CHAPTER XXXVI
_The Last of the Randolph_
"Pass the word quietly," said Seymour, rapidly, to one of his youngaids, "that when I say, 'Stand by to back the maintopsail,' the gunsare to be fired. Bid the gun captains to train on the port-holes ofthe second tier of guns. Mind, no order to fire will be given exceptthe words, 'Stand by to back the maintopsail.' The men are to fire atthe word 'topsail.' Do you understand? Tell the division officers tohold up their hands, as a sign that they understand, as you pass along,so that I can see them. Lively now! Quartermaster, standby to hauldown that flag and show our colors at the first shot."
The frigate was now rapidly drawing near the ship of the line, until,at the moment the officer hailed, the two ships were nearly alongsideof each other. The awful disparity between their sizes was nowpainfully apparent.
"Ship ahoy! Ahoy the frigate!" came down a second time in long hollowtones through the trumpet from the officer balancing himself on theYarmouth's rail by holding on to a back-stay. "Why don't you answer?"
"Ahoy the ship!" replied Seymour at last through his own trumpet."What ship is that?"
"His Britannic majesty's ship of the line, Yarmouth, Captain Vincent.Who are you? Answer, or I will fire!"
The flying boom of the Randolph was just pointing past the Yarmouth'squarter, and the two ships were abreast each other; now, if ever, wasthe time for action.
"This is the American Continental ship, Randolph, Captain Seymour,"cried the latter, through the trumpet, in a voice heard in every partof the ship of the line.
At least two hearts in the Yarmouth were powerfully affected by thatannouncement. Katharine's leaped within her bosom at the sound of herlover's voice, and beat madly while she revelled in thought in hisproximity; and then as she noticed again the fearful odds with which hewas apparently about to contend, her heart sank into the depths oncemore. In one second she thrilled with pride, quivered with love,trembled with despair. He was there--he was hers--he would be killed!She gripped the rail hard and clenched her teeth to keep from screamingaloud his name, while her gaze strained out upon his handsome figure.Pride, love, death,--an epitome of human life in that fleetingmoment,--all were hers!
On the main-deck of the frigate the name carried consternation toLieutenant Lord Desborough. So Seymour was alive again! Was that theend of my lord's chance? No. Joy! The rebel was under the guns ofthe battle-ship! Never, vowed the lieutenant, should guns be betterserved than those under his command. Unless the man surrendered, hewas doomed. So, he spoke eagerly to his men, bidding them take goodaim and waste no shot, never doubting the inevitable issue. Thesethoughts took but a moment, however. Beauchamp, who had done thetalking, now stepped aft to Captain Vincent's side, and replied toSeymour's hail by calling out,--
"Do you strike, sir?"
"Yes, yes, of course; that's what we came down here for. We'll strikefast enough," was the answer.
A broad smile lighted up Captain Vincent's face; he turned to thecolonel, laughing, and said with a scarcely veiled sneer,--
"I told you they were not up to it. The cad! he might have fired oneshot at least for the honor of his flag, don't you see?"
The colonel with a sinking heart could not see at all. Cowardice inSeymour, in any officer, was a thing he could not understand. Theworld turned black before Katharine. What! strike without a blow! Wasthis her hero? Rather death than a coward! In spite of her faith inher lover, as she heard what appeared to be a pusillanimous offer ofsurrender, Desborough's chances took a sudden bound upward, while thatgentleman cursed the cowardice of his enemy and rival, which woulddeprive him of a pleasing opportunity of blowing him out of the water.Most of the men at the different guns relaxed their eager watchfulness,while sneers and jeers at the "Yankee" went up on all sides.
"Heave to, then," continued Beauchamp, peremptorily and with muchdisgust, "and send a boat aboard!"
"Ay, ay, sir!"
Oh, it was true, then; he was going to surrender tamely without--
"Stand by!" there was a note of preparation in the words in spite ofSeymour's effort to give them the ordinary intonation of a commonplaceorder,--a note which had so much meaning to Katharine's sensitive earthat her heart stopped its beating for a moment as she waited for thenext word. It came with a roar of defiance. "Back the maintopsail!"But the braces were kept fast and the unexpected happened. In aninstant sheets of flame shot out from the muzzles of the black guns ofthe Randolph, which were immediately wreathed and shrouded in clouds ofsmoke. At the moment of command Seymour had quickly ordered the helmshifted suddenly, and the Randolph had swung round so that she lay at abroad angle off the quarter of the Yarmouth. The thunderous roar ofthe heavy guns at short range was immediately followed by the crashingof timber, as the heavy shot took deadly effect, amid the cheers andyells and curses and groans and shrieks of the wounded and startled menon the liner, while three hearty cheers rang out from the Randolph.
