by G. A. Henty
“There is certainly no hope of rescue, Matteo. It is too early, as yet, to say whether there is any hope of escape. The prospect looked darker when I was in the hands of Ruggiero, but I managed to get away. Then I was alone and closely guarded, now we have in the ship well nigh two hundred friends; prisoners like ourselves, it is true, but still to be counted on. Then, too, the Genoese are no doubt so elated with their triumph, that they are hardly likely to keep a very vigilant guard over us. Altogether, I should say that the chances are in our favour. Were I sure that the Pluto is sailing alone, I should be very confident that we might retake her, but probably the fifteen captured ships are sailing in company, and would at once come to the aid of their comrades here, directly they saw any signs of a conflict going on, and we could hardly hope to recapture the ship without making some noise over it.”
“I should think not,” Matteo agreed.
“Then again, Matteo, even if we find it impossible to get at the crew, and with them to recapture the ship, some chance may occur by which you and I may manage to make our escape.”
“If you say so, Francisco, I at once believe it. You got us all out of the scrape down at Girgenti. You got Polani’s daughters out of a worse scrape when they were captives on San Nicolo; and got yourself out of the worst scrape of all when you escaped from the grip of Ruggiero Mocenigo. Therefore, when you say that there is a fair chance of escape out of this business, I look upon it as almost as good as done.”
“It is a long way from that, Matteo,” Francis laughed. “Still, I hope we may manage it somehow. I have the greatest horror of a Genoese prison, for it is notorious that they treat their prisoners of war shamefully, and I certainly do not mean to enter one, if there is the slightest chance of avoiding it. But for today, Matteo, I shall not even begin to think about it. In the first place, my head aches with the various thumps it has had; in the second, I feel weak from loss of blood; and in the third, my wounds smart most amazingly.”
“So do mine,” Matteo agreed. “In addition, I am hungry, for the bread they gave us this morning was not fit for dogs, although I had to eat it, as it was that or nothing.”
“And now, Matteo, I shall try to get a few hours’ sleep. I did not close my eyes last night, from the pain of my wounds, but I think I might manage to drop off now.”
The motion of the vessel aided the effect of the bodily weakness that Francis was feeling, and in spite of the pain of his wounds he soon went off into a sound sleep. Once or twice he woke, but hearing no voices or movement, he supposed his companions were all asleep, and again went off, until a stream of light coming in from the opening of the hatchway thoroughly roused him. Matteo, who was lying by his side, also woke and stretched himself, and there was a general movement among the ten young men who were their comrades in misfortune.
“Here is your breakfast,” a voice from above the hatchway said, and a basket containing bread and a bucket of water was lowered by ropes.
“Breakfast!” Matteo said. “Why, it is not two hours since we breakfasted last.”
“I suspect it is twenty-two, Matteo. We have had a very long sleep, and I feel all the better of it. Now, let us divide the liberal breakfast our captors have given us; fortunately there is just enough light coming down from those scuttles to enable us to do so fairly.”
There was a general laugh, from his comrades, at the cheerful way in which Francis spoke. Only one of them had been an officer on the Pluto. The rest were, like Matteo, volunteers of good families. There was a good deal of light-hearted jesting over their meal. When it was over, Francis said:
“Now let us hold a council of war.”
“You are better off than Pisani was, anyhow,” one of the young men said, “for you are not hampered with proveditors, and anything that your captaincy may suggest will, you may be sure, receive our assent.”
“I am your captain no longer,” Francis replied. “We are all prisoners now, and equal, and each one has a free voice and a free vote.”
“Then I give my voice and vote at once, Francisco,” Matteo said, “to the proposal that you remain our captain, and that we obey you, as cheerfully and willingly as we should if you were on the poop of the Pluto, instead of being in the hold. In the first place, at Carlo’s death you became our captain by right, so long as we remain together; and in the second place you have more experience than all of us put together, and a very much better head than most of us, myself included.
“Therefore, comrades, I vote that Messer Francisco Hammond be still regarded as our captain, and obeyed as such.”
There was a general chorus of assent, for the energy which Francis had displayed throughout the trying winter, and the manner in which he had led the crew during the desperate fighting, had won for him the regard and the respect of them all.
“Very well, then,” Francis said. “If you wish it so I will remain your leader, but we will nevertheless hold our council of war. The question which I shall first present to your consideration is, which is the best way to set about retaking the Pluto?”
There was a burst of laughter among the young men. The matter of fact way in which Francis proposed, what seemed to them an impossibility, amused them immensely.
“I am quite in earnest,” Francis went on, when the laughter had subsided. “If it is possibly to be done, I mean to retake the Pluto, and I have very little doubt that it is possible, if we set about it in the right way. In the first place, we may take it as absolutely certain that we very considerably outnumber the Genoese on board. They must have suffered in the battle almost as much as we did, and have had nearly as many killed and wounded. In the second place, if Doria intends to profit by his victory, he must have retained a fair amount of fighting men on board each of his galleys, and, weakened as his force was by the losses of the action, he can spare but a comparatively small force on board each of the fifteen captured galleys. I should think it probable that there are not more than fifty men in charge of the Pluto, and we number fully three times that force. The mere fact that they let down our food to us by ropes, instead of bringing it down, showed a consciousness of weakness.”
