CHAPTER FORTY EIGHT.
THE HELP THAT CAME.
In those brief few minutes despair and dogged determination were turnedinto the mingled emotions of triumph and delight, for the two boats,after giving two or three volleys at the schooner, whose crew contentedthemselves with hoisting a couple more sails to increase their speed,came on as hard as the men could row, their crews cheering in French andEnglish with all their might, while in the stern of one the Count stoodup waving his cap; in that of the other Captain Chubb, looking grim andstern, stood like a statue, his left foot on the thwart before him, hisright resting upon the muzzle of a musket.
"Here, I don't feel as if I'd got a cheer left in me, lads," cried JoeCross to his tired companions on board the stranded schooner; "but wemust give them one, or they'll think we aren't much obliged to them forcoming, and there's no gammon about it, we are, and no mistake."
"Cheer, yes!" cried Rodd. "With all your might, my lads. Take yourtime from me. Now then, as you never cheered before--Hooray!"
There was no want of heartiness either in that or in those whichfollowed, to be returned as enthusiastically from the two boats, whichwere rapidly nearing, so that in a few minutes Rodd and his uncle werewringing the hands of the bluff old skipper, while it was observablethat all three kept their backs to the French Count and his son tillthey came up together, when the three started round in surprise, goingthrough a curious kind of pantomime as if they were astonished to seethe Frenchmen there.
Meanwhile a regular fraternisation had gone on between the crews, andafter a mere glance at the three masts of the schooner, which werestanding out of the water about a couple of hundred yards away, theskipper's whole attention was directed to their own vessel, whose keelwas now fast in the mud, and which was beginning to heel over slightly.
"Then I suppose you took her again, doctor?" he said gruffly.
"Well, hardly," said Uncle Paul. "It was Cross and the lads who didthat."
"More shame to him, then," growled the skipper. "I should have thoughtyou were seaman enough, Joe Cross, to have kept her afloat and not runher aground like this."
"Well, I do call that ungrateful," cried Rodd. "I say, uncle, oughtn'the to have saved the schooner from being taken?"
"That's one for me, doctor," said the skipper, with a grim smile and atwinkle in his eye. "The boys of this here generation seem to grow uppretty sharp. But he's quite right. They pretty well caught a weaselasleep that time."
"But how was it?" cried Rodd.
"How was it, my lad? Why, we was hard at work one morning, when up theriver comes another of them nice respectable schooners in the oil trade.Oil trade, indeed! Rank slavers, that's what they were, carrying ontrade with one of those murderous chiefs up country! Set of blackSatans as attack villages and carry off the poor wretches to sell toyour oil traders for sending off to the plantations. Well, one don'tlike killing fellow-creatures, or seeing them pulled down below by thecrocs, but somehow I don't feel so very uncomfortable about them as wehad to fight with and have got the worst of it. What are you smilingat, young Squire Rodd?"
"I was only thinking how you always hated the slave trade, captain."
"Right," said Captain Chubb, with a friendly nod. "Well, the schoonersends her skipper aboard the three-master. Then he comes to where I wasbusy at work with the men, putting the finishing touches to the brig,and tells me and the Count a long tale about his having come up to joinhis friend the Spanish captain, who he hears has gone up the river for arow. Then he goes back to his schooner, makes her snug, and it seemedas if him and his men had all gone to sleep, when it was me."
"You?" cried Rodd wonderingly.
"Well, what they call metyphorically, my boy, for I was wide awakeenough; but I couldn't see anything beyond the _Dagobert_, nor the Countneither, for he wanted her afloat. Then the time went on, and all veryquiet, till just in the middle of one of the hottest days when I was infull feather, thinking that I could tell the Count that night that thejob was done, and we could let her sit the water again next day when thetide served, all at once we had a surprise. There were only four orfive men aboard the schooner, and I suppose they were keeping theirwatch, but just all at once a couple of boats rowed up to them, one fromone schooner, one from the other, and before any of us knew what was up,our fellows were swimming for the shore, and if it hadn't been for theCount, who was on the look-out for crocs, and let them have two barrelstwice over, neither of the poor fellows would have joined their mates ashad been working with me."
