“Zounds, Captain Crowfoot, shoal water—why it breaks—we shall be ashore!”
“Down with the helm-brace round the yards,” shouted Crowfoot; “that’s it—steady—luff, my man;” and the danger was so imminent that even the studding-sail haulyards were not let go, and the consequence was that the booms snapped off like carrots as we came to the wind.
“Lord help us! we shall never weather that foaming reef there: set the spanker—haul out—haul down the foretopmast-staysail—so, mind your luff, my man.”
The frigate now began to fire right and left, and the hissing of the shot overhead was a fearful augury of what was to take place; so sudden was the accident that they had not had time to draw the round shot. The other transports were equally fortunate with ourselves in weathering the shoal, and presently we were all close hauled to windward of the reef, until we weathered the easternmost prong, when we bore up. But poor Rayo! she had struck on a coral reef, where the Admiralty charts laid down fifteen fathoms water; and although there was some talk at the time of an error in judgment, in not having the lead going in the chains, still do I believe there was no fault lying at the door of her gallant captain. By the time we had weathered the reef the frigate had swung off from the pinnacle of rock on which she had been in a manner impaled, and was making all the sail she could, with a fothered sail under her bows, and chain-pumps clanging, and whole cataracts of water gushing from them, clear white jets spouting from all the scuppers, fore and aft. She made the signal to close. The next, alas! was the British ensign, seized, union down in the main rigging, the sign of the uttermost distress. Still we all bowled along together, but her yards were not squared, nor her sails set with her customary precision, and her lurches became more and more sickening, until at length she rolled so heavily, that she dipped both yardarms alternately in the water, and reeled to and fro like a drunken man.
“What is that splash?”
It was the larboard-bow gun, a long eighteen-pounder, hove overboard, and, watching the roll, the whole broadside, one after another, was cast into the sea. The clang of the chain-pumps increased, the water rushed in at one side of the main-deck and out at the other, in absolute cascades from the ports. At this moment the whole fleet of boats were alongside, keeping way with the ship, in the light, breeze. Her main-topsail was hove aback, while the captain’s voice resounded through the ship.
“Now, men—all hands—bags and hammocks—starboard watch, the starboard side—larboard watch, the larboard side—no rushing now—she will swim this hour to come.”
The bags, and hammocks, and officers’ kits, were handed into the boats; the men were told off over the side as quietly by watches as if at muster, the officers last. At length the first-lieutenant came down. By this time she was settling perceptibly in the water; but the old captain still stood on the gangway, holding by the iron stanchion, where, taking off his hat, he remained uncovered for a moment, with the tears standing in his eyes. He then replaced it, descended, and took his place in the ship’s launch—the last man to leave the ship; and there was little time to spare, for we had scarcely shoved off a few yards, to clear the spars of the wreck, when she sended forward, heavily and sickly, on the long swell. She never rose to the opposite heave of the sea again, but gradually sank by the head. The hull disappeared slowly and dignifiedly, the ensign fluttered and vanished beneath the dark ocean—I could have fancied reluctantly—as if it had been drawn down through a trap-door. The topsails next disappeared, the foretopsail sinking fastest; and last of all, the white pennant at the main-topgallantmast head, after flickering and struggling in the wind, flew up in the setting sun as if imbued with life, like a stream of white fire, or as if it had been the spirit leaving the body, and was then drawn down into the abyss, and the last vestige of the Rayo vanished for ever. The crew, as if moved by one common impulse, gave three cheers.
The captain now stood up in his boat—”Men, the Rayo is no more, but it is my duty to tell you, that although you are now to be distributed amongst the transports, you are still amenable to martial law: I am aware, men, this hint may not be necessary, still it is right you should know it.”
When the old hooker clipped out of sight, there was not a dry eye in the whole fleet. “There she goes, the dear old beauty,” said one of her crew. “There goes the blessed old black b——h,” quoth another. “Ah, many a merry night have we had in the clever little craft,” quoth a third; and there was really a tolerable shedding of tears and squirting of tobacco-juice. But the blue ripple had scarcely blown over the glass-like surface of the sea where she had sunk, when the buoyancy of young hearts, with the prospect of a good furlough amongst the lobster-boxes, for a time, seemed to be uppermost among the men. The officers, I saw and knew, felt very differently.
