CHAPTER V
RELEASING A FEARFUL WEAPON
JACK COCKRELL sprawled flat upon the forecastle roof and knew not whatto do. He could lay hands on nothing to serve as a weapon and he badefair to be trapped like the sailors whose cause he had joined. With afeeling of despair he let his gaze rove to the scrawny figure of JoeHawkridge who still bestrode the nine-pounder and took no part in thefray. But Joe had no comfort for him, as a gesture conveyed. It had beenJoe's wild scheme to obtain the help of Jack and Captain Wellsby, at theleast, and so cast loose the gun and slew it around to rake the deck andmow the pirates down. But the men were lacking for this heavy task, andthe sailors of the _Plymouth Adventure_ were too intent on fightingagainst fearful odds to pay heed to Joe Hawkridge's appeals. He had evenskulked into the galley and was ready with a little iron pot filled withlive coals which was hidden under a bit of tarpaulin.
Ned Rackham was a young man and powerful, with a long reach and askilled blade. He fairly hewed his way into the ruck of the dauntlesssailors who had no more bricks to hurl. Several pirates were disabled,with broken arms or bloody crowns, but the others crowded forward,grunting as they slashed and stabbed, and well aware that Ned Rackhamwould cut the laggards down should he detect them.
At the moment when there seemed no chance of salvation for the crew ofthe _Plymouth Adventure_, Joe Hawkridge leaped from the gun and beckonedJack. The grin was restored to the homely, freckled visage and the saltwater gamin danced in jubilant excitement. Down from the forecastle rooftumbled Jack Cockrell and went sliding across the deck, heels over head,to fetch up in the scupper. Joe hauled him by the leg, close to thewooden carriage of the gun, and swiftly told him what was to be done.
Obediently Jack began to loose the knots which secured the rope tacklesbut it was a slow task. The wet had made the hemp as hard as iron and helacked a marlinspike. Joe dodged around the gun, saw the difficulty andsawed through one rope after another, all but the last strand or two.Then the lads tailed on to the breeching hawsers, which held thecarriage from sliding on its iron rollers, and eased the strain as wellas they could.
The ponderous mass was almost free to plunge across the deck. Joesweated and braced his feet against a ring-bolt while Jack Cockrellfound a cleat. Ned Rackham's men were moving forward, cut and thrust,while the sailors grappled with them bare-handed and battled grimlylike mastiffs.
"The next time she rolls!" panted Joe Hawkridge as the hawser ripped theskin from his palms.
"Aye, make ready to cut," muttered Jack.
The ship heaved herself high and then listed far down to starboard. Joeslashed at the last strands of the tackles and yelled to Jack to let gothe hawser. Instead of discharging the nine-pounder, they were employingthe piece itself, and the carriage of oak and iron, as a terriblemissile. The moment of launching it was shrewdly chosen. The pirates,still in compact formation as led by Ned Rackham, were directly abreastof this forward gun of the main deck battery. The deck inclined at asteep and giddy pitch. With a grinding roar the gun rolled from itsstation. It gathered impetus and lunged across the ship as an instrumentof fell destruction. It was more to be feared than an assault of armedmen.
The warning rumble of the iron wheels as they furrowed the planking washeard by the pirates. They turned from their game of butchery and stoodfrozen in their tracks for a frightened instant. Then they tried to fleein all directions. Their tarry pigtails fairly stood on end. Well theyknew what it meant to have a gun break adrift in a heavy sea. Two orthree who had been badly hurt were unable to move fast enough. The guncrunched over them and then seemed to pursue a limping pirate, veeringto overtake him as he fled. He was tossed against the bulwark like abundle of bloody rags.
The gun crashed into the stout timbers of the ship's side and they weresplintered like match-wood. It rebounded as the deck sloped sharply inthe next wallowing roll, and now this frenzied monster of wood and ironseemed fairly to run amuck. It was inspired with a sinisterintelligence, resolved to wreak all the damage possible. The pinnace,the water barrels, the coamings of the cargo hatches, were smashed tofragments as the gun turned this way and that and went plunging insearch of victims.
