said Mr
Treenail, the second lieutenant, from the weather nettings, where he was
reconnoitring.

After a long look through his starboard blinker, (this other skylight had
been shut up ever since Aboukir,) Deadeye gave orders to “clear away the
weather-bow gun;” and as it was now getting too dark for flags to be seen
distinctly, he desired that three lanterns might be got ready for hoisting
vertically in the main-rigging.

“All ready forward there?”

“All ready, sir.”

“Then hoist away the lights, and throw a shot across her forefoot I fire!”
 Bang went our carronade, but our friend to windward paid no regard to the
private signal; he had shaken a reef out of his topsails, and wars coming
down fast upon us.

It war clear that old Blowhard had at first taken him for one of our own
cruisers, and meant to signalize him, “all regular and shipshape,” to use
his own expression. Most of us, however, thought it would have been wiser
to have made sail, and widened our distance, a little, in place of
bothering with old fashioned manoeuvres, which might end in our catching a
tartar; but the skipper had been all his life in line-of-battle ships, or
heavy frigates; and it was a tough job, under, any circumstances, to
persuade him of the propriety of “up-stick-and-away,” as we soon felt to
our cost.

The enemy, for such he evidently was, now all at once yawed, and indulged
us with a sight of his teeth; and there he was, fifteen ports of a side on
his maindeck, with the due quantum of carronades on his quarterdeck and
forecastle; whilst his short lower masts, white canvass, and the tremendous
hoist in his topsails, showed him to be a heavy American frigate; and it
was equally certain that he had cleverly hooked us under his lee, within
comfortable range of his long twenty-fours. To convince the most
unbelieving, three jets of flame, amidst wreaths of white smoke, now
glanced from his main-deck; but in this instance, the sound of the cannon
was followed by a sharp crackle and a shower of splinters from the
foreyard.

It was clear we had got an ugly customer--poor Jenkins now called to
Treenail, who was standing forward near the gun which had been fired “Och,
sir, and it’s badly wounded we are here.”

The officer was a Patlander, as well as the seaman. “Which of you my boy?”
 the growing seriousness of the affair in no way checking his propensity to
fun,--“Which of you,--you, or the yard?”

“Both of us, your honour; but the yard badliest.”

“The devil!--Come down, then, or get into the top, and I will you looked
after presently.”

The poor fellow crawled off the yard into the foretop, as he was ordered,
where he was found after the brush, badly wounded by a splinter in the
breast.

Jonathan, no doubt “calculated,” as well he might, that this taste of his
quality would be quite sufficient for a little eighteen-gun sloop, close
under his lee; but the fight was not to be so easily taken out of Deadeye,
although even to his optic it was now high time to be off.

“All hands make sail, Mr Splinter; that chap is too heavy for us. Mr
Kelson,” to the carpenter, “jump up and see what the foreyard will carry.
Keep her away, my man,” to the seaman at the helm. “Crack on, Mr Splinter,
shake all the reefs out,----set the fore-topsail, and loose
topgallant-sails;--stand by to sheet home; and see all clear to rig the
booms out, if the breeze lulls.”

In less than a minute we were bowling along before it; but the wind was
breezing up again, and no one could say how long the wounded foreyard would
carry the weight and drag of the sails. To mend the matter, Jonathan was
coming up hand over hand with the freshening breeze, under a press of
canvass; it was clear that escape was next to impossible.

“Clear away the larboard guns!” I absolutely jumped off the deck with
astonishment--who could have spoken it? It appeared such downright
madness to show fight under the very muzzles of the guns of an enemy, half
of whose broadside was sufficient to sink us. It was the captain,
however, and there was nothing for it but to obey.

In an instant, the creaking and screaming of the carronade slides, the
rattling of the carriage of the long twelve-pounder amidships, the
thumping and punching of handspikes, and the dancing and jumping of jack
himself, were heard through the whistling of the breeze, as the guns were
being shotted and run out. In a few seconds all was still again, but the
rushing sound of the vessel going through the water, and of the rising
gale amongst the rigging.

