Kitabı oku: «А Pirate of the Caribbees», sayfa 9
Chapter Nine.
We encounter and fight the Guerrilla.
On the morning but one succeeding the capture of the Dolores,—the schooner and her prize then being some two hundred and forty miles to the westward of Dominica,—a sail was discovered at daybreak some twelve miles to the southward and westward of us, beating up against the trade wind, close-hauled upon the starboard tack; and a few minutes later she was made out to be a brigantine. We paid but scant attention to her at first, craft of her rig being frequently met with in the Caribbean, trading to and fro between the islands; but when the stranger, almost immediately after her rig had been identified, tacked to the northward, as though with the intention of getting a closer look at us, I at once scented an enemy, and, possessing myself of the telescope, forthwith made my way into the fore crosstrees for the purpose of subjecting her to a rigorous examination, wondering, meanwhile, whether by any adverse chance the stranger might eventually turn out to be the notorious pirate Morillo in his equally notorious brigantine the Guerrilla. I had no sooner got the craft fairly within the field of the instrument than I discovered my conjecture to be correct, a score of trifling details of rig and equipment becoming instantly recognisable as identical with similar peculiarities already noticed by me when I before saw the pirate vessel.
Such is the perversity of blind fortune! Under ordinary circumstances nothing would have pleased me better than to meet this audacious outlaw and his cut-throat crew in a clear sea, and to try conclusions with them. But now I was hampered with the possession of a valuable prize which I was most anxious to take safely into port, while my little force was seriously weakened by the withdrawal of the prize crew which I had been obliged to put on board the Dolores. It was therefore not wholly without apprehension that, under these untoward circumstances, I witnessed the approach of the formidable brigantine. I would have preferred to have met her, if possible, upon somewhat more equal terms; but there she was, doubtless bent upon the capture of the Dolores, and there was nothing for it but to prepare for her as warm a reception as it was in our power to give. I therefore descended to the deck and gave orders to call all hands and clear for action, at the same time signalling to Christie that the stranger in sight was a pirate, and that he was to keep out of harm’s way during the impending action, keeping on upon his course, and leaving us in the schooner to deal with the intruder.
Our preparations were soon complete, but none too soon; for, approaching each other as we were at a good pace, the space between the brigantine and ourselves narrowed very rapidly. Nevertheless there was time, when all was done, to say a few words to the men; so, as I anticipated that the struggle upon which we were about to engage would be a tough one, I called them aft and said—
“My lads, you have all heard of the atrocious pirate Morillo who haunts these waters; you have heard something of his doings from those poor fellows belonging to the Wyvern who were picked up by us when we were searching for the Althea’s boats, and you saw for yourselves a specimen of his handiwork in the blazing hull of the Kingston Trader, the unfortunate crew of which ship only too probably perished with her. The scoundrel and his gang of cold-blooded murderers are aboard that brigantine; and after what you have heard and seen, I need not tell you what is likely to be the fate of any of us, or of those aboard the Dolores, should we be so unfortunate as to fall into their hands. They are undoubtedly about to attempt the capture of the Spaniard. Now, it is for you to say whether they shall do so, or whether you will send them all to the bottom of the sea instead. Which is it to be, men?”
“Put us alongside of her, Mr Courtenay, sir, and we’ll soon show you—and them too—which it’s to be,” answered one of the men, the rest instantly corroborating the remark by such exclamations as, “Ay, ay; we’ll give ’em their gruel, never fear.”
“Well spoke, Tommy; true for you, my son,” and so on.
“Very well,” said I, “that is the answer I expected. Now go to your guns, men; and see that you make every shot tell.”
While clearing for action we had also made sail and shot ahead of the Dolores; and within five minutes of the moment when the crew went back to their guns, we were within half a mile of the brigantine, which craft was then crossing our bows, tearing through the long, low swell like a racing yacht, with a storm of diamond spray flashing up over her weather bow at every graceful plunge of her into the trough. She was a beautiful vessel, long and low, with enormously taunt, raking masts and a phenomenal spread of canvas—a craft well worth fighting for; and I thought what a proud day it would be for me if perchance I should be fortunate enough to capture and take her triumphantly into Port Royal harbour. She was now well within range, so I sang out to Lindsay, who was looking after matters on the forecastle, to know whether the nine-pounder pivot gun was ready.
“All ready, sir, and bearing dead on the brigantine,” was the answer.
“Then heave a shot across the rascal’s fore-foot at once,” shouted I; “and you, my man, hoist away the ensign at the flash of the gun,” I continued to the fellow who was standing by the peak signal halliards.
