Directing our boatman to run alongside, a minute or two later saw us on deck shaking hands with Mr Neil O’Flaherty, our new commander, who proved to be a regular typical Irishman—genial, high-spirited, and full to overflowing with fun and humour. We took to him in a moment; and I think the favourable impression was mutual, for we never had the ghost of an unpleasantness with him during the short but eventful period which we served under him. We had been thoughtful enough to bring our chests along with us in the boat, so that we could join at once, if need were; these were accordingly hoisted up over the side, and the boatman dismissed; after which, at O’Flaherty’s invitation, we descended to the cabin to cement our new friendship over a glass of wine, and to have a chat about the cruise upon which we were about to enter, leaving the boatswain to superintend the operations on deck. The admiral, it seemed, had only given our new skipper a very general set of instructions, leaving him to arrange all details as to the armament and manning of the schooner after a conference with us, as we were supposed to be the persons best posted on the question of these requirements. The whole of the morning was devoted to a full and particular recital on our part of everything which had transpired from the moment of our boarding the Pinta until that of our leaving her; after which we formed ourselves into a committee to discuss the outfit of the craft; and we now learned, somewhat to our chagrin, that Carera and his boat’s crew, having duly turned up at Port Royal, had made such representations to the admiral as had induced that distinguished officer to release them and the felucca forthwith, upon the understanding that they were to return at once to La Guayra, and were not to attempt to communicate, either directly or indirectly, with Merlani or any of the other pirate gangs on the Cuban coast which it was proposed that we should attack. This, of course, was all very well; and would do no harm whatever if the rascals only adhered to their agreement; but of this I confess I felt somewhat doubtful. The mischief, however, if mischief there were, was done, and it was therefore no use to worry about it; but I saw that it would need even greater circumspection than ever in the carrying out of our difficult enterprise, and for that, heaven knows, the necessity ought never to have been created.
Our palaver over, we all adjourned to the deck, and from, thence into the gig, which had been ordered alongside to convey us on shore to the dockyard. We took advantage of this opportunity to make a thorough inspection of the outward appearance of the craft which was to be our future home; and, so far as I at least was concerned, I cannot say that the impression produced was an altogether satisfactory one. In the first place, the Foam was, to my mind, rather small for the work she had to do, measuring only eighty tons register. She was, it is true, a very fine beamy little vessel for her size, of shallow draught of water, with sides as round as an apple, and beautifully moulded; indeed, I judged, from the look of her, that she had evidently been specially built for privateering purposes, her carrying capacity being very small, whilst no effort seemed to have been spared to render her exceedingly fast and stiff under her canvas. She was very strongly built of oak, with massive timbers, copper fastened throughout, and heavily coppered up to her bends; so that, as far as her hull was concerned, there was not much, beyond its size, to find fault with. But, in the matter of spars and rigging, those heathens the dockyard riggers had completely ruined her, as O’Flaherty admitted, almost with tears in his eyes. Her lower masts had been left in her intact and untouched, as they had been when she first fell into our hands, and two handsomer sticks I never saw; but, in place of the tall slim willowy topmasts which she then carried, they had sent up a couple of heavy, clumsy sticks which, with the yards on her foremast, were stout enough for a vessel of at least twice her tonnage. And, not content with this, they had further hampered the poor little craft with a regular maze of heavy shrouds, stays, and back-stays, all of which had been set up until they were as taut as harp-strings; so that we had only too much reason to fear that, in a fresh breeze and a choppy sea, we should find the little craft cramped and her sailing powers completely spoiled. There was one comfort, however, the rigging was all new; and we trusted that a few hours at sea would stretch it sufficiently to restore in some measure the spring and play of her spars; but the heavy top-hamper with which she was burdened was an evil which could only be cured in one way; and I resolved that it should be cured as soon as we got out of harbour, if I could bring O’Flaherty to my way of thinking.
Our inspection completed, we pulled ashore to the dockyard, where O’Flaherty made out and handed in his requisition for such further stores as we considered would be necessary; and from thence we wended our way to the gun wharf, where arrangements were made for the substitution of six brass long sixes in place of the nine-pound carronades with which it had been proposed to arm the little hooker. These, with the long eighteen which was already mounted on a pivot on the forecastle, would, we considered, make us as fit to cope with the pirates as we could hope to be in so small a craft. The guns came alongside and were hoisted in that same afternoon; and the following day witnessed the completion of our preparations for sea, including the shipping of our ammunition and the filling up of our water-tanks, etcetera. O’Flaherty was able to report himself ready for sea late that afternoon, upon which all three of us were invited on board the Mars to dine with the admiral. The captain of the Emerald frigate, which had arrived the previous day, and his son, a midshipman belonging to the same ship, were also among the guests; and, in the latter, I thought I recognised the young gentleman who had amused himself by popping away at me with a musket during the pursuit of the Pinta through the Boca de Guajaba. I was not quite certain about the matter at first; but the conversation which ensued upon the admiral making mention of the Foam’s destination and mission soon convinced me that I was correct in my surmise. The Emerald, it then turned out, was the identical frigate from which we had so narrowly escaped; and Captain Fanshawe at once waxed eloquent upon the unparalleled audacity and effrontery of the Cuban pirates, and the urgent necessity for their prompt suppression, instancing the escape of the Pinta as a case in point. His son, too, as one of the actual participators in the pursuit, had a great deal to say upon the subject, and seemed somewhat disposed to draw the long-bow when narrating his own share of the exploit, which tendency I thought it only kind to nip in the bud by giving our version of the affair. Both father and son at first appeared to be considerably nettled when they found that it was to us they owed their discomfiture; but their better sense speedily prevailed, and they joined as heartily as the rest in the laugh against themselves. On parting at the gangway that night, however, as we prepared to leave for our respective vessels, young Fanshawe laughingly remarked, as he gave our hands a cordial farewell grip:
“You have the laugh on your side at present, Lascelles; but I warn you that you will not get off so easily the next time I have an opportunity of taking a pot-shot at you.”