“What you say is quite true,” Paolo Parucchi, the other officer of the Pluto, said; “but they are fifty well-armed men, and we are a hundred and fifty without arms, and shut down in the hold, to which must be added the fact that we are cut off from our men, and our men from us. They are, as it were, without a head to plan, while we are without arms to strike.”
A murmur of approval was heard among some of the young men.
“I do not suppose that there are no difficulties in our way,” Francis said quietly; “or that we have only, next time the hatch is opened, to say to those above, ‘Gentlemen of Genoa, we are more numerous than you are, and we therefore request you to change places with us immediately.’ All I have asserted, so far, is that we are sufficiently strong to retake the ship, if we get the opportunity. What we have now to settle, is how that opportunity is to come about.
“To begin with, has anyone a dagger or knife which has escaped the eye of our searchers?”
No one replied.
“I was afraid that nothing had escaped the vigilance of those who appropriated our belongings. As, however, we have no weapons or tools, the next thing is to see what there is, in the hold, which can be turned to account. It is fortunate we are on board the Pluto, instead of being transferred to another ship, as we already know all about her. There are some iron bolts driven in along a beam at the farther end. They have been used, I suppose, at some time or other for hanging the carcasses of animals from. Let us see whether there is any chance of getting some of them out.”
The iron pegs, however, were so firmly driven into the beam, that all their efforts failed to move them in the slightest.
“We will give that up for the present,” Francis said, “and look round for something more available.”
But with the exception of the water casks, the closest search failed to find anything in the hold.
> “I do not know whether the iron hoops of a cask would be of any use,” Matteo said.
“Certainly they would be of use, if we get them off, Matteo.”
“There is no difficulty about that,” one of the others said, examining the casks closely. “This is an empty one, and the hoops seem quite loose.”
In a few minutes, four iron hoops were taken off the cask.
“After all,” Matteo said, “they cannot be of much use. The iron is rust eaten, and they would break in our hands before going into any one.”
“They would certainly be useless as daggers, Matteo, but I think that with care they will act as saws. Break off a length of about a foot.
“Now straighten it, and tear a piece off your doublet and wrap it round and round one end, so that you can hold it. Now just try it on the edge of a beam.”
“It certainly cuts,” Matteo announced after a trial, “but not very fast.”
“So that it cuts at all, we may be very well content,” Francis said cheerfully. “We have got a week, at least, to work in; and if the wind is not favourable, we may have a month. Let us therefore break the hoops up into pieces of the right length. We must use them carefully, for we may expect to have many breakages.”
“What next, captain?”
“Our object will, of course, be to cut through into the main hold, which separates us from the crew. There we shall probably find plenty of weapons. But to use our saws, we must first find a hole in the bulkhead. First of all, then, let there be a strict search made for a knothole, or any other hole through the bulkhead.”
It was too dark for eyes to be of much use, but hands were run all over the bulkhead. But no hole, however small, was discovered.
“It is clear, then,” Francis said, “that the first thing to do is to cut out some of those iron bolts. Pick out those that are nearest to the lower side of the beam, say three of them. There are twelve of us. That will give four to each bolt, and we can relieve each other every few minutes. Remember, it is patience that is required, and not strength.”
The work was at once begun. The young men had, by this time, fully entered into the spirit of the attempt. The quiet and businesslike way, in which their leader set about it, convinced them that he at least had a firm belief that the work was possible; and there was a hope, even if but a remote one, of avoiding the dreaded dungeons of Genoa.
The work was slow, and two or three of the strips of iron were at first broken, by the too great eagerness of their holders; but when it was found that, by using them lightly, the edges gradually cut their way into the wood, the work went on regularly. The Pluto had been hurriedly constructed, and any timbers that were available in the emergency were utilized. Consequently much soft wood, that at other times would never have been found in the state dockyards, was put into her. The beam at which they were working was of soft timber, and a fine dust fell steadily, as the rough iron was sawed backward and forward upon it.
Two cuts were made under each bolt, wide at the base and converging towards it. The saws were kept going the whole day, and although the progress was slow, it was fast enough to encourage them; and just as the light, that came through the scuttle, faded away; three of the young men hung their weight upon one of the bolts, and the wood beneath it, already almost severed, gave; and a suppressed cry of satisfaction announced that one bolt was free.
The pieces of iron were two feet long, and were intended for some other purpose, but had been driven in when, on loading the ship, some strong pegs on which to hang carcasses were required. They were driven about three inches into the beam, and could have been cut out with an ordinary saw in two or three minutes.
“Try the others,” Francis said. “As many of you get hold of them as can put your hands on.”
The effort was made, and the other two bolts were got out. They had been roughly sharpened at the end, and were fully an inch across.
“They do not make bad weapons,” Matteo said.
