Part 27 (2/2)
”My men, the schooner coming up on our weather quarter is a Portuguese pirate. His character is known; he scuttles all the s.h.i.+ps he boards, dishonours the women, and murders the crew. We cracked on to get out of the narrows, and now we have shortened sail to fight this blackguard, and teach him to molest a British s.h.i.+p. I promise, in the Company's name, twenty pounds prize-money to every man before the mast if we beat him off or out-manoeuvre him; thirty if we sink him; and forty if we tow him astern into a friendly port. Eight guns are clear below, three on the weather side, five on the lee; for, if he knows his business, he will come up on the lee quarter: if he doesn't that is no fault of yours nor mine. The muskets are all loaded, the cutla.s.ses ground like razors----”
”Hurrah!”
”We have got women to defend----”
”Hurrah!”
”A good s.h.i.+p under our feet, the G.o.d of justice overhead, British hearts in our bosoms, and British colours flying--run 'em up!--over our heads.”
(The s.h.i.+p's colours flew up to the fore, and the Union Jack to the mizen peak.) ”Now, lads, I mean to fight this s.h.i.+p while a plank of her (stamping on the deck) swims beneath my foot, and--what do you say?”
The reply was a fierce ”hurrah!” from a hundred throats, so loud, so deep, so full of volume, it made the s.h.i.+p vibrate, and rang in the creeping-on pirate's ears. Fierce, but cunning, he saw mischief in those shortened sails, and that Union Jack, the terror of his tribe, rising to a British cheer; he lowered his mainsail, and crawled up on the weather quarter. Arrived within a cable's length, he double-reef'ed his foresail to reduce his rate of sailing nearly to that of the s.h.i.+p; and the next moment a tongue of flame, and then a gush of smoke, issued from his lee bow, and the ball flew screaming like a seagull over the _Agra's_ mizen top. He then put his helm up, and fired his other bow-chaser, and sent the shot hissing and skipping on the water past the s.h.i.+p. This prologue made the novices wince. Bayliss wanted to reply with a carronade; but Dodd forbade him sternly, saying, ”If we keep him aloof we are done for.”
The pirate drew nearer, and fired both guns in succession, hulled the _Agra_ amids.h.i.+ps, and sent an eighteen-pound ball through her foresail.
Most of the faces were pale on the quarter-deck; it was very trying to be shot at, and hit, and make no return. The next double discharge sent one shot smash through the stern cabin window, and splintered the bulwark with another, wounding a seaman slightly.
”LIE DOWN FORWARD!” shouted Dodd. ”Bayliss, give him a shot.”
The carronade was fired with a tremendous report but no visible effect.
The pirate crept nearer, steering in and out like a snake to avoid the carronades, and firing those two heavy guns alternately into the devoted s.h.i.+p. He hulled the _Agra_ now nearly every shot.
The two available carronades replied noisily, and jumped as usual; they sent one thirty-two pound shot clean through the schooner's deck and side; but that was literally all they did worth speaking of.
”Curse them!” cried Dodd; ”load them with grape! they are not to be trusted with ball. And all my eighteen-pounders dumb! The coward won't come alongside and give them a chance.”
At the next discharge the pirate chipped the mizen mast, and knocked a sailor into dead pieces on the forecastle. Dodd put his helm down ere the smoke cleared, and got three carronades to bear, heavily laden with grape. Several pirates fell, dead or wounded, on the crowded deck, and some holes appeared in the foresail; this one interchange was quite in favour of the s.h.i.+p.
But the lesson made the enemy more cautious; he crept nearer, but steered so adroitly, now right astern, now on the quarter, that the s.h.i.+p could seldom bring more than one carronade to bear, while he raked her fore and aft with grape and ball.
In this alarming situation, Dodd kept as many of the men below as possible; but, for all he could do, four were killed and seven wounded.
Fullalove's worth came too true: it was the swordfish and the whale: it was a fight of hammer and anvil; one hit, the other made a noise.
Cautious and cruel, the pirate hung on the poor hulking creature's quarters and raked her at point-blank distance. He made her pa.s.s a bitter time. And her captain! To see the splintering hull, the parting shrouds, the s.h.i.+vered gear, and hear the shrieks and groans of his wounded; and he unable to reply in kind! The sweat of agony poured down his face. Oh, if he could but reach the open sea, and square his yards, and make a long chase of it; perhaps fall in with aid. Wincing under each heavy blow, he crept doggedly, patiently on towards that one visible hope.
At last, when the s.h.i.+p was choved with shot, and peppered with grape, the channel opened; in five minutes more he could put her dead before the wind.
No! The pirate, on whose side luck had been from the first, got half a broadside to bear at long musket-shot, killed a mids.h.i.+pman by Dodd's side, cut away two of the _Agra_'s mizen shrouds, wounded the gaff, and cut the jib-stay. Down fell that powerful sail into the water, and dragged across the s.h.i.+p's forefoot, stopping her way to the open sea she panted for. The mates groaned; the crew cheered stoutly, as British tars do in any great disaster: the pirates yelled with ferocious triumph, like the devils they looked.
But most human events, even calamities, have two sides. The _Agra_ being brought almost to a standstill, the pirate forged ahead against his will, and the combat took a new and terrible form. The elephant gun popped and the rifle cracked in the _Agra's_ mizen top, and the man at the pirate's helm jumped into the air and fell dead: both Theorists claimed him. Then the three carronades peppered him hotly; and he hurled an iron shower back with fatal effect. Then at last the long eighteen-pounders on the gun-deck got a word in. The old Niler was not the man to miss a vessel alongside in a quiet sea: he sent two round shot clean through him; the third splintered his bulwark and swept across his deck.
”His masts--fire at his masts!” roared Dodd to Monk, through his trumpet. He then got the jib clear, and made what sail he could without taking all the hands from the guns.
This kept the vessels nearly alongside a few minutes, and the fight was hot as fire. The pirate now for the first time hoisted his flag. It was black as ink. His crew yelled as it rose: the Britons, instead of quailing, cheered with fierce derision; the pirate's wild crew of yellow Malays, black chinless Papuans, and bronzed Portuguese, served their side guns, twelve-pounders, well, and with ferocious cries. The white Britons, drunk with battle now, naked to the waist, grimed with powder, and spotted like leopards with blood, their and their mates', replied with loud undaunted cheers and a deadly hail of grape from the quarter-deck; while the master-gunner and his mates, loading with a rapidity the mixed races opposed could not rival, hulled the schooner well between wind and water, and then fired chain-shot at her masts, as ordered, and began to play the mischief with her shrouds and rigging.
Meantime, Fullalove and Kenealy, aided by Vespasian, who loaded, were quietly butchering the pirate crew two a minute, and hoped to settle the question they were fighting for: smooth bore _v._ rifle; but unluckily neither fired once without killing; so ”there was nothing proven.”
The pirate, bold as he was, got sick of fair fighting first. He hoisted his mainsail and threw rapidly ahead, with a slight bearing to windward, and dismounted a carronade and stove in the s.h.i.+p's quarter-boat, by way of a parting kick.
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