CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

THE GIG IS CAUGHT IN A GALE.

Did as the skipper had requested, receiving young Dumaresq into the gig in his place, and then the several boats lay upon their oars, awaiting further orders.

Captain Chesney seemed to be very reluctant, even now, to quit the neighbourhood of the burning ship; and therein I considered that he was displaying sound judgment, for the weather was still stark calm, and whatever movement we might make would have to be executed with the oars, which would soon result in greatly fatiguing the men without any commensurate advantage. Moreover the Indiaman was now a blazing beacon, the light from which would be distinctly visible at a distance of at least thirty or forty miles in every direction, and would be sure to attract attention should any craft be in the neighbourhood, probably leading to her steering in our direction as soon as a breeze should spring up; in which case we might all hope to be picked up.

That this was in his mind was evident, for he presently summoned all the boats about him, and pointed out to their occupants the possibilities of rescue by remaining in the neighbourhood of the burning ship, and he then went on to say:

"Our reckoning at noon showed that we were then--as we have since remained--seven hundred and twenty miles south-west by south from the island of Corvo, one of the Azores, which is the nearest land. There is a small town called Rosario upon this island, where, if we can but reach it, I have no doubt we can obtain succour; and I therefore intend to steer for Corvo, not only for the reason that I have mentioned, but also because most homeward-bound ships endeavour to make the Azores, and we therefore stand a very good chance of being picked up at any moment. Now, gentlemen, those of you who are in charge of boats will be pleased to remember that the course is north-east by north, and the distance seven hundred and twenty miles. You will also be pleased to remember that the boats are to keep company as long as the weather will permit, unless otherwise ordered by me. And now, as I do not intend to make a start until to-morrow morning, you had better arrange the watches in each boat, and secure all the rest that you can."

This very sensible recommendation was at once adopted all round; but, as far as the gig was concerned, sleep appeared to be out of the question, the strong glare of light from the burning ship--although the boats had hauled off to a distance of fully half a mile from her--and, still more, the novelty and excitement of our situation, seeming to have completely banished slumber from our eyelids.

At length, toward two o'clock in the morning--by which time the Indiaman had become the mere shell of a ship, a blazing furnace from stem to stern,--a light breeze sprang up from the north-north-east, almost dead in our teeth for the voyage to the Azores; and the order was passed along for the boats to set their sails and make short reaches, for the purpose of maintaining their position near the ship. This was done, and then the only bad quality that the boats appeared to possess rapidly declared itself. They were, one and all, staunch, well-built, and finely-modelled boats, excellently adapted for their work in all respects save one, which, in the present case, was of very great importance: their keels were so shallow that they had no grip of the water; and the result of this was that, as we quickly discovered, they would not turn to windward. The gig, which had been built with an especial eye to speed, was the least serious offender in this respect; indeed, so long as the water remained smooth, we managed to hold our own with her, and a trifle to spare; the long-boat, probably from her size and superior depth of body, came next; but the others sagged away to leeward from the first, despite the utmost efforts of those in charge; and, consequently, in order to remain in company, we were obliged to bear up and run down to them. Within an hour from the moment of making sail we were a mile to leeward of the ship; and with the steady freshening of the breeze we continued to increase our distance from her.

The day at length broke, disclosing a sea ruffled to a hue of purest sapphire, flecked with little ridges of snowy foam by the whipping of the now fresh breeze, under a sky of blue, dappled with small, wool-like white clouds that came sailing up, squadron after squadron, out of the north-east, at a speed that told of a fiery breeze in the higher reaches of the atmosphere; and a sharp look-out for the gleaming canvas of a passing ship was at once instituted, but without result. About half an hour later the skipper, who was but a short distance to leeward of us, waved us to close; and when we had done so the long-boat and the gig ran down in company to the other boats in succession, Captain Chesney ordering each, as we passed, to follow him, until we finally all found ourselves near the jolly-boat, which was the most leewardly boat of all. The little flotilla then closed round the long-boat, which had been hove-to, and the skipper, standing up in the stern-sheets, addressed us:

"Gentlemen," said he, "it is, as you may well imagine, a great disappointment to me to discover that the boats exhibit such very poor weatherly qualities, since it renders it plain that, unless something can be done to improve them in that respect, it will be useless for us to think of carrying out my original plan of making for the Azores in the teeth of the present foul wind. A plan has occurred to me that may possibly have the effect of helping the boats to go to windward, and I should like you all to try it. If it answers, well and good; if it does not, I am afraid there will be nothing for it but for us to try for the Canaries, which are considerably further away from us than the Azores, but which also lie much further to the southward, and consequently afford us a better chance, with the wind as it now is.

"And now as to my plan for helping the boats to turn to windward. They are all fitted with bottom-boards; and I am of opinion that, if the triangular bottom-board in the stern-sheets is suspended over the lee side amidships by means of short lengths of line bent on to two of the corners, the arrangement will serve as a lee-board, and the boats will go to windward, although their speed may be slightly decreased. At all events I should like to give the plan a trial; so get your bottom-boards rigged at once, gentlemen, if you please, somewhat after the fashion of this affair that I have arranged."

So saying, the skipper exhibited the long-boat's board, fitted to serve as a lee-board, and forthwith dropped it over the side, secured by a couple of stout lanyards, the other ends of which were made fast to the boat's thwarts. It appeared to require but little arranging, the leeway of the boat pressing it close to her side, and retaining it there in its proper position. The other boats were not long in following the skipper's example. Five minutes sufficed to get the lee-boards into action, and then the squadron hauled its wind, with the object of beating back to the neighbourhood of the ship. The value of Captain Chesney's idea soon became apparent, for in less than an hour we had reached far enough to windward to enable us to fetch the ship on the next tack. But we did not go about; for just at that time the wreck, burnt to the water's edge, suddenly disappeared, leaving no trace of her late presence but a dense cloud of mingled steam and smoke, that gradually swept away to leeward astern of us.

The boats were on the starboard tack, and were kept so throughout the day, that being the leg upon which we could do best with the wind as it then was; and at noon an observation of the sun was secured which, the skipper having his chronometer and charts with him, showed that we were eleven miles nearer to our destination than we had been when we left the ship. This was no great slice out of a distance of more than seven hundred miles, but neither was it by any means discouraging, taking into consideration the distance that we had lost during the night. As for the passengers, particularly the women and children, they were in wonderfully good spirits, seeming to regard the boat-voyage rather as a pleasure-trip than the serious matter that it really was. The breeze continuing to freshen, it at length became necessary for the long-boat and ourselves to haul down a reef, in order that we might not outsail and run away from the remainder of the flotilla. But, despite everybody's most strenuous efforts, the boats manifested a decided disposition to become widely scattered, and it was only by the faster sailers heaving-to occasionally that the sluggards were enabled to keep in company. This proved so serious an obstacle to progress that just before sunset the long-boat again displayed the signal to close, and when we had done so the skipper informed us that, in view of the great difference in the sailing powers of the several boats, he withdrew his prohibition as to parting company, and that from that moment each boat would be at liberty to do the best that she could for herself. And it appeared to me that this was a most sensible decision to arrive at, since, taking into account the long distance to be traversed, the determination to regulate the progress of the entire squadron by that of the slowest boat must necessarily entail a very serious lengthening of the period of exposure and privation for those in the faster boats. Sail was accordingly made by the long-boat and ourselves; and when darkness closed down upon the scene, the gig was leading by about half a mile, the long-boat coming next, and the remainder stringing out astern, at distances varying from three-quarters of a mile to twice as far.

It must not be supposed that, on this first day in the boats, the novelty of our situation caused us to feel indifferent to the possibility of a sail heaving in sight; on the contrary, one man in each boat was told off for the especial purpose of keeping a look-out; and I, for one, felt it to be a serious misfortune that up to nightfall nothing had been sighted; for, to tell the whole truth, I regarded the possibility of our reaching either Corvo or the Canaries as mighty problematical, trusting for our eventual rescue very much more to the chance of our falling in with a ship and being picked up.

About eight bells of the second dog-watch the wind, which had been gradually freshening all day, freshened still more, piping up occasionally in so squally a fashion that I deemed it prudent to again haul down a reef; and by midnight it had become necessary to take in a second reef, the sky having clouded over, with a thick and rather dirty look to windward, while the wind came along in such heavy puffs that, staunch boat as was the gig, we had our work cut out at times to keep her lee gunwale above water. Moreover, a short, steep, choppy sea had been raised that proved very trying to us, the boat driving her sharp stem viciously into it, and throwing frequent heavy showers of spray over herself, that not only drenched us all to the skin, but also necessitated the continuous use of the baler. Fortunately, we were not very greatly crowded; so that, despite the weight of our party and that of our provisions and water, the boat was fairly buoyant, and we shipped nothing heavier than spray; but my heart ached as I thought of the poor women and children cooped up in the long-boat, and pictured to myself their too probable piteous condition of cold and wet and misery.

As the night wore on, the weather grew steadily worse; and morning at length dawned upon us, hove-to under close-reefed canvas, with a strong gale blowing, and a high, steep, and dangerous sea running. And there was every prospect that there was worse to come, for the sun rose as a pale, wan, shapeless blot of sickly light, faintly showing through a veil of dim, grey, watery vapour, streaked with light-coloured patches of tattered scud, that swept athwart the louring sky at a furious rate, while the sea had that greenish, turbid appearance that is often noticeable as a precursor of bad weather.

None of the other boats were anywhere near us, so far as could be made out; but one of the men was still standing on a thwart, steadying himself by the mast, looking for them, when he suddenly made our hearts leap and our pulses quicken by flinging out his right arm and pointing vehemently, as he yelled:

"Sail ho! a couple of points on the lee bowl. A ship, sir, steerin' large, under to'gallant-sails!"

"Let me get a look at her," answered I, as I clawed my way forward, noticing with consternation as I did so, that, despite the continuous baling that had been kept up, the water was fully three inches deep in the bottom of the boat, and that the lower tier of our provisions was, in consequence, most probably spoiled.

The man, having first carefully pointed out to me the exact direction in which I was to look for the stranger, climbed down off the thwart and so made room for me to take his place, which I immediately did. Yes; there she was, precisely as the man had said, a full-rigged ship, scudding under topgallant-sails. She was fully seven--maybe nearer eight--miles away, and although rather on our lee bow at the moment when first sighted--in consequence of the gig having just then come to--was in reality still a trifle to windward of us. Of course it was utterly useless to hope that we could, by any means at our disposal, attract her attention at that distance; but as I looked almost despairingly at her, and noticed that she did not appear to be travelling very fast, it occurred to me that there was just a ghost of a chance that, by bearing up and running away to leeward, upon a course converging obliquely upon her own, we might be able to intercept her; or, if not that, we might at least be able to approach her nearly enough to make ourselves seen. It was worth attempting, I thought, for even though, in the event of failure, we should find ourselves in the end many miles more distant from Corvo than we then were, I attached but little importance to that; my conviction now being stronger than ever that our only hope of deliverance lay in being picked up, rather than in our being able to reach the Azores, or any other land. Noting carefully, therefore, the bearings of the stranger, and especially the fact that she appeared to be running dead to leeward, with squared yards, I made my way aft again, took the tiller, watched for a favourable opportunity, and succeeded in getting the gig before the wind without shipping very much water. Once fairly before the wind, the boat was able to bear a considerably greater spread of canvas than while hove-to; indeed an increase of sail immediately became an imperative necessity in order to avoid being caught and overrun, or pooped, by the sea; moreover we had to catch that ship, if we could. We therefore shook out a couple of reefs, and then went to breakfast; treating ourselves to as good a meal as the circumstances would permit.

The gig being double-ended, and modelled somewhat after the fashion of a whale-boat, scudded well and no longer shipped any water; our condition, therefore, was greatly improved, and running before the gale, as we now were, the strength of the wind was not so severely felt, nor did the chill of the blast penetrate our saturated clothing so cruelly as while we were hove-to. Our clothes gradually dried upon us, we baled out the boat, and in the course of an hour or so began to experience something approaching a return to comfort. Meanwhile, at frequent intervals, the bearing and distance of the strange sail was ascertained, and our spirits rose as, with every observation, the chances of our ultimately succeeding in intercepting her grew more promising. Another result of these observations, however, was the unwelcome discovery that the stranger was travelling at a considerably faster pace than we had at first credited her with; and that only the nicest and most accurate judgment with regard to our own course would enable us to close with her.

That in itself, however, was not sufficient to occasion us any very grave anxiety, for we had the whole day before us; and what we had most greatly to fear was a further increase in the strength of the wind. Unhappily there was only too much reason to dread that this might happen, if, indeed, it was not in process of happening already; for the sky astern was rapidly assuming a blacker, wilder appearance, while it was unquestionable that the sea was increasing in height and breaking more heavily. This last was a serious misfortune for us in a double sense; for, on the one hand, it increased the danger of the boat being pooped, while on the other it materially reduced our progress, our low sails becoming almost completely becalmed, and the boat's way slackening every time that we settled into the hollow of a sea. So greatly did this retard us that at length, despite the undeniable fact that the gale was increasing, we shook out our last reef and attempted the hazardous experiment of scudding under whole canvas. And for a short time we did fairly well, although my heart was in my mouth every time that, as the boat soared upward to the crest of a sea, the blast struck her with a furious sweep, filling the sail with a jerk that threatened to take the mast out of her, and taxing my skill to the utmost to prevent her from broaching-to and capsizing. But it would not do; it was altogether too dangerous an experiment to be continued. It was no longer a question of skill in the handling of the boat, we were tempting Providence and courting disaster, for the wind was freshening rapidly, so we had to haul down a reef again, and even after we had done this we seemed to be scarcely any better off than before.

Meanwhile, however, in the midst of our peril and anxiety we had the satisfactory assurance that we were steadily nearing the ship; for we had risen her until, when both she and the gig happened to be simultaneously hove up on the crest of an unusually heavy sea, we could catch a glimpse not only of the whole of her canvas, but also of the sweep of her rail throughout its length, and we might now hope that at any moment some keen-eyed sailor might notice our tiny sail and call attention to it. Nay, there was just a possibility that this had happened already, for we presently became aware that the ship had taken in her topgallant-sails. Of course this might mean nothing more than mere ordinary precaution on the part of a commander anxious to avoid springing any of his spars; but it might also point to the conclusion that a momentary, doubtful glimpse of us had been caught by somebody, and that the officer of the watch, while sceptical of belief, had shortened sail for a time to afford opportunity for further investigation. But whichever it might happen to be, it improved our prospects of eventual rescue, and we were glad and thankful accordingly.

