CHAPTER FIVE.
WE PROCEED IN SEARCH OF THE ALTHEA'S BOATS.
He wind came away about an hour and a half before sunrise, a gentlebreeze out from the north-east, coming down to us first of all in theform of a few wandering cats'-paws, that just wrinkled the oil-smoothsurface of the ocean and were gone again, and finally settling into atrue breeze that fanned us along at a speed of some four knots, theschooner proving to be a fairly speedy little vessel.
Long ere this, however, I had carefully thought out a line of action formyself, in order that when the wind came I might be prepared for it. Itwill be remembered that before parting company with the launch I hadbeen furnished by the master with a table showing the relative speeds ofthe various boats, and from that moment I had, with the assistance ofthe table, carefully calculated the supposed position of each boat atnoon; so that I now knew, to within a few miles, where any particularboat ought to be looked for, upon the assumption that all had gone wellwith them. And somehow I thought it had; I was very strongly impressedwith the belief that the gale which we had encountered had not extendedfar enough to the south-east to reach the launch and the rest of thesquadron. Flowers it _might_ have overtaken, but my observations uponthe bearings of the centre of the storm and its direction led me toentertain a very strong hope that the rest of the boats had escaped.This being so, I determined to act upon the assumption that they haddone so, and to proceed in search of them in the direction where theyought, upon that assumption, to be found. Of course, with theirdifferent rates of sailing, they would now be strung out in a fairlylong line; and the question that exercised me most strongly was whetherI should first seek the leading boat, and, having found her, dodge aboutin waiting for the others, or whether I should first seek the dinghy,and, having found her, run down the wind in the track of the others.The direction from which the wind might happen to spring up wouldnecessarily influence my decision to a great extent; but when it cameaway out from the north-east, and I discovered that the schooner couldfetch, upon an easy bowline, the spot where the sternmost boat might beexpected to be found, I hesitated no longer, but at once made up my mindto first look for the dinghy.
As the morning wore on the breeze freshened somewhat, and the schooner'sspeed increased to fully seven knots. I employed the early part of theforenoon in satisfying myself that the prisoners were properlysecured,--taking the precaution to have them all put in irons, as, inthe exhausted condition of my own crew, I could not afford to run anyunnecessary risks,--and as soon as I had eased my mind of that anxiety,I personally investigated the condition of the schooner's storeroom. Tomy great joy I discovered that we possessed an ample supply ofprovisions and water, together with a liberal quantity of wines,spirits, and other luxuries--enough of everything, in fact, to maintainthe whole of the survivors of the _Althea_ upon full allowance for atleast a month. The schooner, moreover,--she proved to be the _Susanne_,privateer, of Saint Malo,--was nearly new, a stout, substantially builtlittle craft of one hundred and thirty-four tons register, as tight as abottle, well found, and armed with six long six-pounders in herbatteries, with a long nine-pounder mounted on a pivot on herforecastle, and her magazine nearly full.
Nothing of any importance happened, either on that day or the next,except that the sky gradually became overspread with those peculiarpatches of fleece-like clouds called "trade-clouds"--showing that atlength we had hit off the north-east trade winds that seemed to havebeen evading us for so long. According to my reckoning, and upon theassumption that the wind would now hold fairly steady, we ought to hitoff the track of the boats about six bells in the morning watch, on thethird morning after the capture of the schooner, which would allow ussome eleven hours of daylight in which to prosecute our search; and, togive ourselves the best possible chance of finding the objects of ourquest, I took care, on the preceding midnight, to haul the schooner asclose to the wind as she would lie, so that there should be nopossibility of hitting upon their track to leeward instead of towindward of them, and so running _away_ from instead of _after_ them.And at six bells on that morning I was called, in accordance withprevious instructions, in order that I might work up the reckoning tothe very last moment, and so make certain of getting as accurately aspossible upon the track. My calculations now showed that it would benearly eight bells instead of six before we should reach the imaginaryline for which we were making; and at a quarter to eight--havingpreviously sent a hand aloft to take a careful look round--I gave theorder to up helm and bear away upon a west-south-west course, and topack the studding-sails upon the little hooker. The men--thanks to goodfeeding and all the rest I could give them consistent with themaintenance of proper discipline--had by this time completely recoveredfrom the effects of our boat voyage, and were one and all as keen asneedles on the lookout for the boats from the moment that we squaredaway, the watch, all but the helmsman, taking to the rigging--withoutany orders from me--immediately that they had finished breakfast, anddisposing themselves upon the royal and topgallant yards in theireagerness to catch the earliest possible glimpse of their shipmates. Icalculated that at about five bells in the forenoon watch we ought toovertake the dinghy,--the slowest boat in the fleet,--and as that momentdrew near our anxiety reached a most painful pitch, the men on the yardsstraining their eyes to the utmost as they peered intently into thedistance from right ahead to broad on either beam, carefully and slowlyscanning the horizon for the little blot of gleaming canvas that shouldproclaim the success of our quest. But the fateful moment came andwent, leaving the horizon a blank. Noon arrived, and I secured anexcellent observation for my latitude, by means of which I was enabledto check my previous dead reckoning, which tallied to within less than amile of what it ought to be; and still there was no sign of the missingboat, although my calculations showed that we had overrun by somefifteen miles the spot where we expected to find her. I hailed theyards, inquiring whether there was any possibility of our having runpast the dinghy without observing her; but the men assured me that theyhad maintained so bright a lookout that had she been anywhere within theboundaries of our horizon they would assuredly have seen her.
