CHAPTER FIFTY SIX.
With dauntless hardihood And brandish'd blade rush on him, And shed the luscious liquor on the ground, ...though he and his cursed crew Fierce sign of battle make, and menace high. MILTON.
The information received from Mr Hardsett induced our hero to break offhis conversation with Debriseau, and he immediately quitted the hut. Aparty of men, wild in their appearance and demeanour, were bounding downthrough the rocks, flourishing their bludgeons over their heads, withloud shouts. They soon arrived within a few yards of the shealing, and,to the astonishment of Seymour and the boatswain, who, with a dozenmore, had resumed their clothes, seemed to eye them with hostile, ratherthan with friendly glances. Their intentions were, however, soonmanifested by their pouncing upon the habiliments of the seamen whichwere spread out to dry, holding them rolled up under one arm, while theyflourished their shillelahs in defiance with the other.
"Avast there, my lads!" cried the boatswain "why are you meddling withthose clothes?"
A shout, with confused answers in Irish, was the incomprehensible reply.
"Conolly," cried Seymour, "you can speak to them. Ask them what theymean?"
Conolly addressed them in Irish, when an exchange of a few sentencestook place.
"Bloody end to the rapparees!" said Conolly, turning to our hero. "It'shelping themselves they're a'ter, instead of helping us. They say allthat comes on shore from a wreck is their own by right, and that they'llhave it. They asked me what was in the cask, and I told them it was thecratur, sure enough, and they say that they must have it, and everythingelse, and that if we don't give it up peaceably, they'll take the livesof us."
Seymour, who was aware that the surrender of the means of intoxicationwould probably lead to worse results, turned to his men, who hadassembled outside of the hut, and had armed themselves with spars andfragments of the wreck on the first appearance of hostility, anddirected them to roll the cask of rum into the hut, and prepare to acton the defensive. The English seamen, indignant at such violation ofthe laws of hospitality, and at the loss of their clothes, immediatelycomplied with his instructions, and, with their blood boiling, were withdifficulty restrained from commencing the attack.
A shaggy-headed monster, apparently the leader of the hostile party,again addressed Conolly in his own language.
"It's to know whether ye'll give up the cask quietly, or have a fightfor it. The devil a pair of trousers will they give back, not even myown, though I'm an Irishman, and a Galway man to boot. By Jesus, MrSeymour, it's to be hoped ye'll not give up the cratur without a bit ofa row."
"No," replied Seymour. "Tell them that they shall not have it, and thatthey shall be punished for the theft they have already committed."
"You're to come and take it," roared Conolly, in Irish, to the opposingparty.
"Now, my lads," cried Seymour, "you must fight hard for it--they willshow little mercy, if they gain the day."
The boatswain returned his Bible to his breast, and seizing the mast ofthe frigate's jolly-boat, which had been thrown up with the other spars,poised it with both hands on a level with his head, so as to use thefoot of it as a battering-ram, and stalked before his men.
The Irish closed with loud yells, and the affray commenced with adesperation seldom to be witnessed. Many were the wounds given andreceived, and several of either party were levelled in the dust. Thenumbers were about even; but the weapons of the Irish were of a betterdescription, each man being provided with his own shillelah of hardwood, which he had been accustomed to wield. But the boatswain didgreat execution, as he launched forward his mast, and prostrated anIrishman every time, with his cool and well-directed aim. After a fewminutes' contention, the Englishmen were beaten back to the shealing,where they rallied, and continued to stand at bay. Seymour, anxious atall events that the Irish should not obtain the liquor, directedRobinson, the captain of the forecastle, to go into the hut, take thebung out of the cask, and start the contents. This order was obeyed,while the contest was continued outside, till McDermot, the leader ofthe Irish, called off his men, that they might recover their breath fora renewal of the attack.
"If it's the liquor you want," cried Conolly to them, by the directionof Seymour, "you must be quick about it. There it's all running awaythrough the doors of the shealing."