The question now uppermost in our minds was whether we had or had not been seen by anyone on board the ship. Some of us felt convinced that we had--the wish, doubtless, being father to the thought; but, for my own part, I was exceedingly doubtful. For, as a rule--to which, however, some most shameful and dastardly exceptions have come under my own notice--sailors are always most eager to help their distressed brethren, even at the cost of very great personal inconvenience and peril; and, knowing this, I believed that, had only a momentary and exceedingly doubtful view of us been caught, steps would at once have been taken on board the ship to further test the matter. Some one, for instance, would probably have been sent aloft to get a more extended view of the ocean's surface; nay, it was by no means unlikely that an officer might have taken the duty upon himself, and have searched the ocean with the aid of a telescope, in either of which cases we should soon have been discovered; when the sight of a small boat battling for life against a rapidly increasing gale and an already extremely dangerous sea would doubtless have resulted in the ship hauling her wind to our rescue. Nothing of the kind, however, happened, and we continued our perilous run to leeward upon a course that was slowly converging upon that of the ship, with a feeling of growing doubt and angry despair at the blindness of those whom we were pursuing rapidly displacing the high hopes that had been aroused in our hearts at the first sight of that thrice-welcome sail.

The ship held steadily on her way, and all that we could do was to follow her, with the wind smiting down upon us more fiercely every minute, while each succeeding wave, as it overtook us, curled its angry, hissing crest more menacingly above the stern of the deeply-laden boat. It was a wild, reckless, desperate bit of boat-sailing; and the conviction rapidly grew upon us all that it could not last much longer, we should soon be compelled to abandon the pursuit, or succumb to the catastrophe that momentarily threatened us. If we could but hold out long enough to attract the attention of those blind bats yonder, all might yet be well; but when at length our desperate race had carried us to within about two and a half miles of the ship, and an occasional glimpse of the whole of her hull could be caught when we were both at the same instant hove up on the ridge of a sea, there was no perceptible indication whatever that we had been seen by anybody aboard her. There was no truck, and no flag-halliard fitted to the mast of the gig, and we consequently had no means of hoisting a signal; but even if we had possessed such means they would probably have been useless, because if the sleepy lubbers had not noticed our sail, the exhibition of a comparatively small flag would hardly be likely to attract their attention.

We were still in the midst of an anxious discussion as to what we could possibly do to make ourselves seen, when an end came to our pursuit. A furious squall of wind and rain swooped down upon us, there was a crash, and the mast thwart, unable to endure the additional strain thrown upon it, gave way, the mast lurched forward and went over the bow, sails and all, and at the same moment an unusually heavy sea overtook us, broke in over the boat's stern, and filled her half-way to the thwarts.

I thought now that it was all over with us; fully expecting that the next sea would also break aboard, completely swamp the boat, and leave us all to swim for a few brief, agonising moments, and then to vanish for ever; yet with the never-slumbering instinct of self-preservation, I put the tiller hard over as the crest of the wave swept forward, and then frantically threw out an oar over the stern, with which to sweep the boat round head to sea. How it was achieved I know not to this day, but so furious a strength did I throw into my work that I actually succeeded in almost accomplishing my object; that is to say, I got the boat so far round that, when the next wave met us, the bluff of her starboard bow was presented to it, and although more water came aboard, it was not sufficient to very materially enhance the peril of our situation. Meanwhile the rest of the occupants seized the baler, a bucket that somebody had been thoughtful enough to throw into the boat when preparations were being made to leave the burning Indiaman, their caps, or even their hoots--the first thing, in fact, that came handy-- and began baling for their lives.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN.

THE SHADOW OF DEATH.

The mast and sails of the boat had gone clean over the bows into the water, and would in all probability have been lost to us but for the fact that the shrouds still held; and, this being the case, the boat rode to them as to a sort of floating anchor, keeping her stem-on to the sea. Her trim was such that her bows were considerably more above water than her stern, which may have had something to do with the fact that, although the sea was now higher and more dangerous than ever, the water no longer broke into her. Dumaresq and I, however, were both of opinion that the floating mast, with the sails attached, served in some measure as a breakwater for the seas to expend their most dangerous energies upon, and after discussing the matter a little further it was determined to submit our theory to the test of experiment. The shrouds were accordingly unbent, and the mast hauled alongside, when the boat again began to ship water; moreover, an oar over the stern at once became necessary to keep her bows on to the sea. This experiment satisfied us that our impression was something more than a mere fancy, and we at once went to work to further test it. There were six oars in the boat, and another portion of her equipment was a painter, some six fathoms in length. We securely lashed together the whole six of the oars and the mast, with the sails still attached, in a sort of bundle, by the middle, using the end of the painter as a lashing, and when everything had been made secure we veered away the painter until the whole of it was out, and the bundle of oars and what-not was floating about five fathoms ahead of the boat. This served as a drag, again bringing the gig's bows on to the sea, and a comparatively short period of observation sufficed to convince us that the arrangement did indeed serve also as an appreciable protection to the boat. By the time that this was done the rain had nearly ceased, and presently it cleared up to leeward, revealing the ship once more, under double-reefed topsails, now broad on our larboard quarter and hopelessly beyond all possibility of being overtaken, even had we dared to resume the chase, which, after our recent experience, and in the face of the terrible weather, none of us dreamed of attempting.

It was a cruelly bitter disappointment to us all to reflect that we had been so near to the possibility of rescue, and yet had missed it, and I caught the rumbling notes of more than one sea-blessing invoked upon the heads of the crew, who ought to have seen us, but apparently did not. It was useless, however, to cry over spilt milk, or to murmur against the mysterious decrees of Providence. Our business now was to do all that lay in our power to keep the boat afloat and enable her to ride out the gale; so we baled her dry, trimmed her a trifle more by the stern to enable her to present a bolder bow to the sea, and then piped to dinner.

And now arose fresh cause for distress and apprehension, for when we came to look into the state of our provisions, it was found that pretty nearly everything that was spoilable had been ruined by the salt-water that we had shipped, our bread especially being almost reduced to pulp. We picked out the least damaged portions, however, and ate them, with some chunks of raw salt beef, washing down the whole with a sparing libation of weak grog, after which we felt in somewhat better spirits.

But, oh! the cold and misery of it all! We were drenched to the skin, and the wind seemed to penetrate to our very marrow. Moreover, there was no hope whatever of the slightest improvement so long as the gale continued, for even though the rain had ceased, the air was full of spindrift and scud-water that fell upon us in drenching showers; while, cooped up as we were within the circumscribed dimensions of a small boat, there was no possibility of warming ourselves by exercise or active movement of any sort. The sea was running too dangerously high to admit of our taking to the oars and keeping ourselves warm by that expedient, and all that we could do to mitigate our misery was to huddle closely together in the bottom of the boat, and so shield ourselves as far as possible from the piercing wind and the drenching spray. Had we been able to smoke, matters would not have been so bad with us, but we had no means of obtaining a light; so there we crouched, hour after hour, our teeth clenched or chattering with cold, our drenched clothing clinging to our shivering bodies, and the gale howling over our heads with ever-increasing fury, while the sheets of salt spray lashed us relentlessly like whips of steel. So utterly miserable did we become that at length we even ceased to rise occasionally to take a look round, to see whether, perchance, another sail might have hove in sight. I believe that some of my companions in suffering found a temporary refuge from their wretchedness in short snatches of fitful sleep; at all events I caught at intervals the sound of low mutterings, as of sleeping men; but, as for me, exhausted though I was, I could not sleep. My anxiety on behalf of these poor wretches, who were in a way under my command, and who were certainly dependent to a great extent upon my experience and judgment, seemed to have driven sleep for ever from my eyes.

And so we lay there, hour after hour, now flung aloft until the whole ocean to the limits of the horizon lay spread around us, anon sweeping down the back of some giant billow until it seemed that the boat was about to plunge to the ocean's bed, and the passage of every hour was marked by an increasing greyness and haggardness in the faces of my companions, while a more hopelessly despairing expression came into their eyes.

At length, however, shortly before sunset, a welcome break appeared in the sky to windward; a gleam of watery, yellow light spread along the horizon; the pall of murky vapour broke up into detached masses; small but gradually widening patches of blue sky appeared here and here; and finally we got a momentary glimpse of the sun through a break in the clouds, just as the great luminary was on the point of sinking below the western horizon. We greeted the blessed sight with a cheer of reviving hope, for we knew that the gale was breaking, and that with the moderating of the wind and sea we should once again be able to take some active steps toward our preservation; while, apart from that, the finer weather would at least afford us some relief from our present suffering and misery. About half an hour later there was a noticeable diminution in the strength of the wind, which by midnight had become merely a moderate breeze. The sea no longer broke dangerously, the sky cleared, the stars beamed benignantly down upon us, and there was every prospect of our being able to resume our voyage on the morrow. But although, so far as the weather was concerned, matters were greatly improving with us, our suffering from cold was still very acute, for the night wind seemed to penetrate right through our wet clothes and to strike colder than ice upon our skins that were now burning with fever.

As for me, I envied my more fortunate companions who were able to sleep. I was deadly weary, worn out with prolonged watching and anxiety and exposure; my eyes were burning and my head throbbing with the fever that consumed me, while my teeth were chattering with cold to such an extent that I could scarcely make my speech intelligible. Wild, fantastic, irrelevant fancies were whirling confusedly through my brain, and I found it simply impossible to fix my mind upon the important question of the direction in which we ought to steer upon the resumption of our voyage. For the impression now forced itself upon me that poor Captain Chesney had committed an error of judgment in adhering to his determination to make for the Azores, after the breeze had sprung up from a direction which placed those islands almost dead to windward, and his only alternative of making for the Canaries appeared to be open to the same objection, although in a considerably lesser degree. Then arose the question: If he was mistaken in thus deciding, what ought he to have done? But to this, in the then disordered condition of my mental faculties, I could find no satisfactory reply. At length, while mentally groping for a solution to this knotty problem, I sank into a feverish semi-somnolent condition that eventually merged into sleep, and when I again became conscious, the sun was flashing his first beams across the surface of the heaving waters, now no longer scourged to fury by the lashing of a gale, but just ruffled to a deep, tender blue by the gentle breathing of a soft breeze from the north-east. A very heavy swell was still running, of course; but it no longer broke, and there was nothing whatever to prevent our resuming our voyage at once, saving the question--Whither?

The matter, however, that called for our first and most imperative attention was our own condition. We were still suffering greatly from the effects of prolonged exposure in our still damp clothes, and we could hope for little or no amelioration until our garments were once more dry, and the healthy action of our skin restored; so, to facilitate this, I suggested that we should all strip, and spread out our clothing to thoroughly dry in the sun's now ardent beams, and that, while the drying process was in progress, we should all go overboard and indulge in a good swim. The greater portion of our party thought this advice good enough to be acted upon, and in a few minutes seven of us were in the water and swimming vigorously round the boat; the other three were unable to swim, but they imitated us so far as to strip and pour buckets of water over each other. The water felt pleasantly warm in comparison with the temperature of the air, and we remained overboard for nearly half an hour; then we scrambled back into the boat again, rubbed ourselves and each other vigorously with the palms of our hands, while our bodies were in process of being dried by the joint action of the sun and air; and finally we donned our clothes again, they being by this time quite dry, feeling much refreshed and in every way considerably the better for our bath. Our next business was to go to breakfast, but our bread was by this time so completely destroyed as to be quite uneatable. We therefore threw it overboard, and made a meagre and unpalatable meal off more raw salt beef, washed down as before with weak grog.

And while the meal was in progress I brought up the question that had been vexing me during the previous night; namely, the direction in which we should steer. I had been giving this matter my best consideration during the time that I had been overboard; indeed Dumaresq and I had been discussing it together as we swam industriously round and round the boat, and we both agreed in the conclusion that the appearance of the sky warranted the belief that we were on the very margin of the north- east trade-wind, if not actually within its influence. And if this were indeed the case, it appeared that the proper course for us to adopt would be to bear up and run for the West Indies, instead of attempting to reach the Azores or even the Canaries. For while Corvo was only seven hundred and twenty miles from the spot where the Indiaman was destroyed, while Teneriffe was about thirteen hundred and eighty miles, and Saint Thomas, in the West Indies, fifteen hundred miles from the same spot, we could reckon with tolerable certainty upon reaching the latter island in about twelve days if the breeze now blowing actually happened to be the young trade-wind; while, under the same supposition, it was exceedingly doubtful when, if ever, we should succeed in reaching either the Azores or the Canary Islands. It was altogether too momentous a question for me to settle off-hand and upon my own responsibility, so I laid the matter before the whole boat's company, inviting them to decide it by a preponderating vote. I found that the majority agreed with me in the opinion that we might be on the fringe of, if not actually within, the influence of the trade-wind, but when it came to the question of bearing up and running for the West Indies, the great distance to be traversed seemed to frighten them. They were hardly prepared to face the prospect of nearly a fortnight in an open boat, even although we might reckon with tolerable certainty upon a fair wind and moderate weather all the time. They pointed out that our stock of provisions was wholly inadequate for such a voyage, unless we were all prepared to go upon an exceedingly short allowance forthwith, and they appeared to consider that, by adhering to Captain Chesney's plan, we should stand a better chance of falling in with and being picked up by a ship. As to whether we should make for the Azores or the Canaries, we were pretty unanimously of opinion that, despite the much greater distance of the latter, if we were, as we supposed, within the influence of the trade-wind, we should stand a much better chance of fetching it; and after some further discussion it was definitely determined to shape the best course we could for Teneriffe.

This important matter settled, all that we had to do was to lash the mast thwart in its place again, haul the mast and oars alongside, get them inboard, and make sail, which we did forthwith.

For the next five days we sailed comfortably enough to the eastward, making on an average, about eighty-five miles in the twenty-four hours, during which not a single sail had been sighted; and then the wind gradually died away, and it fell stark calm. This obliged us to take to the oars; and whereas during the gale we had suffered greatly from cold and wet, all our complaint now was of the intense heat; for the clouds had passed away, leaving the sky a vault of purest blue, out of which the sun blazed down upon us relentlessly for about eleven hours out of the twenty-four. This, coupled with our exertions at the oars--and possibly the profuse perspiration induced thereby--provoked a continuous thirst which we had no means of satisfying; for immediately upon our determination to make for Teneriffe, we had carefully gauged our stock of provisions and water, and had placed ourselves upon a very short allowance of both. And, to make matters still worse, the setting in of the calm immediately rendered it imperatively necessary to still further reduce our already far too scanty allowance.