As the words left my lips there was a ringing report and a smart concussion; and, springing upon the weather rail, I was just in time to see the shot neatly strike the water immediately under the brigantine’s figure-head, the spray from it leaping up and leaving a dark stain upon the foot of her foretopmast staysail.
“Well aimed!” exclaimed I exultantly; “if you will all do as well as that throughout the fight, lads, you will soon give a good account of her.”
While I was still speaking there came an answering flash from the brigantine, which at the same moment boldly ran up a black flag at her gaff-end; and ere the report had time to reach us, a nine-pound shot crashed fair into our bows, raking us fore and aft, and carrying off the top of our unfortunate helmsman’s head as it flew out over our taffrail. The poor fellow sank to the deck all in a heap, without a groan, without a quiver of the body, and I sprang to the wheel just in time to save the schooner from broaching-to.
“Anyone hurt there, for’ard?” I shouted; for I saw two or three men stooping as though to help someone.
“Yes, sir,” answered one of the men; “poor Tom Parsons have had his chest tore open, and I doubt it’s all over with him!”
“You must avenge him, then,” I shouted back. “Load again, and give it her between wind and water if you can.”
They were already reloading the gun, even as I spoke, and a minute later the piece again rang out, the shot striking the brigantine’s covering-board fair and square, close to her midship port, and making the splinters fly in fine style. We were now so close to her that we could see that her decks seemed to be full of men, and I thought I heard a shriek as our shot struck. Her reply was almost instantaneous, her whole starboard broadside being let fly as she shot into the wind in stays; and once more the shot—five nine-pounders—came crashing in through our bulwarks, filling the air with a perfect storm of splinters, but happily hurting no one but myself. A large jagged splinter struck me in the left shoulder, lacerating the flesh rather badly; but one of the men sprang to my assistance and quickly bound it up.
“Up helm, my man, and let her go off until our starboard broadside bears,” said I to the man who now relieved me at the wheel, adding in a shout to the crew—
“Stand by your starboard guns, and fire as they come to bear upon her!”
Bang! bang! bang! Our modest broadside of three six-pounders spoke out almost simultaneously. I did not see the shot strike anywhere, but almost immediately afterwards down came her maintopmast and the peak of her mainsail. Her main-masthead had been shot away, and the Dolores at least was safe; for the pirates, having lost their after-sail, would now be compelled to make a running fight of it before the wind, which would enable Christie to haul his wind and get out of danger. Our men raised a cheer at their lucky shot, and I, determined not to throw away the least advantage, gave orders to port the helm and bring the schooner to the wind on the starboard tack, so getting the weather-gage of the brigantine. As we rounded-to our antagonist fell off, the two craft thus presenting their larboard broadsides to each other; and, both being ready, we fired at precisely the same moment, the report of the two discharges being so absolutely coincident that I did not know the brigantine had fired until her shot came smashing in through our bulwarks, wounding five men and rendering one of our six-pounders useless by dismounting it. So close were we to each other by this time that before we could load again the brigantine had passed astern of us, and none of our guns would bear upon her or hers upon us. Her crew were doing their utmost to keep her close to the wind, but with the peak of her mainsail down she would not lay any higher than within about eight points; and I determined to take the utmost advantage of her comparatively helpless position while I might, for a lucky shot on her part might make her case ours at any moment. I therefore signed to the helmsman to put down his helm, and at the same moment gave the order—
“Ready about! helm’s a-lee!”
The nimble little schooner spun round upon her heel as smartly as a dancing girl, presenting her starboard broadside to the brigantine.
“Stand by your starboard broadside, and fire as your guns bear!” shouted I; and as we swept round almost square athwart our antagonist’s stern the six-pounders once more spoke out, one shot striking the stern of her fair amidships and smashing her wheel to pieces, while the other two took her in the larboard quarter at an angle that must have caused them to traverse very nearly three-quarters of the length of her deck before they passed out through her starboard bulwarks.
The brigantine, no longer under the control of her helm, fell off until she was running dead before the wind, when the pirates trimmed their yards square; and a moment later I saw a number of her hands in the fore rigging swarming aloft. The moment that her starboard broadside could be brought to bear upon us she fired; and the next moment our bowsprit and foretopmast both went, the former, with the flying-jib, towing under the bows, while the latter dangled to leeward by its rigging, with the royal towing in the water alongside. Our lads, having by this time reloaded the starboard guns, again fired, hulling the pirate, and then, by my orders, left their guns to clear away the wreck; for, encumbered as we now were, with the jib under the bows and the square canvas hanging over the side, the schooner was gradually coming-to, although her helm was hard a-weather.
