The Pirate Slaver: A Story of the West African Coast

by Harry Collingwood

  CHAPTER TWELVE.

  AN AWFUL CATASTROPHE.

  Presently, after one of his frequent halts, Mendouca turned and gaveorders to shorten sail. "Clew up and haul down fore and aft; stoweverything except the main-staysail; and see that you make a snug furlof it, men!" he cried; adding, as he turned to me--

  "We might as well be snugging down as doing nothing; and perhaps thesight will put some life into the movements of those lazy rascalsyonder," pointing with his cigar as he spoke towards the boats.

  "Possibly," I agreed. "And in any case it appears to me that the timehas fully arrived for the commencement of such preparations as you maythink fit to make for the coming blow, which, in my humble opinion, isgoing to be rather sharp while it lasts."

  "Yes; no doubt," Mendouca assented. "Curse those lazy hounds! Havethey no eyes in their heads to see what is brewing? If they don't wakeup, they will have the squall upon them before they reach the brig."

  "In which case," said I, "you may say good-bye to the brig and to theslaves in her; and may think yourself lucky if you are able to recoveryour boats."

  I do not know whether he heard me or not. I think it probable that hedid; but he made no reply, turning his back upon me, and keeping hisglances alternately roving between the boats and the sky, which latterhad by this time assumed a most sinister and threatening aspect, so muchso, indeed, that had I been in Mendouca's place I should have recalledthe boats without another moment's delay. But I could see that he hadset his heart upon securing possession of the brig, and was willing torun a considerable amount of risk in the effort to do so.

  At length, when the boats were, according to my estimation, a littlebetter than half-way to the brig, another flash of lightning, vivid andblinding, blazed forth, this time from almost overhead, only the verysmallest perceptible interval of time elapsing between it and theaccompanying thunder-crash, which was so appallingly loud and startlingthat for a moment I felt fairly deaf and stunned with it, and before Ihad fairly recovered my dazed senses the rain came pelting down in dropsas large as crown-pieces. The rain lasted for only three or fourseconds, however, and then ceased again abruptly, while almost at thesame instant a brief scurry of wind swept past us, just lifting thestaysail--which was by this time the only sail remaining set on boardus--and causing it to flap feebly for a moment, when it was once morecalm again; but we could trace the puff a long distance to the westwardby its track along the oily surface of the water.

  Mendouca turned to me with an oath. "When it comes, it will come to usdead on end from the brig!" he exclaimed. "It is just like my cursedluck! Do you think it is too late to recall the boats?"

  "Yes," I answered decidedly. "They are now nearer the brig than theyare to us, and their best chance certainly is to keep on as they aregoing."

  Mendouca turned and bestowed upon the boats yet another longscrutinising glance; and then said, with his eyes still fixed uponthem--

  "I do not agree with you. I think they are quite as near to us as theyare to the brig; and if they keep on and the squall bursts before theyreach the brig, they will have to pull against it, and may perhaps notfetch her after all, whereas if I recall them, and they are overtakenbefore they reach us, they will have the wind all in their favourinstead of dead against them."

  "That is very true," I assented. "It appears to me, however, that thewhole question hinges upon the point whether they are nearer to us or tothe brig; and in my opinion they are much nearer to the latter."

  For fully another minute Mendouca continued to watch the boats; then hesuddenly exclaimed--

  "I shall recall them. Clear away the bow gun there, and fire it with ablank cartridge; and, Pedro, get out the recall signal, and stand by torun it up to the main-truck at the flash of the gun."

  The signal was made, the boom of the gun seeming to echo with a hollow,long-drawn-out reverberation between sea and sky; and within a minutethe boats, with seeming reluctance, had turned and were pulling back tothe brigantine.

  Meanwhile the heavens had continued to darken, until, by the time thatthe boats had turned, the whole scene had become involved in a murkytwilight, through the gloom of which the brig, still with every stitchof canvas set, could with difficulty be made out. Still, although itseemed to me that the brooding squall might burst upon us at any moment,the atmosphere maintained its ominous condition of stagnation until theboats had reached within some four cables' lengths--or somewhat lessthan half-a-mile--of us; when, as I was intently watching theirprogress, I saw the sky suddenly break along the horizon just abovethem, the clouds appearing as though rent violently apart for a lengthof some ten or twelve degrees of arc, while the rent was filled with astrong yet misty glare of coppery-yellow light, in the very centre ofwhich the brig stood out sharply-defined, and as black as a shape cutout of silhouette paper.

