Angus B. Reach

“ In a moment the flaming torches, shown from so many of the fleet, were blown out or quenched; but the great ship, burning a bright light in her main rigging, we saw her all lurid and blue in the glare, leaning heavily over to the blast, her slanting yards dotted with the seamen, who were taking in sail as fast as they had spread it forth. In a few minutes again all around was darkness, except where the glimmer of a lantern, tossing and tumbling as though a giant were flinging it from hand to hand, showed where one of the Pearl Fleet was jerking and straining at her anchor. ”

“ We were running five or six knots, with the cool land-breeze sighing in our sails. The heaven was one vault of stars, and, lying on deck wrapped up in folds of old canvas, while Nicky held the tiller beside me, I fixed my gaze upon the Southern Cross, that beautiful cluster of stars which shines only in the tropics, and which, appearing in the solemn and thoughtful night, always caused me to feel that I was in a strange part of the world, even more than the curious animals, and plants, and men, which one sees daily and ordinarily about one, when abroad. ”

“ The ocean is the most inscrutable of sepulchres. I know not, and no man knows, the place of their resting. The breeze was fair, and the sea smooth, which bore from Carthagena the ship in which they embarked to return to Spain. She was a stately merchantman, and as she left the port cannon thundered and church bells clashed from echoing steeples. Then spreading her fair white wings to the wind, and towering in her pride over the fleet of small craft which joyously, with shout and blessing, convoyed her out to sea—the good ship disappeared, holding her steady course for home. ”

“ Captain Jem at this moment returned on deck, carrying two large pistols.
‘If the schooner as much as scrapes a ridge of sand,’ says he, and he pressed the muzzle of one of the pistols so hard upon the dwarfs forehead, that when he took it away there was a round blue ring left above the eyebrow; ‘if the schooner as much as taps one oyster upon the coral, you cease to live!’
‘That is no news,’ answered the dwarf, with the old shrug of the shoulders; ‘if the schooner strikes we all of us cease to live. Pooh, pooh, man! bullying avails not now. ”

“ The bowman of the Spanish boat made a desperate leap, alighting with a surge on the stern of our shallop. Even while he was in the air, I started up to grapple with him. Our arms grasped each other’s doublets. I felt his hot breath on my cheek. We stood erect but for a moment, twining, as it were, around each other’s limbs, and then both of us, linked with brawny muscles together, fell splash into the sea, amid a great shout, which mingled in my ears with the rushing and gurgling of the water, into which we plunged. ”

“ Shortly after this we went on deck, and my first glance was astern, where the skiff was still towing, although the waves raised by the sea-breeze ran so gaily, that sometimes as they chased us, the boat, rising on the crest of the following sea, would seem as though she would be hove bodily on deck. The land was now quite close, not more than a mile under the lee, so that we could see a great succession of bays and little headlands with bushes of many sorts, and rich tangled underwood, creeping among and clothing the knolls and banks even to the water’s edge. ”

“ Our chains were taken off—we climbed the ladder—we passed the hatchway—and we stood upon the deck. The moon shone, as it shone above my hut—above the dark woods—above the dark river—above my country; the breeze was sweet to taste, as palm wine after bitter water. The white men slept upon the deck—the ship went steady before the night wind which came over the sea. It was good. The captain asked us again where the white men were slaves, and we told him a moon and two moons and three moons from where the dark river joined the sea. ”

“ Meantime the sky was growing every moment of a more lurid colour, as though the arch of heaven had been a great vault of brazen metal, and the surf was breaking in awful surges upon the reefs.
‘Captain,’ says Bristol Tom, who was at the tiller, ‘we shall not weather the point; the wind heads her every moment.’ And as he spoke, the sails flapped like thunder, and a great swell lifted the schooner and flung her bodily back a dozen fathoms. One of the men from the forecastle cried at the same time that the wind was coming, for that the sea was breaking white about a league away. ”

“ Often and often, since I left the Spanish main, in rough dark middle watches, as well as in soft and balmy nights, when my ship stole through a waveless and shining sea, have I flown in fancy back to those bright days of hope and love—often have I meditated and pondered, until the very image of Joseffa has seemed to waver in the air and smile upon me, until the well-remembered tones of her voice have sounded audibly in mine ear amid the dash of waves, or the rustle of the swelling canvas. ”