“My eye!” sang out an old quartermaster in our boat, perched well forward, with his back against the ring in the stem, and his arms crossed, after having been busily employed rummaging in his bag—”my eye, what a pity—oh, what a pity!—”
Come, there is some feeling, genuine, at all events, thought I.
“Why,” said Bill Chestree, the captain of the foretop, “what is can’t be helped, old Fizgig; old Rayo has gone down, and—”
“Old Rayo be d——d, Master Bill,” said the man, “but may I be flogged, if I han’t forgotten half-a-pound of negrohead baccy in Dick Catgut’s bag.”
“Launch ahoy!” hailed a half-drunken voice from one of the boats astern of us. “Hillo,” responded the coxswain. The poor skipper even pricked up his ears. “Have you got Dick Catgut’s fiddle among ye?” This said Dick Catgut was the corporal of marines, and the prime instigator of all the fun amongst the men. “No, no,” said several voices, “no fiddle here.” The hail passed round among the other boats, “No fiddle.”
“I would rather lose three days’ grog than have his fiddle mislaid,” quoth the man who pulled the bow oar.
“Why don’t you ask Dick himself?” said our coxswain.
“Ay, true enough—Dick, Dick Catgut!” but no one answered. Alas! poor Dick was nowhere to be found; he had been mislaid as well as his fiddle. He had broken into the spirit-room, as it turned out, and, having got drunk, did not come to time when the frigate sank.
Our ship, immediately after the frigate’s crew had been bestowed and the boats got in, hoisted the commodore’s light, and the following morning we fell in with the Torch, off the east end of Jamaica, which, after seeing the transports safe into Kingston, and taking out me and my people, bore up through the Gulf, and resumed her cruising-ground on the edge of the Gulf Stream, between 25° and 30° north latitude.
CHAPTER III.
THE QUENCHING OF THE TORCH.
“Then rose from sea to sky the wild farewell.”
—Don Juan.
THE EVENING was closing in dark and rainy, with every appearance of a gale from the westward, and the weather had become so thick and boisterous that the lieutenant of the watch had ordered the look-out at the mast-head down on deck. The man, on his way down, had gone into the maintop to bring away some things he had placed there in going aloft, and was in the act of leaving it, when he sang out—”A sail on the weather bow.”
“What does she look like?”
“Can’t rightly say, sir; she is in the middle of the thick weather to windward.”
“Stay where you are a little.—Jenkins, jump forward, and see what you can make of her from the foreyard.”
Whilst the topman was obeying his instruction, the look-out again hailed—“She is a ship, sir, close-hauled on the same tack—the weather clears, and I can see her now.”
The wind, ever since noon, had been blowing in heavy squalls, with appalling lulls between them. One of these gusts had been so violent as to bury in the sea the lee-guns in the waist, although the brig had nothing set but her close-reefed main-topsail and reefed foresail. It was now spending its fury, and she was beginning to roll heavily, when, with a suddenness almost incredible to one unacquainted w
ith these latitudes, the veil of mist that had hung to windward the whole day was rent and drawn aside, and the red and level rays of the setting sun flashed at once, through a long arch of glowing clouds, on the black hull and tall spars of his Britannic Majesty’s sloop Torch. And, true enough, we were not the only spectators of this gloomy splendour; for, right in the wake of the moon-like sun, now half sunk in the sea, at the distance of a mile or more lay a long warlike-looking craft, apparently a frigate or heavy corvette, rolling heavily and silently in the trough of the sea, with her masts, yards, and the scanty sail she had set, in strong relief against the glorious horizon.
Jenkins now hailed from the foreyard—”The strange sail is bearing up, sir.”
As he spoke a flash was seen, followed, after what seemed a long interval, by the deadened report of the gun, as if it had been an echo, and the sharp, half-ringing half-hissing sound of the shot. It fell short, but close to us, and was evidently thrown from a heavy cannon, from the length of the range.
Mr Splinter, the first-lieutenant, jumped from the gun he stood on—“Quartermaster, keep her away a bit,” and dived into the cabin to make his report.
Captain Deadeye was a staid, stiff-rumped, wall-eyed, old first-lieutenan-tish-looking veteran, with his coat of a regular Rodney cut, broad skirts, long waist, and stand-up collar, over which dangled either a queue or a marlinspike with a tuft of oakum at the end of it,—it would have puzzled Old Nick to say which. His lower spars were eased in tight unmentionables of what had once been white kerseymere, and long boots, the coal-scuttle tops of which served as scuppers to carry off the drainings from his coat-flaps in bad weather: he was, in fact, the “last of the sea-monsters,” but, like all his tribe, as brave as steel, and, when put to it, as alert as a cat.