This ended the fight, for when I next found time to look at the brigantine she had studding-sail booms rigged out on both sides and her people were busy getting the studding-sails upon her, while the straight wake that she was making showed that they had already contrived to rig up some temporary contrivance for steering her. Seeing this, I at once hove the schooner to, and went to work to repair damages; for, now that I had had the opportunity to discover the stuff of which Señor Morillo was made, it struck me as by no means improbable that the moment he had repaired his damages he would return and attack us afresh.
Altogether the fight had not lasted longer than some eight or ten minutes at the utmost, but during that short time we had lost two men, killed outright, while six—including myself—were wounded, four of them severely. Christie, recognising that his duty was to take care of the prize, had hauled his wind when we passed ahead of him, and was now about a mile to windward, with his maintopsail to the mast; but when he saw that the fight was over he filled away and came booming down to us, sweeping close athwart our stern and heaving-to close to leeward of us. As he bore down upon us I saw him in the mizzen rigging, speaking-trumpet in hand; and when he was within hailing distance he hailed to ask if he could be of any assistance, adding that one of the passengers professed to be a doctor and had chivalrously offered his services, should they be required. This was good news to me indeed, for, being a small craft, we carried no surgeon, and but for this proffered help our poor wounded lads would have been obliged to trust pretty much to chance and such unskilled help as we could have afforded them among ourselves. I hailed back, expressing my thanks for the offer, and at once sent away a boat for the medico, not caring that Christie should run the risk of sending away a boat’s crew out of his own scanty company.
In about ten minutes the boat returned, bringing in her a little, swarthy, burnt-up specimen of a Spaniard, and a most portentous-looking case of surgical instruments. But, although by no means handsome, Señor Pacheco soon proved himself to be both warm-hearted and skilful, ministering to the wounded with the utmost tenderness and with a touch as light and gentle as a woman’s. When he had attended to the others I requested him to oblige me so far as to bind up my shoulder afresh, which he at once did, informing me at the same time that it was an exceedingly ugly wound, and that I must be particularly careful lest gangrene should supervene, in which case, if my life could be saved at the expense of my arm, I should have reason to esteem myself exceptionally fortunate. He remained on board, chatting with me for about an hour, after he had coopered me up, and very kindly promised to visit me and his other patients again in the afternoon, if I would send a boat for him: but he declined my invitation to breakfast, upon the plea that he had already taken first breakfast, while it was still too early for the second. He was full of polite compliments and congratulations upon our having beaten off such a desperado as Morillo was known to be, and graphically described the consternation that had prevailed in the cabins of the Dolores when the brigantine was identified as the notorious Guerrilla.
Contrary to my expectations, and greatly to my relief, the pirates did not return to attack us; and as a measure of precaution,—in case the idea should occur to Morillo later on,—as soon as our damages were repaired I stood to the northward and westward all that day, shaping a fresh course for Morant Point at sunset that evening. The sun went down in a heavy bank of clouds that had been gathering on the western horizon all the afternoon and slowly working up against the wind,—an almost certain precursor of a thunderstorm,—and as the dusk closed down upon us the wind began to grow steadily lighter, until by the end of the first dog-watch the air was so scant as to barely give us steerage-way. The night closed down as dark as a wolf’s mouth—so dark, indeed, that, standing at the taffrail, I could only barely, and with the utmost difficulty, trace the position of the main rigging against the intense blackness of the sky. As for the Dolores, we lost sight of her altogether, and could only determine her position by the dim, uncertain haze of light that faintly streamed above her high bulwarks from the skylight of her saloon, or by the momentary gleam of a lantern passing along her decks and blinking intermittently through her open ports. This intense darkness lasted only about half an hour, however, when sheet-lightning began to flicker softly low down upon the western horizon, causing the image of the ship—now some two miles astern of us—to stand out for an instant like a cunningly wrought model in luminous bronze against the ebony blackness of the sky behind her.
