CHAPTER TWENTY.
I PERFORM AN IMPORTANT SERVICE.
The task with which I had been intrusted was one of the very greatestresponsibility; for the descent of a combined French and Spanish fleetupon West Indian waters could only be assumed to point to an intention,on the part of our enemies, to wrest at least some of our West Indianpossessions from us; an intention which our available resources on thespot would be utterly inadequate to frustrate, in view of the formidableforce possessed by the enemy. It was therefore of the last importancethat any British reinforcements which might be hastening to the supportof the colonies should be quickly found and communicated with; and itwas equally important that they should be furnished with the latestpossible intelligence with regard to the movements of the enemy. Theduty, therefore, that I was asked to perform, single-handed, was such asactually called for the employment of several vessels. Unfortunately,however, there were absolutely none available for the Admiral at thisjuncture, the only ship in port at the moment of my arrival in Jamaicabeing the schooner _Firefly_, which vessel had immediately beendespatched to the several islands belonging to the British Crown with awarning that a formidable force was approaching; for the reception ofwhich the best possible dispositions were to be made. It thus cameabout that I, a young, untried hand, found myself called upon to performa service of almost national importance with only my own discretion toguide me. My instructions, however, were simple and explicit enough,and I resolved to carry them out to the letter.
After giving the subject the best consideration of which I was capable,I came to the conclusion that if Monsieur Villeneuve really intended toattack the islands in our possession, he would probably begin with theWindward Islands. Instead, therefore, of working my way out into theAtlantic, through the Windward Passage between Cuba and Saint Domingo, Istretched across the Caribbean Sea on a taut larboard bowline, and noonon the fourth day after sailing from Port Royal found us some ninetymiles west-north-west of the French island of Martinique, and while Iwas at dinner the mate stuck his head through the skylight to reportland right ahead. I went up on deck to get a look at it, and soonidentified it as the summit of Mont Pelee, the highest point in theisland. We stood on, keeping a sharp look-out for vessels, but sawnothing; and about two bells in the first watch that night we foundourselves within the influence of the land breeze which was blowing offthe island. Half an hour later saw us off the mouth of the bay of FortRoyal, and as the night was dark I came to the conclusion that it mightbe worth my while to stand inshore a little closer, upon the chance ofbeing able to pick up some information. Accordingly, we worked inagainst the land breeze, and had arrived within half a mile of PigeonIsland, when we encountered a small trading felucca coming out. Weallowed her to get to seaward of us, when we bore up in chase, and a fewminutes later we were alongside the craft, and had secured quietpossession of her. The felucca carried five hands, whom I caused to betransferred to the schooner; and my first business was to get the masterof the craft down into the cabin, where I informed him that all I wantedfrom him was some information, and that if he would answer my questionstruly, I would at once release him and return his vessel to him; but ifI found that he was attempting to deceive me, I would burn his felucca,and retain him and his crew as prisoners. The man was eager in hisprotestations that he would tell me everything that I wanted to know,and begged me not to destroy his vessel, as she represented his entirepossessions, and was his sole means of earning a livelihood; a piece ofinformation that led me to hope he would not attempt to deceive me; so Iwent to work to question him forthwith, jotting his answers down upon apiece of paper.
The information I obtained from the fellow was important enough to havejustified me in running a far greater risk than I had actually incurredto procure it, and was to the effect that the combined fleets had beenoff the island that very day, with some forty prizes, comprising theAntigua convoy, in company; that it had captured Diamond Rock; and that,in consequence of certain information supposed to have been receivedfrom a schooner that had that day arrived from Europe, it had made allsail to the eastward. As to the character of the information, however,that had caused so powerful a force to take so unexpected a step, theman professed to know nothing. Having obtained this information fromhim, I sent the skipper on deck and had him conveyed forward, where hewas placed in charge of two men, while I had his crew down into thecabin, one by one, and questioned them. Their answers bore out what theskipper had already told me. I therefore concluded that the news wastrue, and accordingly released the felucca, with a strict caution thathe was to proceed forthwith on his voyage to Mariegalante--the island towhich he was bound--and on no account to attempt to re-enter the harbourof Fort Royal, under penalty of instant recapture. The fellow wasevidently only too glad to get out of our hands upon such easy terms;and no sooner found himself once more safely on the deck of his littlehooker than he made all sail to the northward, and was soon lost in thedarkness. Dumaresq, who had remained with me thus far, thought this agood opportunity to rejoin his countrymen, and, with my cordialpermission, took a passage in the felucca.
