Ralph D. Paine

“ Captain Paddock and his little party were captured by Arabs on the very next day. He met them calmly, his umbrella under one arm, spy-glass under the other, expecting instant death; but they were more intent on plunder, and the four men were stripped of their packs and most of their clothes in a twinkling. It was soon apparent that shipwrecked sailors were worth more alive than dead, and they were hustled along by their filthy captors, who gave them no more water and food than would barely keep soul and body together. ”

“ Alas! no aged Frenchmen came down to the beach to greet them, nor could any living survivor be found. Almost forty years had gone since they were cast away, and the last of them had slipped his moorings, with a farewell sigh and a prayer for France. When Captain Dillon's party went ashore in a flotilla of armed boats, all the chief men of the island were assembled in the council-hall, and the most venerable and influential of them delivered himself of a long oration, the facts of which differed somewhat from the story as the natives of Tucopia had retold it to Martin Bushart and the Lascar. ”

“ Until the hordes of Moorish and Arab cutthroats and slavers were taught by force to respect the flag flown by American merchant-men, there was no fate so dreaded by mariners as shipwreck on the desert coast of northern Africa. For a hundred and fifty years they risked the dreadful peril of enslavement under taskmasters incredibly inhuman, who lashed and starved and slew them. In the seventeenth century it was no uncommon sight in the ports of Salem and Boston to see an honest sailor trudging from house to house to beg money enough to ransom or buy his shipmates held in Barbary. ”

“ Sir Hyde Parker, lashed near the kicking wheel, where four brawny quartermasters sweated as they endeavored to steer the dying frigate, was heard to shout:
"My God! To think that the wind could have such force!"
There was a terrific racket below decks, and fearing that one of the guns might have broken adrift from its tackles, Lieutenant Archer clambered into the gloomy depths, where a marine officer hailed him, announcing:
"Mr. Archer, we are sinking. The water is up to the bottom of my cot. All the cabins are awash and the people flooded out." ”

“ These were the first white men that had ever been seen in his wild domain. He gazed admiringly at the stalwart chief mate, who looked him straight in the eyes, while the people murmured approval of the captive's bearing, for "he was six feet and an inch high, strong in proportion, and the largest-boned person they had ever beheld."
These were two bold, upstanding men who stood face to face in the judgment hall, and the rajah, after consultation with his chiefs, gave each of the five American sailors a betel-nut to chew as a token of his gracious inclination to spare their lives. ”

“ This was a delicate problem for Captain Snelgrave to decide. The ethical codes of the pirates were so much more unconventional than his own that they failed to see why he should hesitate to sail home to England in a stolen ship with a cargo of looted merchandise. Tactfully, but firmly, he declined the offer, at which they hopefully suggested that he might change his mind and, anyhow, they would do their best to straighten things out for him. It was a pleasant little dinner party, but it is plausible to infer that the thought of the absent Captain Davis hung over it like a grim shadow. ”

“ There were, of course, no lighthouses on the dangerous New England coast.
Captain Deane groped along with sounding lead and log-line and said his prayers, no doubt, until the Nottingham Galley struck on Boon Island in a dark night and almost instantly went to pieces. The crew got ashore after a bitter struggle, and "being assembled together, they with joyful hearts returned their most humble and sincere thanks to Divine Providence for their miraculous deliverance from so imminent a danger." ”

“ The schooner's keel had been laid and the stem and stern-post bolted on, with the frames taking shape in the busy yard, when the five bold sailormen came back from the war with a tale of victory won over the forces of the King of Artingall. Their own sovereign, Abba Thulle, and his commander-in-chief, Raa Kook, had mustered a hundred and fifty canoes and a thousand men armed with spears and darts, which they handled with amazing skill. ”

“ It was this same masterful Bedouin, lord of the desert wastes, who enlightened Captain Paddock as to what had befallen the frigate which drove ashore where the Oswego's crew had discovered the sea-washed timbers, the roofless huts of stone, and the heap of human bones. It was a very large war-ship, French or British, and the crew of several hundred men were able to land much property and to make shelters for themselves before the Arabs found them. ”

“ A little while and, inexplicably, the captured flag-ship passed without making a signal and held on the same tack until she vanished in the mist, passed forever with her eight hundred men just as she had disappeared from the sight of those who gazed and wondered from the decks of the Ramillies. The sea holds many an unfinished story, and the tall Ville de Paris was one of them. ”