THE BRAWN OF THESE LADS MADE THE PIKE A MATCH FOR APIRATE'S CUTLASS]
Left to themselves, the seamen of the _Plymouth Adventure_ would haverisked their lives to cast ropes about the gun and moor it fast. But nowthey were quick to see that the tide had been turned in their favor. Thepirates were demoralized. Some were in the rigging, others atop thebulwarks, and only the readiest and boldest, with Ned Rackham in thelead, had an eye to the task in hand, which was to regain possession ofthe ship.
And now the boatswain of the _Plymouth Adventure_, a rosy giant of a manfrom South Devon, shouted to his comrades to follow him. They delayeduntil the runaway cannon crashed into another gun, and then they brokelike sprinters from the mark and sped straight for the mainmast, seekingthe rack of boarding-pikes. They ran nimbly, as men used to swayingdecks, and compassed the distance in a few strides.
Ned Rackham perceived their purpose and tried to intercept but his fewstaunch followers moved warily, expecting to see that insensate monsterof a gun bear down upon them. The swiftest of the merchant sailors laidhands on the pikes and whirled to cover their shipmates, until all handscould be armed. Then the gun came roaring down at them but they duckedbehind the mast or stepped watchfully aside. Men condemned to death arenot apt to lose their wits in the face of one more peril.
These pikes were ashen shafts with long steel points and the merchantseamen had been trained to use them. And the brawn of these lads madethe pike a match for a pirate's cutlass. Ned Rackham bounded forward toswing at the broad, deep-chested boatswain. A wondrous pair ofantagonists they were, in the prime of their youth and vigor. Thepirate's cutlass bit clean through the pike shaft as the boatswainparried the blow but the apple-cheeked Devonshire man closed in andwrapped his arms around his foe. They went to the deck clutching foreach other's throats and the fight trampled over them.
Meanwhile Joe Hawkridge and Jack Cockrell, unwilling to twiddle theirthumbs, had rushed aft as fast as their legs could carry them. It was amutual impulse, to release such of the men passengers as might have astomach for fighting and also the ship's officers. Into the doorwaywhich led from the waist, the two lads dived and scurried through themain cabin now clear of pirates. Locked doors they smashed with abroadaxe found in the small-arms chest and so entered all the rooms.
The women passengers were almost dead with suffering, what with theturbulence of the storm and the wild riot on deck. The lads pitied thembut had no time to console. Several of the men, merchants and plantersof some physical hardihood, begged for weapons and Joe Hawkridge badethem help themselves from the spare arms which the pirates had left inthe great cabin. In another little room the boys found the mates,steward, surgeon, and gunner of the _Plymouth Adventure_ and you may besure that they came boiling out with a raging thirst for strife.
"Harkee, Jack," said Joe before they climbed to the poop deck, "if thepirates are driven aft, as I expect, they will make a last stand in thiscabin house which is like a fort. These 'fenseless women must be hiddensafe from harm. Do you coax 'em into the lazarette."
This was a room on the deck below, in the very stern of the ship wherewere kept the extra sails and coils of rope and various stores. It wasthe surest shelter against harm in such stress as this. Alas, Jack'spersuasions were vain. The frantic women were in no humor to listen, andso the lads bundled them through the hatch as gently as possible andfor company gave them such male passengers as lacked strength or courageto join the battle.
While they were thus engaged, two pirates came flying down the ladderfrom the poop deck into the main cabin. They revolved like windmills ina jumble of arms and legs. Close behind them, in a manner more orderlycame Captain Jonathan Wellsby who had tossed the one and tremendouslybooted the other. They were the helmsmen whom he had replaced with hisown officers at the steering tackles, while his first mate had been leftin ch
arge of handling the ship.