The men stood clustered at their quarters, their cutlasses buckled round
their waists, all without jackets and waistcoats, and many with nothing
but their trowsers on.

“Now, men, mind your aim; our only chance is to wing him. I will yaw the
ship, and as your guns come to bear, slap it right into his bows.
Starboard your helm, my man, and bring her to the wind.” As she came round,
blaze went our carronades and long-gun in succession, with goodwill and
good aim, and down came his foretop-sail on the cap, with all the
superincumbent spars and gear; the head of the topmast had been shot away.
The men instinctively cheered. “That will do; now knock off, my boys, and
let us run for it. Keep her away again; make all sail.”

Jonathan was for an instant paralysed by our impudence; but just as we were
getting before the wind, he yawed, and let drive his whole broadside; and
fearfully did it transmogrify us. Half an hour before we were as gay a
little sloop as ever floated, with a crew of 120 as fine fellows as ever
manned a British man-of-war. The iron-shower sped--ten of the hundred
and twenty never saw the sun rise again; seventeen more were wounded, three
mortally; we had eight shot between wind and water, our maintop-mast shot
away as clean as a carrot, and our hull and rigging otherwise regularly cut
to pieces. Another broadside succeeded; but by this time we had bore up
thanks to the loss of our after sail, we could do nothing else; and what
was better luck still, whilst the loss of our maintop-mast paid the brig
off on the one hand, the loss of head-sail in the frigate brought her as
quickly to the wind on the other; thus most of her shot fell astern of us;
and, before she could bear up again in chase, the squall struck her, and
carried her maintop-mast overboard.

This gave us a start, crippled and bedevilled though we were; and as the
night fell, we contrived to lose sight of our large friend. With
breathless anxiety did we carry on through that night, expecting every
lurch to send our remaining topmast by the board; but the weather
moderated, and next morning the sun shone on our bloodstained decks, at
anchor off the entrance to St George’s harbour.

I was the mate of the watch, and, as day dawned, I had amused myself with
other younkers over the side, examining the shot holes and other injuries
sustained from the fire of the frigate, and contrasting the clean, sharp,
well-defined apertures, made by the 24-pound shot from the long guns,
with the bruised and splintered ones from the 32-pound carronades; but the
men had begun to wash down the decks, and the first gush of clotted blood
an water from the scuppers fairly turned me sick. I turned away, when Mr
Kennedy, our gunner, a good steady old Scotchman, with whom I was a bit of
a favourite, came up to me--“Mr Cringle, the Captain has sent for you; poor
Mr Johnstone is fast going, he wants to see you.”

I knew my young messmate had been wounded, for I had seen him carried below
after the frigate’s second broadside; but the excitement of a boy, who had
seldom smelled powder fired in anger before, had kept me on deck the whole
night, and it never once occurred to me to ask for him, until the old
gunner spoke.

I hastened down to our small confined berth, where I saw a sight that
quickly brought me to myself. Poor Johnstone was indeed going; a grapeshot
had struck him, and torn his belly open. There he lay in his bloody
hammock on the deck, pale and motionless as if he had already departed,
except a slight twitching at the corners of his mouth, and a convulsive
contraction and distension of his nostrils.

His brown ringlets still clustered over his marble forehead, but they were
drenched in the cold sweat of death. The surgeon could do nothing for him,
and had left him; but our old captain--bless him for it--I little expected,
from his usual crusty bearing, to find him so employed--had knelt by his
side, and, whilst he read from the Prayer-book one of those beautiful
petitions in our Church service to Almighty God, for mercy to the passing
soul of one so young, and so early cut off, the tears trickled down the old
man’s cheeks, and filled the furrows worn in them by the washing up of many
a salt spray. On the other side of his narrow bed, fomenting the rigid
muscles of his neck and chest, sate Mistress Connolly, one of three women
on board--a rough enough creature, Heaven knows! in common weather; but her
stifled sobs showed that the mournful sight had stirred up all the woman
within her. She had opened the bosom of the poor boy’s shirt, and untying
the riband that fastened a small gold crucifix round his neck, she placed
it in his cold hand. The young midshipman was of a respectable family in
Limerick, her native place, and a Catholic--another strand of the cord that
bound her to him. When the Captain finished reading, he bent over the
departing youth and kissed his cheek. “Your young messmate just now
desired to see you, Mr Cringle, but it is too late, he is insensible and
dying.” Whilst he spoke, a strong shiver passed through the boy’s frame,
his face became slightly convulsed, and all was over!