We reached the Foam about midnight; and next morning at daybreak weighed and worked out of the roadstead with the first of the sea-breeze, nipping sharp round the point as soon as we could weather it and keeping close along to windward of the Palisades until we were abreast of Plum Point; when, being fairly clear of the shoals, we braced sharp up for Yallah’s Point. Once abreast of this, we were enabled to check our weather-braces a trifle and ease off a foot or two of the main-sheet, when away we went for Morant Point through as nasty a short choppy sea as it has ever been my luck to encounter; the schooner jerking viciously into it and sending the spray flying from her weather bow right aft into the body of the mainsail and out over the lee quarter. But the discomfort to which we were thus subjected was amply compensated for by the magnificent panorama of wooded mountain, brawling stream, sweeping bay, landlocked inlet, frowning cliff, and white sandy beach, as we skirted the shores of this most beautiful island of Jamaica.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
A Brush with a Piratical Felucca
We had not been three hours at sea before the unwelcome conviction forced itself upon us tha
t our apprehensions respecting the injury to the Foam’s sailing powers were only too well founded; whatever they might originally have been the bungling dockyard riggers had effectually destroyed them. The breeze was blowing so strongly that we had been compelled to furl the topgallant—sail, and, steering as we were with the wind abeam, we ought, with the shapely hull we had beneath us, to have been going at least nine knots, whereas, so cramped were the little vessel’s movements by her tautly set-up rigging and the consequent rigidity of her spars, that she was going little more than six. This was anything but satisfactory; O’Flaherty’s first action, therefore, was to order a general easing-up of lanyards, fore and aft, aloft and alow; and no sooner was this done than we felt the advantage of the change; the swing and play of the spars being restored, and the rigging eased up until they were merely supported without their pliancy being interfered with, the little craft at once recovered her elasticity, and not only went along faster, but also took the seas much more buoyantly, riding lightly over them instead of digging through them as before, so that she no longer threw the spray over and over herself, but went along as light and dry as an empty bottle. But it was still evident that her top-hamper was too heavy; we therefore set the carpenter to work to reduce a couple of spare topmasts we had on board, with the view to shifting them upon the first favourable opportunity; and, this done, we hoped to have the hooker once more at her best.
Nothing of importance occurred until we arrived off the Cristo Cays, when—the time being about three bells in the forenoon watch, and the larger island bearing about two miles on the larboard bow, a couple of miles distant—O’Flaherty brought a chart on deck and, spreading it out on the companion slide, beckoned me to him.
“Look here, Lascelles,” said he, making a mark on the chart with his pencil-point, “there is where we are, and that,” pointing away over the larboard bow, “is Cristo Cay. Now, whereabouts is the channel that you saw that big felucca going into?”
“It is further on to the westward; you cannot see it from here. But why do you ask?” I inquired.
“Because, me bhoy, I intind to take a look in there and see what there is to be seen,” he replied.
“If you will excuse my saying so, I think you had better not,” said I. “In my opinion it would be wiser to meddle with these other places as little as possible until we have beaten up Merlani’s quarters. From all that we could learn from Carera his gang is far and away the most formidable all along this coast; and it seems to me that it would be only prudent on our part to create as little alarm as possible among these fellows until we have polished him off. His snuggery is strong enough and difficult enough of approach as it is, and it might be made infinitely more so if an alarm were given along the coast, as it easily might be if one of their craft happened to escape us; my advice, therefore—if you ask it—is to interfere with nobody until we have been into the Conconil lagoons.”
“Why, Lascelles, you surely are not afraid?” he asked, looking me surprisedly in the face.
“No, sir, I am not,” I answered, rather nettled, “I am only prudent; and—”
“Pooh!” he interrupted lightly, “prudent! Me dear bhoy, prudence is a very good thing—sometimes, but it does not do for such business as ours. A bould dash and have done wid it is the motto for us. Anyhow, I intind to go in, so there’s an end av it, and I’ll thank ye, young gintleman, to point out the channel as soon as we open it.”
“But,” I remonstrated, “I know nothing whatever of the place beyond what I saw of it in passing. Do you?”