  "Here it comes, at last!" I exclaimed; and as the words passed my lipsI felt a spot of rain upon my face, and in another instant down it came,a regular deluge, but only for about half a minute, when it ceasedabruptly, and, looking toward the brig, I saw a long line of white foamsweeping down towards her.

  "God help those poor, unhappy blacks!" I cried. "If that craft's sparsand rigging happen to be good she will turn the turtle with them, andprobably not one of them will escape!"

  "It is a just punishment upon them for rising against the crew,"exclaimed Mendouca savagely; "but if I had only succeeded in layinghands upon them I would have inflicted a worse punishment upon them thandrowning. I would have--ah! look at that! Now the squall strikes her,and over she goes. Taken flat aback, by heaven!"

  It was as Mendouca had said; the brig when struck by the squall happenedto be lying head on to it, and her topmasts bent like reeds ere theyyielded to the pressure, and snapped short off by the caps. Then,gathering stern-way, she paid off until she was nearly broadside on tous, and we could see that her stern was becoming more and more depressedas it was forced against the comparatively stubborn and unyieldingwater, while her bow was raised proportionally high in the air. Foot byfoot, and second by second, her stern sank deeper and deeper into thewater until the latter was flush with her taffrail, and then, with theaid of a telescope, I saw it go foaming and boiling in upon her deck,driving the dense crowd of negroes forward foot by foot. By this timeher forefoot was raised clear out of the water, and, enveloped in mistand spray though she was, I could see the bright, glassy glare of thesky beyond and below it. For a second she remained thus; then her bowrose still higher in the air, and, with a long sliding plunge, shedisappeared stern foremost.

  "Gone to the bottom, every mother's _son of them_--as they richlydeserved!" exclaimed Mendouca, with a savage curse. "And if thoseloafing vagabonds of mine don't bestir themselves they will follow indouble-quick time! What do you think, Dugdale? Shall we be able tosave them?"

  I shook my head. "I would not give very much for their chance," Ireplied. "It is a pity that you recalled them, I think. They wouldhave had time to reach the brig, and could at least have got her beforethe wind, even had they no time to do more."

  "Yes," he assented; "as it happened, they could. But how was a man toknow that the squall was going to hold off so long, and then burst atthe most unfortunate moment possible?"

  All this, it must be understood, had happened in a very much shortertime than it has taken to tell of it, and the squall had not reached asfar as the boats when the brig disappeared; while, as for us, we werelying motionless in a still stagnant atmosphere, with our starboardbroadside presented fair to the approaching squall. But as the lastwords left Mendouca's lips the squall swooped down upon the boats, andin an instant they were lost sight of in a smother of mist and spray,while the roar of the approaching squall, that had come to us at firstas a faint low murmur, grew deeper and hoarser, and more deadly menacingin its overpowering volume of tone. Then the air suddenly grew damp,with a distinct taste of salt in it; the roar increased to a deafeningbellow, and with a fierce, yelling shriek the squall burst upon u
s, andthe brigantine bowed beneath the stroke until her lee rail was buried,and the water foamed in on deck from the cat-head to the main-rigging.I thought for a moment that she, too, was going to turn turtle with us,and I believe she would, had the staysail stood; but luckily at the verymoment when it seemed all up with us, the sheet parted with a reportthat sounded even above the yell of the gale; there was a concussion asthough the ship had struck something solid, and with a single flap thesail split in ribbons and blew clean out of the bolt-ropes. MeanwhileMendouca had sprung to the wheel and lent his strength to the efforts ofthe helmsman to put it hard up, and, after hanging irresolute for amoment, as _though undecided whether to capsize_ or not, the _Francesca_gathered way, and in obedience to the helm gradually paid off until shewas dead before it, when she suddenly righted and began to scud like aterrified thing. The boats were of course left far behind; and I madeup my mind that we should never see them again.