The Captain rose, and Connolly, with a delicacy of feeling which many might
not have looked for in her situation, spread one of our clean mess
tablecloths over the body. “And is it really gone you are, my poor dear
boy!” forgetting all difference of rank in the fulness of her heart. “Who
will tell this to your mother, and nobody here to wake you but ould Kate
Connolly, and no time will they be giving me, nor whisky--Ochon! ochon!”

But enough and to spare of this piping work. The boatswain’s whistle now
called me to the gangway, to superintend the handling up, from a shore boat
alongside, a supply of the grand staples of the island--ducks and onions.
The three Mudians in her were characteristic samples of the inhabitants.
Their faces and sins, where exposed, were not tanned, but absolutely burnt
into a fiery-red colour by the sun. They guessed and drawled like any
buckskin from Virginia, superadding to their accomplishments their insular
peculiarity of always shutting one eye when they spoke to you. They are
all Yankees at bottom; and if they could get their 365 Islands--so they
call the large stones on which they live--under weigh, they would not be
long in towing them into the Chesapeake.

The word had been passed to get six of the larboard-guns and all the shot
over to the other side, to give the brig a list of a streak or two
a-starboard, so that the stage on which the carpenter and his crew were
at work over the side, stopping the shot holes about the water line, might
swing clear of the wash of the sea. I had jumped from the nettings, where
I was perched, to assist in unbolting one of the carronade slides, when I
slipped and capsized against a peg sticking out of one of the scuppers. I
took it for something else, and d----d the ring-bolt incontinently. Caboose,
the cook, was passing with his mate, a Jamaica negro of the name of John
Crow, at the time. “Don’t d----n the remains of your fellow-mortals, Master
Cringle; that is my leg.” The cook of a man-of-war is no small beer; he
is his Majesty’s warrant-officer, a much bigger wig than a poor little
mid, with whom it is condescension on his part to jest.

It seems to be a sort of rule, that no old sailor who has not lost a limb,
or an eye at least, shall be eligible to the office; but as the kind of
maiming is so far circumscribed that all cooks must have two arms, a
laughable proportion of them have but one leg. Besides the honour, the
perquisites are good; accordingly, all old quartermasters, captains of
tops, etc. look forward to the cookdom, as the cardinals look to the
popedom; and really there is some analogy between them, for neither are
preferred from any especial fitness for the office. A cardinal is made
pope because he is old, infirm, and imbecile,--our friend Caboose was made
cook because he had been Lord Nelson’s coxswain, was a drunken rascal, and
had a wooden leg; for, as to his gastronomical qualifications, he knew no
more of the science than just sufficient to watch the copper where the
salt junk and potatoes were boiling. Having been a little in the wind
overnight, he had quartered himself, in the superabundance of his heroism,
at a gun where he had no business to be, and in running it out, he had
jammed his toe in a scupper hole, so fast that there was no extricating
him; and notwithstanding his piteous entreaty “to be eased out handsomely,
as the leg was made out of a plank of the Victory, and the ring at the end
out of one of her bolts,” the captain of the gun finding, after a stout
pull, that the man was like to come home in his hand without the leg, was
forced “to break him short off,” as he phrased it, to get him out of the
way, and let the carriage traverse. In the morning when he sobered, he had
quite forgotten where the leg was, and how he broke it; he therefore got
Kelson to splice the stump with the but-end of a mop; but in the hurry it
had been left three inches too long, so he had to jerk himself up to the
top of his peg at every step. The Doctor, glad to breathe the fresh air
after the horrible work he had gone through, was leaning over the side
speaking to Kelson. When I fell, he turned round and drew Cookee’s fire
on himself. “Doctor, you have not prescribed for me yet.”