This was rather disconcerting, yet I felt that I had no real cause fordisappointment; the boats might have met with rather fresher winds thanI had estimated for, in which case the likelihood was that they werestill many miles ahead of us. My calculations had been based upon thesupposition that they had been evenly maintaining the same rate of speedfrom the moment when we parted with them, and I knew that this was inthe last degree improbable. Yet it was the only basis I had upon whichto make my calculations; for it was impossible for me to judge by theweather which we had ourselves experienced. Of one thing I felttolerably well convinced, which was that, keeping so much farther to thesouthward than we had done in the gig, the other boats would not havemet with the calms that had so seriously delayed us; and thatconsequently--unless they too had been caught in the hurricane that hadso nearly proved our destruction--they must be somewhere directly aheadof us as we were then steering. There was nothing for it, therefore,but to keep all on as we were until we found them.
In this condition of anxiety and suspense we continued to run away tothe west-south-west until sunset, without sighting anything; and then,fearful of running past one or more of the objects of our quest duringthe night-time without seeing them, I hove the schooner to underforesail and jib, with the topsail aback, so that we might remain asnearly as possible where we were--excepting for our lee drift--allthrough the night. I also caused three lanterns to be hoisted, one overthe other, from our maintopmast stay, as a fairly conspicuous signal,pretty certain to attract attention in the event of either of the boatscoming within sight of us during the hours of darkness, and of coursegave the strictest injunctions for the maintenance of a bright lookoutall through the night.
The night passed uneventfully, and at daybreak, after having first gonealoft and personally but unavailingly examined the horizon and theentire visible expanse of the ocean through the
ship's telescope,--anexcellent instrument, by the way,--we made sail again upon the schooner,and resumed our search.
Shortly after breakfast I secured an observation for my longitude, and,having worked out my calculations, found that, if the boats were stillafloat, and had continued to steer the course which I had been told theywould, we must certainly find them that day. As on the preceding day,the men spent their watch upon the yards, maintaining so keen a lookoutthat even I, anxious as I was, felt satisfied they would allow nothingto escape them. Yet the day passed, and evening arrived without thediscovery of any sign of the missing boats; while my anxiety grew morepainfully intense with the lapse of every hour of daylight. And when atlength the night closed down upon us, and the stars came winking mistilyout from between the driving clouds, the conviction came to me thatsomething had gone lamentably wrong, and that to continue the search anyfurther in the direction that we had been pursuing would be useless.
The question was: What had happened? I could think of but two possibleexplanations of our failure to find the boats; one of which was thatthey had been fallen in with and been picked up by a passing ship, whilethe other was that they had experienced bad weather, which had driventhem out of their course. If the first explanation happened to be thecorrect one, well and good--our missing comrades were safe; but if thesecond explanation was to account for our non-success, in what directionought we to continue our search? The question was a very difficult oneto answer with any approach to accuracy, but an approximation to thetruth might be arrived at. I reasoned thus: The boats were undoubtedlywithin the limits of the trade wind when we parted with them, and theonly disturbing influence that they would be likely to meet with in thatregion would be that of the hurricane that we had encountered.Reasoning thus, I went below and produced a chart of the NorthAtlantic,--it was a French one, reckoning its longitude from themeridian of Paris; but that difficulty was to be easily overcome,--andupon it I forthwith proceeded to prick off, as accurately as the data inmy possession would permit, first, the spot where we had parted companywith the other boats; secondly, our own course and distance up to themoment when the hurricane struck us; and thirdly, the supposititiouscourse and distance of each of the boats up to the moment when thehurricane would probably strike them. The observations I had personallymade as to the bearing and course of the centre of the storm hadoriginally led me to the conclusion that the other boats had probablyescaped it altogether; and now, as I went over the matter afresh, Icould not persuade myself that they had encountered anything worse thana mere fringe of it, a breeze strong enough perhaps to compel them torun before it for a few hours, but nothing more. Assuming, then, thisto be the case, I calculated as nearly as I could the probable directionof the wind when the gale struck them, and the number of hours duringwhich they would be likely to be compelled to run before it, prickingoff upon the chart their probable whereabouts at the moment when theywould be likely to find themselves once more able to head for, say,Saint Thomas or Saint Kitts. From this point I laid off a course forthe former island, and then calculated their probable position on thatline at the moment, compared this with the position then occupied by theschooner, and thus arrived at the new direction in which I ought to seekfor them. Having reached thus far, I went on deck, set the new course,and then, with Lindsay's assistance, went over all my calculationsagain, verifying every figure of them.