The advantage of the first blow in the grim game, the unequal combat,was with the little one.
"How now, captain!" shouted the colonel, in high exultation. "Won'tfight, eh! What do you call this?"
"Fire! fire! Let him have it, men, and be damned to you! The man 's ahero; 't was cleverly done," roared the captain, excitedly. "Iretract. Give it to him, boys! Give it to the impudent rebel!" heroared.
Katharine, forgot by every one in the breathless excitement of the pastfew moments, bowed her head on her hands on the rail, and breathed aprayer of thankfulness, oblivious of everything but that her lover hadproved himself worthy the devotion her heart so ungrudgingly extendedhim. There was great confusion on board the Yarmouth from this suddenand unexpected discharge, which, delivered at short range, had done nolittle execution on the crowded ship; but the officers rallied theirmen speedily with cool words of encouragement.
"Steady, men, steady."
"Give it back to them."
"Look sharp now."
"Aim! Fire!"
And the forty-odd heavy guns roared out in answer to the determinedattack. The effect of such a broadside at close range would have beenfrightful, had not the Randolph drawn so far ahead, and her course beenso changed, that a large part of it passed harmlessly astern of her.One gun, however, found its target, and that was one aimed and fired bythe hand of Lord Desborough himself: a heavy shot, a thirty-two, fromone of the massive lower-deck guns of the Yarmouth, which the pleasantweather permitted them to use effectively, came through one of theafter gun-ports of the Randolph, and swept away the line of men on theport side of the gun. Some of the other shot did slight damage alsoamong the spars and gear, and several of the crew were killed orwounded in different parts of the ship; but the Randolph waspractically unharmed, and standing boldly down to cross the stern ofthe Yarmouth to rake her. But the English captain was a seaman, everyinch of him, and his ship could not have been better handled; divininghis bold little antagonist's purpose, the Yarmouth's helm was put up atonce, and in the smoke she fell off and came before the wind almost asrapidly as did the Randolph, her promptness frustrating the endeavor,as Seymour was only able to make an ineffectual effort to rake her, asshe flew round on her heels. The starboard battery of the Yarmouth hadbeen manned as she fell off, and the port battery of the Randolph wasrapidly reloaded again. The manoeuvre had given the Englishmen theweather-gage once more, the two ships now having the wind on the portquarter. The two batteries were discharged simultaneously, and nowbegan a running fight of near an hour's duration.
Seymour was everywhere. Up and down the deck he walked, helping andsustaining his men, building up new gun's crews out of the shatteredremains of decimated groups of men, lending a hand himself on a tackleon occasion; cool, calm, unwearied, unremitting, determined, hedesperately fought his ship as few vessels were ever fought before orsince, imbuing, by his presence and example and word, his men with hisown unquailing spirit, until they died as uncomplainingly and as noblyas did those prototypes of heroes,--
another three hundred in the passat Thermopylae!
The guns were served on the Randolph with the desperate rapidity of menwho, awfully pressed for time, had abandoned hope and only fought tocripple and delay before they were silenced; those on the Yarmouth, onthe contrary, were fired with much more deliberation, and did dreadfulexecution. The different guns were disabled on the Randolph by heavyshot; adjacent ports were knocked into one, the sides shattered, boatssmashed, rails knocked to pieces, all of the weather-shrouds cut, themizzenmast carried away under the top, and the wreck fell into thesea,--fortunately, on the lee side, the little body of men in the topgoing to a sudden death with the rest. The decks were slippery withblood and ploughed with plunging shot, which the superior height of theYarmouth permitted to be fired with depressed guns from an elevation.Solid shot from the heavy main-deck batteries swept through and throughthe devoted frigate; half the Randolph's guns were useless because ofthe lack of men to serve them; the cockpit overflowed with the wounded;the surgeon and his mates, covered with blood, worked like butchers, inthe steerage and finally in the ward room; dead and dying men lay wherethey fell; there were no hands to spare to take them below, no place inwhich they could lie with safety, no immunity from the searching hailwhich drove through every part of the doomed ship. Still the men,cheered and encouraged by their officers, stood to their guns andfought on. Presently the foretopmast went by the board also, as thelong moments dragged along, Seymour was now lying on the quarter-deck,a bullet having broken his leg, another having made a flesh-wound inhis arm; he had refused to go below to have his wounds dressed, and oneof the midshipmen was kneeling by his side, applying such unskilfulbandages as he might to the two bleeding wounds. Nason had been sentfor, and was in charge, under Seymour's direction. That young man, allhis nervousness gone, was most ably seconding his dauntless captain.