“No, Caboose, I have not; what is wrong?”

“Wrong, sir? why, I have lost my leg, and the Captain’s clerk says I am not
in the Return!--Look here, sir, had Doctor Kelson not coopered me, where
should I have been?--Why, Doctor, had I been looked after, amputation might
have been unnecessary; a fish might have done, whereas I have had to be
spliced.”

He was here cut short by the voice of his mate, who had gone forward to
slay a pig for the gunroom mess. “Oh, Lad, oh!--Massa Caboose!--Dem dam
Yankee!--De Purser killed, massa!--Dem shoot him troo de head!--Oh, Lad!”

Captain Deadeye had come on deck. “You John Crow, what is wrong with you?”

“Why, de Purser killed, Captain, dat all.”

“Purser killed?--Doctor, is Saveall hurt?”

Treenail could stand it no longer. “No, sir, no; it is one of the gunroom
pigs that we shipped at Halifax three cruises ago; I am sure I don’t know
how he survived one, but the seamen took a fancy to him, and nicknamed him
the Purser. You know, sir, they make pets of any thing, and every thing,
at a pinch!”

Here John Crow drew the carcass from the hog-pen, and sure enough a shot
had cut the poor Purser’s head nearly off. Blackee looked at him with a
most whimsical expression; they saynno one can fathom a negro’s affection
for a pig. “Poor Purser! de people call him Purser, sir, because him
knowing chap; him cabbage all de grub, slush, and stuff in him own corner,
and give only de small bit, and de bad piece, to de older pig; so Captain.”

Splinter saw the poor fellow was like to get into a scrape. “That will do,
John Crow--forward with you now, and lend a hand to cat the anchor.--All
hands up anchor!” The boatswain’s hoarse voice repeated the command, and he
n turn was re-echoed by his mates. The capstan was manned, and the crew
stamped, round to a point of wart most villainously performed by a bad
drummer and a worse fifer, in as high glee as if those who were killed had
been snug and well in their hammocks on the berth-deck--, in place of at
the bottom of the sea, with each a shot at his feet. We weighed, and began
to work up, tack and tack, towards the island of Ireland, where the arsenal
is, amongst a perfect labyrinth of shoals, through which the Mudian pilot
conned the ship with great skill, taking his stand, to our no small
wonderment, not at the gangway or poop, as usual, but on the bowsprit end,
so that he might see the rocks under foot, and shun them accordingly, for
they are so steep and numerous, (they look like large fish in the clear
water,) and the channel is so intricate, that you have to go quite close
to them. At noon we arrived at the anchorage, and hauled our moorings on
board.

We had refitted, and been four days at sea, on our voyage to Jamaica, when
the gunroom officers gave our mess a blow-out.

The increased motion and rushing of the vessel through the water, the
groaning of the masts, the howling of the rising gale, and the frequent
trampling of the watch on deck, were prophetic of wet jackets to some of
us; still, midshipman-like, we were as happy as a good dinner and some
wine could make us, until the old gunner shoved his weather beaten phiz
and bald pate in at the door. “Beg pardon, Mr Splinter, but if you will
spare Mr Cringle on the forecastle for an hour until the moon rises.”

(“Spare, quotha, is his Majesty’s officer a joint stool?”)

“Why, Mr Kennedy, why? here, man, take a glass of grog.”

“I thank you, sir. It is coming on a roughish night, sir; the running
ships should be crossing us hereabouts; indeed more than once I thought
there was a strange sail close aboard of us, the scud is flying so low, and
in such white flakes; and none of us have an eye like Mr Cringle, unless it
be John Crow, and he is all but frozen.”

“Well, Tom, I suppose you will go”--Angelice, from a first lieutenant to a
mid--“Brush instanter.”