Luckily for our anxiety, the trade wind was now blowing so fresh that,on an easy bowline as we were, a whole mainsail, foresail, and topsail,with royal and topgallant sails stowed, was as much as we could staggerunder, the little witch dancing along at a good, clean eleven knotsunder this canvas; the consequence being that in thirty-eight hours fromthe moment of bearing up we had reached the spot where I intended thatmy new search for the missing boats should begin.
This time, however, I intended to adopt a course of procedure exactlyopposite to that which I had followed while prosecuting my formersearch. Then, I had gone to windward of the spot when I expected tofind the boats, and had run down to leeward along the course which Ithought it probable they had taken; but now my uncertainty as to theirprecise position necessitated a search over a belt of ocean severalmiles in width. I therefore determined to get well to leeward of thespot where my calculations indicated that I ought to find them, and fromthere work to windward on an easy bowline, making stretches of sometwenty-six miles in length. I had already ascertained the height of ourroyal yard above the sea-level, and from that had calculated that alookout stationed at that elevation would command a circular area havinga radius of thirteen miles. If, therefore, I made stretches across acircle of twenty-six miles' diameter, I should practically command abelt of ocean of fifty-two miles in width; and this I deemed sufficientfor my purpose.
Accordingly, having reached our cruising-ground at two bells in theforenoon watch, and having one hand on the royal yard as a lookout, withtwo more on the topsail yard by way of additional precaution, we madeour first reach of thirteen miles in a south-easterly direction. Then,nothing being in sight, we tacked and stood to the northward for twenty-six miles. Still nothing in sight; so we hove about again, and thistime reached to the southward and eastward for a distance of twenty-sixmiles, continuing our search thus throughout the entire day, withoutsuccess. At sunset we hove about again, and, reaching to the northward,until we had arrived at the track which the boats, if still afloat,would probably pass over, we hove-to for the night, hoisting threelanterns, as before, to attract their attention should they happen toarrive within sight of us during the hours of darkness. It was somerelief to us that the night was tolerably clear, with a fair sprinklingof stars and a moon well advanced in her first quarter; so that, duringthe first half of the night, we had a very fair amount of light.
I did not keep the lookout men aloft at night, deeming it useless, asthe light, although--as I have said--fairly good, was not bright enoughto reveal a small object like a boat at a greater distance than some twoor three miles, and up to that distance it was possible to see reallybetter from the level of the deck than from the more lofty elevation ofthe yards; but I had three men continuously on the lookout at the sametime, namely, one on the jib-boom end, and one each to port andstarboard in the waist. We were hove-to on the starboard tack.Needless to say, that although we had these three men thus stationed forthe express purpose of keeping a lookout and doing nothing else, Lindsayand I also kept our eyes well skinned, going even to the length ofblinding the skylight with an old sail in order that our eyes might notbe dazzled by even the dim light of the cabin lamp.
It happened to be my eight hours in that night, and I had takenadvantage of the circumstance to turn in early, for the anxietyattending upon this dishearteningly fruitless search was beginning totell upon me, and I had suffered for the last night or two from aninability to sleep. On this particular occasion, however, I feltsomewhat drowsy, and therefore went to my bunk in the hope of gettingtwo or three hours' rest; and, as a matter of fact, I did sleep, but myrest was so disturbed by frightful dreams of men enduring unheard-ofsuffering in open boats, that at length, awaking in a paroxysm ofhorror, I turned out and went on deck, to find that it was seven bells,and that under any circumstances I should have been called in anotherhalf-hour.