There was nothing for it, however, but to toil on, hour after hour, with ever-decreasing strength; the only redeeming feature of our case being the knowledge that, should we now chance to sight a ship, she could not possibly sail away from us so long as the calm lasted. But when the calm had continued for twenty-four hours, during which we pulled continuously to the eastward, relieving each other at frequent intervals, this reflection almost ceased to afford us any comfort, for we found that short commons and hard work together were exhausting our strength with such alarming rapidity that, unless we sighted the hoped- for sail pretty speedily, we should have no strength left with which to pull to her. And when another twelve hours had passed over our heads, and another cloudless, breathless, blazing morning had dawned upon us, the men with one accord laid in their oars, protesting their utter inability to any longer keep up the exhausting work of pulling the boat I argued with, entreated, and threatened them alternately, without avail; they turned a deaf ear to me, and lay down in the bottom of the boat, where they almost instantly fell into a restless, troubled sleep. All, that is to say, except Dumaresq, who recognised as clearly as I did the vital necessity for us to push onward as speedily as possible; after discussing the situation for a while, therefore, we threw over a couple of oars, and, placing the boat compass between my feet where I could see it, paddled wearily and painfully onward until noon, when we ceased, that I might have an opportunity to take an observation for the determination of our latitude. While I was still engaged upon this operation the men awoke; and as soon as I had ascertained our latitude we went to dinner; if dinner that could be called which consisted of a small cube of raw meat, measuring about an inch each way, and as much tepid, fetid water as would half-fill the neck of a rum-bottle that had been broken off from the body to serve as a measure.

After dinner the men again stretched themselves out, either in the bottom of the boat or on the thwarts, and once more sought surcease of suffering in sleep; and again Dumaresq and I threw out our oars and toiled at them until sunset. But it was cruel work, and nothing short of such urgent necessity as ours would have induced me to do it. Then the men awoke again, apparently somewhat refreshed by their day's rest, and we went to supper. The fact that Dumaresq and I had been working at the oars all through the scorching day, while they had been sleeping, seemed to awaken a sense of shame in some of them; and after supper they took to the oars of their own accord, announcing their determination to rest henceforth through the day, and to work all night, a plan which I was at once compelled to admit had much to recommend it. And so, while the men pulled pretty steadily on through the night, Dumaresq and I took watch and watch at the tiller.

Another breathless morning dawned; we went to breakfast, and the men then lay down to sleep, as on the previous day, while Dumaresq and I laboured at the oars until noon, when the gallant young Frenchman was compelled to give up, declaring that he could not pull another stroke, even though his life depended upon it. I could, of course, do nothing single-handed; so after dinner we all lay down together, and the sleep of utter exhaustion soon fell upon me. When I next awoke the men were already astir and getting their supper; and it appeared to me, from the look in their faces, that they would have been better pleased had Dumaresq and I remained asleep. After supper they threw out their oars, and the Frenchman and I sat together in the stern-sheets, moodily discussing the situation, and marvelling at our strange ill-fortune in having sighted but one solitary sail ever since the destruction of the Indiaman.

"The fact is," remarked Dumaresq, in a low tone, "that we have made a terrible mistake in deciding to try for Teneriffe. We ought to have acted upon your suggestion to bear away for the West Indies. Had we done so, we should have been more than half-way there by this time--if, indeed, we had not already been fallen in with and picked up. As it is, it is now clear enough that, if as we both believed, we were on the edge of the trade-wind, we have lost it again, and it may be many days before we shall get another breeze. And should that be the case, it is my belief that not one of us will ever see dry land again. Note our condition at this moment; observe our companions. When we abandoned the ill-fated Manilla they were a stout, sturdy crew of willing, obedient men; whilst now they are a gang of gaunt and savage outlaws, no longer amenable to discipline, and rendered ferociously selfish by starvation. Did you observe the fell gleam of animosity with which they regarded us when we awoke this evening and helped ourselves to our share of the provisions? There has been no hint of violence thus far; but, mark my words, Bowen, unless we are rescued within the next forty-eight hours this boat will become the scene of a ghastly tragedy. Ah! mon Dieu! look at that!"

Dumaresq had brought his lips close to my ear while speaking, and the accompanying turn of his head had permitted his eyes to glance over my shoulder into the water astern of the boat. As he uttered his closing exclamation he pointed to the boat's wake; and there, not two fathoms away from the rudder, could be seen two large sharks, their forms clearly indicated in the phosphorescent water, steadily following the boat, and swimming at a distance of about three feet below the water.

"What did I say?" continued Dumaresq. "The shadow of death is hovering over this boat; those sharks see it, and they will follow us until they get their prey!"

CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

DYING OF HUNGER AND THIRST.

I must confess that the sudden appearance of those two ferocious monsters of the deep excited within me a feeling of intense horror and uneasiness; for I had heard so much about the alleged mysterious instinct by which the shark is said to be enabled to foresee the approaching death of one or more members of a crew, and had listened to so many apparently authentic stories confirming this belief in the creature's powers, that I had grown to be quite prepared to believe that there might be something more than mere superstition at the bottom of it. And now it almost appeared as though I was to have an opportunity of learning by personal experience what amount of truth there really was in the gruesome theory. But after the first shock of horror had passed, reason and common sense whispered that the presence of these visitors, instead of being a constant horror and menace to us, might, by good luck, be converted into a valuable source of food-supply, and I accordingly at once informed the men that there were two sharks following us, and inquired whether any of them could suggest a plan for the capture of one of the fish. I immediately discovered, however, that I should have done better to have said nothing; for the announcement excited the utmost consternation; while my proposal to attempt the capture of one of the fish was ridiculed as something approaching the height of absurdity. Tom Hardy--a weather-beaten seaman, who had been knocking about in all parts of the world for thirty years from the time when he first plunged his hands into the tar bucket at the age of fourteen--at once rose from his thwart, where he was pulling the stroke oar; and, looking over the heads of Dumaresq and myself, stared intently down at the fish for a few seconds, and then resumed his seat, remarking:

"Ay, mates, what Mr Bowen says is true enough; there's two of 'em; and that means that two of this here party is goin' to lose the number of their mess afore long; you mark my words and see if they don't come true. As to catchin' either of them sharks, why, we haven't got no hook to catch 'em with. And, if we had, 'twouldn't be of no use to try; them fish ain't to be caught; they're astarn of us for a purpose; and there they'll stay until that purpose have come to pass. I've knowed this sort of thing to happen afore. I was once aboard of a brig called the Black Snake, hailin' from Liverpool, and tradin' between the West Injies and the Guinea coast. We'd made a fine run across from Barbadoes, and was within a week's run of the Old Calabar river when it fell calm with us, just as it have done now.

"There wasn't nothing the matter with none of us at the time; but a'ter we'd been becalmed about a week--which, let me tell ye, mates, ain't nothing so very much out of the common in them latitoods--the second mate fell sick, and took to his bunk. He hadn't been there not two hours when somebody sings out as there was a shark under the counter; and we goes to work to try and catch him. But, mates, he wasn't to be caught, though we tried him all ways, even to pitchin' the bait right down atop of his ugly snout. Mind you, he was ready enough to swaller as much pork as ever we chose to give him, so long as there wasn't no hook in it; but if there was a hook buried in it he wouldn't so much as look at it.

"Well, we was obliged to give it up at last; and as we was haulin' in the line and unbendin' the hook I heard the chief mate say to the skipper:--

"`That settles poor Hobbs' hash, anyhow!'

"`How d'ye mean?' says the skipper, short and angry-like.

"`Why,' says the mate, `I means that Hobbs won't get better, and that shark knows it. He's just waitin' for him!'

"`Oh, nonsense,' says the skipper; `I'm surprised, Mr Barker, to hear a hintelligent man like you sayin' such things.'

"And he marches off down below, and goes into the second mate's cabin to see how the poor chap was gettin' on. About twenty minutes a'terwards he comes up on deck again, and tells the mate as poor Mr Hobbs have got the yaller fever. And, mates, I takes notice that the skipper weren't just then lookin' so extra well hisself. About a hour a'terwards he goes below again; and by and by the steward comes for'ard, lookin' pretty frightened, I can tell ye, and says as the skipper is sick, too.

"`I wonder whether there's a shark come for him, as well as for the second mate,' says one of the men, jokin' like. `Run aft, steward,' says he, `and look over the taffrail, and see.'

"The steward did as he was told; and presently he comes for'ard again, as white as a ghost; and:--

"`There's two of 'em now,' says he. And sure enough, shipmates, when we went aft and had a look for ourselves, there was two sharks just playin' about under the starn, scullin' here and there, lazy-like, but never goin' very far away.

"I told the mate of this, and p'inted out the brutes to him; but he didn't seem a bit put out by it; he just laughed and said:--

"`Then the skipper's goose is cooked, too; and I shall have to take charge of the ship myself!'

"And, as he said it, mates, you may believe me or not, as you like, but up comes a third shark, and jines company with the two that was standin' off and on.

"`Hillo!' says the mate, now lookin' frightened enough; `what's the meanin' of this here, I wonder? Three of 'em,' he says; `one for Hobbs, and one for the cap'n: but who's the third one a'ter?'

"Mates, what I'm goin' to tell you is as true as that I'm sittin' here on this here thwart: the mate was took ill that very night; and the next day he follered poor Mr Hobbs and the skipper over the rail; and then the three sharks left us. And a week later the brig went ashore on the coast, about the middle of as dark a night as ever you see, and me and two more was all as managed to reach the sand-hills alive."

This weird story, told with all the impressiveness of a man who knew himself to be speaking the truth--emphasised as it was by the persistent presence of those two remorseless brutes under our own stern,--affected the listeners powerfully; and at its close there was not one of us, I will venture to say, but was firmly convinced that at least two of our party were doomed.

We continued pulling to the eastward until nearly midnight that night, relieving each other at the oars at short intervals, when, suddenly, one of the men--Peter Green by name--dropped his oar and, with a choking cry, rolled off his thwart and fell prone into the bottom of the boat. His place was immediately taken by another; but within a quarter of an hour this man, too, was obliged to give up; and so, one after the other, they all succumbed, until only Dumaresq and myself were left; and we had not been tugging at the oars five minutes when the Frenchman cried:

"It is no good, mon ami; I am `gastados', as the Spaniards say; I am expended, worn out!" He rose to his feet; staggered heavily aft, and sank down in the stern-sheets with a groan and a gasping cry of:

"Water! water! For the love of God give me a mouthful of water, or I shall die!"

The poor fellow had, of course, been receiving the same allowance as the rest of us; and the small quantity of putrid fluid now remaining in the bottom of our breaker was of such priceless value that I could not give him any more without inflicting a grievous injustice and injury upon the rest; nevertheless, I could not sit there and see him die; so I drew a single allowance from the cask--explaining to the men as well as my own parched throat would allow, that I would forego my own allowance next time that it was due--and, raising his head, I poured it into his mouth, bitterly grudging him every drop, I am ashamed to say, as I did so. There was only enough to just moisten his cracked lips and his dry, black tongue; but, such as it was, it seemed to revive him somewhat, and, squeezing my hand gratefully, he settled himself more comfortably on the thwart, and presently appeared to sink into a state of semi- unconsciousness that perhaps partially served in place of sleep.

I would gladly have followed his example if I could, but it was impossible. My stubborn constitution seemed to defy the destructive wear and tear of prolonged hunger and thirst; but my sufferings were beyond the power of language to portray; my craving hunger was so intense that I believe I could have eaten and enjoyed any food, however revolting, could I but have obtained it; while my thirst was so overpowering that it was with the utmost difficulty I combated the temptation to open a vein and moisten my parched and burning tongue and throat with my own blood. Equally difficult was it to resist the temptation to take a long, cool, satisfying draught of the salt-water that lapped so tantalisingly against the sides of the boat, and shimmered so temptingly in the starlight all around me; but I knew what the consequences of such an act would be, and, by the resolute exercise of all the will power remaining to me I contrived to overcome the longing. Yet so excruciating was my torment that I felt I must do something to alleviate it, even though the alleviation were to be of the briefest. I therefore determined to try an experiment; and, stripping off all my clothing, I plunged the garments, one by one, into the water alongside, until they were saturated; when I donned them again. The cool, wet contact of them with my dry, burning skin seemed to afford some relief to my tormenting thirst; and, encouraged by this small measure of success, I next cut a strip of leather from one of my boots and, dividing this into small pieces, I placed them, one at a time, in my mouth, masticating them as well as I could, and finally swallowing them. It will, perhaps, convey to the reader some idea of the intensity of my hunger when I say that I actually enjoyed these pieces of leather, and that my unendurable craving for food was in an appreciable degree appeased by them, to an extent sufficient, indeed, to enable me to lie down and actually fall asleep.

I remember that my dreams, that night, were of feasting and drinking, of a profusion of appetising viands and choice wines spread upon long tables that stood under the welcome shadow of umbrageous trees and close to the borders of sparkling streams of sweet, crystal-clear water; and when I awoke the sun was again rising above the horizon into a sky of fleckless blue reflected by an ocean of glassy calm unbroken by the faintest discoverable suggestion of a flaw of wind anywhere upon its mirror-like surface. My companions were also stirring; some of them contenting themselves by merely grasping the gunwale of the boat and so raising their bodies that they could look round them for a moment, and then sinking back with a moan of despair at the sight of the breathless calm and the blank horizon, while others--two or three whose strength still sufficed for the extra effort--painfully raised themselves upon their feet and scanned the horizon with a longer and more searching gaze for a sail. There was nothing to be seen, however, in the whole visible stretch of the ocean, save the fins of the two sharks which haunted us so remorselessly; so, with inarticulate mutterings of despair, and hoarse, broken curses at the ill-fortune which so persistently dogged us, we prepared to devour our last insignificant ration of food and consume the last drops of our hoarded water.

The next minute saw us transformed into a crew of furious, raving maniacs; for--the food and the water had both disappeared! the locker forward in which our last morsel of meat had been deposited on the previous night was empty; the water-breaker was dry! some unscrupulous villain, some vile, dastardly thief among us had stolen and consumed both! The discovery of this detestable crime had the temporary effect of a powerful restorative upon us; our furious indignation temporarily imbued our bodies with new vigour; and in an instant every man of us was upon his feet and glaring round, with eyes ablaze, upon his fellows, in search of the criminal. In vain I strove to quell the excitement, to stay the clamour, and to restore order; discipline and obedience indeed were at an end, distinctions of rank no longer existed, the ordinary restraints of civilisation were discarded, our frightful situation had reduced us to the condition of wild beasts, and my entreaties that the matter might be dealt with in something like judicial form might as well have been urged upon the empty air.