  The squall was as sharp a thing of its kind as I had ever beheld, and itwas _fully_ three-quarters of an hour before it became possible to bringthe ship to the wind again, which Mendouca did the moment that he couldwith safety. The wind continued quite fresh for another half-hour afterthe squall had blown itself out, and then it dwindled away to a verypaltry breeze again, the clouds cleared away, the sun re-appeared andshone with a heat that was almost overpowering, and the weather becamebrilliantly fine again; much too fine, indeed, for Mendouca's purpose,he being anxious to get back again as quickly as possible to the spotwhere he had been obliged to abandon his boats, a lingering hopepossessing him that perchance they might have outlived the squall, andthat he might recover his men. I may perhaps be doing the man aninjustice in saying so much, but I firmly believe that this desire onhis part was prompted, not by any feeling of humanity or regard for themen, but simply because the loss of so many out of his ship's companywould leave him very short-handed, and seriously embarrass him until hecould obtain others to fill their places; and I formed this opinion fromthe fact that his many expressions of regret at being blown away fromhis boats were every one of them coupled with a petulant repetition ofthe remark that his hands would be completely tied should he fail torecover their crews. So persistently did he hang upon this phase of themishap, that at length I ventured to ask him whether there were none ofthem that he would be sorry to lose for their own sakes, apart from anyquestion of inconvenience; in reply to which he stated, with a brutallaugh, that they were, one and all, a lazy set of worthless rascals, ofwhom he should have rid himself in any case on his arrival in Havana.

  However, be his motive what it might, he cracked on every stitch ofcanvas that the brigantine would bear, as soon as the strength of thesquall had sufficiently abated to permit of his bringing her to thewind, making sail from time to time as the wind further dwindled, untilhe had her under everything that would draw, from the trucks down. Toadd to his anxiety, it was about two bells in the first dog-watch beforehe could bring the ship to the wind, and he feared, not without reason,that it would be dark before he could work back near enough to the spotat which we had left the boats, to see them again--always supposing, ofcourse, that they still floated. However, he did everything that aseaman could do, sending a hand aloft to the royal-yard to keep alook-out as soon as the ship had been got upon a wind, and making shortboards to windward--the first one of a quarter of an hour's duration,and the others of half-an-hour each, so as to thoroughly cover theground previously passed over--as long as the daylight lasted. Butwhen, all too soon, the sun went down in a blaze of golden and crimsonand purple splendour, no sign of the boats had been seen; Mendouca,therefore, worked out a calculation of the distance run by thebrigantine from the spot where the squall first struck her, subtractedfrom it the distance that the boats would probably traverse in the sametime, and having worked up to this spot as nearly as he could calculate,he hove-to for the night, with a bright lantern at his main-truck,firing signal rockets at intervals of a quarter of an hour, and wearingthe ship round on the other tack every two hours. The night wasbrilliantly star-lit, but without a moon, still there was light enoughupon the water to have revealed the boats at a distance of half-a-mile,while the weather was so fine that a shout raised at twice that distanceto windward of the ship might have been heard on board her above thesoft sigh of the night wind, and the gentle lap of the water along thebends; moreover, apart from the rockets fired, she might have beenplainly seen against the sky at a distance of fully three miles from theboats, while her progress through the water was so slow that they couldhave pulled alongside her without difficulty; when, therefore, midnightarrived without any news of them, I gave them up for lost, and turnedin. Not so Mendouca, he would not give them up; moreover, he refused toleave the deck--declaring that now he had lost his two mates he hadnobody on board that he could trust in charge--preferring to have amattress laid for him upon the skylight bench, where he snatched catnapsbetween the intervals of wearing the ship round.

  However, the matter was cleared up shortly after sunrise next morning,when Mendouca again sent a hand aloft to look round, for the fellow hadonly got as far as the foretop when he reported two objects that lookedlike the boats, about five miles to leeward; adding, that if they _were_the boats, they were capsized. The topsail was accordingly filled, andthe ship kept away, when, after about an hour's run, first one boat andthen the other was found, the first being capsized, while the second wasfull of water and floating with the gunwale awash. One drowned seamanwas found under the capsized boat, but the rest were nowhere to be seen.Both boats were easily secured, and found to be undamaged; and severalof the oars and loose bottom-boards were also recovered, being foundfloating at no great distance from the boats. The drowned seaman, I mayas well mention, was not brought on board, but instead of this a boatwas sent away with a canvas bag containing three nine-pound shot, whichthey secured to the poor wretch's ankles, and so sunk him.