So far I had done very well; the combined fleet was only a few hoursdistant; and I had no doubt that, with so nimble-heeled a craft as the_Sword Fish_, I should have very little difficulty in overtaking them inthe course of a day or two. The question now was whether I shouldproceed forthwith in pursuit of Monsieur Villeneuve, or whether I shoulddevote an hour or two to an endeavour to ascertain the precise nature ofthe information said to have been brought from Europe by the schooner.This information might be of value, or it might not; but after givingthe matter brief but careful consideration I came to the conclusion thatit was hardly worth while troubling about; as, if the vessel had broughtout despatches, they would have been delivered long since; and in anycase, the captain and crew would know nothing of their contents. Itherefore filled away forthwith, and by midnight had brought the islandover our larboard quarter.
There was now another question that bothered me somewhat, and it wasthis: I could not understand why the combined fleet should be steeringeast, or why they should have gone off in such a hurry as had beenrepresented to me. I racked my brains for a long time in search of asatisfactory solution of this problem, as I felt that until I had foundsuch I should be quite in the dark as to the course which I ought tosteer in order to overtake them. For although I had been informed that,when last seen, the fleet was steering to the southward and eastward,close-hauled, I had no data upon which to base an opinion as to thelength of time during which they would continue to steer in thatdirection, for the simple reason that there was no apparent object intheir steering in that direction at all. We had no possessions in thatquarter to tempt them, unless it might be Barbados; and even that islandlay considerably to leeward of the course that Monsieur Villeneuve wassaid to be steering. At length, however, a possible explanationsuggested itself. It occurred to me that the schooner, which wassupposed to have brought the information leading to the precipitatedeparture of Monsieur Villeneuve, might have fallen in with andsucceeded in eluding the British pursuing fleet, of the existence ofwhich the admiral at Jamaica had felt so certain; and if she had, andhad brought news to Martinique of the approach of such a fleet, I couldunderstand Monsieur Villeneuve's anxiety to be off; for we were allfully persuaded that there was nothing the French admiral desired solittle as to encounter Nelson. And, upon considering the matterfurther, the conviction forced itself irresistibly upon me that, ifMonsieur Villeneuve had been given good reason to believe that he waspursued, his chief anxiety would be to get back to Europe as quickly aspossible. Such a desire would fully account for everything in hismovements that I had found difficult to understand, and it would alsoaccount for the course that he was said to be steering; that coursebeing the only one that would at once lead him homeward and at the sametime enable him to avoid a meeting with the suppositious British fleet.So thoroughly at length did I convince myself that this represented theactual state of the case t
hat I unhesitatingly set the _Sword Fish's_head in the same direction that I believed the combined fleet to besteering; and then, having issued orders that the schooner was to bedriven at the highest speed consistent with safety to her spars, I wentbelow and turned in.
During the remainder of that night and the whole of the next day wecarried on, without sighting anything in the shape of a sail; but atdawn of the second day my persistence was rewarded by the sight of alarge fleet of ships strung out along the horizon, and by mid-day we hadapproached them near enough to enable us to identify them as the fleetof which we were in search. There was a big fleet of merchantmen incompany, which I assumed to be the captured Antigua convoy; and by andby one of these--a fine full-rigged ship--wore round, in response to asignal, and headed for us. I allowed her to approach within a couple ofmiles of us, when we in turn shifted our helm and going round upon thestarboard tack, assumed all the appearance of being in precipitateflight. But I was particular to flatten in all sheets and braces tosuch an extent that, by careful and persistent wind-jamming, theschooner became as sluggish as a log; and in this way we played with theship until we had decoyed her a good twenty miles away from the rest ofthe fleet, sometimes allowing her to gain upon us a trifle, and thendrawing away from her again, my object, of course, being to capture herif I could. And of my ability to do this--provided that I could decoyher far enough away from all possible support--I had very little doubt;for I did not consider it in the least likely that she would have morethan sixty Frenchmen on board her as a prize crew, while I had an equalnumber of Englishmen.