The skipper was now free to follow his own desires and he fell uponthose two stunned pirates in the cabin and trussed them tight with bitsof rope. Then he reloaded with dry powder all the pistols he could findand made a walking arsenal of himself. The two lads who now joined himneeded no word of command. At his heels they made for the main deck andthe shout which arose from those British sailors, so sorely beset, wasmightily heartening.
Blazing away with his pistols, the skipper cleared a path for himself,the pirates being taken aback when they were attacked in the rear. Andthey were leaderless, for Ned Rackham had been dragged aside with themarks of the boatswain's fingers on his throat and a sheath-knife buriedin his side. He was alive but nobody paid heed to his groans.
With the skipper in the thick of it, there was no danger of being pennedin the forecastle again. The pirates were crowded aft, step by step,before the play of those wicked boarding-pikes. It would be hard tomatch a sea fight like this, amid the spray and the washing seas, on adeck that tipsily danced and staggered, with a truant gun smashing agood ship to bits and the wounded screaming as they saw this horrorthundering at them. Captain Wellsby's men were at pains to drag theirhelpless comrades to safety but the pirates were too callous and toohard pressed to care for aught save their own worthless skins. Theyfought like wolves but they lacked the gristle and endurance of thestalwart sailors. Wheezing for breath, they ceased to curse and reeledback in silence while the sailors huzzaed and seemed to wax the lustier.
As was bound to happen, the stubborn retreat broke into a rout. It wasevery man for himself and the devil take the hindmost. The pirates fledfor the after cabin-house, there to take cover behind the timbered wallsand use the small port-holes for musketry fire. Thus they could findrespite and it would be immensely difficult to dislodge them.
The first mate of the _Plymouth Adventure_ and his own two helmsmen sawwhat was taking place and they were of no mind to be cut off at thestern of the ship. They footed it along the poop and the cabin roof asthe pirates were scampering inside and so gained the waist and werewith their comrades. The tiller deserted, the vessel careened into thetrough of the sea with a portentous creaking of spars and rending ofcanvas.
The mainmast had been dealt more than one splintering blow by thefugitive gun. This sudden strain, of a ship broached to and hurledalmost on her beam ends, was too much for the damaged mast. It brokeshort off, a few feet above the deck, and the ragged butt ripped theplanks asunder as it was dragged overside by the weight of the toweringfabric of yards and canvas. One merciful circumstance befell, for thetangle of shrouds and sheets and halliards ensnared the ramping monsterof a cannon and overturned it. Caught in this manner, the gun wasdragged to the broken bulwark and there it was held with the batteredcarriage in air.
The mainmast was floating alongside the ship which it belabored withthumps that jarred the hull. It was likely to stave in the skin of thevessel and Captain Wellsby shouted to his men to hack at the trailingcordage and send the mast clear before it did a fatal injury. A dozenmen risked drowning at this task while the others guarded the aftercabin lest the pirates attempt a sally. These besieged rogues were givenan interval in which to muster their force, organize a defense, andbreak into the magazine for muskets and powder and ball.
Now Captain Wellsby was no dullard and he purposed to make short work ofthese vile pirates. Otherwise his crippled ship might not survive thewind and weather. He conferred with his gunner who had bethoughthimself, by force of habit, to fetch from aft his powder-horn andseveral yards of match, or twisted tow, which were wrapped around hisbody, beneath the tarred jerkin.
"It grieves me sore to wreck yonder goodly cabin house," said theskipper in his beard, "but, by Judas, we'll blow 'em out of it. Haul andbelay your pieces, Master Gunner, and let 'em have a salvo of roundshot."
Reckless of the musket balls which began to fly among them, the sailorsjumped for their stations at the guns. First they set aright thatcapsized nine-pounder which had wreaked so much mischief and found thatit could be discharged, despite the broken carriage. Joe Hawkridge andJack Cockrell blithely aided to swing and secure it with emergencytackles and Joe exclaimed, with a chuckle:
"This dose is enough to surprise Blackbeard hisself. 'Tis anironmonger's shop I rammed down its throat."