The moon was within a very short time of setting when I reached thedeck, and I stood watching her half-disc creeping insensibly nearer andnearer to the horizon, lighting up the sky that way with a soft,mysterious, brownish-green light, and casting a long, tremulous wake ofruddy gold athwart the tops of the running surges. Lindsay was standingbeside me, yawning the top of his head nearly off, poor lad; foralthough he too was anxious as to the fate of those who we were seeking,his anxiety had not, thus far, interfered with his rest, and his watchwas now so nearly up that he was quite ready for the four hours' sleepthat awaited him.
I was in the very act of telling him that, as I should not go belowagain, he might turn in if he chose,--my eyes being all the while fixedupon the setting moon,--when
suddenly, almost immediately under theluminary, I caught a momentary glimpse of a small black object--small asa pin-head--as it were hove-up on the back of a sea against the luminoussky. Stopping short in what I was saying, I sprang to the rail, andfrom thence into the main rigging, half a dozen ratlines of which Iascended in order to gain a horizon clear of the run of the nearer seas.From this elevation I again looked out, instinctively shading my eyesunder my hand, and in another moment I had again caught sight of theobject, and not only so, but had also detected an intermittent flashing,as of the moonlight off the wet blades of oars.
"A boat! a boat!" I shouted, in the fulness of my delight. "Hurrah,lads! we have one of them at last! Let draw the jib-sheet! Fill thetopsail! Up helm there, my man, and let her go broad off!"
As I rapidly issued these orders I swung myself out of the rigging, and,running to the binnacle, took the bearing of the moon, allowing half apoint to the northward of her as the course to steer for the boat.
"Where is the gunner?" I shouted; "pass the word for Mr Robbins!"
"Here I am, sir," answered Robbins--for my words had thrilled throughthe little craft like an electric shock, and already the watch belowwere scrambling up through the hatchway, carrying their clothing intheir hands, in their eagerness to get a glimpse of the newly discoveredboat.
"Mr Robbins," said I, "have the goodness to clap a blank cartridge intoone of the guns, and fire it as an encouragement to those poor fellowsout there; they will guess, by our firing, that we have seen them."
"Ay, ay, sir," answered Robbins, shambling away with alacrity upon hiserrand; and a few minutes later one of our guns rang out what I hopedwould prove a thrice-welcome message to our shipmates. Somehow I neverfor a moment doubted that it was one of the frigate's boats that I hadseen; I felt as sure of it as though we had her already alongside,although of course I could form no sort of surmise as to which of themit would prove to be.
It took us but a very few minutes to run down to the boat, when, judgingour distance, we rounded-to and laid the topsail aback, so close towindward of the little craft that one of our people was able to heave arope's-end into her, and we hauled her alongside. Then, to our supremedisappointment, we discovered that it was _not_ either of the boats thatwe were looking for, but the long-boat of a merchantman, with elevenpeople in her, all of whom were in a very wasted and exhaustedcondition, partly from famine and partly from wounds, most of them beingswathed about the head or limbs with bloodstained bandages.
Concealing our disappointment as well as we could, we helped the poorcreatures up over the side,--discovering, during the process, that therescued party were our fellow-countrymen,--and then, having removedeverything from the boat that promised to prove of the slightest value,we cast her adrift, having no room on our decks for her. Meanwhile, theunhappy strangers, being too weak to stand, had sunk down upon the deck,pointing to their parched throats and feebly gasping the word "water";in response to which appeal some of our own people had gone to work,under my supervision, to supply them cautiously with small quantities ofwater slightly dashed with brandy. This treatment had a wonderfullystimulative and revivifying effect upon them, so much so, indeed, thatthey managed to stagger to their feet and earnestly beg for food. This,of course, we supplied them with forthwith, in the form of ship's breadbroken small and softened by steeping in weak brandy and water. I gavethem this pending the preparation of a more substantial and appetisingmeal by the cook; and it was perhaps well that circumstances obliged meto do so, for I afterwards learned that the administration of a solid,substantial meal to people in their famished condition would probablyhave had fatal results. Having satisfied to some small extent theirfirst ravenous craving for food and drink, we got them below andprovided them with such makeshift sleeping accommodation as theresources of the schooner would permit, that they might seek in sleepsuch further recuperation as was to be obtained, pending the productionof the meal in preparation for them. Having thus disposed of therescued men, nothing remained for us but to await, with such patience aswe could muster, the return of daylight, to enable us to resume thesearch for the lost frigate's boats.
