“Come, then,” said Don Luis, “I will go with you.”
We descended to the lower deck, and I saw, by the dim light of a lantern suspended from the beams, that most of my lads had provided themselves with at least something in the shape of a weapon. Some had armed themselves with tail-blocks, which they had routed out from somewhere; some carried marlinespikes; and others were balancing crowbars and pieces of old iron in their hands; whilst one or two had dragged to light some short lengths of chain, which, wielded by their sinewy arms, might prove formidable weapons of offence.
Don Luis looked at them, then at me, and smiled.
“You English are a most extraordinary people,” he said. “I believe you are never more happy than when fighting. Those men of yours look more like a parcel of schoolboys preparing for a holiday than men making ready for a desperate life-and-death struggle. But I must be brief; there is no time for anything like gossip now; the pirate schooner is within two miles of us, and Don Felix expects her to open fire immediately. I have tried to persuade him that he was hasty and ill-advised to refuse your offer of assistance; but the fellow is as obstinate as a pig; he will not listen to reason, albeit I believe he is growing more nervous every minute. Now, first, I want to ask you what had I better do with my daughter?”
“Stow her away as low down in the run of the ship as you can put her,” said I. “She will then be out of reach of the shot. It will also be some little time before she can be discovered by the pirates—assuming, of course, that they take the ship—and in the meantime there will be the chance of my men being able to do something. But, for the love of Heaven, Don Luis, let her not fall alive into the hands of the scoundrels!”
“She shall not, if I have to slay her with my own hand,” ejaculated Don Luis through his set teeth. “There is one thing more,” he continued hurriedly. “Your men cannot possibly do any good with those makeshift weapons with which they have provided themselves. Now, if I am willing to compromise myself to the extent of providing you all with suitable arms, will you pledge your sacred word of honour, Don Leo, that those weapons shall not be employed save against the pirates, and only then in the event of my countrymen proving unequal to cope with them.”
“Willingly,” said I, “but with this proviso, Don Luis: If the pirates conquer your countrymen and gain possession of the Santa Catalina, and we, after that, are able to recover her, I shall regard her as my prize and retain possession of her by every means in my power.”
Don Luis cogitated deeply for a full minute.
“Be it so,” he then said. “That was agreed upon between you and Don Felix, I remember; and after all it would be infinitely preferable that we should be your prisoners than that we should fall by the murderous hands of the pirates. Do you happen to know if there is any other means of gaining the deck above than the ladder by which we descended!”
“Yes,” said I; “there is another ladder abaft there which leads to the main and upper decks by way of the after hatchway.”
At this moment a muffled boom smote our ears, and a crash somewhere above us, which followed a second or two later, showed that the pirate had opened fire and was within range.
This was immediately succeeded by a confused discharge from the Santa Catalina of all the main-deck guns of the larboard broadside, one after the other.
“Don Luis,” said I, “for Heaven’s sake try to persuade Don Felix not to return the pirate’s fire. Those twelve-pounder carronades are of comparatively little use except at close quarters, and Merlani is not fool enough to give you the chance to use them to advantage; he will simply heave to out of range and blaze away with his long gun until more than half your crew are killed, when he will dash alongside and carry the ship without an effort. Tell Don Felix to double-shot his guns and to depress them as much as he can, but not to fire. Let the schooner come alongside—haul down your ensign if you cannot otherwise get him to come—and, when the schooner is close under the muzzles of your guns, fire, and your shot will go right through her bottom. The pirates will then be obliged to board, when, with the advantage afforded by the Catalina’s high sides, you ought to have things all your own way.”
“Thanks! thanks! I will see what I can do,” said Don Luis. “But now, come this way, and bring your men with you; I will take it upon myself to arm you, and then, if the worst comes to the worst, I shall look to you to save ay daughter.”
“And I will do it or perish!” I exclaimed fervently, as I beckoned the Dolphins to follow me and made sail in the wake of Don Luis.