  Mendouca now, in no very amiable mood, resumed his course toward thecoast; and that same afternoon--having meanwhile been engaged apparentlyin a tolerably successful effort to recover his temper--approached mewith a proposal that he should tell me the story of his life, to which Iof course cheerfully assented.

  I will not inflict upon the reader the tale that he told me, because ithas no direct bearing upon this present history; suffice it to say, thatI now learned with some astonishment that he was a born Englishman, andthat, moreover, he had begun his career in the British navy, fromwhich--if his story were strictly true, as I afterwards had theopportunity of learning was the case--he had been ousted by a quiteunusual piece of tyranny, and a most singular and deplorable miscarriageof justice. It was the latter, I gathered, even more than the former,that had soured him, and warped everything that was good out of hischaracter; for it appeared that he had a keen sense of justice, and avery exalted idea of it; he had undoubtedly been most cruelly ill-used--he had in fact been adjudged guilty of a crime that he had nevercommitted--and this appeared to have utterly ruined the character of aman who might otherwise have been an ornament to the service, distortedall his views of right and wrong, and filled him to the brim with awild, unreasoning, insatiable desire for vengeance.

  This much for the man's story, which, however, I soon found had beentold me with a purpose; that purpose being nothing less than theinducing of me to join him and take the place of his lost chief mate,whereby--according to his showing--I might speedily become a rich man.Had the proposal come before I had heard his story I should haveresented it as an insult, but the recital to which he had treated me,and the sentiments expressed during its narration, convinced me that hissense of honour had been so completely warped that he could see nodisgrace in the abandonment of a service and a country capable oftreating any other man--myself, for instance, as he carefully pointedout--as he had been treated; I therefore contented myself with a simplerefusal, coupled with an assurance that such a step would be whollydiscordant with my sense of right and wrong, utterly irreconcilable, tomy conscience, and not at all
in accord with my views. I had expectedhim to be furiously angry at my refusal, but to my great surprise he wasnot; on the contrary, he frankly admitted that he had been fullyprepared for a refusal--at first--but that he still believed my viewsmight alter upon more mature reflection.

  "Meanwhile," said he, "you see how I am situated; I have lost both myofficers, and have no one on board but yourself in the least capable oftaking their places. I saved your life--or spared it, which comes tothe same thing--and I now ask you to make me the only return in yourpower by assisting me in my difficulty."

  "Before I give you any answer to that," said I, "I must ask you toexplicitly define and accurately set forth the nature of the assistancethat you desire me to render."

  "Certainly," said Mendouca. "All that I ask of you at present is torelieve me by taking charge of a watch, and assisting me to navigate theship. With regard to the latter, I consider myself capable of takingthe ship anywhere, and have as much confidence in myself as a man oughtto have; but `to err is human,' and it increases one's confidence, andconfers a feeling of security, to have some one to check one'scalculations. And as to the watch, unless you will consent to keep onefor me, I shall be compelled to keep the deck night and day. Now, it isno great thing that I am asking of you _in return for your life_; willyou do it?"

  "Give me half-an-hour to consider the matter, and you shall then have myreply," said I.

  "So be it," he answered. And then the matter ended, for the moment.

  It was a question that I found it by no means easy to decide. Here wasI, an officer in the service of a country pledged to do its utmost tosuppress the abominable slave-traffic, actually invited to assist in thenavigation of a ship avowedly engaged not only in that traffic but--according to the acknowledgment of her captain--also in, at least,occasional acts of piracy! What was I to do? On the one hand, I wasfully determined to do nothing that could be construed into even thesemblance of tacit acquiescence in Mendouca's lawless vocation; while,on the other, I undoubtedly owed my life to the man, and thereforeshrank from the idea of behaving in a manner that might appear churlish.Moreover, it appeared to me that by rendering the trifling servicedemanded of me, I should find myself in a position to very greatlyameliorate in many ways the condition of the unhappy blacks down in thedark, noisome hold. The end of it all was, therefore, that at theexpiration of the half-hour I had determined--perhaps weakly andfoolishly--to accede to Mendouca's request. I accordingly went to himand said--

  "Senor Mendouca, I have considered your request, and have decided toaccede to it upon certain conditions."

