and the rattle of oars told that her boat had just scraped alongside. At that moment a clear, determined voice shouted through the trumpet,
“Level your guns! Take good aim! Fire!”
A brilliant series of sheets of flame burst forth from the corvette’s battery, lighting up the water and jet black wales, and away aloft to the great towering maze of rigging and sails to the trucks, with the topmen clustering to windward, and their very eyes and teeth lit up in the glare; then, too, the crews of the guns, in their trim frocks and trowsers; the marines on the top-gallant forecastle, with their firelocks and white cross-belts; and abaft a knot of officers on the poop, with night-glasses to their eyes, all standing out as clear as day in the sudden flashes from the cannon. Then followed the concussive roar, and the next instant you could hear the hurtling rush of the iron hail as it flew singly or in bunches through the air, or skipped in its deadly flight from wave to wave, until it went crashing into the pirate’s boat, slapping with heavy thumps against the schooner’s side, or furrowing along her decks; while a shower of white splinters flew high over her low rail, and told how well the iron had done its bidding. 38 Then, with many a groan and imprecation, the shattered and sinking boat was cut adrift, and, a moment after, the sails of the vessel were spread, the sheets hauled flat aft, and, taking the breeze, she heeled over till her lee rail was all awash, and away she walked, right up to windward.
But again came the clear, commanding tones on board the cruiser, mingled with the jumping of the crew and ramming home the charges in the guns:
“Load! round shot! Run out! One point abaft the beam! Fire as you bring the schooner to bear!”
Out belched the red flames; the heavy globes of iron, like so many black peas in daylight, sung their deadly note as they darted on their way, and the corvette gave a little heel to leeward as the shock of the explosion was felt. One shot dropped within fifty yards of the low hull of the schooner, bounded just clear of her after-deck, knocked off the head and shoulder of a man at the tiller, and then went skipping away over the water like a black foot-ball. Another messenger cut off the schooner’s delicate fore-top-mast as clean as a bit of glass, bringing down the gaff-top-sail, and, what was equally pleasant, the fellow who was setting it––pitching him over and over like a wheel, until he fell, a bruised and lifeless lump of jelly, on the oak bitts at the fore-mast. Before, however, they were treated to another of these metallic doses, the pirates had got their craft in splendid trim; and with every stitch of her canvas spread, and tugging and straining, she rushed on with the heels of a race-horse, within three points of the wind. The “Scourge,” too, was now close hauled, her yards braced as fine as needles, and crowded with every inch of sail that would draw; while every ten minutes or so she would let slip two or more guns from a division at the chase. But the uncertain gloom of starlight, and the darkening effect of the passing trade-clouds, made the little vessel a very difficult object to see; and though one of the last balls struck her on the narrow deck, passed through that and the waterways, and out to windward, spoiling two of her timbers, and no end of planking, yet this was the last damage she received. Her crew, also, had got as well as could be out of harm’s way––both the sound and wounded––and were lying quietly as possible deep down in the vessel’s run. When daylight broke the breeze began to slacken, but she was by this time hull down from the corvette, a long way beyond the reach of her long eighteens in the bow ports, and eating her way to windward, with no chance of being taken.
THE NIGHT CHASE.
“It’s no use,” said the captain of the corvette to his first lieutenant, as they stood watching the receding chase. “We may as well give it up; she has the heels of us in this light wind, and will soon be out of sight. I think, however,” continued the captain, with 41 a smile, “that he’ll remember the ‘Scourge’ when he meets her again. This is the second time we have chased that fellow; and this heat, by the way the splinters flew, we must have peppered the skin off his back.”
Shutting up the joints of the spy-glass which he held in his hand, he took hold of the man-ropes of the poop ladder, and as he put his feet on the steps, he said,
“You can go about, Mr. Cleveland, and run down to the brig.”
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CHAPTER VII.
THE MEETING AND MOURNING.
| “Moan! moan, ye dying gales! The saddest of your tales Is not so sad as life! Nor have you e’er began A theme so wild as man, Or with such sorrow rife. “Then, when the gale is sighing, And when the leaves are dying, And when the song is o’er, Oh! let us think of those Whose lives are lost in woes–– Whose cup of grief runs o’er!” |
The afternoon following the night when the foregoing events transpired, the “Martha Blunt” sailed slowly along the sandy tongue of land which separates Port Royal from Kingston, and dropped anchor in the harbor. As the cable rumbled out with a grating sound through the hawse-hole, and the crew aloft were furling the sails, a large, gayly-painted barge, pulled by a dozen blacks shaded by a striped awning, shot swiftly alongside. Jabbering were those darkies, and clapping their hands, and shouting joyously. A rope was immediately thrown from the gangway of the brig, and a tall, handsome man, with a broad Panama hat, loose white jacket and trowsers, sprang with a bound up the side, and leaped on deck.
Captain Blunt stood there to receive him. A broad white bandage was passed around his head, and the tears trickled slowly down his bronzed and honest cheeks. Just beyond him, under the shade of the awning, lay Banou, stretched out at full length on a mattress; while Ben, the helmsman, was kneeling beside him, fanning his hot and fevered face with his tarpaulin. A yard or two beyond, on a broad plank resting on trestles, lay the mate, Mr. Binks, cold and rigid in the grasp of death, with the union jack folded modestly over his corpse. The black breathed heavily and in pain; but when he caught sight of the gentleman as he stepped on deck, a deathly blue pallor came over his countenance, and, closing his eyes, the hot salt tears started in great drops from the lids.
“My God! captain,” said the gentleman, with a bewildering stare, “what’s all this? What has happened?”
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The old skipper merely made a motion with his hand toward the cabin, and, leaning painfully against the rail, wept like a child. The gentleman’s blood forsook his cheeks, and, with his knees knocking together, he staggered like a drunken man toward the cabin door. A few minutes later he emerged, bearing in his arms the sobbing, drooping form of his wife. Starting from his close embrace for a moment as he bore her to the gangway, she gave one shuddering, terrified, searching gaze over the blue water to seaward, and then, with a wailing cry of agony, that would have shaken the hardest heart, she fell sobbing again into her husband’s arms.
The voices and joyous shrieks of the negroes in the barge alongside subsided into low moaning groans; four or five came up, and carefully lowered Banou down; then all got into the boat, and she moved mournfully away toward the shore.
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CHAPTER VIII.
CAPTAIN BRAND AT HOME.
| “From his brimstone bed at break of day, A-walking the Devil is gone, To visit his snug little farm the Earth, And see how his stock goes on.” |
Upon a broad, flat, rocky ledge, near a small, landlocked narrow inlet of one of the clustering Twelve League Keys on the south side of Cuba, stood a red-tiled stone building, with a spacious veranda in front, covered by plaited matting and canvas curtains