He led us along until we reached the after hatchway, through which we ascended to the deck above, when we again turned aft until we reached a bulkhead inclosing a room beneath Don Felix’s cabin. Don Luis threw open a door in this bulkhead, and exclaiming:
“There, help yourselves; I providentially noticed this room as I was coming down to you just now,” rushed away on deck.
The room disclosed by the opening of the door was of some extent, occupying nearly half the breadth of the vessel; and it had evidently been fitted up as an armoury when the ship had been doing duty as a man-of-war, for though sundry unoccupied pegs and pins showed that the present crew had just been armed from this place, there still remained weapons enough unappropriated for more than twice our numbers. The weapons consisted of muskets, pistols, swords, and cutlasses; but, as there were of course no cartridges lying about, we chose cutlasses only, and, having secured them, hurried back to our former lurking-place. Once safely back there, I lost no time in briefly, yet as fully as possible, explaining the position of affairs to my followers; after which we sat down and calmly waited the course of events, I employing the interval in comparing notes with those of the Dolphin’s officers who had been taken off the floating deck.
Meanwhile gun after gun had been fired by the pirates, to which Don Felix had persistently replied; but after a time the firing ceased overhead, and I was in hopes that Don Luis had been able to persuade the skipper to follow my advice.
At length, after a somewhat tedious interval of suspense, a sharp order or two was given on deck, quickly followed by the simultaneous discharge of the whole of the Santa Catalina’s larboard broadside. A terrible din of shrieks, yells, shouts, and imprecations—heard but very imperfectly by us down below—immediately succeeded. A crash of artillery, accompanied by the thud of shot against the ship’s sides, and the rending of timber overhead, told us that the pirate schooner had promptly returned the broadside, and a slight but very perceptible concussion a minute later indicated that she was alongside. A rattling fire of musketry was immediately opened from the deck of the Santa Catalina, to which the pirates replied with their pistols. Orders were shouted on both sides, the sharp cries of the wounded, and the muffled thud of their bodies falling to the deck, began to mingle with the officers’ shouts of encouragement and the fierce defiances of the men. There was a rush, a confused trampling of feet, more pistol-shots, the ring of steel upon steel, and a medley of human voices raised high in the excitement of mortal combat which told us that the pirates were boarding.
“There they are!” exclaimed Woodford, springing to his feet, his example in this respect being followed by the whole of the men. “Now, what do you say, Mr Lascelles, are we to go up and tackle them?”
“Not yet,” said I; “I have pledged my word that we will not interfere unless the pirates absolutely gain possession of the ship, and that pledge must be scrupulously observed. By the way,” I continued, as an idea flashed through my brain, “I wish you all to understand, my lads, that I am particularly anxious to secure the pirate captain alive, if possible; and I will give fifty pounds to the man who effects his capture. And I suppose I need not remind you that if we have to fight at all it will be for our lives. Those fellows on deck are not likely to give any quarter if they get the best of the tussle.”
“Never fear, sir,” answered Collins, one of the smartest of the crew; “we’ll give ’em a second taste of what they got from us away over there in t
he lagoons.”
“Ay, ay; we will. Trust us for that,” etcetera, etcetera, murmured one and another; and as I looked round at them standing there like hounds in the leash, their eyes gleaming, their feet shuffling impatiently on the deck, their cutlasses tightly grasped in their sinewy hands, their every movement betraying their excitement and eagerness to join in the fray, I felt that they most assuredly would.
Presently hasty footsteps were heard approaching, and in another moment several of the Santa Catalina’s crew came helter-skelter down the ladder, and, taking not the slightest notice of us, rushed off and disappeared in the darkness.
“Steady, lads; not yet!” said I, as the Dolphins, like one man, pulled themselves together and braced themselves for a rush.
More footsteps, and Don Luis appeared, bareheaded, in his shirt-sleeves, his right arm bleeding profusely and dangling useless and broken at his side, whilst his right hand still convulsively grasped the hilt of his broken sword.