There was not much difficulty in identifying the culprit. He was a Welshman, named Evans, a poor, pitiful, sneaking creature, one of the under-stewards belonging to the Manilla, who had systematically shirked his share of the work, and done his best to evade his share of the hardship from the very first; and although, when taxed with his crime, he at first strenuously denied it, his manner belied his words, and presently he flung himself upon his knees and--with tears and protestations of his inability to resist the temptation that had suddenly come upon him--acknowledged the theft, and abjectly besought our forgiveness. I very much doubt whether, in my then frame of mind, I could have been induced to forgive the miserable creature: but I certainly had no desire to inflict any punishment upon him beyond what he would derive from my undisguised expressions of contempt and abhorrence. Not so his more immediate companions, however. Evans had no sooner confessed than, with a hoarse howl of fury, his self- constituted judges whipped out their sheath-knives, while in a paroxysm of terror the wretched steward leapt to his feet and hastily retreated forward, shrieking for mercy. The men followed him; and ere I could intervene there was a scuffle, a rapid rain of blows, a smothered groan, a splash alongside, and the next instant the Welshman's head reappeared above water, about a fathom away from the boat, his face grey and distorted with fear, and his skinny hands outstretched in a vain endeavour to reach the gunwale of the boat. Then, almost in the self- same instant, and before one's benumbed senses found time to realise the ghastly tragedy, there was a rapid swirl of water alongside, an ear- splitting yell, and the miserable man was dragged down, an ensanguined patch in the deep crystalline blue, and a few transitory air-bubbles alone marking the spot from which he had vanished. Involuntarily I glanced astern. There was but one shark's fin now visible!

"Shame upon you, men; shame upon you!" cried I, emerging from the temporary trance of stupefaction which seemed to have seized me while this frightful tragedy was in progress. "You have taken a human life, and branded yourselves as murderers. And for what? Simply because that poor craven of a fellow appropriated a small morsel of putrid meat and a few drops of disgusting liquid that, evenly divided among you all, could have done you no appreciable good. At most, it could but have prolonged your lives an hour or two."

"Ay, that's just it!" huskily interrupted one of the men. "The meat and the water that we've lost would have give us another hour or two of life, and who's to say that just that hour or two mightn't have made all the difference between livin' and dyin' to us? If anything was to happen to drift into view within the next few hours, that bit of meat and they few drops of water might have give us strength enough to handle the oars again and pull far enough to be sighted and picked up; but now we're done for, all hands of us. Our strength is gone, and we've nothin' left to give it back to us, even if a whole fleet was in sight at this present moment. When that chap stole the last of our grub he stole our lives with it. He's the murderer, not us, and he deserved what he got! Oh, my God, water! Give us water, for Christ's sake!"

And, throwing up his poor, lean, shrivelled hands toward the cloudless sky, with a gesture eloquent of frantic, despairing appeal, the poor, tortured creature suddenly collapsed and fell senseless athwart the gunwale of the boat, with his arms hanging down into the water. We dragged him quickly inboard again, but we were not a second too soon, for we had scarcely done so when the remaining shark was alongside, glaring up at us with a look of fell longing in those cruel goggle eyes of his, that seemed to say he intended to have his prey sooner or later, although we had baulked him of it for the present.

The dreadful exhaustion of reaction from the late excitement now seized upon the rest of us, and one by one we wearily sank down again into our respective places in the boat. Then I told the men by what means I had obtained temporary relief during the night, advising them to try the same method, and presently we were all sitting in our wet clothes, ravenously chewing away upon strips of our shoe leather. But nobody thought of again having recourse to the oars; indeed our strength had now so completely melted away that I doubt very much whether a single man in the whole of that boat's company--saving, perhaps, myself--could have laid out an oar unaided.

The blazing hot, breathless day lagged slowly along, every hour seeming to spin itself out to a more intolerable length than the last, and with every moment our suffering grew more nearly unbearable, until toward evening I seemed to be going mad, for the most fantastic ideas went crowding through my whirling brain, and I now and then caught myself muttering the most utter nonsense, now laughing, now weeping and moaning like a child. Anon I found myself kneeling in the stern-sheets and supporting my body upon one arm as I gesticulated with the other while apostrophising that demon shark--or were there two of them again, or three? I remember laughing to myself uproariously, noticing at the same time, with a sort of wonder, what a wild, eldritch, gibbering laugh it was, at the thought of how those sharks--yes, there were three; I was certain of it--would jostle and hustle each other, in their greedy haste to get at me, were I to simply stand up and topple over the gunwale into the water. And how easily--how ridiculously easily--I might do it too. I laughed again at the absurdity of taking so much trouble and enduring such frightful extremity of suffering to preserve a life that might be so readily got rid of, and wondered dully why I had been so foolish as to go through it all when it might be put an end to in a single moment. Why, I asked myself, should I remain any longer in the boat with that great, red, flaming eye staring so mercilessly down upon me out of that brazen sky, when the laughing blue water smiled so temptingly up into my eyes and wooed me to its cool embrace? There would be no more hunger and thirst down there, no relentless sun to torment me century after century by darting his fiery beams down upon my uncovered head and through my hissing, seething brain. A plunge, and all my miseries would be at an end. I would make that plunge; I would seek those cool, cerulean depths; I would--Ah! I had forgotten you, you devils! What! are you waiting for me? Are you growing impatient? How many of you are there? One, two, three, four--stop, stop. I cannot count you if you swarm around the boat in that unseemly fashion! Why, there are hundreds of you, thousands, millions! The sea is black with you! Your waving fins cover the ocean to the farthest confines of the horizon! And you are all waiting for me! Very well, then, I shall disappoint you. I shall--

When I recovered from my delirium it was night. The stars were shining brightly, and the air was deliciously cool after the scorching heat of the day. Strange to say, I no longer felt hungry. The craving for food was gone, but its place was more than supplied by an increased agony of thirst which seared my vitals as with fire. My lips were dry and cracked; my tongue felt shrivelled and hard in my mouth. I tried to speak to Dumaresq, who was lying in the bottom of the boat with his glazed eyes turned up at the stars, but I could give utterance only to a husky, hissing sound. There was no movement on the part of any of the forms that were dimly discernable, huddled up in the bottom of the boat. Whether they were dead or only asleep I knew not, nor cared. Life and everything connected with it had lost all interest for me I was dying. I knew it, and longed only for the end to come that I might be delivered out of my misery. With inexpressible pain I raised myself to my knees to take one more last look round, lest peradventure a sail should by some miraculous interposition of Providence have drifted within our ken, but there was nothing. There could be nothing while that murderous calm lasted. I felt the old delirium returning upon me; it was rioting within my brain. Strange forms and hideous shapes floated around me. The dead steward climbed in over the gunwale and stood in the eyes of the boat, denouncing us as murderers and calling curses down upon us. Then the scene changed. A glorious light shone round about us; soft strains of sweetest music came floating to us across the placid waters; delicious perfumes filled the air. There was a gentle murmuring sound as of a soft wind among trees and a gentle tinkling as of a running stream. Then my brain seemed to burst. I was dimly conscious that I was falling backward, and I knew no more.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

CAPTAIN RENOUF.

Where was I? What was this darksome, foul, and evil-smelling place? Who was that forbidding-looking individual sitting there smoking under that swaying, smoky, dimly-burning, miserable apology for a lamp? And, finally, what had happened that my limbs should feel heavy as lead, and that I should be too weak to turn upon my cruelly-hard, box-like pallet?

Such were the questions that slowly and laboriously formed themselves within my mind when I at length awoke from that state of blessed unconsciousness which I had believed to be death. For some time I lay painfully revolving these questions in my mind, groping about for information in a sort of dim, mental twilight, so obscure that I was not even certain of my own identity. Gradually, however--very gradually,-- the twilight brightened with returning life and reason, and I found myself beginning to identify my surroundings. I became conscious of a rhythmical rising and falling and swaying movement, accompanied by a creaking, grinding sound, and the wash and gurgle of water outside the planking that formed two of the three walls of the triangular apartment in which I found myself, and I somehow recognised these movements and sounds as familiar. Then I heard a voice at some distance, shouting something that I could not distinguish, answered by two or three voices almost immediately overhead. There was a noise of ropes being thrown down upon planking, and a further outcry of voices, accompanied by a creaking sound and the flapping of canvas. And then it suddenly dawned upon me that I was lying in a bunk in a ship's forecastle, and that the forbidding-looking stranger must be one of the crew.

But why was it, I asked myself, that this man was a stranger to me? Why, indeed, was it that all my surroundings were strange to me; for I could not recall that I had ever seen any of them before? And then, as I lay puzzling over this perplexing problem, the past gradually unfolded itself before me; first of all confusedly, as one recalls the images and incidents of an imperfectly remembered dream, and then more clearly, until it had all come back to me in the fulness of its hideous reality. I recollected everything, my memories beginning, strangely enough, as I think, with the incidents of my earliest childhood, and gradually extending through the years until I arrived at the incident of the burning Indiaman, the boat-voyage, the pursuit of the strange ship, the gale, and our subsequent sufferings from thirst and starvation. And, as the remembrance of the final horrors of that awful experience returned to me, my thirst seemed to return with it, and I cried aloud for water, feeling surprised, as I did so, to find that my voice had returned to me, and that my throat, tongue, and lips, although still very sore and painful, were no longer dry and hard as they had been when I was last conscious of anything.

The repulsive-looking individual, apparently the sole occupant of the forecastle except myself, at once rose from the chest upon which he was sitting, and approached my bunk, bending over and peering down into my face.

"Aha! my frien'!" he exclaimed, in a strong French accent; "so you have come to life again, have you? Bon! zat is grand; ze capitaine he vill be rejoice to hear ze news; for he say, ven ve pull you up out of ze bateau, `Aha! here is von fine fellow; he mus' be tres fort ven he is vell; ve mus' try to save him; he vill be more useful in our--vat you call, eh?--gaillard d'avant, dan in ze stomach of ze shark!' You vant vattare, eh? Bon! plenty vattare here, mon ami; plenty provision too; you not starve no more; you lie still in ze bunk, and I shall bring you all t'ings necessaire to make you veil, promptement."

So saying, he went to the other end of the forecastle, and producing a large, rusty, tin can, and an equally rusty, and woefully battered tin pannikin, poured out a draught, which he brought to me, and, supporting my head upon his shoulder, held to my lips. I had an opportunity to take a good look at him now, as he bent his face close to mine, and, so far as I could see by the dim light of the forecastle, his repulsiveness of appearance was due rather to the filthy condition of his person and clothing than to the expression of his countenance; for although his skin was dark with accumulated grime, his long whiskers, moustache, and black greasy locks matted and unkempt, and his features frightfully scarred with small-pox, there was a genial, mirthful sparkle in his coal-black eyes that somewhat favourably impressed me.

The draught which he offered me was deliciously cool and refreshing; being composed of water strongly dashed with a crude, sour sort of wine. I swallowed it at a gulp, and was about to put a few interrogations to my new friend, when, from the bunk adjoining my own, there arose a feeble cry that I identified as the voice of Dumaresq; and my grimy nurse, gently laying my head back upon the pillow, at once hurried away to attend to his other patient. I heard a few low-murmured words from Dumaresq, followed by a reply from the unprepossessing unknown, and then I fell into a delightfully refreshing, dreamless slumber.

When I next awoke it was night, for I could just catch a glimpse of a narrow strip of star-lit sky swinging to-and-fro athwart the open scuttle communicating with the deck, in unison with the pendulum-like roll of the ship. There appeared to be a fine breeze blowing, for the vessel was heeling strongly; the thunder of the wind in the sails, and the piping of it through the taut rigging came down through the scuttle with a pleasant, slumberous sound, and the roar of the bow-wave, close to my ear, with the quick, confused swirl and gurgle of water along the planks, assured me that the ship was moving at a tolerably rapid rate. The ever-burning lamp still swung from its blackened beam, its yellow flame wavering hither and thither in the eddying draught of wind that streamed down through the scuttle, and its fat, black smoke coiling upward in fantastic wreaths until it was lost in the darkness among the beams.

A figure--a slumbering figure--still occupied the chest, and mistaking it at first for my grimy unknown friend, I called to him, for I felt both hungry and thirsty. He was evidently not sleeping very heavily, for he awoke at my first call and came to the side of my bunk; but I at once perceived that it was not the man I had before seen; this fellow's voice and manner were surly in the extreme, and as he bent over me he gruffly demanded, in a scarcely comprehensible French patois, what I wanted. I answered, in French, that I should like something to eat and drink; whereupon he produced, from a sort of cupboard in the darkest corner of the forecastle, a bowl and a large can of soup, together with a wooden tray of flinty biscuit and an old iron spoon. Pouring a liberal quantity of the soup into the bowl, and plunging the spoon into it, he handed it to me, placed the bread barge within my reach, and again composed himself to sleep. The soup was quite cold, and its surface was covered with floating lumps of congealed grease; nevertheless, after rejecting the grease, I consumed the whole of the soup, together with about half a biscuit, and felt very much the better for it. By and by the watch was called. I heard the men swarming up from the 'tween-decks abaft the forecastle; and presently my pock-marked friend of the repulsive countenance but kindly eye, descended into the forecastle to the relief of the surly dog who had handed me the soup. I thought this would be a good opportunity to learn something with regard to the character of the craft on board which I found myself, and also to obtain an insight into the circumstances under which we were picked up. I therefore proceeded to put a few questions to the new-comer, by means of which I elicited the following information from him.

The vessel which had picked us up was the privateer schooner Jean Bart, of Morlaix, commanded by Captain Henri Renouf, an exceptionally brave and skilful seaman, it would appear, if the story of his successes, as told by Rene Ollivier, was to be believed. Indeed, if I understood the guileless Rene aright, it was chiefly, if not wholly due to these successes, or rather one result of them, the extreme short- handedness of the Jean Bart, caused by the losses sustained in her recent engagements, that Captain Henri Renouf had troubled himself to rescue us in the first place, and afterwards to issue orders that every effort should be made to restore us to health and strength; it being his intention to make good some of his losses by enrolling us as members of his crew. A little further questioning on my part resulted in the discovery that we had been picked up some four hours previously to my return to consciousness; our boat having been sighted right ahead at daybreak after the springing up of the breeze that had followed a period of calm of unprecedented duration in the experience of those on board the Jean Bart. Eight of us had been found in the boat, of whom six still exhibited some faint signs of life, and these six had been domiciled in the schooner's forecastle, and simply placed in charge of two of the crew--the vessel not carrying a surgeon--to recover or not as fate might decide. Upon learning from my friend Rene the date upon which we had been picked up, I made a little calculation, by which I arrived at the conclusion that I must have lain absolutely unconscious in the boat something like thirty hours, during which one of our number had mysteriously disappeared, probably by jumping overboard in a fit of delirium.