Having changed my uniform, for shag-trowsers, pea-jacket, and south-west
cap, I went forward, and took my station, in no pleasant humour, on the
stowed foretopmast-staysail, with my arm round the stay. I had been half
an hour there, the weather was getting worse, the rain was beating in my
face, and the spray from the stem was flashing over me, as it roared
through the waste of sparkling and hissing waters. I turned my back to the
weather for a moment, to press my hand on my strained eyes. When I opened
them again, I saw the gunner’s  gaunt high-featured visage thrust
anxiously forward; his profile looked as if rubbed over with phosphorus,
and his whole person as if we had been playing at snap-dragon. “What has
come over you, Mr Kennedy?--who is burning the bluelight now?”

“A wiser man than I am must tell you that; look forward, Mr Cringle--look
there; what do your books say to that?”

I looked forth, and saw, at the extreme end of the jib-boom, what I had
read of, certainly, but never expected to see, a pale, greenish, glowworm
coloured flame, of the size and shape of the frosted glass shade over the
swinging lamp in the gunroom. It drew out and flattened as the vessel
pitched and rose again, and as she sheered about, it wavered round the
point that seemed to attract it, like a soapsud bubble blown from a tobacco
pipe before it is shaken into the air; at the core it was comparatively
bright, but gradually faded into a halo. It shed a baleful and ominous
light on the surrounding objects; the cup of sailors on the forecastle
looked like spectres, and they shrunk together, and whispered when it began
to roll slowly along the spar towards where the boatswain was sitting at my
feet. At this instant something slid down the stay, and a cold clammy hand
passed round my neck. I was within an ace of losing my hold, and tumbling
overboard. “Heaven have mercy on me, what’s that?”

“It’s that skylarking son of a gun, Jem Sparkle’s monkey, sir. You, Jem,
you’ll never rest till that brute is made shark bait of.”

But Jackoo vanished up the stay again, chuckling and grinning in the
ghostly radiance, as if he had been the “Spirit of the Lamp.” The light
was still there, but a cloud of mist, like a burst of vapour from a steam
boiler, came down upon the gale, and flew past, when it disappeared. I
followed the white mass as it sailed down the wind; it did not, as it
appeared to me, vanish in the darkness, but seemed to remain in sight to
leeward, as if checked by a sudden flaw; yet none of our sails were taken
aback. A thought flashed on me. I peered still more intensely into the
night. I was now certain. “A sail, broad on the lee bow.”

The ship was in a buz in a moment. The Captain answered from the
quarterdeck--“Thank you, Mr Cringle. How shall we steer?”

“Keep her away a couple of points, sir, steady.”

“Steady,” sung the man at the helm; and the slow melancholy cadence,
although a familiar sound to me, now moaned through the rushing of the
wind, and smote upon my heart as if it had been the wailing of a spirit.

I turned to the boatswain, who was now standing beside me--“Is that you or
Davy Jones steering, Mr Nipper? if you had not been here bodily at my
elbow, I could have sworn that was your voice.”

When the gunner made the same remark it startled the poor fellow he tried
to take it as a joke, but could not. “There may be a laced hammock with a
shot in it, for some of us ere morning.”

At this moment, to my dismay, the object we were chasing shortened,
gradually fell abeam of us, and finally disappeared. “The Flying
Dutchman.”

“I can’t see her at all now.”

“She will be a fore-and-aft-rigged vessel that has tacked, sir,” said
the gunner. And sure enough, after a few seconds, I saw the white object
lengthen, and draw out again abaft our beam.

“The chase has tacked sir,” I sung out; “put the helm down, or she will,
go to windward of us.”

We tacked also, and time it was we did so, for the rising moon now showed
us a large schooner under a crowd of sail. We edged down on her, when
finding her manoeuvre detected, she brailed up her flat sails, and bore up
before the wind. This was our best point of sailing, and we cracked on,
the captain rubbing his hands--“It’s my turn to be the big un this time.”
 Although blowing a strong north-easter, it was now clear moonlight and we
hammered away from bow guns, but whenever a shot told amongst the rigging,
the injury was repaired as if by magic. It was evident we had repeatedly
hulled her, from the glimmering white streaks along her counter and, across
her stern, occasioned by the splintering of the timber, but it seemed to
produce no effect.