“Quick, Don Leo,” he panted; “up with you, for the love of God! Captain Calderon’s courage failed him half an hour ago, and he left the defence of the ship to the first lieutenant, who was killed a moment ago fighting gallantly, and the crew, panic-stricken, at once gave way, scattering all over the decks like frightened sheep, and huddling by twos and threes into the first corner they could find, where they are now being savagely slaughtered by those fiends of pirates. Quick, my dear boy, or you may be too late—my daughter—oh, God, have mercy!—”
“Collins,” said I, “off with your neckerchief; quick, my man; tie it tightly about this gentleman’s arm, above the wound, mind, and stay here in charge of him until you are relieved. Now, lads, away on deck we go. Follow me; hurrah!”
The brave fellows responded with a single heart-stirring cheer as they bounded after me up ladder after ladder, and in the twinkle of a purser’s dip we found ourselves on the upper deck.
A glance sufficed to show us that Don Luis’ statement was literally true. The pirates were scattered all over the upper deck, killing the unresisting Spaniards as if they had been so many rats.
I hastily detailed the gunner with a dozen men to enter and explore the cabins, to defend them against all comers, and to capture any strangers they might discover therein; and then, Woodford leading one division and I the other, we swept the decks from the after hatchway right forward, cutting down everybody who attempted to oppose us. The pirates thus unexpectedly found themselves all huddled together in the eyes of the ship, where, their freedom of movement being seriously interfered with by the presence of the heel of the bowsprit and all the gear which so frequently hampers a ship’s forecastle-head, they were placed at a very serious disadvantage; and, though they fought desperately, we overpowered them without much difficulty, gaining possession of the ship in less than two minutes from the time of our first appearance on deck.
CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE
“All’s well that ends well.”
Leaving Woodford to attend to the securing of the prisoners, I hastened aft to see how Tompion and his little party were faring in the cabins. I found them in the saloon under the poop, with four prisoners who had been discovered ransacking the cabins, and in one of these prisoners, a fine handsome middle-aged man of swarthy complexion, with dark hair clustering in close ringlets all over his shapely head, dark piercing eyes, small ears, from the lobes of which depended a pair of plain gold ear-rings, and a somewhat slim yet wiry and athletic-looking figure clad in a picturesque but somewhat showy costume, I thought I identified the man I was so anxious to meet, Giuseppe Merlani. The man was badly wounded, having been run through the body by Tompion, who had been compelled to inflict the wound in order to save his own life. The fellow looked hard, almost wildly at me, and muttered something which I could not catch, as I was at the moment speaking to the gunner; and when, a minute afterwards, I found myself at liberty to interrogate him, I discovered that he had swooned from loss of blood. I directed Tompion to have him taken below, undressed, and placed in a hammock, despatching one of our men, meanwhile, to hunt up the surgeon of the Santa Catalina, and then made my way below to the spot where I had left Don Luis. I found him still in charge of the man Collins, who had managed in an effectual if somewhat clumsy way, to stanch the bleeding of his wound; and it is scarcely necessary to say that he was overjoyed when I informed him that we had succeeded in recapturing the ship. He at once staggered to his feet, and upon my assuring him that there was nothing further to fear from the pirates, announced his intention of going immediately to his daughter’s hiding-place, begging me to accompany him thither. We accordingly started on our way to the main-deck, Collins supporting Don Luis by placing his arm round the latter’s waist. But we were barely half-way up the ladder when a sudden hubbub and confusion arose on the upper deck, and I was compelled to hasten away to see what it meant. I found that it was caused by the discovery, suddenly made, that the pirate schooner was sinking alongside, and I reached the poop only just in time to see her heel over and founder stern first, the broadside of shot which had been fired into her when she ranged alongside having passed through her deck and out through her bottom, thus occasioning so fatal a leak that the only wonder was that she had floated so long.