The gun was laid on the largest cabin port-hole just as it framed theugly face of a pirate with a musket while another peered over hisshoulder. Joe shook the powder-horn into the touch-hole and the gunnerwas ready with the match which he had lighted with his own flint andsteel. Boom, and the gun recoiled in a veil of smoke. Through the cabinport-hole flew a deadly shower of spikes and bolts while the frameworkaround it was shattered to bits. It was a most unhealthy place forpirates. They forsook it instantly. And the musketry fire slackenedelsewhere. It was to be inferred that there was painful consternation inthe cabin.
With boisterous mirth, the sailors deftly turned other guns to bear andwere careful not to let them get adrift. The muzzles had been wellstopped against wetting by the sea and with a little dry powder for thepriming, most of them could be served. They could not be reloaded fordearth of ammunition but Captain Wellsby felt confident that one roundwould suffice.
Methodically the gun-crews aimed and fired one gun after another,watching the chance between the seas that broke aboard. The solid roundshot, at short range, ripped through the cabin walls and bulkheads andburied themselves in the frames and timbers of the ship's stern. A goodgunner was never so happy as when he saw the white splinters fly inshowers and these zealous sailormen forgot they were knocking their ownship to pieces. They were on the target, and this was good enough.
The beleaguered pirates made no more pretense of firing muskets ordefying the crew to dig them out. Their fort was an untenable position.At this sport of playing bowls with round shot they were bound to lose.Captain Wellsby sighted the last gun himself. It was a bronze culverinof large bore, taken as a trophy from the stranded wreck of a Spanishgalleon. With a tremendous blast this formidable cannon spat out adouble-shotted load and the supports of the cabin roof were tornasunder. The tottering beams collapsed. Half the structure fell in.
It was the signal for the sailors of the _Plymouth Adventure_ to chargeaft and finish the business. They found pirates crawling from under thewreckage. It was like a demolished ant-heap. In the smaller cabins andother rooms far aft, which were more or less intact, some of the rascalsshowed fight but they were remorselessly prodded out with pikes andthose unwounded were hustled forward to be thrown into the forecastle.It was difficult to restrain the seamen from dealing them the death theydeserved but Captain Wellsby was no sea-butcher and he hoped to turnthem over to the colonial authorities to be hanged with due ceremony.
The badly hurt were laid in the forecastle bunks where the ship'ssurgeon washed and bandaged them after he had cared for the injured menof his own crew. Ned Rackham was still alive, conscious and defiant,surviving a wound which would have been mortal in most cases. Whether helived or died was a matter of small concern to Captain Wellsby but heordered the surgeon to nurse him with special care.
The dead pirates were flung overboard but the bodies of seven braveBritish seamen were wrapped in sailcloth to be committed to the deep onthe morrow, with a round shot at their feet and a prayer to speed theirsouls. There were men enough to work the ship but she was in asituation indescribably forlorn. It was possible to patch and shore thecabin house and make a refuge, even to find place for the wretched womenwho were lifted unharmed out of the lazarette. But the stout ship, hermainmast gone by the board, the deck ravaged by that infernal catapultof an errant gun, the hull pounded by the floating wreckage of spars,would achieve a miracle should she see port again.
The combat with the pirates and their overthrow had been waged in thelast hour before the gray night closed over a somber sea. God's mercyhad caused the wind to fall and the waves to diminish in size else theship would have gone to the bottom ere dawn. Much water had washed d
owninto the hold through the broken cargo hatch and the gaps where therunaway gun had torn other fittings away. The carpenter sounded the welland solemnly stared at the wetted rod by the flicker of his hornlantern. The ship was settling. It was his doleful surmise that sheleaked where the pounding spars overside had started the butts. It wasman the pumps to keep the old hooker afloat and Captain Wellsby orderedhis weary men to sway at the brakes, watch and watch.