During my conversation with Ollivier, Dumaresq awoke and joined in; upon which, assisted by the repulsive-looking but really sympathetic French seaman, I contrived to get out of my bunk and reach a chest alongside Dumaresq's bunk; and I was much gratified to find that the gallant young fellow, although still terribly weak, was making satisfactory progress. Further research resulted in the discovery that those saved from the gig were, in addition to Dumaresq and myself, Tom Hardy, Peter Green, Henry Anstey, and Philip Sendell; all four of whom were thorough staunch British seamen, who, except when driven mad by hunger and thirst, were to be implicitly depended upon.

It was a very great relief to me to find that so many of us had survived; for, apart from other considerations, I foresaw that, if Captain Renouf's intentions towards us were such as Ollivier had stated them to be, complications were likely to arise of such a character that the strongest possible mutual support would be necessary to enable us to face them. The mere fact that this fellow, Renouf, had in so off-handed a manner arranged the destinies of six of his fellow-creatures, without even the formality of consulting them in the matter, rendered me exceedingly uneasy; such a proceeding seeming to indicate a headstrong, overbearing, exacting character, with which it would be exceedingly difficult to deal. Of course, so far as Dumaresq was concerned, the arrangement was not so objectionable; he would probably be quite willing to work his passage to the next port. But with us who were English it was quite another matter. The worst that Renouf had a right to do was to treat us as prisoners of war; to impress us into an enemy's service would simply be an outrage. Yet it was not infrequently done, not only by the French, but also by our own countrymen. Before any further development was possible, however, it would be necessary for us to become well and strong again; and there was always the hope that before that time should have arrived the Jean Bart might fall in with an enemy and be captured.

This hope, however, was not destined to be fulfilled; and on the third day after the recovery of my senses, being once more well and strong enough to move about, I determined to take the bull by the horns forthwith; with which purpose I sent a message aft by Ollivier to Captain Renouf, expressing a desire to personally thank him for his rescue of myself and the survivors of my boat's crew, and to make arrangements for obtaining our parole. By way of reply to this I received a curt intimation that Captain Renouf was in his cabin, and that I was to proceed thereto forthwith.

In response to this summons I at once mounted to the deck for the first time, and, flinging a keen, hurried glance about me, found that I was on board a slashing schooner, some fifty or sixty tons bigger than the Dolphin. She was a tremendously beamy craft, flush-decked fore-and- aft, and was armed with ten twelve-pounders in her broadside batteries, with a thirty-two-pounder between her masts--a truly formidable craft of her kind. And it was evident, moreover, that she was manned in accordance with her armament, for the watch on deck, although I did not stay to count them, mustered fully forty men, as ruffianly-looking a set of scoundrels as I ever set eyes on. A glance over the side showed me that the vessel was a regular flier; for although there was but a moderate breeze blowing, and the craft was close-hauled, she was going along at a pace of fully nine knots. So smart a vessel, so heavily armed and manned, ought to have been the pride of her captain; but I could detect no traces of any such feeling, her decks being dark with dirt, while a general air of slovenliness pervaded the craft from stem to stern.

I was conducted aft to the companion by Ollivier, who whispered to me, just as I was about to descend:

"Courage, mon ami!"

That the man should have deemed such an exhortation necessary was the reverse of encouraging, for it seemed to indicate that, in his opinion, I was about to undergo some more or less trying ordeal, a suggestion that only too strongly confirmed my own forebodings. If, however, I was about to be involved in a difficulty, my first step was, manifestly, to ascertain its nature; so, making my way down the companion ladder, I knocked at a door which confronted me, and was immediately bidden, in French, to enter.

Turning the handle of the door and flinging it open, I obeyed, finding myself in a fine, roomy, well-lighted cabin, the beams of which, however, were so low that I could only stand upright when between them. The place was rather flashily decorated, with a good deal of gilding, and several crudely executed paintings in the panelling of the woodwork. A large mirror, nearly ruined by damp, surmounted a buffet against the fore-bulkhead, and the after-bulkhead was decorated with a trophy composed of swords, pistols, and long, murderous-looking daggers arranged in the form of a star. A massive mahogany table, occupying the centre of the cabin, reflected in its polished depths a handsome lamp of white, silvery-looking metal that swung in the skylight, and the locker underneath the trophy was occupied by a slight, youthful-looking, sallow-complexioned man, whose well-oiled hair clustered in coal-black ringlets all over his small, shapely head, while a pair of small, piercing black eyes flashed out from beneath black eyebrows that ran, unbroken, right across the root of the nose, and a set of large, even, pearl-white teeth gleamed through a well-kept, coal-black moustache and beard. The fellow was attired in a showy, theatrical-looking costume, consisting of blue cloth jacket, adorned with a double row of gilt buttons and a pair of bullion epaulettes upon the shoulders, over a shirt of white silk, open at the throat, a sword-belt of black varnished leather, fastened by a pair of handsome brass or gold clasps, served the double purpose of a support for his blue cloth trousers and a receptacle for a pair of pistols, handsomely mounted in silver. This was, of course, Captain Renouf; and a man who looked like, and afterwards proved to actually be, his brother sat beside him. This individual I rightly conjectured to be the chief mate of the Jean Bart. Both men were young, the captain being, perhaps, about four-and-twenty, while his brother would be about two years younger, and both would have been handsome but for the cruel, sinister expression of the eyes. They were ocean dandies of the first water; for, in addition to their showy garb-- that of the junior being similar to his captain's, except that the epaulettes were lacking,--they both wore gold ear-rings, while several apparently valuable rings flashed upon the rather dirty fingers of the senior officer.

The pair looked at me intently as I made my bow, and, ere I could speak a word, Captain Renouf accosted me in French.

"Well, my good fellow," said he, "pray who may you be?"

"My name is Bowen," I answered. "I am chief officer of the British privateer Dolphin, and I was in command of the boat, the occupants of which you so humanely rescued a few days ago. Permit me, monsieur, to express to you, without further delay, on behalf of myself and my fellow-sufferers, our most hearty thanks for--"

"And, pray, how came you and your fellow-sufferers to be adrift in that boat?" demanded Renouf, unceremoniously cutting short my expression of thanks. I could not help thinking that there was more than the suspicion of a mocking sneer in the tone in which he uttered the words "you and your fellow-sufferers". Moreover there was a distinct air of discourtesy in his manner of interrupting me, and a suggestion of antagonism in his flashing eyes that put me on my guard; so, curbing a very decided disposition to make a resentful retort, I answered:

"The gig was one of the boats of the late East Indiaman Manilla, which the Dolphin had recaptured from a French privateer named the Tigre, and which was afterwards set on fire by lightning and destroyed. I was prize-officer in charge of the Manilla at the time; hence my presence in one of her boats."

"And how came you, sir, to be chief officer on board a British privateer?" now demanded Renouf.

I could not, for the life of me, comprehend the drift of this question, but there was no mistaking the insolent intonation of it. I therefore answered, rather haughtily:

"Pardon me, sir, if I say that I cannot see what possible concern a Frenchman can have in such a matter as that which you have just referred to."

"You cannot, eh?" he retorted, with a sudden flash of temper. "Then I will explain to you, my fine fellow. I asked the question because I feel curious to know what induced a French citizen to become a renegade and take up arms against his own country. You are a Breton, sir. I recognise you as such by your unmistakable dialect. And if I am not greatly mistaken you hail from Morlaix, in the streets of which town I am certain I have met that lanky carcase of yours hundreds of times. Nay, do not interrupt me! I will not have it--"

"But I must and will interrupt you, Captain Renouf," I broke in, despite his efforts to talk me down. "What you assert is simply ridiculous, sir. No man in his senses would ever mistake my imperfect French for Breton or any other dialect than that of an Englishman. What your motive may be for endeavouring to persuade yourself that I am a fellow- countryman of your own I cannot guess; but I reject the suggestion with scorn. I am an Englishman, as you are certainly quite aware, and I insist upon being treated as such. It was my intention to have asked parole for myself and my four fellow-countrymen; but with a captain possessed of such extraordinary hallucinations it will probably be better for us to remain close prisoners."

Renouf laughed disdainfully. "I have no doubt," said he, "that such an arrangement would suit you admirably, but it will not suit me. Now I want you to understand me clearly. You and your `four fellow- countrymen' are Frenchmen. Your clumsy attempt to pass yourselves off as Englishmen does not deceive me for a moment, nor do I believe it has really deceived that dolt Dumaresq, although he professes to have been temporarily taken in by you. You are all Frenchmen, however; that fact is indisputable. My brother here is as firmly convinced of it as I am; and, as France just now stands in need of the services of all her sons, it is my duty to see that you are made to serve her, willingly or unwillingly. But let me recommend you to render your service willingly; for if you do not it will be the worse for you. Now go on deck and turn to. And observe, my fine fellow, you will do well to recommend your `four fellow-countrymen', as you are pleased to term them, to commence duty at once, and to behave themselves; for I learn that you have great influence with them, and I shall hold you responsible for any shortcomings on their part. Now, go!"

"Captain Renouf," answered I, "I have listened to you patiently, and I understand that it is your intention to compel us five Englishmen to serve on board this ship. You can only do this by force, sir, and I warn you that if you dare to use force to either of us you shall suffer for it. You are certain to be captured by an English ship sooner or later, and the captain of that ship will not be slow to amply avenge any violence you may be foolhardy enough to resort to in your determination to compel five Englishmen to serve an enemy of their country."

"So!" he ejaculated, starting to his feet in a frenzy of passion. "You dare me, do you, you insolent rascal? Very well. Let us see how far your courage will carry you!"

He struck a hand-bell furiously, and shouted "Gaspar!"

A man, evidently the steward, promptly made his appearance at the cabin door, and responded:

"Monsieur called?"

"I did," answered Renouf. "Go on deck and tell Pierre to bring three men and some lashing down into the cabin."

The steward disappeared, and, as he did so, Renouf whipped a pistol out of his belt and covered me with it.

"Now, Monsieur Englishman, since you insist upon being so considered," he said, "if you make the slightest show of resistance I will shoot you through the head. Do you comprehend?"

"Clearly," I answered. "But as I cannot fight all hands single-handed, and as I am not yet tired of my life, I shall not resist. You at present have me in your power, and, by the exercise of that power, can compel me to do your will. But you are laying a heavy debt upon me, Captain Renouf, a debt which I will not fail to pay off in full at the earliest opportunity."

"Pouf!" answered he scornfully; "a fig for your threats! I have always been able to take good care of myself hitherto, and I doubt not I shall always be equally able to do so."

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.

THE TRUE CHARACTER OF THE JEAN BART BECOMES MANIFEST.

At this moment Pierre, who turned out to be the boatswain of the ship, accompanied by the three other men, one of whom carried a length of ratline in his hand, came clattering down the companion ladder, and entered the cabin.

"Now, monsieur," continued Renouf to me, "will you go on deck and do your duty, or shall these men drag you there and compel you to do it by seizing you up to the gangway and flogging you into obedience?"

"I will obey your orders, Captain Renouf," said I, "since you leave no alternative but that of being flogged, which I do not choose to submit to. But--"

"Well, but what?" sneered Renouf.

"Nothing at present," answered I, suddenly realising the absurdity as well as the imprudence of continuing to threaten while in so utterly helpless a condition.

"Aha, Monsieur Braggadocio!" answered Renouf; "so you are coming to your senses already, are you? It is well. Now you are beginning to exhibit a glimmer of common sense, which I hope will increase with reflection, and if it does I doubt not that we shall get on well enough together after all; especially as you will find that there is plenty of prize- money to be earned on board this ship. Now go forward and tell your mates that you have accepted service under me, and persuade them to do the same. I hope, for your sake, that you will have no trouble in so persuading them."

"I go, sir," replied I; "but I tell you, now, in the presence of these men, that I obey you under protest, and only because I do not choose to submit to the indignity of compulsion by mere superior brute force."

And so saying I turned and left the cabin, being escorted to the deck by Pierre and his three myrmidons.

I went right forward into the forecastle and, finding my fellow- survivors there, told them all that had passed in the cabin, at which they expressed the utmost indignation; Dumaresq being as loud as the loudest of my companions in his denunciation of Renouf's conduct. I let them finish their growl, and then said:

"Well, lads, I have told you exactly what this fellow Renouf said, and how he acted. It is now for you to act, each according to what seems best to him; for although I have been ordered to persuade you to follow my example, I shall do nothing of the sort. Each man must act according to his own judgment, just as I did. It did not suit me to submit to the indignity of being flogged, and I therefore accepted the only alternative that was left to me, namely, to consent to serve aboard this ship. But I did so with several mental reservations, the nature of which I will communicate to you at some more convenient time."

As I said this, my gaze involuntarily turned in Dumaresq's direction. The poor fellow flushed up painfully and said:

"I hope, my dear Bowen, you have no suspicion that I will betray to this rascal--whom I blush to acknowledge as a fellow-countrymen--anything that you may choose to say in my presence. Believe me, I fully appreciate all the difficulties of your position, and can well understand that you have felt yourself compelled to yield to circumstances which you found it impossible to control. But give me credit for believing that your surrender was not the base, unconditional surrender of a coward who preferred to turn traitor to his country rather than submit to a flogging. If I have read your character aright--and God knows I have been associated with you under circumstances that ought to have given me some insight into it--you have yielded to this man Renouf for some ulterior purpose of your own, which you intend to communicate to your comrades at the first fitting opportunity. Now, so far as I am concerned, I have not the same reasons that you have for objecting to take service in this ship, and I shall therefore volunteer. But I want you to understand that the accident of our happening to belong to two nations, at present unhappily at war with each other, is wholly insufficient to lessen in the slightest degree the personal friendship I entertain for you and these good fellows here, your fellow-countrymen. I am your and their friend now and for ever; and I want to make it plain to you that, short of absolute treachery to my country, you may count upon me to stand by you through thick and thin. You hesitate, and very rightly, too, to speak of your plans before me. It would be no advantage to you, and it might be embarrassing to me, were you to discuss them in my presence; but I have so little sympathy with Captain Renouf in his high-handed method of dealing with you that, were I to accidentally become acquainted with any portion of your intentions, I should feel quite justified in remaining silent about them. If the fellow is foolish enough to compel you to serve him against your will, he need feel no surprise at your taking an early opportunity to free yourselves from so galling a yoke. And now, in order that I may not be a restraint upon you, I will relieve you of my presence by going aft and volunteering. But believe and trust in my friendship always, even should circumstances assume such a character as to suggest a doubt of it."