The excitement and confusion attending this incident had not subsided when the surviving Spanish officers and crew made their reappearance on deck. The former were very profuse in their compliments and thanks for what they termed our invaluable assistance; having tendered which they manifested a disposition to resume their former status on board. But I was quite determined not to allow this. The ship had passed completely out of their possession into that of the pirates, and had been recaptured by us. She was therefore our lawful prize, and I was resolved to retain possession of her, as I had informed Don Felix I would. I pointed this out to the Spanish officers, and requested them to surrender their swords, which, very sensibly, they did. Don Felix, however, who had hidden himself away below somewhere, and who did not reappear until some time after the others, stormed and blustered and reviled us, calling us everything but gentlemen, and demanding to know whether we considered we were making him a proper return for his kindness in having rescued us. This, of course, was all very well; but he had refused our offer of assistance, as I pointed out to him, and had had his ship taken from him, not by us, but by the pirates. He was, of course, obliged to deliver up his sword; but he would not listen to reason, retiring to his cabin and sulking there until our arrival in Port Royal harbour, for which, on gaining possession of the ship, I had at once shaped a course. Previous to this, however, I had secured his despatch-box and had put it in a place of safety, otherwise I have no doubt he would have promptly dropped it overboard out of the stern windows.
I was anxious to treat my prisoners with the same generosity and consideration which they had accorded to me; and I hastened to set their minds at rest upon this point. But whilst the officers were perfectly willing to give their own parole, they reluctantly admitted that they felt it quite impossible to guarantee the good behaviour of their men; I was therefore compelled, in self-defence, to confine the latter below. All this took up a great deal of time; it was consequently not until after the men had had their dinner that I was able to set the watches and start the carpenter upon the task of getting new spars ready for sending aloft. I had been informed by the Spanish surgeon, when we all sat down to luncheon together, that Don Luis’ hurt was not of a serious character, and that he was likely to do well enough if the fever resulting from his wound could be kept under; but with regard to the pirate captain the case was different: his wound, I was assured, was mortal, and whilst the man might possibly linger for several days, he might, on the other hand, expire at any moment. The surgeon further informed me that Merlani—for he it really proved to be—had manifested quite an extraordinary inquisitiveness respecting me, and had at last requested that I might be informed he would like to speak to me.
As soon, therefore, as I found myself at liberty, I, withou
t delaying even to wait upon Don Luis and Inez, made my way below to the sick-bay, where, in a little corner which had been separated by a screen from the part occupied by the other injured men, lay Merlani in a hammock, with one of my men to attend upon and at the same time stand sentry over him.
He was ghastly pale, and evidently suffering great pain, as I could see by the occasional twitching of his facial muscles, as well as by the perspiration which bedewed his forehead and trickled down upon the pillow; but he seemed to be quite free from fever, and he was perfectly steady and collected in his mind.
He looked long and eagerly in my face as I stood beside his hammock, and his countenance brightened up with pleasure. At length he said in Spanish:
“This is kind of you, Señor Lascelles. I wanted to see you, because in the moment that I first looked upon your face I was reminded of one who in my younger days I almost worshipped; and when, during the dressing of my wound, I learned your name, I could not resist the temptation of believing that you must be related to her—that you must, in fact, be her son. Tell me, am I not right? Are you not the son of Maria Bisaccia?”
“That was indeed my mother’s name,” I said, greatly disconcerted. “But I find it difficult to understand how it could possibly have happened that you and my mother should have—”
“Known anything of each other?” he interrupted. “Yes; and well you may. But it is easily explained. I have not always been the blood-stained villain that I now am; when I knew your mother I was, I need scarcely say, wholly innocent of crime. Idle, perhaps; wayward; and a trifle wild I undoubtedly was; but crime and I were strangers, and strangers we should have continued to be,” he added somewhat wildly, “if I had but listened to and heeded the warnings and pleadings of my sweet foster-sister.”
“Your foster-sister!” I ejaculated, a great light bursting in upon me in a moment. “Was my mother your foster-sister?”
The Pirate Story Megapack: 25 Classic and Modern Tales Page 171