This announcement had, however, the contrary effect to that whichSeymour intended it should produce. Enraged at the loss of the spirits,and hoping to gain possession of the cask before it was all out, theIrish returned with renewed violence to the assault, and drove theEnglish to the other side of the shealing, obtaining possession of thedoor, which they burst into, to secure their prey. About eight or tenhad entered, and had seized upon the cask, which was not more than halfemptied, when the liquor, which had run out under the door of the hut,communicated, in its course, with the fire that had been kindledoutside. With the rapidity of lightning the flame ran up the streamthat continued to flow, igniting the whole of the spirits in the cask,which blew up with a tremendous explosion, darting the fiery liquid overthe whole interior, and communicating the flame to the thatch, and everypart of the building, which was instantaneously in ardent combustion.The shrieks of the poor disabled wretches, stretched on the sails, towhich the fire had communicated, and who were now lying in a molten seaof flame like that described in Pandemonium by Milton--the yells of theIrish inside of the hut, vainly attempting to regain the door, as theywrithed in their flaming apparel, which, like the shirt of Nessus, ateinto their flesh--the burning thatch which had been precipitated in theair, and now descended in fiery flakes upon the parties outside, whostood aghast at the dreadful and unexpected catastrophe,--the volumes ofblack and suffocating smoke which poured out from every quarter, formeda scene of horror to which no pen can do adequate justice. But all wassoon over. The shrieks and yells had yielded to suffocation, and theflames, in their fury, had devoured everything with such rapidity, thatthey subsided for the want of further aliment. In a few minutes,nothing remained but the smoking walls, and the blackened corpses whichthey encircled.
Ill-fated wretches! ye had escaped the lightning's blast--ye had beenrescued from the swallowing wave--and little thought that you wouldencounter an enemy more cruel still--your fellow-creature--man.
The first emotions of Seymour and his party, as soon as they hadrecovered from the horror which had been excited by the catastrophe,were those of pity and commiseration; but their reign was short--
"Revenge impatient rose, And threw his blood-stain'd sword in thunder down."
The smoking ruins formed the altar at which he received their vows, andstimulated them to the sacrifice of further victims. Nor did he fail toinspire the breasts of the other party, indignant at the loss of theircompanions, and disappointed at the destruction of what they so ardentlycoveted.
Debriseau, who had played no idle game in the previous skirmish, was thefirst who rushed to the attack. Crying out, with all the theatrical airof a Frenchman, which never deserts him, even in the agony of grief,"_Mes braves compagnons, vous serez venges_!" he flew at McDermot, theleader of the Irish savages.
A brand of half-consumed wood, with which he aimed at McDermot's head,broke across the bludgeon which was raised to ward the blow. Debriseauclosed; and, clasping his arms round his neck, tore him with his strongteeth with the power and ferocity of a tiger, and they rolled togetherin the dust, covered with the blood which poured in streams, andstruggling for mastery and life. An American, one of the _Aspasia's_crew, now closed in the same way with another of the Irish desperadoes,and as they fell together, twirling the side-locks on the temples of hisantagonist round his fingers to obtain a fulcrum to his lever, heinserted his thumbs into the sockets of his eyes, forced out the ballsof vision, and left him in agony and in darkness.
"The sword of the Lord!" roared the boatswain, as he fractured the skullof a third with the mast of the boat, which, with herculean force, henow whirled round his head.
"Figh
t, _Aspasias_, you fight for your lives," cried Seymour, who waseverywhere in advance, darting the still burning end of the large sparinto the faces of his antagonists, who recoiled with suffocation andpain. It was, indeed, a struggle for life; the rage of each had mountedto delirium. The English sailors, stimulated by the passions of themoment, felt neither pain nor fatigue from their previous sufferings.The want of weapons had been supplied by their clasp knives, to whichthe Irish had also resorted, and deadly wounds were given and received.