So saying, he grasped the hand I offered him, wrung it heartily, and sprang up the ladder to the deck.

As soon as he was gone I translated to my four fellow-prisoners what he had said, and we then resumed our discussion of the situation. I told my companions that although I had consented to serve on board the Jean Bart, nothing should induce me to take up arms against my fellow- countrymen; that, on the contrary, if we should chance to fall in with a British ship, I was fully determined, by every means in my power, to frustrate Renouf's intentions, and to hamper and obstruct him in every possible way, and at all hazards; and that, if they felt disposed to accept service with a similar determination, it would be strange if five resolute, determined men like ourselves could not do something very material toward assisting in the capture of the schooner, and the safe lodgment of Monsieur Renouf aboard a British hulk. The men seemed to look at the matter in pretty much the same light that I did. They recognised, as I did, that Renouf was an unscrupulous rascal, likely to hesitate at little or nothing to gain his own headstrong will; they realised the utter futility of attempting to resist him, backed as he was by his whole crew; and, finally, they made up their minds to follow my example, recognising me as their actual leader, and heartily pledging themselves to be ready to act upon my initiative at a moment's notice, and to obey me to the death whenever a suitable opportunity should arise to translate our somewhat vague plans into action.

Having arrived at this understanding, I went aft and informed Captain Renouf that my comrades had consented, like myself under protest, to serve on board the Jean Bart; whereupon he ironically congratulated me upon my success--at which, nevertheless, I could see he was very much pleased--and gave orders that we were forthwith to be enrolled in the port watch, under his brother. We went on duty within the hour, were all placed in the same mess, and slept that night in that portion of the 'tween-decks devoted to the accommodation of the crew.

I was called upon to perform the duty of an able seaman; and ere long it became apparent that, having gained his way with us Englishmen, Renouf was now desirous to render our service as pleasant as possible to us. We were called upon only to do such work as is usually allotted to the highest grade of seamen before the mast, and in many ways trifling but none the less acceptable indulgences were shown to us. One of our duties was, of course, to take our regular trick at the wheel, and in this way I soon discovered that we were heading for West Indian waters.

It was on the fifth day after our submission to Renouf that, just after breakfast, a sail was made out from the mast-head, and the schooner's course was at once altered with the object of intercepting the strange ship, which was steering north. I was full of hope that the craft would turn out to be British, in which case there would almost certainly be a fight, and an opportunity would be afforded me of paying off part of the debt that I owed to Monsieur Renouf. But as the two craft neared each other, and the stranger's sails, and finally her hull, rose above the horizon, I was disappointed to discover that she was evidently a foreigner; and at length, in response to an exhibition of the French colours at the schooner's peak, she hoisted the Spanish ensign. Renouf, however, continued to bear down upon her; and presently the Spaniard, evidently growing alarmed at the menacing behaviour of the schooner, put up her helm and bore away before the wind, with the unmistakable intention of avoiding us if possible.

But a cart-horse might as well hope to gallop away from a thorough-bred racer as that ship to outsail the Jean Bart. The stranger was clearly a big, lumbering merchantman, built for the purpose of stowing the greatest possible amount of cargo in a hull of her dimensions. She had no pretensions whatever to speed, while the schooner was, as I have elsewhere said, exceptionally fast; it was not wonderful, therefore, that we rapidly overhauled her without an effort.

It was my impression that, as the Spaniard was probably homeward-bound from that part of the world toward which we were steering, Renouf was anxious to speak her and obtain what information he could with regard to the state of affairs generally in that quarter; and I was therefore not surprised at his persistent pursuit of the ship. But when later on in the day we had closed her to within gun-shot distance, and he began to fire into her, I certainly thought he was again carrying things with rather a high hand, and that, if he was not careful, he would probably get himself into serious trouble over the affair. Still it was no business of mine. The Spaniards, like the French, were at war with us, and if they chose to make war upon each other also it was not for me to object; on the contrary, any action calculated to produce a feeling of ill-will between the two nations could not fail to be of advantage to Great Britain. I therefore felt no qualms of conscience whatever when called upon to take my station at one of the guns, and did my duty with hearty good-will.

We continued firing at the Spaniard for about half an hour, in a very leisurely way, but with such deliberate aim that every shot struck her; and then, without firing a shot in return, the great hulking craft shortened sail and hove-to. Ten minutes later we, too, were hove-to within pistol-shot of the Spaniard's weather quarter, and we then had an opportunity to learn, by the gilt lettering on her stern, that she was the Santa Theresa, of Cadiz. The Jean Bart's three boats were at once lowered, and a party of about forty men, armed to the teeth, and led by Captain Renouf, his brother Gabriel, and young Dumaresq pushed off to take possession.

I thought this last a most extraordinary proceeding, France and Spain being then on friendly terms with each other; moreover, it at once disabused me of the impression that it was information only that Renouf was seeking. Still, it was no business of mine; and even had it been, that was certainly not the moment for me to interfere, surrounded as I was by some forty evil-looking ruffians, fully armed, and the schooner in charge of the second mate--the most evil-looking scoundrel of the lot, and, moreover, a man who had not attempted to conceal the fact that he intensely hated the very sight of us Englishmen.

The boats passed under the Spaniard's stern, and a few minutes later Renouf appeared upon her poop with his sword drawn, and waved a signal to Danton the second mate; whereupon a man was sent aloft to our royal- yard, with instructions to keep a sharp look-out all round the horizon, and to at once report the appearance of any strange sail that might perchance heave in sight.

For close upon four hours the two craft remained thus hove-to, upon opposite tacks, gradually drifting further apart, except when Danton saw fit to fill upon the schooner from time to time for the purpose of again closing with the Spaniard, never nearing her, however, closer than half a mile to leeward; and during at least two hours of this time not a trace of life was to be discovered on board the bigger ship. At length, however, a slight movement became observable on board the Santa Theresa; and presently we saw that tackles were being got up on the main-topmast-stay and the lower yard-arms. The Spaniard's boats were then hoisted out and lowered from the davits, until all of them appeared to be in the water, when the long-boat was hauled alongside to leeward, abreast the main hatchway; half a dozen men clambered down the side into her; and, after a short interval which was probably employed in taking off the hatches, it became apparent that they were hoisting cargo up out of the Santa Theresa's hold, certain selected bales and packages of which were from time to time carefully lowered down into the long-boat; a sight which went far toward confirming certain dreadful suspicions that had been slowly taking shape within my mind from the moment when I had seen Renouf, with his drawn sword, upon the Spanish ship's poop.

We now once more filled upon the schooner, and this time closed the bigger ship to leeward within less than a cable's length, when we once more hove-to, on the same tack as our neighbour, and a powerful tackle was then got up on our lower yard-arm, and another on the triatic-stay.

By the time that these preparations were complete, the long-boat was loaded as deeply as was prudent, and she was at once cast off and taken in tow by four men in one of the schooner's boats, the next largest of the Santa Theresa's boats taking her place, for the reception of further cargo. The weather was at this time quite fine, with a very moderate breeze blowing, and so little swell running that it was not worth speaking about; yet the long-boat was no sooner fairly in tow than it became apparent that those in charge of her were in difficulties; and, but for the prompt measures taken by Danton, she would have missed the schooner altogether and gone wallowing away to leeward. With our assistance, however, she was got alongside, after a fashion, and brought to the schooner's lee gangway, when it became apparent that those in charge of her were so helplessly drunk that they could hardly stand. Yet, somehow, they managed, with assistance, to clamber up our low side and reach the deck; when, as well as their drunken state would allow, they forthwith proceeded, in ribald language, to entertain their more sober shipmates with a tale of gross, wanton, cruel outrage, perpetrated on board the Spaniard, that made my blood boil with indignation, and caused me, thick-skinned sailor as I was, to blush at the thought that the perpetrators were, like myself, human. I noticed that Danton listened with greedy ears to the foul recital; and by and by, when the long-boat's cargo had been roused out of her and struck down our main hatchway, he turned the schooner over to the carpenter, and, taking four fresh and sober hands with him, proceeded on board the Santa Theresa, leaving the four drunken ruffians behind.

Shortly after the departure of the long-boat, one of the cutters came drifting down to us, loaded to her gunwale, and the four intoxicated scoundrels in charge of her amply verified the revolting story told by their predecessors, adding such details as abundantly confirmed my suspicions that the Jean Bart was no privateer, but an out-and-out pirate of the deepest dye. Their tale so inflamed the sober portion of our crew, who had remained on board the schooner, that at one moment it looked very much as though they were about to throw off all the trammels of discipline and obedience, and proceed forthwith on board the Spaniard, to participate in the saturnalia still in progress there; and it was only by the production of a lavish allowance of rum, and a promise from the carpenter that they should all have their turn on board the doomed ship, that they could be restrained from heaving the cutter's cargo overboard--instead of hoisting it out and passing it down the hatchway,--seizing the boat, and proceeding on board the Spaniard en masse. As for me, it may be imagined what a raging fever of indignation and fury I was thrown into by what I had heard; and it was made all the more unendurable by the circumstance that I was utterly powerless to interfere. For what could I and my four fellow-countrymen say or do to restrain some eighty lawless ruffians animated by all the vilest and most evil passions that the human breast ever harboured? Absolutely nothing! not even though we should resolve to lay down our lives in the attempt. We might destroy some twenty or thirty of the Frenchmen, perhaps, before we ourselves went under, but that would in nowise serve the unhappy Spaniards, who would still be at the mercy of the ruthless survivors. A thousand schemes suggested themselves to me, but there was not a practical one among them all, not one that offered the remotest prospect of success; and, with a bitter execration at our helplessness, I was at length obliged to admit that things must take their course, so far as we were concerned. But, although helpless to intervene just then, I saw that there was a possibility of the Frenchmen's excesses bringing retribution in their train. For every man who had thus far come from the Spanish ship had been almost helplessly drunk; and I saw no especial reason why the rest should not be in the same condition. And, if they were, what might not five resolute, reckless Englishmen be able to do?

I had observed that, when the carpenter found himself compelled to bribe what I may term the sober half of the schooner's crew to remain aboard, by producing a quantity of rum, my four English shipmates exhibited no backwardness in accepting and swallowing the very liberal allowance that had been offered to them; I also accepted mine; and, upon the pretence of being thirsty and therefore desiring to add water to it, I took it aft to the scuttle-butt, deftly hove the spirit overboard, and filling the pannikin with water, drank the contents with the greatest apparent gusto. And now, as certain vague possibilities began to present themselves to my mind, I contrived to draw Hardy, Green, Anstey, and Sendell away from the crowd of excited, chattering Frenchmen that swarmed in the waist and around the hatchway; and, getting them down into the deserted forecastle, I briefly and rapidly explained to them all that I had discovered relative to the real character of the Jean Bart and her crew, as well as the nature of the doings aboard the Spanish ship; and, having thus wrought them up to a proper pitch of indignation, I unfolded to them my somewhat hazy plans, and inquired whether they were disposed to aid me in them. To my delight, I found that they were with me, heart and soul. They had never very greatly relished their compulsory service aboard the schooner, and now that they were made aware of her true character and that of her crew, they professed themselves ready and eager to do anything I might propose in order to escape the thraldom of a continuation of such service and companionship. Whereupon I bade them accept all the drink that might be offered them, but to religiously abstain from swallowing another drop of it, and to hold themselves in readiness to act under my leadership whenever I might deem that the favourable moment for such action had arrived.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.

WE TURN THE TABLES UPON MONSIEUR RENOUF.

It was drawing well on toward sunset when Renouf, having apparently appropriated all the most valuable portions of the Spaniard's cargo that he could readily lay hands on, began to clear his disorderly rabble of a crew out of the ship, sending them aboard the schooner, a boatload at a time, and, to my surprise, using the Spanish boats, as well as his own, for this purpose. Meanwhile, the stories told by the men who had from time to time come from the Spanish ship had had the effect of gradually enticing the more sober half out of the schooner and on board the Santa Theresa, until the Jean Bart had at length been left practically in possession of us five Englishmen, and some thirty Frenchmen, the whole of whom were more or less helplessly drunk. And, this being the state of things on board the schooner, it would have been a comparatively easy matter for us five to have overpowered the Frenchmen, who were lying or staggering about the decks, and to have made off with the vessel; but not even to secure our liberty did I consider that I should have been justified in leaving Renouf and the bulk of his ruffians on board the Santa Theresa, to wreak his vengeance on the hapless crew and passengers. At length pretty nearly all the Frenchmen, save Renouf, his brother, and some half a dozen more, had rejoined the schooner, and I perceived with intense satisfaction that, although they were, without exception, in an almost helpless state of intoxication, every man brought with him at least a couple of bottles of wine or spirits; some men brought as many as half a dozen with them; and, at a hint from me, Anstey and his shipmates zealously assisted in getting these precious bottles safely up over the ship's side for their owners, who at once took them below and stowed them away in their hammocks. Among the earliest of the main body of arrivals, so to speak, came Dumaresq; he was perfectly sober, and I was gratified to observe that his countenance wore a quite unmistakable expression of fiery indignation, in which I thought I could also trace indications of horror and disgust. He caught my eye for an instant, as he sprang in over the rail; threw up his hands expressively, laid his finger on his lips, and vanished below.

Only the schooner's gig and the Spanish ship's pinnace now remained to join, and I had found time to observe that the latter was being loaded with a number of very small but apparently heavy packages, the nature of which I shrewdly suspected, for I had seen something very like them before. At length the operation of loading the pinnace appeared to be complete. There was a pause of about a quarter of an hour, and then the gig started for the schooner, with the pinnace in tow. As soon as I saw these two boats coming I directed my four shipmates to go below and turn into their hammocks, as at least half the Frenchmen had done, and to remain there, if possible, until I should call them, at the same time warning them not to touch a drop of liquor, as they valued their lives. In a few minutes the two boats were alongside, and I saw that my suspicion as to the nature of the small packages was correct. There were just forty of them, weighing about one hundred pounds each; each package was carefully sewn up in raw hide, and I knew that these small but exceedingly heavy packages were so many gold ingots! So the Jean Bart had made a very handsome haul, apart from the probably valuable bales that had come up out of the Spaniard's hold. As Renouf and his brother came up over the side I observed that their faces were flushed, as with excitement, or wine, or both, and their voices were thick and husky, but neither of them was what might be called intoxicated. As they turned to go aft to the cabin the brothers glanced at the Spanish ship, and the elder gave utterance to a brutal jest that made my hands tingle to take him by the throat and heave him overboard. But I seldom permit my passion to conquer prudence, and I allowed him to go, promising myself that his unhappy victims should be amply avenged in due time. Alas! even then I did not know the full measure of the villain's infamy, or I should have cast prudence to the winds, and dared everything for immediate freedom of action. They went below for a few minutes, and then returned to the deck to watch the trans-shipment of the gold, standing close to the gangway, and execrating in unmeasured terms the incapacity of the drunken mob who were performing the operation. For my own purpose I also assumed the demeanour of semi- intoxication, and accordingly came in for my full share of abuse. The gold, as it was hoisted on deck, was passed down into the cabin, and when it had all been got safely aboard the schooner, the pinnace was passed astern and made fast to the rest of the Spanish boats, when, to my astonishment, we filled and made sail with the Santa Theresa's boats in tow!