  "Name them," answered Mendouca.

  "They are these," said I. "First, that my services shall be strictlyconfined to the keeping of a watch and the checking of your astronomicalobservations. Secondly, that you undertake to perpetrate no act ofpiracy while I am on board. And, thirdly, that you will allow me toleave your ship upon the first occasion that we happen to encounter asail of a nationality friendly to Great Britain."

  "Is that _all_?" demanded Mendouca. "By my faith, but you appear toattach a somewhat high value to your services, senor midshipman! Ispared your life; yet that does not appear to be a sufficient reason whyyou should afford me the small amount of help I require without hedgingyour consent about with ridiculous and impossible restrictions! I amsurprised that, while you were about it, you did not also stipulate thatI should abandon the slave-trade while the ship is honoured by yourpresence! I am obliged to you, Senor Dugdale, for your condescension ingiving your distinguished consideration at all to my request, but yourterms are too high; I can do better without your help than with it, ifit is to be bought at the price of such restraint as you demand."

  And he turned his back upon me and walked over to the other side of thedeck.

  Presently he turned and re-crossed the deck to my side, and remarked, inEnglish--

  "Look here, Dugdale, don't be a fool! In coupling your consent to helpme with those restrictions, you doubtless suspected me of an intentionto involve you in some of those acts that you deem unlawful, and then torenew my proposal that you should join me. Well, if you did you werenot so very far from the truth; I confess that I _do_ wish you to joinme. I have somehow taken a fancy to you, despite those old-fashionedand absurd notions of yours about conscience, and duty, and the like.Why, if you would only put them away from you it would be the making ofyou, and you would be just the sort of fellow that I want; you are pluckall through, and, once free from the trammels of the thing that you callconscience, you would stick at nothing, and with you as my right hand Ishould feel myself free to undertake deeds that I have only dared to_dream_ of thus far, while, with our views brought into accord, weshould be as brothers to each other. I am ambitious, Dugdale, and Itell you that if you will join me we _can_ and _will_ revive the gloriesof the old buccaneering days and make ourselves feared and reverencedall over the globe; we will be sea-kings, you and I. What need is therefor hesitation in the matter? Nay"--and he held up his hand as he sawthat I was about to speak--"do not inflict upon me those mustyplatitudes about _conscience_ and _duty_ that I have heard so often inthe old days, and that have been made the excuse for so many acts ofgross tyranny and injustice that my gorge rises in loathing whenever Ihear them mentioned. What _is_ conscience? The inward monitor thatpoints out your duty to God and restrains--or tries to restrain--youfrom doing wrong, you will perhaps say. Well, let us accept that as ananswer. I will then ask you another question. Do you really believe inthe existence of the Being you call God? No, I am sure you do not; youcannot, my dear fellow, and remain consistent. For what is ourconception of God? or, rather, what is the picture of Him that ourghostly advisers and teachers have drawn of Him? Are we not assuredthat He is the personification and quintessence of Justice, and Love,and Mercy? Very well. Then, if such a Being really exists, would thetyranny, the injustice, the cruelty, and the suffering that haveafflicted poor humanity, from Adam down to ourselves, have beenpermitted? Certainly not! Therefore I unhesitatingly say that Hecannot exist, and that the belief in Him is a mere idle, foolishsuperstition, unworthy of entertainment by intelligent, reasonable, andreasoning beings. And if there is no God, whence do we derive ourconception of duty? I tell you, Dugdale, there is no such thing as dutysave to one's self; the duty of protecting, and providing for, andavenging one's self, as I am doing, and as you may do if you choose tojoin me."

  "Have you finished?" I asked, as he paused and looked eagerly into myface. "Very well, then; I will answer in a few words, if facts were asyou so confidently state them to be, I might possibly be induced to castin my lot with yours; but, fortunately for humanity, they are not so,and I must therefore most emphatically decline."

  "Then I presume," said he, with a sneer, "you still believe in theexistence of God, and His power to work His will here on earth?"

  "Certainly," I answered, without hesitation.

  "Do you believe that He is more potent than I am!"

  "I really must decline to answer so absurd a question," said I, andturned away to leave him.