He no sooner heard Splinter’s report than he sprang up the ladder, brushing the tumbler of swizzle he had just brewed clean out of the fiddle into the lap of Mr Saveall, the purser, who had dined with him, and nearly extinguishing the said purser by his arm striking the bowl of the pipe he was smoking, thereby forcing the shank half-way down his throat.
“My glass, Wilson,” to his steward.
“She is close to, sir; you can see her plainly without it,” said Mr Treenail, the second-lieutenant, from the weather nettings, where he was reconnoitring.
After a long look through his starboard blinker (his other skylight had been shut up ever since Aboukir), Captain Deadeye gave orders to “clear away the weather-bow gun;” and as it was now getting too dark for flags to be seen distinctly, he desired that three lanterns might be got ready for hoisting vertically in the main-rigging.
“All ready forward there?”
“All ready, sir.”
“Then hoist away the lights, and throw a shot across her forefoot—Fire!” Bang went our carronade, but our friend to windward paid no regard to the private signal; he had shaken a reef out of his topsails, and was coming down fast upon us.
It was clear that old Blowhard had at first taken him for one of our own cruisers, and meant to signalise him, “all regular and shipshape,” to use his own expression. Most of us, however, thought it would have been wiser to have made sail and widened our distance a little, in place of bothering with old-fashioned manoeuvres, which might end in our catching a tartar; but the skipper had been all his life in line-of-battle ships or heavy frigates; and it was a tough job, under any circumstances, to persuade him of the propriety of “up-stick-and-away,” as we soon felt to our cost.
The enemy, for such he evidently was, now all at once yawed, and indulged us with a sight of his teeth; and there he was, fifteen ports of a side on his main-deck, with the due quantum of carronades on his quarterdeck and forecastle; whilst his short lower-masts, white canvass, and the tremendous hoist in his topsails, showed him to be a heavy American frigate; and it was equally certain that he had cleverly hooked us under his lee, within comfortable range of his long twenty-fours. To convince the most unbelieving, three jets of flame, amidst wreaths of white smoke, now glanced from his maindeck; but in this instance the sound of the cannon was followed by a sharp crackle and a shower of splinters from the foreyard.
It was clear we had got an ugly customer—poor Jenkins now called to Treenail, who was standing forward near the gun which had been fired—”Och, sir, and it’s badly wounded we are here.”
The officer was a Patlander, as well as the seaman. “Which of you, my boy?”—the glowing seriousness of the affair in no way checking his propensity to fun,—”Which of you—you, or the yard?”
“Both of us, your honour; but the yard badliest.”
“The devil!—Come down, then, or get into the top, and I will have you looked after presently.”
The poor fellow crawled off the yard into the foretop, as he was ordered, where he was found after the brush, badly wounded by a splinter in the breast.
Jonathan, no doubt, “calculated,” as well he might, that this taste of his quality would be quite sufficient for a little eighteen-gun sloop close under his lee; but the fight was not to be so easily taken out of Deadeye, although even to his optic it was now high time to be off.
“All hands make sail, Mr Splinter; that chap is too heavy for us.—Mr Kelson,” to the carpenter, “jump up and see what the foreyard will carry. Keep her away, my man,” to the seaman at the helm.—”Crack on, Mr Splinter, set the fore-topsail,—shake all the reefs out, and loose topgallant-sails;—stand by to sheet home; and see all clear to rig the booms out, if the breeze lulls.”
In less than a minute we were bowling along before it; but the wind was breezing up again, and no one could say how long the wounded foreyard would carry the weight and drag of the sails. To mend the matter, Jonathan was coming up hand over hand with the freshening breeze, under a press of canvass; it was clear that escape was next to impossible.
“Clear away the larboard guns!” I absolutely jumped off the deck with aston-ishment—who could have spoken it? It appeared such downright madness to show fight under the very muzzles of the guns of an enemy, half of whose broadside was sufficient to sink us. It was the captain, however, and there was nothing for it but to obey.
In an instant the creaking and screaming of the carronade slides, the rattling of the carriage of the long twelve-pounder amidships, the thumping and punching of handspikes and the dancing and jumping of Jack himself, were heard through the whistling of the breeze, as the guns were being shotted and run out. In a few seconds all was still again, but the rushing sound of the vessel going through the water, and of the rising gale amongst the rigging.