For some time I was puzzled to divine what could possibly be Renouf's motive in taking away the Spanish boats, for they could be of no use or value whatever to us. There was no room for them on deck or at the schooner's davits, and I could hardly imagine that a man like Renouf would seriously contemplate the idea of attempting to tow them across the Atlantic. It was while I was marvelling at this extraordinary eccentricity, as I considered it, that I happened to allow my gaze to rest abstractedly on the Spaniard that still remained hove-to, and as I gazed it dawned upon me that a subtle change was taking place in the appearance of the vessel. At first I could not satisfy myself at all as to the nature of the change, although I was convinced of its reality, but suddenly I understood it all. The craft was deeper in the water than before; she was gradually, almost imperceptibly, settling down, and already the rise and fall of her upon the swell was becoming characterised by that heavy sluggishness of movement that marks a water- logged ship. The scoundrels had scuttled her--I could understand it all now--and were taking away the boats in order that the miserable passengers and crew might by no possibility escape to tell the tale of Renouf's piratical behaviour. With this conviction strong upon me, I made my way below, and at length found Dumaresq, sitting upon a chest, with his face buried in his hands, and wearing every appearance of the most abject melancholy.

"Dumaresq," exclaimed I, in a fierce whisper, grasping him by the shoulder and shaking him almost savagely in my agitation; "rouse yourself, man, and listen to me! I want to ask you a question or two. You have been aboard the Spanish ship, and were an eye-witness, I suppose, of some at least of the deeds of Renouf and his crew. I want to hear the particulars, as briefly as possible, and I also want to know what is your feeling in the matter."

He removed his hands from his face and looked up at me, and even in the dim uncertain light of the 'tween-decks I could read the horror, sorrow, and indignation in his eyes.

"Bowen, my friend," he replied in low, cautious tones, "do not ask me for I cannot tell you; I could not find words to describe the scenes of which I have been a helpless, horrified eye-witness this day. Everything may be summed up in a few words: Renouf and his crew are pirates of the most ruthless character; men who absolutely revel in wickedness of the vilest description, who take positive delight in inflicting the most horrible indignities upon those who unfortunately happen to fall into their power, who gloat over the unavailing tears and entreaties of their victims, and who scoff at the mere mention of the word `mercy'. Picture to yourself the very worst that you have ever heard or read of piratical atrocities, and you will be able to arrive at a very accurate conception of the horrors of which that unfortunate ship was the theatre to-day. And I, my friend, I was compelled to look on, powerless to mitigate a single horror; nay, worse, my remonstrances were jeered at, and if I ventured to intercede in behalf of a victim, some additional insult or barbarity was at once inflicted upon the unhappy creature. And these are the fiends into whose power we have fallen. It would have been a thousand times better had we perished in the gig!"

"Is that your view of the matter?" I exclaimed contemptuously. "Then I can only say, Monsieur Dumaresq, that I have been mistaken in you. Man, man!" I continued angrily; "what are you thinking about? Are you going to crouch here, dumb, abject, and inactive, like a whipped hound, instead of bestirring yourself and helping me to put an end to the career of these fiends and bring them to justice, to say nothing of the possibility of saving those unhappy wretches on board the Spanish ship, unless I am to understand from you that they have all been murdered in cold blood."

"No, no, it was not quite so bad as all that," he answered, looking at me with a bewildered air; "bloodshed there certainly was, and cruel torture to extract the secret of the hiding-place of the gold, but no life was actually taken, so far as I know. What do you mean by your talk of `saving' the unhappy wretches on board the Spanish ship?"

"I mean," said I impressively, "that the ship has been scuttled, and is now surely but slowly sinking, while Renouf has all her boats in tow, in order that there may be no possible chance of escape for anybody on board her."

"Merciful heaven! it cannot be!" he exclaimed, starting to his feet, and gripping me by the arm. "Why, nobody but a fiend incarnate would dream of doing such a thing!"

"Then," said I, "Renouf is a fiend incarnate; and that is an additional reason for putting an end to his career at once; for, as surely as that you are standing here, he has not only dreamed of doing such a thing, but has actually done it."

"Horrible, horrible!" exclaimed Dumaresq, smiting his forehead with his hand as he stared at me, still more than half incredulous. "But what can we do, my friend; what can we do? There are but six of us, at most, against more than eighty!"

"True," I answered; "but if each of those six is as resolute as I am prepared to be, we may prove sufficient for my purpose. Now, listen to me. This is my plan. Look around you. There is not a man below here, save ourselves, but is nearly or quite helplessly drunk, and those on deck are little or no better. We must divide ourselves into three parties of two each, and each party must tackle one of these drunken wretches at a time, one of us clapping a gag between his jaws, while the other whips a lashing round him, and makes him fast, hands and feet. In this way everybody below here may be secured. Then, leaving two of our number here to deal with any others who may come down, the other four must go aft and seize Renouf and his brother; and when we have made them safe, we must tackle Danton. This done, our next move must be to get the schooner round, and return to the Spanish ship, and while we are making our way back we must go round the decks with a belaying-pin apiece, and simply knock the senses out of all who attempt to oppose us. It will not be a difficult matter, for I do not believe that there is a man on board, excepting ourselves and perhaps Renouf and his brother, capable of taking care of himself."

"Mon Dieu!" exclaimed Dumaresq; "but it is a desperate scheme, and I do not believe that anybody but a Briton would have thought of it, much less talked of it so coolly as you have done. But, Bowen, my friend, dare we attempt it? Is there the remotest chance of our being successful?"

"There is every chance, if we are but resolute," I answered, a little impatiently. "But, of course," I continued, "you are not called upon to join us if--"

"Nay, nay," he interrupted, "you shall never say that Anatole Dumaresq flinched when desperate work had to be done. I am with you, my friend, heart and soul. Let me but clearly understand what is to be done, and you shall have no chance to say that I did not do my fair share. There is my hand upon it."

I silently grasped his extended hand, and then went to the hammocks in which Hardy and his mates were pretending to sleep, and told them to tumble out at once. This they did, when I explained to them very briefly what I proposed to do. Having made my meaning clear, we rejoined Dumaresq, and without further ado the six of us seized a number of jackets, trousers, and other clothing that had been hung to the bulkheads and beams, and unceremoniously cut them into suitable strips, which we rolled into gags.

On board the Jean Bart the hammocks were never taken on deck, as they are on board a man-o'-war--the schooner not being fitted with a hammock- rail,--but were simply laced up every morning. Each hammock was consequently fitted with a good stout lacing, which I thought would admirably serve as a lashing for my prisoners.

Having provided ourselves with as many gags as we could conveniently stow in our pockets, we next stationed ourselves in couples alongside three occupied hammocks, and while one of the twain loosely and quickly passed the lacing through the eyelet-holes the other stood by with the gag, which, at the proper moment, was slipped into the victim's mouth and lashed securely, the hammock lacing at the same moment being hauled taut and made fast; and in this way each prisoner was silently and effectually secured. It took the six of us fully twenty minutes to secure everybody below--to the number of sixty-three,--as some of them had to be gagged first and afterwards lashed into their hammocks; but the work was done effectually, noiselessly, and without a hitch, every one of the Frenchmen proving to be too completely intoxicated to offer the slightest resistance worthy of the name.

This done, I crept up on deck, staggering and stumbling, with the most vacant expression of face that I could assume, and generally imitating, as nearly as I could, the gait and appearance of a drunken man, for the benefit of whosoever might happen to be in a condition to take intelligent notice of me. Reeling and staggering to the fore-rigging, I clutched at and hung on to a belaying-pin, and looked about me fore-and- aft. The deck was occupied by some twenty men or so, some of whom were asleep in the lee scuppers, while others, in little groups of two and three, hung over the bulwarks, staring idiotically at the white foam that swept aft from the schooner's keen cut-water; and four, who had probably assumed the duty of looking out, staggered and lurched in pairs, holding each other on their legs, to-and-fro between the windlass and the fore-rigging, occasionally indulging in an ineffectual attempt to exchange remarks. So far, all was right; nobody here seemed capable of giving us the slightest trouble. In fact, discipline was for the time being at an end, lawlessness reigned supreme, everybody was his own master, and the schooner was practically left to take care of herself. Danton, however, was in charge of the deck, and although he was a trifle unsteady in his walk, I could see that he had his wits pretty well about him and would have to be somewhat carefully tackled if we wished to secure him without giving the alarm to Renouf and his brother, both of whom, I took it, were below. Astern of us, or rather about a point and a half on our starboard quarter, and some four miles distant, lay the Spaniard, still hove-to, her brasswork and the glass of her sky-lights and scuttles flashing redly in the last rays of the setting sun as she laboured over the ridges of the low swell; and I was both startled and horrified to observe how deep she had sunk into the water during the comparatively short time that I had been below. It was clear enough that if the unhappy people aboard her were to be rescued there was not a moment to lose; I therefore staggered aft and, approaching Danton with drunken solemnity, touched my forehead and, wavering upon my legs and speaking thickly, asked him to come for'ard and down below and tell me whether he could smell fire. The scoundrel's face blanched at the word, as he probably pictured to himself the frightful predicament of all hands--himself included--should my suggestion prove true; then, without a word, he hastened forward to the hatchway, with me at his heels, and went stumbling down the steep ladder. As he reached the bottom I flung myself upon him, clasping him round the body and arms, and lifted him off his feet, at the same time singing out to Hardy to gag him; and in another minute we had him securely bound, hand and foot, and lashed hard and fast into a hammock.

"So far, well!" I exclaimed, as I dragged him unceremoniously away to a dark corner. "We have now but to secure Renouf and his brother, and the schooner is ours. Hardy, Green, and Sendell, come you aft with me, providing yourselves with a belaying-pin each on the way; and you, Anstey, will keep Mr Dumaresq company on deck, mounting guard over the companion, to prevent anyone going below, or to knock down and secure anyone who may escape us and attempt to reach the deck. Our duty is very simple; four of us will enter the cabin; and while Hardy and I attempt to secure Renouf and his brother, the other two will stand by to assist, in the event of either of us becoming disabled by a pistol bullet. Come along, my hearties."

So saying, I led my little party aft. At the head of the companion ladder Dumaresq and the man Anstey came to a halt, the former engaging the drunken helmsman in conversation, while the remaining four of us stole down the ladder, bare-footed, and noiseless as cats. I had already mentally arranged my method of procedure; so, whispering to Hardy that he was to tackle the chief mate, while I would look after Renouf, I boldly knocked at the cabin door. A command to enter, given in rather a drowsy, peevish tone of voice, was the immediate response, whereupon I flung open the door and passed into the cabin closely followed by Hardy.

Renouf and his brother occupied a locker each on opposite sides of the cabin; and it was quite apparent that they had both been indulging in a nap, which I had rudely broken in upon. They were in the act of changing from a reclining to a sitting posture, yawning and stretching as they did so, when I entered the cabin.

"Captain Renouf," began I, as I advanced toward him, "I have taken the liberty to--"

My little ruse was, however, unavailing; the ruffian seemed to instinctively and immediately divine my purpose, and in a flash he had whipped a pistol and a long knife--the blade of which I noticed was smeared with blood--from his belt, and levelled the former straight at my head. There was no need for further words between us; nor was there time for hesitation; so, quickly ducking my head, I sprang upon him like lightning, and seized him by both wrists at the very instant that his pistol exploded; the bullet grazing the left side of my head, and neatly clipping off a lock of my hair. The fellow was as lithe as an eel in my hands, and made the most desperate efforts to stab me with his long, murderous-looking knife; but I had him fast in so powerful a grip that, after a furious struggle of a few seconds, he dropped both his weapons with a gasp of pain, my clutch having, as it presently appeared, forced both his wrists from their sockets. To snatch the remaining pistol from his belt with my right hand, while I shifted the grip of my left to his throat, was the work of but a single instant; and I then turned to see how Hardy was faring with his antagonist. He had apparently been less fortunate than myself, for his cheek was laid open by a long gash from the chief mate's knife, which, even as I turned my head, again descended and buried itself in Hardy's shoulder. The smart of this second wound seemed to fairly rouse my shipmate, and before I could do anything to help him his ponderous fist darted out with the force of a six-pound shot, catching the miserable Corsican fair in the centre of the face and dashing him backwards, with a shriek of pain, across the table. This blow settled the affair; there was no more fight left in either of the brothers--indeed I had unconsciously gripped my prisoner's throat so tightly, while watching the termination of the struggle between the other two, that his tongue and eyeballs were protruding, and he was already going black in the face. So we securely pinioned the precious pair, lashing their arms and legs together, and, bundling each into his own cabin, locked the doors, the keys of which I slipped into my pocket. This done, I helped myself, from the trophy upon the after-bulkhead of the cabin, to weapons enough for our entire party; found Gaspar, the steward, in his pantry, where I lashed him fast and locked him in; and then the four of us hastened on deck to ascertain what effect, if any, had been produced by the pistol-shot fired in the cabin upon the small residue of the crew who had not yet utterly succumbed to the stupefying influence of their immoderate potations.

CHAPTER NINETEEN.

THE FATE OF THE SANTA THERESA.