McDermot, the Irish leader, had just gained the mastery of Debriseau,bestriding his body and strangling him, with his fingers so fixed in histhroat that they seemed deeply to have entered into the flesh. TheGuernsey man was black in the face, and his eyes starting from theirsockets: in a few minutes he would have been no more, when the mast inthe hands of the boatswain descended upon the Irishman's head, anddashed out his brains. At the same moment, one of the Irishmen dartedhis knife into the side of Seymour, who fell, streaming with his ownblood. The fate of their officer, which excited the attention of theseamen, and the fall of McDermot, on the opposite side, to whoseassistance the Irish immediately hastened, added to the suspension oftheir powers from want of breath, produced a temporary cessation ofhostilities. Dragging away their killed and wounded, the pantingantagonists retreated to the distance of a few yards from each other,tired, but not satisfied with their revenge, and fully intending toresume the strife as soon as they had recovered the power. But a veryfew seconds had elapsed, when they were interrupted by a third party;and the clattering of horses' hoofs was immediately followed by theappearance of a female on horseback, who, galloping past the Irishmen,reined up her steed, throwing him on his haunches, in his full career,in the space between the late contending parties.
"'Tis the daughter of the House!" exclaimed the Irishmen, inconsternation.
There wanted no such contrast as the scene described to add lustre toher beauty, or to enhance her charms. Fair as the snow-drift, hercheeks mantling with the roseate blush of exercise and animation--herglossy hair, partly uncurled, and still played with by the amorousbreeze, hanging in long ringlets down her neck--her eye, whichalternately beamed with pity or flashed with indignation, as it wasdirected to one side or the other--her symmetry of form, which the closeriding-dress displayed--her graceful movements, as she occasionallyrestrained her grey palfrey, who fretted to resume his speed, allcombined with her sudden and unexpected appearance to induce theboatswain and his men to consider her as superhuman.
"She's an angel of light!" muttered the boatswain to himself.
She turned to the Irish, and, in an energetic tone, addressed them intheir own dialect. What she had said was unknown to the English party,but the effect which her language produced was immediate. Their weaponswere thrown aside, and they hung down their heads in confusion. Theymade an attempt to walk away, but a few words from her induced them toremain.
The fair equestrian was now joined by two more, whose pace had not beenso rapid; and the boatswain, who had been contemplating her withastonishment, as she was addressing the Irish, now that she was about toturn towards him, recollected that some of his men were not exactly in acostume to meet a lady's eye. He raised his call to his mouth, and,with a sonorous whistle, cried out, "All you without trousers behindshealing, hoy!" an order immediately obeyed by the men who had beendeprived of their habiliments.
Conolly, who had understood the conversation which had taken place,called out in Irish, at the same time as he walked round behind thewalls, "I think ye'll be after giving us our duds now, ye dirtyspalpeens, so bring 'um wid you quick;" a request which was immediatelycomplied with, the clothes being collected by two of the Irish, andtaken to the men who had retired behind the walls of the shealing.
Mr Hardsett was not long in replying to her interrogations, and ingiving her an outline of the tragical events which had occurred, whilethe ladies, trembling with pity and emotion, listened to the painfulnarrative.
"Are you the only officer then of the frigate that is left?"
"No, madam," replied the boatswain, "the third-lieutenant is here; butthere he lies, poor fellow, desperately wounded by these men, from whomwe expected to have had relief."
"What was the name of your frigate?"
"The _Aspasia_, Captain M---."
"O heaven!" cried the girl, catching at the collar of the boatswain'scoat in her trepidation.
"And the wounded officer's name?"
"Seymour."
A cry of anguish and horror escaped from all the party as the beautifulinterrogatress tottered in her seat, and then fell off into the arms ofthe boatswain.
In a few seconds, recovering herself, she regained her feet. "Quick,quick--lead me to him."
Supported by Hardsett, she tottered to the spot where Seymour lay, withhis eyes closed, faint and exhausted with loss of blood, attended byRobinson and Debriseau.
She knelt down by his side, and taking his hand, which she pressedbetween her own, called him by his name.
Seymour started at the sound of the voice, opened his eyes, and in thebeauteous form which was reclining over him, beheld his dear, dearEmily.