The men stood clustered at their quarters, their cutlasses buckled round their waists, all without jackets and waistcoats, and many with nothing but their trousers on.
“Now, men, mind your aim; our only chance is to wing him. I will yaw the ship, and as your guns come to bear, slap it right into his bows. Starboard your helm, my man, and bring her to the wind.” As she came round, blaze went our carronades and long gun in succession, with good will and good aim, and down came his foretop-sail on the cap, with all the superincumbent spars and gear; the head of the topmast had been shot away. The men instinctively cheered. “That will do; now knock off, my boys, and let us run for it. Keep her away again; make all sail.”
Jonathan was for an instant paralysed by our impudence; but just as we were getting before the wind, he yawed, and let drive his whole broadside; and fearfully did it transmogrify us.
Half an hour before we were as gay a little sloop as ever floated, with a crew of a hundred and twenty as fine fellows as ever manned a British man-of-war. The iron shower sped—ten of the hundred and twenty never saw the sun rise again; seventeen more were wounded, three mortally; we had eight shot between wind and water, our maintop-mast shot away as clean as a carrot, and our hull and rigging otherwise regularly cut to pieces. Another broadside succeeded; but by this time we had bore up—thanks to the loss of our after-sail, we could do nothing else; and what was better luck still, whilst the loss of o
ur maintop-mast paid the brig off on the one hand, the loss of headsail in the frigate brought her as quickly to the wind on the other; thus most of her shot fell astern of us; and before she could bear up again in chase, the squall struck her, and carried her maintop-mast overboard.
This gave us a start, crippled and bedevilled though we were; and as the night fell, we contrived to lose sight of our large friend. With breathless anxiety did we carry on through that night, expecting every lurch to send our remaining topmast by the board; but the weather moderated, and next morning the sun shone on our blood-stained decks at anchor off the entrance to St George’s harbour.
I was the mate of the watch, and as the day dawned I had amused myself with other younkers over the side, examining the shot-holes and other injuries sustained from the fire of the frigate, and contrasting the clean, sharp, well-defined apertures made by the 24-pound shot from the long guns—with the bruised and splintered ones from the 32-pound carronades; but the men had begun to wash down the decks, and the first gush of clotted blood and water from the scuppers fairly turned me sick. I turned away, when Mr Kennedy our gunner, a good steady old Scotchman, with whom I was a bit of a favourite, came up to me—”Mr Cringle, the captain has sent for you; poor Mr Johnstone is fast going, he wants to see you.”
I knew my young messmate had been wounded, for I had seen him carried below after the frigate’s second broadside; but the excitement of a boy, who had seldom smelt powder fired in anger before, had kept me on deck the whole night, and it never once occurred to me to ask for him, until the old gunner spoke.
I hastened down to our small confined berth, where I saw a sight that quickly brought me to myself. Poor Johnstone was indeed going; a grape-shot had struck him, and torn his belly open. There he lay in his bloody hammock on the deck, pale and motionless as if he had already departed, except a slight twitching at the corners of his mouth, and a convulsive contraction and distension of his nostrils. His brown ringlets still clustered over his marble forehead, but they were drenched in the cold sweat of death. The surgeon could do nothing for him, and had left him; but our old captain—bless him for it—I little expected from his usual crusty bearing to find him so employed—had knelt by his side, and, whilst he read from the Prayer-book one of those beautiful petitions in our Church service to Almighty God for mercy to the passing soul of one so young, and so early cut off, the tears trickled down the old man’s cheeks, and filled the furrows worn in them by the washing up of many a salt spray. On the other side of his narrow bed, fomenting the rigid muscles of his neck and chest, sat Misthress Connolly, one of three women on board—a rough enough creature, heaven knows! in common weather: but her stifled sobs showed that the mournful sight had stirred up all the woman within her. She had opened the bosom of the poor boy’s shirt, and untying the ribbon that fastened a small gold crucifix round his neck she placed it in his cold hand. The young midshipman was of a respectable family in Limerick, her native place, and a Catholic—another strand of the cord that bound her to him. When the captain finished reading, he bent over the departing youth, and kissed his cheek. “Your young messmate just now desired to see you, Mr Cringle, but it is too late; he is insensible and dying.” Whilst he spoke, a strong shiver passed through the boy’s frame, his face became slightly convulsed, and all was over!