At length we drew well up on her quarter. She continued all black hull and
white sail, not a soul to be seen on deck, except a dark object, which we
took for the man at the helm. “What schooner’s that?” No answer.
“Heave-to, or I’ll sink you.” Still all silent. “Sergeant Armstrong, do
you think you could pick off that chap at the wheel?” The marine jumped on
the forecastle, and levelled his piece, when a musket-shot from the
schooner crashed through his skull, and he fell dead. The old skipper’s
blood was up. “Forecastle, there!  Mr Nipper, clap a canister of grape
over the round shot into the boat-gun, and give it to him.”

“Ay, ay, sir!” gleefully rejoined the boatswain, forgetting the augury and
every thing else in the excitement of the moment. In a twinkling, the
square foresail-topsail-topgallant-royal--and studdingsail haulyards
were let go by the run on board of the schooner, as if they had been shot
away, and he put his helm hard aport as, if to round to.

“Rake him, sir, or give him the stem. He has not surrendered. I know
their game. Give him your broadside, sir, or he is off to windward of you
like a shot.--No, no! we have him now; heave to, Mr  Splinter, heave-to!”
 We did so, and that so suddenly, that the studdingsail booms snapped like
pipe-shanks, short off by the irons. Notwithstanding, we had shot two
hundred yards to leeward before we could lay our maintopsail to the mast. I
ran to windward. The schooner’s yards and rigging were now black with men,
clustered like bees swanning, her square-sails were being close furled,
her fore and--aft sails set, and away she was, close-hauled and dead to
windward of us.

“So much for undervaluing our American friends,” grumbled Mr Splinter.

We made all sail in chase, blazing away to little purpose; we had no chance
on a bowline, and when our amigo had satisfied himself of his superiority
by one or two short tacks, he deliberately hauled down his flying jib and
gaff-topsail, took a reef in his mainsail, triced up the bunt of his
foresail, and fired his long thirty-two at us. The shot came in at the
third aftermost port on the starboard side, and dismounted the carronade,
smashing the slide, and wounding three men. The second shot missed, and as
it was madness to remain to be peppered, probably winged, whilst every one
of ours fell short, we reluctantly kept away on our course, having the
gratification of hearing a clear well-blown bugle on board the schooner
play up “Yankee Doodle.”

As the brig fell off, our long-gun was run out to have a parting crack at
her, when the third and last shot from the schooner struck the sill of the
midship-port, and made the white splinters fly from the solid oak like
bright silver sparks in the moonlight. A sharp piercing cry rose into the
air--my soul identified that death-shriek with the voice that I had heard,
and I saw the man who was standing with the lanyard of the lock in his hand
drop heavily across the breech, and discharge the gun in his fall.
Thereupon a blood-red glare shot up into the cold blue sky, as if a
volcano had burst forth from beneath the mighty deep, followed by a roar,
and a shattering crash, and a mingling of unearthly cries and groans, and a
concussion of the air, and of the water, as if our whole broadside had been
fired at once. Then a solitary splash here, and a dip there, and short
sharp yells, and low choking bubbling moans, as the hissing fragments of
the noble vessel we had seen fell into the sea, and the last of her gallant
crew vanished for ever beneath that pale broad moon. We were alone, and
once more, all was dark, and wild, and stormy. Fearfully had that ball
sped, fired by a dead man’s hand. But what is it that clings black and
doubled across that fatal cannon, dripping and heavy, and choking the
scuppers with clotting gore, and swaying to and fro with the motion of the
vessel, like a bloody fleece?

“Who is it that was hit at the gun there?”

“Mr Nipper, the boatswain, sir. The last shot has cut him in two.”

After this most melancholy incident we continued on our voyage to Jamaica,
nothing particular occurring until we anchored at Port Royal, where we had
a regular overhaul of the old Bark, and after this was completed, we were
ordered down to the leeward part of the island to afford protection to the
coas

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