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 table-cloths 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 handing 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 skins, 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, &c., 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 butt-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 anything and everything 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 say no 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 oder 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 in turn was re-echoed by his mates; the capstan was manned, and the crew stamped round to a point of war most villanously 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 cunned 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”—Anglice, from a first-lieutenant to a mid—”Brush instanter.”
Having changed my uniform for shag-trousers, 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 water
s. 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 blue-light 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, glow-worm-coloured flame, of the size and shape of the frosted glass shade over the swinging lamp in the gun-room. 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 soap-sud 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 group 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 buzz 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,” sang 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 standing beside me—”Is that you, or Davy 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 sang 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-wester, it was now clear moonlight, and we hammered away from our 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 everything else in the excitement of the moment. In a twinkling the square foresail, topsail, top-gallant, 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 a-port, 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 swarming, 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 mid-ship 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 o
verhaul 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 coasting trade. One fine morning, about a fortnight after we had left Port Royal, the Torch was lying at anchor in Bluefields Bay. It was between eight and nine; the land-wind had died away, and the sea-breeze had not set in—there was not a breath stirring. The pennant from the masthead fell sluggishly down, and clung amongst the rigging like a dead snake, whilst the folds of the St George’s ensign that hung from the mizen-peak were as motionless as if they had been carved in marble.
Tom Cringle's Log Page 11