“It is not as weapons that we want them, Matteo. They will be more useful to us than any weapons, except, indeed, a good axe. We shall want at least three more. Therefore, I propose that we continue our work at once. We will divide into watches now. It will be twelve hours before we get our allowance of bread again, therefore that will give three hours’ work, and nine hours’ sleep to each. They will be just setting the first watch on deck, and, as we shall hear them changed, it will give us a good idea how the time is passing.”
“I am ready to work all night, myself,” Matteo said. “At first I had not much faith in what we were doing; but now that we have got three of these irons out, I am ready to go on working until I drop.”
“You will find, Matteo, that your arms will ache, so that you cannot hold them up, before the end of the three hours. Sawing like that, with your arms above your head, is most fatiguing; and even the short spells of work we have been having made my arms ache. However, each must do as much as he can in his three hours; and as we are working in the dark, we must work slowly and carefully, or we shall break our tools.”
“Fortunately, we can get more hoops off now if we want them,” Matteo said. “With these irons we can wrench them off the sound casks, if necessary.”
“Yes; I did not think of that, Matteo. You see we are already getting a stock of tools. Another thing is, with the point of the irons we have got off, we can wrench the wood out as fast as we saw it, and the saws will not work so stiffly as they did before. But we must not do that till the morning, for any sound like the breaking of wood might be heard by the watch, when everything is quiet.”
Although all worked their best, they made but slight progress in the dark, and each worker was forced to take frequent rests, for the fatigue of working with their arms above their heads was excessive. As soon, however, as the light began to steal down, and the movement above head told them that the crew were at work washing the decks, the points of the irons were used to wrench away the wood between the saw cuts; and the work then proceeded briskly, as they relieved each other every few minutes.
At last, to their intense satisfaction, three more irons were got out.
“If anyone had told me,” one of the party said, “that a man’s arms could hurt as much as mine do, from working a few hours, I should have disbelieved him.”
There was a chorus of assent, for none were accustomed to hard manual labour, and the pain in their arms was excessive.
“Let us have half an hour’s rest, Francis, before you issue your next orders. I shall want that, at least, before I feel that I have any power in my arms at all.”
“We will have an hour’s rest, Matteo, if you like. Before that time they will be sending us down our food, and after we have breakfasted we can set to work again.”
“Breakfast!” one of the young men groaned. “I cannot call that black bread and water breakfast. When I think of the breakfasts I have eaten, when I think of the dishes I have refused to eat, because they were not cooked to perfection, I groan over my folly in those days, and my enormous stupidity in ever volunteering to come to sea.”
“I should recommend you all,” Francis said, “to spend the next hour in rubbing and squeezing the muscles of your neighbours’ arms and shoulders. It is the best way for taking out stiffness, and Giuseppi used to give me relief that way, when I was stiff with fencing.”
The idea was adopted; and while the rest were at work in the manner he suggested, Francis, taking one of the irons, went to the bulkhead. One by one he tried the planks, from the floor boards to the beams above.
“Well, captain, what is your report?” Matteo asked as he joined the rest.
“My report is a most favourable one,” Francis said. “By great good luck, the planks are nailed from the other side against the beams both above and below.”
“What difference does that make, Francisco?”
“All the difference in the world. Had they been nailed on this side, there would have been nothing for it but to carry out our original plan�
�that is, to make holes through the planks with these irons, large enough for the saws to go through, and then to saw the wood out from hole to hole. As it is, I believe that with five minutes’ work we could wrench a plank away. We have only to push the points of the irons up, between the beams and the planks, and use them as levers. The nails will be strong, indeed, if those irons, with two of us at each, would not wrench them out.”
The young men all leapt to their feet, pains and aches quite forgotten in the excitement of this unexpected news, and six of them seized hold of the irons.
“Gently!” Francis said. “You must remember, there may be people going down there at present, getting up stores. Before we venture to disturb a plank, we must make the hole sufficiently large for us to spy through. This will be a very easy affair, in comparison with making a hole large enough for a saw to go through. Still, you will find it will take some time. However, we had better wait, as we agreed, till we have had our food.”
CHAPTER 16
The Recapture of the Pluto
As soon as the hatch had been removed, and the bread and water lowered down, and they heard heavy weights again laid on the hatch, two of the party took one of the irons and began to bore a hole, while the others proceeded to eat their food. Several times, the workers had to be relieved. The iron penetrated comparatively easily for a short distance, but beyond that the difficulty greatly increased; and it was fully four hours before one of the workers, applying his eye to the hole, said that he could see a gleam of light through.
In another quarter of an hour, the orifice was sufficiently enlarged to enable a view to be obtained of the central hold. It was comparatively light there, for the hatch was off, and they could see two men at work, opening a cask for some stores that were required.
“We must wait till it gets dark now,” Francis said. “I do not think that we shall make much noise, for the nails will be likely to draw quietly; but we had better choose the time between nightfall and the hour for the crew to turn in, as there will be a trampling of feet on deck, and talking and singing, which would prevent any slight noise we might make, being heard.”