  "Stop!" he thundered, his eyes suddenly blazing with demoniac fury."Answer me, yes or no, _if you are not afraid_! If your faith in Him isas perfect as you would have me believe, answer me!"

  I hesitated for a moment--I confess it with shame--for I felt convincedthat in the man's present mood a reply in the affirmative wouldassuredly provoke him to some dreadful act in proof of the contrary; thehesitation was but momentary, however, and, that moment past, Ireplied--

  "Yes; I believe Him to be omnipotent, both on earth and in heaven."

  It was as I had expected--my reply had provoked him to murder; for asthe words left my lips he, for the second time, drew his pistol from hisbelt, cocked it, and deliberately pressed the muzzle of the barrel to mytemple, exclaiming, as he did so--

  "Very well. Then let us see whether He has the power to save you frommy bullet!"

  And, glaring like a madman straight into my eyes, he held it there
whileone might perhaps have slowly counted ten, and then pulled the trigger.There was a sharp click and a little shower of sparks as the flint-lockfell, and--that was all.

  "Missed fire, by all the furies!" he exclaimed, dashing the weaponviolently to the deck, _where it instantly exploded_. "Well, you haveproved your faith, at all events, and have escaped with your life by themere accident of my pistol having missed fire, and there is an end of itfor the present. Here, take my hand; you are a plucky young dog and nomistake, but you did wrong to provoke me; take my advice and don't do itagain, lest worse befall you."

  "No," said I, "I will _not_ take your hand. You saved--or rather,spared--my life once, it is true, but you have threatened it twice, andit is no thanks to you that I am alive at this moment. We are nowquits, for this last act of yours has wiped out whatever obligation Imay have owed you for your former clemency. I will not take your hand;and I warn you that I will leave your ship on the first opportunity thatpresents itself."

  And I turned away and left him.

  Shortly afterwards Mendouca went below; and a few minutes after hisdisappearance the steward came up to me and informed me that "supper"--as the evening meal is called at sea--was ready.

  "I shall not go below, steward," I said. "If Captain Mendouca willallow you to do so, I should like you to bring me a cup of coffee and abiscuit up here."

  "Very well, senor," the man answered. "I will bring them."

  He disappeared, but returned, after an interval of a minute or two, andhanded me a note scrawled on a small slip of paper. It was written inEnglish, and read as follows--

  "You are the last fellow I should ever have suspected of so contemptible a weakness as sulking. Come below, like a sensible lad; I have that to say to you which I do not choose to say on deck in the presence of the men.

  "Mendouca."

  "Oh!" thought I, "so he has returned to his right mind, has he? Verywell, I will go below and hear what he has to say; for it wouldcertainly be unpleasant to be in a ship for any length of time with thecaptain of which one is not on speaking terms."

  Accordingly I descended the companion, and as I entered the cabinMendouca rose from a sofa-locker upon which he had flung himself, andagain stretched forth his hand.

  "I want you to forgive me, Dugdale," said he, with great earnestness."Nay, but you must; I will take no denial. I am not prone to feelashamed of anything that I do, but I frankly confess that I _am_ ashamedof my behaviour to you this afternoon, and I ask your pardon for it. Totell you the whole truth, I believe that there is a taint of madness inmy blood, for there have been occasions when I have felt myselfirresistibly impelled to actions for which I have afterwards been sorry,and that of this afternoon was one of them."

  I believed him; I really believed that, as he had said, there was atouch of madness in his composition, and that he was not always fullyaccountable for his actions. I therefore somewhat reluctantly acceptedhis proffered hand and the reconciliation that went with it, and with asuggestion that perhaps it would be as well henceforth to avoidtheological arguments, took my accustomed seat at the cabin table.

  Later in the evening, while Mendouca was reading in his cabin, my friendPedro joined me on deck, and, with many expressions of poignant distressat his father's behaviour to me, endeavoured to excuse it upon the pleaof irresponsibility already urged by Mendouca himself; the poor ladassuring me that even he was not always safe from the consequences ofhis father's violence. And during the half-hour's chat that ensued Ilearnt enough to convince me that Mendouca was in very truth afflictedwith paroxysmal attacks of genuine, undoubted madness; and that, in myfuture dealings with him, I should have to bear that exceedinglyalarming and disconcerting fact in mind.