Upon rejoining Dumaresq, I learned from him that the pistol-shot fired in the cabin had attracted only the most casual and momentary notice of the few Frenchmen on deck; the majority of them, indeed, scarcely rousing themselves sufficiently to do more than merely turn their heads to send a single inquiring glance aft. This was good news, as, although the schooner was now to all intents and purposes our own, there were few enough of us to navigate her, and I was most anxious that those few should not be weakened by possible injuries in a struggle to secure full and complete possession. That full and complete possession, however, it was absolutely necessary to secure at once, if anything was to be done toward rescuing the unhappy Spaniards on board the fast-sinking Santa Theresa; so Dumaresq and I went forward and, by dint of a little good- humoured force, succeeded in persuading the remainder of the Frenchmen to go below, where we secured them without much difficulty. This done, we at once brought the schooner to the wind, and proceeded to beat up toward the Spanish ship, which we could just make out in the rapidly deepening dusk of the tropical evening. I carefully noted her bearing and distance; and then, Dumaresq taking the wheel, the rest of us went to work to make our prisoners permanently secure. Fortunately for us, Renouf's foresight enabled us to do this very effectually, he having apparently recognised that circumstances might possibly arise rendering it important that he should possess the means to reduce a large number of men to absolute helplessness; for which purpose he had provided himself with an ample supply of irons, which now proved most useful to us. We lost no time in clapping these irons upon the hands and legs of the Frenchmen, thus rendering it impossible for them to give us the slightest trouble upon their recovery from their drunken debauch; and, having made all perfectly secure, our next business was to restore the cook and steward to sobriety, by subjecting them to a liberal douche of salt-water, and to set them to work to prepare us a meal, of which we began to feel that we stood in need.

The task of effectually securing the whole of our prisoners occupied a considerable amount of time; so that when it was at length completed to my satisfaction the night had long since fallen, and we had completely lost sight of the Spanish ship, although Dumaresq had kept his eye upon her as long as possible. We had brought the schooner to the wind on the starboard tack, in the first instance, and we held on upon this tack until I found, by means of a simple little diagram, drawn to scale upon a piece of paper, that we could fetch her on the next tack when we hove the schooner round. But my hopes of being able to rescue the Spaniards were fast fading away, for the wind had evinced a decided disposition to drop with the setting of the sun; and when we at length tacked to fetch the spot where we expected to find the Santa Theresa, the schooner was going through the water at a speed of barely four knots. And, according to my reckoning, the ship was just that distance from us; so that it would occupy us another hour to fetch her, and I was exceedingly doubtful whether she would remain afloat so long. Indeed, I greatly feared that she had foundered already, for the night, although dark, was clear. The stars were shining brilliantly from zenith to horizon, and it appeared to me that if she was still afloat we ought to be able to see the blur of her canvas against the sky. But although I searched the horizon from broad on the one bow to broad on the other, using for the purpose an exceptionally fine night-glass that I found in Renouf's cabin, I was unable to make her out.

Once or twice, it is true, I thought I had caught her right ahead, but it unfortunately happened that the portion of sky in that quarter was bare of stars over a space very considerably larger than would have been covered by the ship's canvas, and consequently I was without the assurance that would have been afforded me had the faint, dusky appearance that I took to be her sails alternately eclipsed and exposed a star. But I afterwards had reason to believe that I had really seen her, for when we had arrived within about a mile of the spot where I supposed her to be, a faint, wailing cry, as of people in the last extremity of despair, came pealing distinctly to us across the black water, and about a quarter of an hour later we suddenly found ourselves among a quantity of floating oars, buckets, hatches, and other articles that had undoubtedly belonged to the Spaniard. The presence of these articles proved conclusively that the unfortunate ship had gone down, and the cry that we had heard was doubtless the last despairing cry of her hapless, helpless passengers and crew. Thus to the crime of piracy Renouf had added the far worse one of wholesale murder, for Dumaresq asserted that, according to his estimate, the number of passengers and crew together on board the Santa Theresa could not have fallen much, if anything, short of a hundred. We immediately hove the schooner to, and Dumaresq, with my four English shipmates, at once shoved off in a boat to search among the wreckage for possible survivors, but not one was found; which is not to be wondered at, for it afterwards transpired that Renouf had driven the Spanish seamen below and battened them down, while he had lashed the officers and passengers hand and foot and locked them into the cabins the last thing before scuttling the ship!

We remained hove-to until past midnight, and then, having failed to find even so much as a floating body, sorrowfully filled away, and shaped a course for the West Indies, it being my intention to hand the whole crew over to the authorities upon a charge of piracy.

A few days later, as we were running down the trade-wind, shortly after mid-day, we sighted ahead a whole fleet of large ships steering pretty nearly the same course as ourselves. They were under royals, with studding-sails set on both sides, and despite the fact that they were so much bigger than ourselves, we overhauled them so rapidly that by sunset we had brought them hull-up, and had neared them so closely that we were not only able to identify them as line-of-battle ships, but, with the aid of Renouf's splendid telescope, were able to read several of the names emblazoned upon their sterns. We made out such names as Argonauta, Espana, Pluton, Terrible, Bucentaure, San Rafael, and others, by means of which Dumaresq was able to identify some of them as ships that had been blockaded in the port of Toulon by Lord Nelson. Others were manifestly Spanish ships. Their names and appearance generally testified to that fact, and it therefore looked very much as though Vice-admiral Villeneuve had somehow contrived to evade the British fleet, and, having effected a junction with a Spanish fleet, was making the best of his way to the West Indies to work what damage might be within his power upon our colonies and our commerce in that quarter of the globe. There were twenty sail of them altogether. The fact that so formidable a fleet of our enemies was ranging the Atlantic and steering a course that would take them to some of the most valuable of Britain's possessions in the western hemisphere was important news indeed; and I reconnoitred the fleet as closely as I dared, contriving, before the daylight faded, to ascertain the name, and approximately the power, of every ship. They did not deign to take the slightest notice of us, beyond firing a shot or two at us whenever we ventured within range. So when darkness set in I bore away to the southward sufficiently to give the flank ship a berth of about four miles, when I crowded sail upon the schooner and ran past them, dropping them out of sight before sunrise next morning.

Despite the fact that we were so short-handed, we continued to carry on, night and day, arriving at Port Royal on the morning of the eighth day after sighting the combined fleet.

My first task was to seek out the Admiral, whom I expected to find at his Pen on the slope of the hill at the back of the town of Kingston; so no sooner was our anchor down than I engaged a negro boatman to take me up the harbour. Arrived at Kingston, I procured a vehicle, and, driving to the Pen, was fortunate enough to catch the great man just as he was about to sit down to breakfast. The announcement that I was the bearer of important intelligence relating to the enemy secured my immediate admission to his presence, and, despite the fact that I was only a privateersman, the genial old seadog accorded me a hearty welcome, and insisted upon my sitting down to table with him directly he had elicited from me the fact that I had not yet broken my fast. He was, of course, profoundly interested in the intelligence that I was able to furnish him, relative to the presence of a combined French and Spanish fleet in the Atlantic, my information being the first that had reached him of the fact, and he was good enough to say that, in hastening to him with the news, I had rendered a service of the utmost importance to my country. Scarcely less interested was he in the narration of my adventures from the time of the abandonment of the Manilla to the moment of the capture of the Jean Bart. He complimented me highly upon my conduct throughout, and, while promising to immediately relieve me of the charge of my prisoners, incidentally expressed his regret that I had not selected the navy as my profession. I answered him that I was but an obscure individual, with no influence or patronage whatever at my command, and that, therefore, had I entered the navy, I should probably never have been allowed to rise in my profession, the influence and patronage which I lacked causing other and more fortunate ones to be promoted over my head. His reply was characteristic.

"Influence! patronage!" he exploded. "Ay, sir, you speak truly; there is too much of it altogether. It amounts to a very serious drawback and injury to the service in many ways. But, as for you, and men like you, you do not require either influence or patronage. You possess the best of all influence in this," lightly touching the hilt of my sword, "and it is a thousand pities that greater facilities are not afforded to men of your kidney for entrance into the service. But perhaps the profits derivable from successful privateering outweigh your patriotism, and you would rather be as you are than become the wearer of His Majesty's livery?"

"You are mistaken, sir," answered I hotly. "To serve on His Majesty's quarter-deck would be the height of my ambition, but I confess I prefer my present position, as commander of a privateer to that of a warrant- officer aboard a man-o'-war."

He answered me with a "Umph!" which afforded me no clue whatever to his opinion of my outspoken reply; and, my business with him being at an end, I took my leave.

"Have you any engagement for to-night?" he asked, extending his hand very cordially. And upon my answering that I had not, he said: "Then come and dine with me; seven sharp. I want to see a little more of you."

Of course I gladly accepted so flattering an invitation, and then hurried away to appoint an agent and return to the schooner.

I was anxious to get to sea again as quickly as possible, for I looked upon the loss of the Manilla as so much leeway, and a very serious amount too, that could not be too speedily made up. But I foresaw that my chief difficulty in so doing would arise from my lack of a crew, and how to scrape together a decent complement in a small town like Kingston I knew not, for I was fully aware that our men-o'-war kept the place pretty well swept of men. I was therefore greatly pleased when, having called upon the individual who had been recommended to me by the Admiral as an agent, he informed me, upon the conclusion of my business proper with him, that he knew a man who he believed would be willing, for a consideration, to find me as many good men as I might require. I at once asked for the address of this person, but was informed that it would be utterly useless for me, a total stranger, to call upon him, as he would most certainly decline to treat with me; but that if I felt disposed to leave the matter in his, the agent's, hands, he would do his best for me. I thought I understood pretty well what this meant. The system of impressment had done more than anything else to render our navy unpopular, and men were constantly deserting whenever and wherever they found a chance. And when they had once succeeded in making good their escape from the ship on board which they had been compelled to serve, their best chance of safety from recapture lay in getting to sea as quickly as possible, until which they were perforce obliged to lie in close hiding. This state of affairs soon produced a set of men known as "crimps", who kept boarding-houses for the especial accommodation and concealment of seamen who either had deserted from their ships, or who, having been paid off, were anxious to find other employment without the risk of impressment while openly looking for it. These crimps were to be found in every British seaport, abroad as well as at home, and a very good thing they made of it, what with their exorbitant charges for board and lodging on the one hand, and, on the other, the premiums or head- money that they received from ship-masters for the supply of men. It was, of course, to their interest to be loyal to the men, and hence they hedged themselves and their houses about with so many safeguards against undesirable intrusion that it became a matter of almost impossibility to approach them except through certain channels. I suspected that my agent was in touch with one or more of these men, and although I thoroughly hated the system, which was nothing short of the most audacious robbery, both of the unfortunate men whom it professed to befriend, and of the ship-masters who were compelled to avail themselves of it, my prospects of procuring a crew by any other means were so remote that I unwillingly assented to my agent's suggestion, stipulating only that I should see the men and have the option of refusing such as I deemed unsuitable. And with this understanding the agent undertook to do his best to find me at least forty thoroughly good men.

This important matter put in train, I hastened back on board the schooner, and soon had the satisfaction of seeing Renouf and his scoundrel crew passed over the side into the boats that were to convey them to the prison-hulk. I had the still greater satisfaction of learning, not very long afterwards, that Renouf, his brother, and half a dozen more of the party had been hanged as pirates upon the evidence of Dumaresq, myself, and the other survivors of the gig's crew. This, however, is anticipating my story somewhat.

That same night I dined with the Admiral, and had the honour of meeting the Governor and some half-dozen more of the principal personages of the island. I was rather astonished, I must admit, at the perfect equanimity with which my portentous tidings had been received. The Admiral had, of course, had a busy day of it in preparing and sending off despatches to the other islands belonging to the crown, as well as in arranging for the defence of our possessions generally; but I soon found that there was an utter absence of apprehension on the score of an attack.

"No, no," exclaimed the Admiral confidently. "Villeneuve has escaped from Toulon, it is true, but he will be like a canary that has slipped out of its cage, he will be so frightened at unexpectedly finding himself free that he will not dare to make the least use of his freedom; his greatest anxiety will be to escape the pursuers that he knows must be on his track. For, d'ye see, Nelson will become aware of his escape in less than twelve hours, and will be after him forthwith. The only wonder to me is that he has not overtaken him and brought him to action before now. I would give a good deal for the power to let Nelson know the whereabouts of this fleet; but I haven't another ship at my disposal. By the way, Mr Bowen, what are you going to do next?"

"I shall proceed to sea again without a moment's unnecessary delay, sir," I answered. "All I want is a crew."

"All you want!" echoed the Admiral. "By George, sir, I don't know where you will find a crew in Jamaica. I believe every available man has already been hunted out and appropriated by our men-o'-war. Have you no men at all?"

"Four only; and I am not yet by any means certain that they will consent to ship with me. I have no authority whatever over them. They formed part of the crew of the Manilla."

"Well," observed the Admiral, "I am afraid it is a bad look-out for you. At the same time if you should succeed in picking up enough to enable you to handle your schooner, let me know. I may find you some work to do, if you care to undertake it."

I slept ashore that night; and upon calling upon my agent next day was as much astonished as gratified to learn that "his friend" was prepared to furnish me with sixty prime seamen,--every one of whom had served on board a man-o'-war,--upon payment of a guinea a head for them. It was a tolerably stiff premium to pay; but, as times then were, they would be fully worth it, should they turn out to be as represented, so I agreed to go and see them that night; with the result that--not to dwell at unnecessary length upon this part of my story--I next morning found myself in command of as smart a crew as a man need wish to have at his back. I found that I was indebted for this slice of good fortune principally to the fact that the crew of a privateer were exempt from impressment, which exemption was allowed to hold good in the West Indies, although the exemption was frequently little better than a dead letter at home and in other parts of the world. I now went to work to provision and water the schooner for a three-months' cruise; and so well did my agent work for me that, within seventy-two hours of my arrival at Port Royal, I was able to report myself ready for sea and at the Admiral's service.

"That is well!" exclaimed the Admiral, rubbing his hands, when I so reported myself. "I congratulate you upon your smartness, Mr Bowen, and also upon your good fortune in finding a crew; it is a good deal more than our own people could have done. And now, if you are willing to render your country a further important service, I can afford you the opportunity. I am convinced that Lord Nelson will not remain inactive at home, now that Admiral Villeneuve has contrived to give him the slip, he will chase the combined fleet round the world, if need be. But it is important that Villeneuve should be watched. What, therefore, I want you to do is to sail in search of the combined fleet, and find them; ascertain as much as you can relative to their projected movements, and then find the British fleet and acquaint Nelson with all that you have been able to learn. When you have done that, you will be free to cruise wherever you please; but make an excuse to return to Jamaica at your earliest convenience, and do not fail to call on me."

I thanked the Admiral for his kindness, promised to execute his commission to the best of my ability, and took my leave. Two hours later the schooner, which I had rechristened the Sword Fish, was outside the Pallisades, working her way to the eastward under as heavy a press of canvas as I dared pile upon her.