Joe Hawkridge and Jack Cockrell, more fit for duty than the others, puttheir backs into it right heartily while the sailors droned to thecadence of the pump a sentimental ditty which ran on for any number ofverses and began in this wise:
"As, lately I traveled toward Gravesend, I heard a fair Damosel a Sea-man commend: And as in a Tilt-boat we passed along, In praise of brave Sea-men she sung this new Song, _Come Tradesman or Marchant, whoever he be, There's none but a Sea-man shall marry with me!_"
Thus they labored all the night through, men near dead with fatiguewhose hard fate it was to contend now with pirates and again with thehostile ocean. The skipper managed to stay the foremast and to bendsteering sails so that the ship was brought into the wind where hermotion was easier. The sky cleared before daybreak and the rosy horizonproclaimed a fair sunrise. How far and in what direction the _PlymouthAdventure_ had been blown by the storm was largely guesswork. By meansof dead reckoning and the compass and cross-staff, Captain Wellsby hopedto work out a position but meanwhile he scanned the sea with a sense ofbrooding anxiety.
Instead of praying for plenty of sea room, he now hoped with all hisheart that the vessel had been set in toward the coast. She was sinkingunder his feet and would not live through the day. It was useless totoil at the pumps or to strive at mending the shattered upperworks. Themen turned to the task of quitting the ship, and of saving the souls onboard. It was a pitiful extremity and yet they displayed a dogged,unshaken fidelity. Only one boat had escaped destruction. The pinnacehad been staved in by the thunderbolt of a gun and the yawl, stowed uponthe cabin roof, was wrecked by round shot. The small jolly-boat wouldhold the women passengers and the wounded sailors, with the handsrequired to tend oars and sail.
Nothing remained but to try to knock together one or more rafts. CaptainWellsby discussed it with his officers and it was agreed that theable-bodied pirates should be left to build a raft for themselves,taking their own wounded with them. This was more mercy than they hadany right to expect. The strapping young Devonshire boatswain, with hishead tied up, was for leaving the blackguards to drown in the forecastlebut the shipmaster was too humane a man for that.
It was drawing toward noon when the first mate descried land to thewestward, a bit of low coast almost level with the sea. In the light airthe sluggish ship moved ever so slowly, with canvas spread on the foreand mizzen masts. Spirits revived and life tasted passing sweet. Todrift in the open sea upon wave-washed rafts was an expedient which allmariners shuddered to contemplate. It was with feelings far differentthat they now assembled spars and planks and lashed and spiked themtogether on the chance of needing rafts to ferry them ashore from astranded ship.
Well into the bright afternoon the _Plymouth Adventure_ was waftednearer and nearer the sandy coast. Within a half mile of it a line ofbreakers frothed and tumbled on a shoal beyond which the water deepenedagain. The ship could not be steered to avoid this barrier. Her maindeck was almost level with the sea which lapped her gently and sobbedthrough the broken bulwarks. With a slight shock she struck the shoaland rested there just before she was ready to founder.
With disciplined haste, the jolly-boat was launched and filled with itshuman freightage. The boatswain went in charge and four seamen tugged atthe sweeps. There were trees and clumps of bushes among the hillocks ofsand and a tiny bight for a landing place. The bulwark was then choppedaway so that the largest raft could be shoved into the water by means oftackles, rollers and handspikes. It floated buoyantly and supported asmany as fifteen men, who did not mind in the least getting their feetwet. Upon a raised platform in the centre of the raft were fastenedbarrels of beef and bread and casks of fresh water.
The jolly-boat could hope to make other trips between the ship and theshore but the prudent skipper took no chances with the weather. A suddengale might pluck the _Plymouth Adventure_ from the shoal or tear her tofragments where she lay. Therefore most of the men, includingpassengers, were embarked on the raft. Captain Wellsby remained aboardwith a few of his sailors and our two lads, Joe and Jack, who had notattempted to thrust themselves upon the crowded raft.