At length, about an hour before sunset, we allowed the ship to approachus within gun-shot, and shortly afterwards she opened fire upon us witha six-pounder. The shot flew wide; but all the same I caused our helmto be put down, and as the schooner slowly luffed into the wind I gaveorders for all our sheets to be let fly, presenting an appearance ofterrible confusion. The ruse was successful; the ship ceased firing,and came booming along toward us under _every_ inch of canvas that shecould spread. Meanwhile our lads, hugely delighted at the fun inprospect, armed themselves, got the grappling-irons ready, and preparedfor boarding the stranger. The weather was quite fine enough to admitof our running alongside in the schooner, there being very little swellon; so as soon as we were ready the men stationed themselves at thesheets and braces, and by a little judicious manipulation of these andthe helm we contrived to get sternway upon the schooner just as the shipcame booming down upon our weather quarter. Nobody on board her seemedto think of shortening sail until she was fairly abreast of us, and thena terrific hullabaloo broke out as her crew endeavoured to clew up andhaul down everything at once--they even let run their topsail-halliardsin their excitement. Then, in the midst of it all, just as the shipwent surging past us, with a great rustling of canvas and lashing ofloose cordage in the wind, a man sprang into her mizzen-rigging andhailed us in French, ordering us to follow until he could heave-to, whenhe would send a boat on board us. This suited my plans to a nicety; sowe filled upon the schooner and followed the ship closely, luffing upfor her lee quarter as we did so; and so well had everything worked withus that I believe none of the Frenchmen had the slightest suspicion thatanything was wrong until we had actually run them aboard and thrown ourgrappling-irons. Then the excitement was even more distracting thanbefore, everybody crying out at once; officers and men vying with eachother in giving the most contradictory orders, and nobody dreaming ofobeying any single one of them. The surprise was complete; and when ourlads followed me over the ship's bulwarks, with drawn cutlasses, wefound as our opponents only a shouting, shrieking, gesticulating mob,who reviled us for our perfidious mode of fighting in one breath, and inthe next passionately conjured us not to overlook the fact that theysurrendered. It was as amusing a bit of business as I had been engagedin for many a day.
We lost no time in securing our prisoners--who were only some forty innumber--and then I turned my attention to the ship, which I ascertainedto be the _Caribbean_, of London, of twelve hundred and forty-three tonsregister, laden with sugar and rum. She was therefore a valuablerecapture. She carried thirty-two passengers, and by great good luckher own British crew was also on board. It was not necessary,therefore, for me to weaken my own force by putting a prize crew onboard her; my chief mate being quite sufficient to represent and watchover the interests of the _Sword Fish_ and her owners. The individualwho had been put on board her as prize-master, when she was captured byMonsieur Villeneuve's fleet, happened to be a very talkative fellow, andaccordingly I had not much difficulty in extracting from him theinformation that it had been rumoured through the fleet that thesuddenness of Monsieur Villeneuve's departure from the West Indies wasdue to intelligence that Lord Nelson was in pursuit. This statement, iftrue, exactly bore out my theory; and a little more judiciousquestioning enabled me to ascertain that it had further been statedthat, at the time of departure from Martinique, the British fleet wasbelieved to be not more than four days' sail distant. I thus obtainedsomething in the shape of a clue as to the direction in which my furthersearch ought to be prosecuted; and accordingly hauled up to thesouthward, close-hauled on the starboard tack, with our recapture incompany.
It was more than a week, however, before we contrived to obtain anydefinite information as to the whereabouts of the British fleet, andeven then I was four days longer in finding it; but when at length thiswas achieved, I had the satisfaction of learning that my information wasthe very latest of an authentic character that had been furnished toNelson; and it had the effect of causing him instantly to determine toretrace his steps to Europe. This was good news to me, for it enabledme to send my recapture across the Atlantic with the British fleet as aprotector, instead of taking her into Kingston, in Jamaica, where thenecessary formalities connected with the capture would have involved usin a vast amount of trouble and expense. I accordingly wrote a briefletter or two home, which I forwarded by the _Caribbean_, and partedcompany with her and the fleet within an hour of having fallen in withthe latter. And thus terminated, successfully and profitably, theservice which I had undertaken at the instigation of the Admiralstationed at Jamaica.
I was now my own master once more, free to go wherever my whim promptedme, and I determined that I would put into effect a plan that had longcommended itself to me; namely, to cruise along the Spanish Main in thehope of picking up one of the galleons or plate-ships that were stilldespatched from time to time from Cartagena. Upon parting company,therefore, with the British fleet, I cruised along the whole line of theWindward Islands as far south as Tobago and Trinidad, and then bore upfor the Main. In leisurely fashion and under easy canvas we coastedalong the shore, taking a look into the Cariaco Gulf without findinganything worth picking up, and thence across to Cape Codera, off whichthe wind came out from the westward, compelling us to make a stretch offthe land. This occurred about midnight. I secured an observation formy longitude at nine o'clock the next morning, and another for mylatitude at noon, about which time I became aware that the barometer wasfalling, although not rapidly enough to give cause for any uneasiness.As the afternoon wore on, however, there were indications that a changeof weather was impending. The sky lost the pure brilliancy of its blue,and by insensible degrees assumed an ashen pallor, which the sun vainlystruggled to pierce until he merged from a palpitating, rayless ball oflight to a shapeless blotch of dim, watery radiance, and thendisappeared. At the same time the wind died away until we were leftbecalmed and rolling rail-under upon a swell that gathered strengthevery hour as it came creeping up from the westward. In a short time itbecame a fine example of what the Spaniards call a "furious calm", theschooner rolling so heavily that I deemed it prudent to send the yardsand topmasts down on deck to relieve the lower-masts. And I did thisthe more readily because the steady, continuous decline of the mercuryin the tube assured me that we were booked for a stiff blow. Yet hoursucceeded hour until the darkness closed down upon us, and still, beyondthe portents already mentioned, there w
as no sign of the coming breeze.The night fell as dark as a wolf's mouth; the air was so close and hotthat the mere act of breathing was performed with difficulty; and thequick, jerky roll of the schooner at length became positivelydistressing in its persistent monotony. Of course, under thecircumstances, turning in was not to be thought of, so far as I wasconcerned. I therefore made myself as comfortable as I could upon thewheel-grating, and awaited developments.