“Not a wan ov me; but what matther?” was his characteristic reply.
“Simply this,” said I. “The navigation is doubtless difficult, and the water shallow. We should find ourselves in a pretty pickle if we plumped into a hornet’s nest and on to a shoal at the same moment.”
“How big did you say that felucca was that you saw going in there?” he asked.
“Nearly or quite two hundred tons,” said I, “but—”
“And we are eighty,” said he. “Where she could float we can—”
“By no means,” I interrupted. “I do not believe she drew an inch more than eight feet, whilst we draw nine; and an extra foot of water, let me tell you, Mr O’Flaherty, makes all the difference in these shallow inlets.”
“Say no more,” was the answer. “In we go, even if we never come out again.”
That, I thought, was scarcely the resolution to which a wise commander would have come; but after such an expression I could, of course, only hold my peace, and I did so until a few minutes later when we opened the entrance to the channel, which I pointed out to him.
“Then you will clear for action and send the crew to quarters, av ye plaise, Mr Lascelles,” said O’Flaherty; which done, we hauled our wind and reached in for the narrow opening.
It was a foolhardy undertaking, to my mind; but I must do. O’Flaherty the justice to say that, having entered upon it, he neglected no precaution to ensure our success. Thus, his first act, after the mustering of the crew, was to furl the square canvas, to facilitate the working of the schooner; after which he requested Courtenay to go aloft to the topgallant-yard to search out from that elevation the deepest water and to con the ship accordingly.
On entering the channel it was discovered to be very narrow, so much so indeed that at one point there was not width enough to work the ship, and it was only by means of a very smartly executed half-board, under Courtenay’s directions from aloft, that we avoided plumping the schooner ashore on the projecting spit. The water, too, was so shallow that, on looking over the taffrail, it was seen to be quite thick and clouded with the sand stirred up by the vessel’s keel; whilst so close aboard of us was the land on either hand that a couple of batteries, of, say, four twenty-four pounders each, one on either side of the channel, would have inevitably blown us out of the water. Most fortunately for us, it had not occurred to the frequenters of the place to plant batteries at this spot; so we passed in unmolested. The channel was about a mile in length, on emerging from which we found ourselves in a landlocked lagoon about four and a half miles wide at its broadest part, and so long that neither extremity could be accurately defined even from the elevated perch occupied by Courtenay. No sign whatever of anything like a settlement could be anywhere seen from the deck; but Courtenay hailed us to the effect that he could see something like a vessel’s mast-head over the middle island of a group of three on our starboard beam. He further reported, on the question being put to him, that the water was very shoal all round the ship, but that there were indications of something like a channel to the southward and eastward; upon which sail was shortened to lessen the schooner’s speed through the water, and her head was put in the direction indicated. This course was held for about two miles, when, by Courtenay’s direction, it was changed to south-south-west. Another run of two miles enabled us to open the southern sides of the three islands before referred to; and there, sure enough, in a snug bight between the two most distant islands, and completely concealed from to seaward by the lofty trees with which the ground was densely overgrown, we discovered three feluccas at anchor, two of them being small, one-masted craft, of about the same tonnage as the Pinta, whilst the third carried three masts, and looked very much like the identical craft we had seen when last we passed up the coast. They were about four miles distant from us; and for the first minute or two after sighting them not the slightest sign of life could we discover about them. As we now had a trifle more water under our keel sail was once more made upon the schooner, and we headed straight for the strangers; but we were hardly round upon our new course before we saw four very large boats, full of men, push out from among the bushes and make in all haste for the craft at anchor; two of them going alongside the big felucca, and one each to the smaller craft. They remained alongside only about a minute, and then returned to the shore with two men in each. Watching the craft through our glasses, we could see the crews bustling about the deck in a state of extraordinary ac
tivity; and, in less time than it takes to describe it, the enormous lateen yards—which had, evidently for the purpose of concealing the whereabouts of the craft, been lowered down on deck—were mastheaded, the canvas loosed, and the feluccas got under weigh. The two small craft at once made sail to the westward, heading for a passage between the mainland and a long mangrove-covered spit which jutted out from the larger and more westerly of the three islands; but the large felucca boldly headed for us direct under every inch of canvas she could spread.
“Now,” said I to O’Flaherty, “if that is the same felucca that passed the Pinta when we were up here before, we shall have our hands full, for she carries two more guns than we do, and hers are nines whilst ours are sixes; moreover, she has half as many men again as we have, and if they are anything like as tough as they appeared to be they will fight desperately. However, it will never do to turn tail now, so please say how you mean to engage her, and I will take the necessary steps.”
“We will run her aboard, me bhoy, throw all hands on her decks, and dhrive her cut-throat crew below or overboard in less than two minutes, or I’m very much mistaken. So be good enough, Misther Lascelles, to have the guns loaded wid a couple ov round shot and a charge ov grape on the top ov thim,” said O’Flaherty, rubbing his hands gleefully.
The Pirate Story Megapack: 25 Classic and Modern Tales Page 156