“ It is in the silence and the dusk of evening and of dawn that best we seem to see each other. And even these moments, what are they?—Times of musing, idle phantasy. People laugh at them and at me, and, perhaps, with reason. Who, indeed, would believe, seeing the grizzled locks and weather-beaten visage and horny hands of the man who is now captain of the Scotch brig ‘Royal Thistle,’ why so called we know well—that he, that jolly yarn-telling mariner—that tough old tangled lump of sea-weed—can yet remember the day when the flush of loving blood was hot within him? ”

“ I might think that I was looking into the swirlings of our trout-pool in the Balwearie Burn, but for the bright, jagged coral, and the strange sea-weeds at the bottom, and the still stranger fishes floating, as it were, in pure mid air, but a fathom down beneath the keel of the canoe. Gliding over these translucent waters, sometimes scraping the battered side of our skiff against the rough coral edges; sometimes receiving a sparkling shower of spray when a bigger wave than ordinary burst upon the outside reef, the Mosquito men were in their glory. ”

“ Men were in the rigging and among the ropes; they strived to loose the sails, but they had no time. The ship struck—the waves went over her—the masts fell—the crew were drowned! As I swam to land, I heard the people of my nation—how they shouted and were glad! That ship fared like the others—she broke, and we had the spoil. The powder, the cloth, the iron, and all things which we valued. Only three white men were saved, and we made them slaves. We sent them up the dark river, and into the dark woods far from the sea. ”

“ I was roused by rude shocks and pulls, and a confused clamour of voices. Opening my eyes with effort, I saw surging upon the broken water, close to the spars, a ship’s boat with men, one of whom—he who rowed the boat oar—had grasped the collar of my sea doublet, and was hauling me into the pinnace, in which effort he succeeded, ere I could well make out whereabouts I was. ”

“ The Spaniards would doubtless send out a squadron of their armadilloes. The schooner would be forced to leave the coast, and when or where, even supposing I was to get scot free out of the hands of my present jailers, I could meet her again, was but a discouraging question to put to myself. To-morrow I was to appear before the alcaide, and perhaps his court was but a stage on the way to the gallows. To be strung up and choked at the end of a rope—faugh! why did I not die upon a bloody deck, amid the thunder of our guns, and with the anthem of my comrades’ cheers ringing through my brain? ”

“ Happily, sail is easily taken off a fore-and-aft-rigged vessel. The struggling and flapping sheets of canvas were rapidly secured, the gaffs were lowered down upon deck, and the schooner was speedily running under bare poles dead to leeward. The squall, meanwhile, increased until it became almost a hurricane: the great waves were beaten down flat by the sheer force of the wind. We rushed along, the tempest whistling and howling in the rigging in the centre of a roaring bed of foam, which the wind caught up and drove through the air in clouds which almost blinded us. ”

“ Meantime the sea-breeze had died away, and for an hour or longer we were left heaving upon the glassy swell, the land showing in vast dusky masses which, as it were, cut great spaces out of the firmament twinkling with stars, and the roar of the surf coming heavy and loud over the sea. Presently, after divers faint puffs, which caused the canvas to flap, shaking down on the deck great showers of dew, the land-wind, or terral, arose in its turn, balmy and sweet with the smell of the forests, and our lateen sails being dipped, we glided along, leaning over to seaward. ”

“ I lay awake all that night, and the god that stood in my father’s hut, with the necklace of wild beasts’ teeth, gave me thoughts in my heart. I said to myself, we are slaves, but we may be masters; only one watches at the hatchway—at night the wind is small and the sea is smooth—the white men sleep in the moonlight—we may arise and kill them, and have the ship and its riches. ”

“ I was not deceived, and presently the boat glided along a sort of dusky canal, with great rocks on either hand, clothed with rich creeping herbage; trees hanging over either ledge, and, as the channel narrowed, meeting, and by their intertwining boughs shutting out the blue sky. Below me the water showed as black as tar, yet sparkling, when the undulations from the outer creek caused it to rise and sink upon the bushy banks. Now and then a flutter of wings would echo in the narrow passage, and the loud shriek of a night-bird would drown the noise. ”

“ There, down into the trough once more, and now aloft again on the very shoulder of a breaking sea, which has hove her up, as a strong man swings a child, and then bearing her recklessly on, dissolves beneath her keel, in a tumbling avalanche of creaming foam, in the centre of which the sloop is carried triumphantly up, upon the wreaths of sea-weed at the very top of high water-mark, and there, as the sea recedes, is left high and dry! No Deal boatmen ever beached a galley more admirably after a wild trip to the Goodwin Sands. ”