The fact is that I was puzzled. I did not know what to make of theweather. Had it not been for the steady, continuous fall of the mercuryI should have expected nothing worse than a fresh breeze from thewestward, preceded perhaps by a thunder-squall; but the barometerindicated something more serious than that, yet the sky gave noverifying sign of the approach of anything like a heavy blow. But I hadlong ago taken in everything except the boom-foresail, to save the sailsfrom beating themselves to pieces, so I was pretty well prepared for anyeventuality.
It was close upon midnight when the change came, and then it was nothingat all alarming, being merely a sudden but by no means violent squallout from about due west, followed by a heavy downpour of rain. The rainlasted about a quarter of an hour, and when it ceased we were againbecalmed. Suddenly I became conscious of a faint luminousness somewherein the atmosphere, and looking about me to discover the cause, Iobserved what looked like a ball of lambent, greenish flame clinging tothe foremast-head, where it swayed about, elongating and contractingwith the roll of the ship, exactly as a gigantic soap-bubble might havedone. It clung there, swaying, for some moments, and then glided slowlydown the mast until it reached the jib-stay, down which it slid to thebowsprit, whence, after wavering for a few seconds, it travelled alongthe bowsprit, inboard, and vanished, not, however, until it had revealedby its corpse-like light the horror-stricken features of some half adozen of the watch huddled together on the forecastle, in attitudesevery curve and bend of which were eloquent of consternation.
"That's a bad sign, sir; so they say," remarked Saunders, my chief mate,whose watch it was.
"What? The appearance of that light?" demanded I.
"Not so much the appearance of it, sir, but the way that it travelled.They say that if a corposant appears aboard a vessel and stays aloft, ortravels upwards, it's all right; but if it comes down from aloft, itmeans a heavy gale of wind at the very least," answered Saunders.
"Pooh!" said I; "mere superstition. Everybody knows nowadays that acorposant is nothing whatever but an electrical phenomenon, andtherefore merely an indication that the atmosphere is surcharged withelectricity. As to whether it travels up or down, that, in my opinion,is mere chance or accident, call it which you will."
"Have you ever seen any of those things before, sir?" inquired the mate.
"No," said I; "this is the first time that I have ever been shipmateswith one."
"Ah!" remarked the mate, with a distinct accent of superior experiencein his tone; "I've seen 'em often enough; too often, I may say. Why,there was one time when I was aboard the little _Fox_, bound fromJamaica to New Providence. We were lying becalmed, just as we are to-night, close to the Diamond Bank, and with pretty much the same sort ofweather, too, when one of them things boarded us, making its appearanceon the spindle of the vane at our main-topmast head. It wavered aboutfor a minute or two, exactly like that thing just now, and then rolled,as it might be, down the spar until it met the topmast-stay, down whichit travelled to the foremast-head, and from thence it came down thetopsail sheet to the deck, where it bursted. Ten minutes after thathappened, sir, we were struck by a squall that hove us over on our beam-ends. We had to cut both masts away before she would right with us, andwhen at length she rose to an even keel, there was five feet of water inthe hold. Of course we could do nothing but scud before it, and, thesquall hardening into a furious gale of wind, we went ashore about twohours afterwards on South Point, Yuma Island, and out of a crew ofthirty-four men only seven of us was saved! Now, what d'ye think ofthat, sir?"
"Why, I think it was a terribly unfortunate affair; but I don't believethat the corposant had anything to do with it," answered I.
"Well, sir," answered the mate, "I only hope that it hadn't; because,d'ye see, if your view is the correct one, we needn't fear anythinghappening in consequence of--Why, bust me, but there's another of 'em!"