The two ships were covered with smoke. It was impossible to tell onone what was happening on the other; but the steady persistence withwhich the Randolph clung to her big enemy had its effect on theYarmouth also, and the well-delivered fire did not allow that vesselany immunity. In fact, while nothing like that on the frigate, thedamage was so great, and so many men had fallen, that Captain Vincentdetermined to end the conflict at once by boarding the frigate. Thenecessary orders were given, and a strong party of boarders was calledaway and mustered on the forecastle, headed by Beauchamp and Hollins;among the number were little Montagu, with other midshipmen. Takingadvantage of the smoke and of the weather-gage, the Yarmouth wassuddenly headed for the Randolph. As the enormous bows of theline-of-battle ship came slowly shoving out of the smoke, toweringabove them, covered with men, cutlass or boarding pike in hand, Seymourdiscerned at once the purpose of the manoeuvre. Raising himself uponhis elbow to better direct the movement,--
"All hands repel boarders!" he shouted, his voice echoing through theship as powerfully as ever.
This was an unusual command, as it completely deprived the guns oftheir crews; but he rightly judged that it would take all the men theycould muster to repel the coming attack, and none but the main-deckguns of the Yarmouth would or could be fired, for fear of hitting theirown men in the melee on the deck. The Randolph was a wreck below, atbest; but while anything held together above her plank shears, shewould be fought. The men had reached that desperate condition whenthey ceased to think of odds, and like maddened beasts fought and ravedand swore in the frenzy of the combat. The thrice-decimated crewsprang aft, rallying in the gangway to meet the shock, Nason at theirhead, followed close by old Bentley, still unwounded. As the bow ofthe Yarmouth struck the Randolph with a crash, one or two wounded men,unable to take part in repelling the boarders but still able to move,who had remained beside the guns, exerted the remaining strength theypossessed to discharge such of the pieces as bore, in long rakingshots, through the bow of the liner; it was the last sound from theirhot muzzles.
The Yarmouth struck the Randolph just forward of the mainmast; the men,swarming in dense masses on the rail and hanging over the bowspritready to leap, dropped on her deck at once with loud cheers. A sharpvolley from the few marines left on the frigate checked them for amoment,--nobody noticing at the time that the Honorable Giles hadfallen in a limp heap back from the rail upon his own deck, the bloodstaining his curly head; but they gathered themselves together at once,and, gallantly led, sprang aft, handling their pistols and pikes andwaving their cutlasses. Nason was shot in a moment by Hollins' pistol,Beauchamp was cut in two by a tremendous sweep of the arm of the mightyBentley, and the combat became at once general. Slowly but surely theAmericans were pressed back; the gangways were cleared; thequarter-deck was gained; one by one the brave defenders had fallen.The battle was about over when Seymour noticed a man running out in theforeyard of the Yarmouth with a hand-grenade. He raised his pistol andfired; the man fell; but another resolutely started to follow him.
Bentley and a few other men, and one or two officers and a midshipman,were all who were able to bear arms now.
"Good-by, Mr. Seymour," cried Bentley, waving his hand and setting hisback against the rail nearest to the Yarmouth, which had slowly swungparallel to the Randolph and had been lashed there. The old man wascovered with blood from two or three wounds, but still undaunted. Twoor three men made a rush at him; but he held them at bay, no man caringto come within sweep of that mighty arm which had already done so much,when a bullet from above struck him, and he fell over backward on therail mortally wounded.
Seymour raised his remaining pistol and fired it at the second man, whohad nearly reached the foreyard arm; less successful this time, hemissed the man, who threw his grenade down the hatchway. Seymourfainted from loss of blood.
"Back, men! back to the ship, all you Yarmouths!" cried CaptainVincent, as he saw the lighted grenade, which exploded and ignited alittle heap of cartridges left by a dead powder-boy before themagazine. Alas! there was no one there to check or stop the flames.The English sailors sprang back and up the sides and through the portsof their ship with frantic haste; the lashings were being rapidly cutby them, and the braces handled.
"Come aboard, men, while you can," cried Captain Vincent to theAmericans. "Your ship 's afire; you can do no more; you 'll blow up ina moment!"
The little handful of Americans were left alone on their ship. Theonly officer still standing lifted his sword and shook it impotently atthe Yarmouth in reply; the rest did not stir. The smoke of battle hadnow settled away, and the whole ghastly scene was revealed. A woman'scry rang out fraught with agony,--"Seymour, Seymour!" and again was hercry unheeded; her lover could not hear. She cried again; and then,with a frightful roar and crash, the Randolph blew up.
For Love of Country: A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution Page 37