It was nearly noon next day ere any of the rescued party appeared ondeck, the first to do so being a fine, sailorly-looking man of someforty or forty-five years of age, who introduced himself to me as"Captain" Tucker of the late British barque _Wyvern_, of Bristol,outward-bound to the West Indies with a general cargo of considerablevalue. He informed me that all had gone well with him until eight dayspreviously, when, about noon, a strange sail was sighted in the south-western board, standing to the northward, close-hauled on the starboardtack.
"You may be sure," said Tucker, "that I kept a sharp eye upon her, for Iknew that, for _every_ honest merchantman that I happened to meet downhere, I was likely to meet with a dozen rogues, in the shape ofpicaroons, privateers, or other craft of the enemy, or even our own men-o'-war--no offence meant to _you_ in saying so, Mr Courtenay; but _you_know, sir, as well as I do, that some of our men-o'-war treat Britishmerchantmen pretty nearly as bad as if they were enemies, boarding themand impressing all their best men, and leaving them with so few handsthat if they happen to meet with bad weather it's ten chances to one oftheir being able to take their ship to her destination. Well, knowingthis, I kept both eyes on the stranger, which I soon made out to be anuncommonly smart and heavy brigantine, that, close-hauled as she was,seemed to be travelling three feet to our one. She had a particularlywicked look about her that I didn't half like; and I liked it still lesswhen, having drawn well up on our larboard beam, at a distance of somefive miles, I suddenly discovered that she was edging away for us. Wewere already under stunsails, so I could do no more in the way of makingsail; but we mounted eight brass nine-pounders,--very pretty pieces theywere, too,--so I had them cleared away and loaded, in readiness for theworst; for I took her to be a French or Spanish privateer, and I had nonotion of yielding my ship to any such vermin without making a fight forit; and my own lads were quite of the same mind as myself, not likingthe idea of being locked up for years in a French or a Spanish prison.
"Well, sir, that brigantine came bowling along at such a pace thatwithin half an hour of the time when I noticed her to be edging down forus she was within gun-shot; and no sooner was this the case than, yawingbroad off for a moment, she pitched a shot--an eighteen-pounder I tookit to be--across our fore-foot, as a polite hint to us to heave-to. ButI wasn't in the humour for heaving-to just then, so I hoisted my ensignand kept all on as I was going.
"I expected that, seeing this, the brigantine would give us a sight ofher bunting, and open fire upon us in good earnest; but she didn't doeither. She just kept edging away, until in another five minutes shewas broad on our larboard quarter, running the same way that we were,and creeping up with the evident intention of running us alongside.Seeing this, I ordered Mr Thomson, my mate, to ram an extra shot downupon the top of those we had already loaded our guns with, and todepress the muzzles, so that we could fire down upon the brigantine'slow deck as she ranged up alongside. But I tell you, sir, that I didn'thalf like the look of things; for by this time the craft was so close tous that we saw down upon her decks quite distinctly, and she seemed tobe full of men--swarthy, greasy, black-bearded cut-throats, _every_ oneof them, if looks went for anything. In another minute or so she waswithin biscuit-toss of us,--so close that we could hear the hissingshear of her sharp stem through the water, and the moan of the wind inthe hollows of her canvas,--when up jumps a fellow upon her rail andhailed us in what I took to be Spanish,--it wasn't French, I know,because I can speak a little of that lingo,--at the same time pointingto his gaff-end, up to which another ruffian at once began to hoist a_black flag_.
"`So ho!' thinks I; `so it's _pirates_ we have to deal with, eh? Well,that means neck or nothing, so here goes!' And with that I sings out tothe mate to throw open the ports--we'd kept them closed until now--andlet the rascals have it hot. No sooner said than done. Thomson gavethe word, the port
s were thrown open, the nine-pounders run out, and thenext second four of our shot went smashing through the brigantine'sbulwarks, bowling over like ninepins every man that happened to bestanding in their way. The man on the rail jumped down off his perch asnimbly as if he was scalded, and I heard him shout `Car-r-r-r-amba!' orsomething like it, as he waved his hand to the man at the wheel. At thesame moment the brigantine delivered her broadside, and before the smokehad time to clear away I heard and felt the crash of her as she droppedalongside us fair in the waist. The next second--so it seemed to me--our rail was alive with the dirty, garlic-smelling blackguards, who cameswarming over upon our decks until it seemed that there was no room formore. Well, I had a pair of pistols and a sword, and each of our ladshad his cutlass, and for three or four minutes there was as pretty afight as you'd wish to see going on aboard the old _Wyvern_. Then,while I was doing my best to hold my own against four of the rascals whocame crowding round me, I got a knock on the head from behind that mademe see about a million stars before I dropped senseless to the deck."