It was true. While Saunders was in the very act of speaking, another ofthe strange, weird lights had suddenly become visible, this time on themainmast-head, where it hung for a few minutes, finally sliding down themast to the deck, where it rolled to and fro for perhaps half a minute,presenting the appearance of a sphere of luminous mist, the mostbrilliant part of which was its centre. I am by no means asuperstitious person, but I am free to admit that the sight of thisweird, uncanny thing gliding about the deck and emitting its ghostlylight, almost at my feet, produced a sufficiently creepy feeling to makeme unfeignedly glad when it presently disappeared.
"Now, you mark my words, sir, if we don't have some very ugly weatherafter this," observed Saunders, producing his tinder-box and lightinghis pipe.
I walked to the skylight and took a squint at the barometer. It wasstill falling, and by this time the depression had assumed suchproportions as to fully justify such an expectation as that entertainedby the mate. I thought, therefore, that it might be only prudent tomake some further preparation, and I accordingly gave orders to reef theforesail and fore-staysail. All this time it continued as dark aspitch, and so breathlessly calm that the helmsman, wishing to prick upthe wicks of the binnacle-lamps, was able to do so in the open air, theonly wind affecting the naked flame being the draught occasioned by theheavy roll of the schooner.
But this was not destined to last very long. Some ten minutes or aquarter of an hour after the second corposant had vanished we felt afaint movement in the atmosphere which caused our small spread of canvasto flap heavily once or twice; then came a puff of hot, damp air thatlasted long enough to give the schooner steerage-way; and when this wason the point of dying, a scuffle of wind swept over us that careened theschooner to her bearings, and before she had recovered herself the truebreeze was upon us, with a deep, weird, moaning sound that wasinexpressibly dismal, and that somehow seemed to impart a feeling ofdire foreboding to the listener. Not that there was anything in theleast terrifying in the strength of the wind--far from it, indeed,--forit was no heavier than a double-reefed topsail breeze, to which theschooner stood up as stiff as a church, but there was a certainindescribable hollowness in the sound of it--that is the only fittingterm I can find to apply--that was quite unlike anything that I hadheard before, and that somehow seemed, in its weirdness, to indisputablyforebode disaster.
The schooner was now forging through the water at a speed of some fourknots, and looking well up into the wind, which had come out from thewestward. As I have said, there was already a very heavy swell running,and upon the top of this a very steep, awkward sea soon began to make,so that within half an hour of the breeze striking us we were pitchingbows under, and the decks to leeward were all afloat. By this time,too, it had become perfectly apparent that the wind was rapidly gainingstrength; so rapidly, indeed, that about an hour after the first puff itcame down upon us with all the fury of a squall, laying the schoonerdown to her rail, and causing her to plunge with fearful violence intothe fast-rising sea. Within the next half-hour the wind had increasedso greatly in strength that I began to think there really might besomething in Saunders's theory after all, and I was inwardly debatingwhether I should haul the fore-sheet to windward and heave the schoonerto, or whether it would be better to up helm and run before it until theweather should moderate a bit, when a third corposant suddenly appeared,this time on the boom-foresail gaff-end.
"Now, sir," remarked Saunders, "we shall soon know whether we've got theworst of the blow yet or not. If we have, that thing'll shift higherup; but if we haven't, it'll come down like the others."
I did not answer him, for I was at the moment straining my eyes into theblackness
on the weather-bow, where I fancied I had caught, a second ortwo before, a deeper shadow. There were moments when I thought I saw itagain, but so profound was the darkness that it really seemed absurd tosuppose it possible to discern anything in it; to make sure, however, Isang out to the look-out men on the forecastle to keep their eyes wideopen, and their answer came so sharp and prompt as to convince me thatthey were fully on the alert, and that I had allowed my imagination todeceive me. I therefore turned to Saunders with some remark upon mylips in reply to his, when I saw the corposant suddenly leave the gaff-end and go driving away to leeward on the wings of the gale. Inaturally expected that it would almost immediately vanish, but it didnot; on the contrary, it had all the appearance of having been arrestedin its flight, for I saw it elongating and collapsing again, as it haddone with the motion of the schooner, and it also appeared to me to bedescribing long arcs across the sky. For a moment I was puzzled toaccount for so strange a phenomenon, and then the explanation came to mein a flash. I had not been deceived when I believed I caught sight of ashadowy something sweeping athwart our bows. I had seen a ship, andthere she was to leeward of us, with the corposant clinging to one ofher spars. I had just time to give the order to bear up in pursuit, andto get the schooner before the wind, when the corposant seemed to settledown nearer to the water, and in another instant it had vanished.