The speaker turned to the Count, who nodded his head quickly, and thenlooked at his son as much as to say, Yes, this is quite true.
"Well," continued the skipper, "I felt as if all the wind had beenknocked out of me, and as soon as I could speak and quite understandthat my schooner had been took, I began to bully-rag the poor lads whohad just escaped with their lives, for, not having time to get a gun ora cutlass, they had been almost as helpless on board as they were in thewater among them reptiles. I couldn't even believe it then, and beganquestioning the lads, and you might have knocked me down with a feather,as people say, and the Count there with another, when they all sworethat our Spanish skipper had led the men from his three-master in one ofthe boats. Then we began to see the worst."
The skipper turned with a questioning look at the Count again, toreceive a second grave nod, while this time the latter laid his handupon his son's shoulder, and a long eager glance passed between them.
"Well, I don't know that I have much more to say," said the skipper,"only that it was a bad job, being a fresh one we had got to tackle andmeant to do. The Count here fitted me and my lads up with some weepuns,and we settled that as soon as it was dark we'd man two of the brig'sboats, and board first one and then the other of the two schooners.Well, we tried, but they were waiting for us, and I don't know how weescaped, for they met us with such a fire that if we had kept on bothboats must have been sunk, and we never got within touch of either ofthe enemy, but drifted down with the tide; and somehow just then Isuppose there must have been a flood somewhere up the river, down camethe water in a way that we couldn't meet, and it was only by pretty goodseamanship on the part of the Frenchmen more than ours, though we helpedall we knew, that we were able to keep afloat; and since then we havebeen right down to the sea, and it's been very hard to get enough toeat. But somehow we managed to keep alive, shooting what we could andcatching a fish or two now and then as we came up the river again. Forof course we were not going to give up without finishing our job; and itseems to me that we got here just at the right time, and found thatthings weren't half so bad as we thought; eh, Count?"
"My friend," replied the latter, "how can I ever repay you?"
"Oh, let's talk about that, sir, when I have done something to keep the_Maid of Salcombe_ upright and finished my other job and the brig'safloat, which it seems to me we can manage at high water; but I neverbargained for having our schooner to set right too through the lubberlymanagement of that chap Joe Cross. There," he cried angrily, "I can'tand won't say another word till I have had something to eat, for we areall half starved."
"Get on board the schooner, then, every one," cried the doctor, "for Ihave got my work here."
It was a fact, for now the fight was over the men began to stiffen, andseveral unexpectedly turned faint, it proving that though not a singleman was seriously wounded, nearly every one of those who had followedJoe Cross in his gallant achievement of boarding the schooner, and inbeating down the slaver's crew when they forced their way out of thecabin, was more or less injured and had been doing his best to hide theknife stabs and contusions he had received.
It was during the next two or three days that the doctor proved that hewas in his element, and that his knowledge of natural history was notconfined to his ordinary scientific pursuits, for no surgeon could havebeen more skilful in his treatment of wounds, no physician more able inalleviating the fever which supervened.
It was a busy time for
all, for not only was there the grounded schoonerto guard from going over, but strict watch to keep for the return ofenemies, and then, when the high tide served, all hands were at work,save the poor disappointed fellows whose injuries kept them to theirbunks, in raising the brig to her old proud position. As she floatedout, herself once more, and dropped anchor in the stream, the menliterally yelled themselves hoarse, while on the following day at theCount's request both vessels were dropping down with the tide, all onboard eager to leave behind the river, which in spite of its manybeauties was too full of painful recollections for its waters to berecalled without horror and disgust.
The Ocean Cat's Paw: The Story of a Strange Cruise Page 48