The pirates were making a commotion in the forecastle, yammering to befreed, but the skipper had no intention of loosing them until all hispeople had safely abandoned ship. The jolly-boat made a landing withoutmishap and returned to the wreck as the sun went down. More stores weredumped into it, sacks of potatoes and onions which had been overlooked,bedding for the women, powder and ball for the muskets, and other thingswhich it was necessary to keep dry.
Captain Wellsby got rid of the rest of his men on this trip, exceptingthe gunner and carpenter, and these lingered with him as a kind ofbody-guard pending the ticklish business of releasing the imprisonedpirates and forsaking them to their own devices. The jolly-boat wasladen to the gunwales and Jack Cockrell held back, saying to JoeHawkridge:
"Why trouble the captain to set us ashore? Let us make a raft of ourown. The breeze holds fair to the beach and it will be a lark."
"It suits me well," grinned Joe. "If we wait to go off with the master,and those sinful pirates see me aboard, I'll need wings to escape 'em.They saw me serve the gun that was filled with spikes to the muzzle.Aye, Jack, I will feel happier to be elsewhere when Cap'n Wellsby unbarsthe fo'castle and holds 'em back with his pistols till he can cast offin the jolly-boat."
"Yes, the sight of you is apt to put them in a vile temper," laughinglyagreed Jack, "and 'tis awkward for the master to bother with us. Nowabout a little raft----"
"Two short spars are enough. There they lie. And the cabin hatch will dofor a deck. Spikes for thole-pins, and oars from the pinnace. Unlace thebonnet of the jib for a sail."
"You are a proper sailorman, Joe. A voyage by starlight to an unknowncoast. 'Tis highly romantic."
They set to work without delay. Captain Wellsby had occupations of hisown and no more than glanced at them in passing. Jack insisted oncarrying a water breaker and rations, he being hungry and too busy topause for supper. They would make a picnic cruise of the adventure.Handily Joe reeved a purchase and they hauled away until their raft slidoff the sloping deck to leeward. With a gay hurrah to Captain Wellsby,they paddled around the stern of the ship and through the ruffle of surfthat marked the shoal.
In the soft twilight they trimmed the sail and swung at the clumsy oars,while a fire blazing on the beach was a beacon to guide their course.After a time they rested and wiped the sweat from their faces. Theprogress of the raft was like that of a lazy snail. In the luminousdarkness they pulled with all their strength. The wind had died to acalm. The sail hung idle from its yard. They heard, faint and afar, thedeep voices of the sailors in the jolly-boat as they returned to takethe skipper and his two companions from the ship on which a lightburned.
The lads shouted but there came no answering hail from the unseen boat.They were perplexed to understand how their courses could be so farapart. Presently the night breeze drew off the land, bringing with itthe scent of green things growing. Joe Hawkridge stared at the fire onthe beach and then turned to look at the spark of light on the ship. Theraft had drifted considerably to the southward. Anxiously Joe said tohis shipmate:
"The flood o' the tide must be setting us down the coast, in some crazycurrent or other. Mayhap it runs strong through this race betwixt theshoal and the beach with a slant that's bad for us."
"I noted it," glumly agreed Jack. "The jolly-boat passed too far away toplease me. And this landward breeze is driving us to sea."
"No sense in breaking our backs at these
oars," grumbled Joe. "We goahead like a crab, with a sternboard. Think ye we can swing the raft tofetch the ship?"
"After Captain Wellsby turns the pirates loose and quits her?" scoffedJack.
"I am a plaguey fool," cheerfully admitted Joe Hawkridge. "'Twould beout of the frying-pan into the fire, with a vengeance."
"And no way to signal our friends," sadly exclaimed Jack. "We forgotflint and steel. It looks much like another voyage."
"Straight for the open sea, my bully boy," agreed Joe. "And I'd as soonchance it on a hen-coop."
Blackbeard: Buccaneer Page 5