Part 5 (1/2)
_The Strange Adventures of a South Seaman._
On November 4th, 1830, a number of convicts were indicted at the Admiralty Sessions of the Old Bailey for having on the 5th of September in the previous year piratically seized a brig called the _Cyprus_. A South Seaman was innocently and most involuntarily, as shall be discovered presently, involved in this tragic business, to which he is able to add a narrative that is certainly not known to any of the chroniclers of crime. But first as to the piratical seizure.
The _Cyprus_, a colonial brig, had been chartered to convey a number of convicts from Hobart Town to Macquarie Harbour, on the northern coast of Tasmania, and Norfolk Island, distant about a week's sail from Sydney--in those days a penal settlement. There were thirty-two felons in all. These men had been guilty of certain grave offences at Hobart Town, and they had rendered themselves in consequence liable to new punishment; they were tried before the Supreme Court of Judicature there, and sentenced to be transported to the place above mentioned.
Only the very worst sort of prisoners were sent to Norfolk Island and Macquarie Harbour. The discipline at those penal settlements was terrible; the labour that was exacted, heart-breaking. The character of the punishment was well known, and every felon re-sentenced to transportation from the colonial convict settlements very well understood the fate that was before him.
The _Cyprus_ sailed from Hobart Town in August, 1829. In addition to the thirty-two convicts, she carried a crew of eight men and a guard of twelve soldiers, under the command of Lieutenant Carew, who was accompanied by his wife and children. The prisoners, as was always customary in convict s.h.i.+ps, were under the care of a medical man named Williams.
Nothing of moment happened until the brig either brought up or was hove-to in Research Bay, where Dr. Williams, Lieutenant Carew, the mate of the vessel, a soldier, and a convict named Popjoy went ash.o.r.e on a fis.h.i.+ng excursion. They had not been gone from the s.h.i.+p above half-an-hour when they heard a noise of firearms. Instantly guessing that the convicts had risen, they made a rush for the boat and pulled for the brig. It was as they had feared: the felons had mastered the guard and seized the brig. They suffered no man to come on board save Popjoy, who, however, later on sprang overboard, and swam to the beach. They then sent the crew, soldiers, and pa.s.sengers ash.o.r.e, but without provisions and the means of supporting life. Then, amongst themselves, the prisoners lifted the anchor and trimmed sail, and the little brig slipped away out of Research Bay.
The chroniclers state that the vessel was never afterward heard of, though some of the convicts were apprehended, separately, in various parts of Suss.e.x and Ess.e.x. The posthumous yarn of the mate of an English whaler disproves this. He relates his extraordinary experience thus:
”We had been fis.h.i.+ng north of the Equator, and had filled up with a little 'grease,' as the Yankees term it, round about the Galapagos Islands, but business grew too slack for even a whaleman's patience.
Eleven months out from Whitby, and, if my memory fails me not, less than a score of full barrels in our hold! So the Captain made up his mind to try south, and working our way across the Equator, we struck in amongst the Polynesian groups, raising the Southern Cross higher and higher, till we were somewhere about lat.i.tude 30 deg., and longitude 175 deg. E.
”I came on deck to the relief at four o'clock one morning: the weather was quiet, a pleasant breeze blowing off the starboard beam; our s.h.i.+p was barque-rigged, with short, topgallant masts--Cape Horn fas.h.i.+on; she was thrusting through it leisurely under topsails and a maintopgallantsail, and the whole Pacific heave so cradled her as she went that she seemed to sleep as she sailed.
”Day broke soon after five, and as the light brightened out I caught sight of a gleam on the edge of the sea. It was as white with the risen sun upon it as an iceberg. I levelled the gla.s.s and made out the topmast canvas of a small vessel. There was nothing to excite one in the spectacle of a distant sail. The barque's work went on; the decks were washed down, the look-out aloft hailed and nothing reported, and at seven bells the crew went to breakfast, at which hour we had risen the distant sail with a rapidity that somewhat puzzled the captain and me. For, first of all, she was not so far off now but that we could distinguish the lay of her head. She looked to be going our way, but clearly she was stationary, for the _Swan_, which was the name of our barque, though as seaworthy an old tub as ever went to leeward on a bowline, was absolutely without legs: nothing more sluggish was ever afloat; for _her_ then to have overhauled anything that was actually under way would have been marvellous.
”'Something wrong out there, Grainger?' said the captain.
”'Looks to me to be all in the wind with her,' I answered.
”'Make out any colour?' said the captain.
”'Nothing as yet,' said I.
”'s.h.i.+ft your helm by a spoke or two,' said he. 'Meanwhile, I'll go to breakfast.'
”He was not long below. By the time he returned we had risen the distant vessel to the line of her rail. I got some breakfast in the cabin; on pa.s.sing again through the hatch I found the captain looking at the sail through the telescope.
”'She is a small brig,' said he, 'and she has just sent the English colours aloft with the jack down. She is all in the wind, as you said.
Her people don't seem to know what to do with her.'
”She now lay plain enough to the naked sight; a small black brig of about a hundred and eighty tons, apparently in ballast as she floated high on the water. She, like ourselves, carried short topgallantmasts, but the canvas she showed consisted of no more than topsails and courses. I took the gla.s.s from the captain, and believed I could make out the heads of two or three people showing above the bulwark rail abaft the mainmast.
”'What's their trouble going to prove?' said the captain.
”'They're waiting for us,' said I. 'They saw us, and put the helm down, and got their little s.h.i.+p in irons instead of backing their topsail yard. No sailor-man there, I doubt.'
”'A small colonial trader, you'll find,' said the captain, 'with a crew of four or five Kanakas. The captain's sick and the mate was accidentally left ash.o.r.e at the last island.'
”It blew a four-knot breeze--four knots, I mean, for the _Swan_.
Wrinkling the water under her bows, and smoothing into oil a cable's length of wake astern of her, the whaler floated down to the little brig within hailing distance. We saw but two men, and one of them was at the wheel. There was an odd look of confusion aloft, or rather let me describe it as a want of that sort of precision which a sailor's eye would seek for and instantly miss, even in the commonest old sea-donkey of a collier. Nothing was rightly set for the lack of hauling taut. Running gear was slackly belayed, and swung with the rolling of the little brig like Irish pennants. The craft was clean at the bottom, but uncoppered. She was a round-bowed contrivance, with a spring aft which gave a kind of mulish, kick-up look to the run of her.
”One of the two visible men, a broad-chested, thick-set fellow, in a black coat and a wide, white straw hat, got upon the bulwark, and stood holding on by a backstay, watching our approach, but he did not offer to hail. I thought this queer; it struck me that he hesitated to hail us, as though wanting the language of the sea in this business of speaking.