With the setting-in of the lightning the last faint breathing of the wind died away altogether, leaving us and the Spaniard to box the compass in the midst of a glassy calm, the sweltering heat of which was but partially relieved by the flapping of our big mainsail as the schooner heaved languidly upon the low swell that came creeping down upon us from the north-east. The night seemed preternaturally still, the silence which enveloped us being so profound that the noises of the ship—the occasional heavy flap of her canvas, accompanied by a rain-like pattering of reef-points; the creak of the jaws of the mainboom or of the gaff overhead on the mast; the jerk of the mainsheet tautening out suddenly to the heave of the schooner; the kicking of the rudder, and the gurgling swirl of water about it and along the bends—only served to emphasise while they broke in upon it with an irritating harshness altogether disproportionate to their volume. So intense was the silence outside the ship that one seemed constrained to listen intently for some sound, some startling cry, to come floating across the glassy water to break it; and the suspense and anxiety of waiting, despite one’s better judgment, for such a sound, caused the discordant noises inboard to quickly become acutely distressing. At least such was my feeling at the time, a feeling that possibly may have grown out of the increasing smart of my wound, which was now giving me so much pain that I had little hope of getting any sleep that night, especially as the heat below was absolutely stifling.
Gradually—so gradually that its approach was scarcely perceptible—the storm worked its way in our direction, the brighter glimmer and increasing frequency of the sheet-lightning alone indicating that it was nearing us, until just about eight bells in the dog-watch the first faint mutterings of distant thunder became audible, while the vast piles of sooty cloud that overhung us seemed momentarily to assume new and more menacing shapes, as the now almost continuous quivering of the lightning revealed them to us. Anon, low down in the western sky there flashed out a vivid, sun-bright stream of fire that, distant as it was, lighted up the whole sea from horizon to horizon, tipping the ridges of the swell with twisted lines of gold, and transfiguring the distant Dolores into a picture of indescribable, fairy-like beauty, as it brought sharply into momentary distinctness every sail and spar and delicate web of rigging tracery. A low, deep rumble of thunder followed, which was quickly succeeded by another flash, nearer and more dazzlingly brilliant than the first; and now the storm seemed to gather apace, the lightning-flashes following each other so rapidly that very soon the booming rumble of the thunder became continuous, as did the blaze of the sheet-lightning, which was now flickering among the clouds in half a dozen places at once, bringing out into powerful relief their titanic masses, weirdly changing shapes, and varied hues, and converting the erstwhile Cimmerian darkness into a quivering, supernatural light, that caused the ocean to glow like molten steel, and revealed every object belonging to the ship as distinctly as though it had been illuminated by a port-fire. So vivid and continuous was the light that I not only distinctly saw the fin of a shark fully half a mile distant, but was also able to watch his leisurely progress until he had increased his distance so greatly as to be no longer distinguishable. The continuous quivering flash of the sheet-lightning among the clouds afforded, of itself, a superbly magnificent spectacle, but the beauty of the display was soon still further increased by a wonderfully rapid coruscating discharge of fork-lightning between cloud and cloud, as though the fleecy giants were warring with each other and exchanging broadsides of jagged, white-hot steel; the thunder that accompanied the discharge giving forth a fierce crackling sound far more closely resembling that of an irregular volley of musketry than it did the deep, hollow, booming crash that followed the spark-like stream of fire that lanced downward from cloud to ocean.
A few minutes more and the storm was right overhead, with the lightning hissing and flashing all about us, and the thunder crackling and crashing and booming aloft with a vehement intensity of sound that came near to being terrifying. The whole atmosphere seemed to be aflame, and the noise was that of a universe in process of disruption.
Suddenly the schooner seemed to be enveloped in a vast sheet of flame, at the same instant that an ear-splitting crash of thunder resounded about us; there was a violent concussion; and when, a few seconds later, I recovered from the stunning and stupefying effect of that terrific thunderclap, it was to become aware that the foremast was over the side, and the stump of it fiercely ablaze. There was no necessity to pipe all hands, for the watch below now came tumbling up on deck, alarmed at the shock; and in a few minutes we had the buckets passing along. Fortunately we were able to effectively attack the fire before it had taken any very firm hold, and a quarter of an hour of hard work saw the flames extinguished; but it was a narrow escape for the schooner and all hands of us. The most serious part of it was the loss of our foremast, which completely disabled us for the moment. We went to work, however, to save the sails, yards, rigging, and so on, attached to the shivered mast; and before morning we had got a jury-lower-mast on end and secured, by which time the storm had cleared away, the wind had sprung up again, and the Dolores had borne down and taken us in tow. Fortunately the wind was fair for us, and it held; and, still more fortunately, no enemy hove in sight to take advantage of our crippled condition. We consequently arrived safely in Fort Royal harbour, in due course, on the eighth day after the occurrence of the accident, and forthwith received our full share of congratulations and condolences from all and sundry, from the admiral downward; the congratulations, of course, being upon our good luck in having effected the capture of so valuable a prize as the Dolores, while the condolences were offered pretty equally upon our having met with the accident, and our having failed to capture Morillo and his wonderful brigantine.