“ Soon the wreck of the Wager piled up in the breakers between two huge rocks, where she stayed fast. Dry land was no more than a musket-shot away, and as soon as daylight came the three boats that were left—the barge, the cutter, and the yawl—were launched and instantly filled with men, who tumbled in helter-skelter. The rest of the sailors proceeded to break open casks of wine and brandy and to get so drunk that several were drowned in the ship. ”

“ The towering, ornate Asia was refitted as completely as possible, but there was a great lack of seamen. More than half her crew had died of scurvy or deserted during the long voyage and the year at an anchorage. Press-gangs combed the streets and dives of Buenos Aires and Montevideo, but the ship could not find a proper complement, and, as a last resort, eleven Indians were unceremoniously thrown on board. They had been captured while raiding the outposts of the thinly held Spanish settlements, and were of a fighting tribe which preferred death to submission to the cruel and rapacious invader. ”

“ CHAPTER II HOW THE SCHOONER EXERTION FELL AMONG THIEVES THIS is the story of a very shabby set of rascals who wrecked and plundered an honest little merchant vessel a hundred years ago and disgraced the profession of piracy. In truth, even in the heyday of the black flag and the Spanish Main, most pirates were no better than salt-water burglars who would rather run than fight. The glamour of romance has been kinder to them than they deserved. ”

“ In this same year Captain Ned England was taking his pick of the colonial merchantmen which were earning a respectable livelihood in the slave-trade of the Guinea coast. He displayed his merry and ingenious spirit by ordering his crew to pelt to death with broken rum-bottles a captured shipmaster whose face and manners displeased him. Mary Read, the successful woman pirate, was then in the full tide of her exploits and notably demonstrated that a woman had a right to lead her own life. ”

“ Flogged and starved and daily threatened with death, Captain Judah Paddock, Irish Pat, and the two black seamen were carried into the desert until their captors came to a wandering community of a thousand Bedouins, with their skin tents and camels and sheep and donkeys. Amid the infernal clamor the Americans heard a voice calling loudly in English:
"Where are they? Where are they? Where are the four sailors?" And then, as Captain Paddock tells it,
A young man once white pressed through the crowd, burnt with the sun, without hat or shoes, and his nakedness covered only with a few rags. ”

“ If you should be curious enough to measure out such a repast for yourself and try living on it for a few days only, I have no doubt that your weight would be reduced more rapidly than any high-priced specialist in dietetics could possibly achieve for you. A twenty-fifth of a pound of hard bread would not much more than satisfy the appetite of a vigorous canary bird. Yet these seventeen men lived on it and stayed alive for weeks and weeks. Heavy rains came to give them more water, but thirst was a continual torment, so sparingly and prudently did Lieutenant Bligh dole out the precious fluid. ”

“ CHAPTER XVII THE NOBLE KING OF THE PELEW ISLANDS MANY kinds of ships and men have endured the eternal enmity of the sea, as these true tales have depicted, but there is one episode of disaster which might be called the pattern and the proper example for all mariners cast away on unknown shores. It reveals the virtues and not the vices of mankind in time of stress, and saves from oblivion the portrait of a dusky monarch so wise and just and kind that he could teach civilization much more than he could learn from it. ”

“ Landing at the camp, King Abba Thulle was escorted by his chiefs and three hundred bronzed fighting men. He wore no clothing and carried on his shoulder a hatchet which seemed to be a kind of scepter. A man of uncommon force and intelligence, a king in deed as well as name, this was to be read at a glance. It was his surmise that Captain Wilson, attended by his officers and armed sailors, must be a prince in his own country, but this error the modest commander was at pains to correct. ”

“ Seamanship was helpless to ward off the attack of the storm that left the brig a sodden hulk. Courageously her crew shortened sail and made all secure when the sea and sky presaged a change of weather. These were no green hands, but men seasoned by the continual hazards of their calling. The wild gale smote them in the darkness of night. ”

“ So infrequented were the islands of the South Seas that the mutineers might have lived and died there unmolested and unsought. Fletcher Christian was too humane a man for such a deed, the most upright and pious outlaw that ever risked the gallows.
The tale of the Bounty and of the tragic fate which overtook these rash and childlike wanderers in search of Elysium had been familiar to later generations, but the wonderful voyage of Lieutenant Bligh and his exiles in the open boat has been forgotten and unsung. ”

“ The tragedy of the Nottingham Galley was one of those instances, lamentably frequent, in which men were driven to the dire necessity of eating one another under the awful compulsion of hunger. Such a theme is abhorrent, but to realize how men felt in such circumstances, those who were otherwise kindly and brave, and long-suffering, is to add to one's perspective of human nature and to gain truthful glimpses of what the toilers of the sea have endured. ”

“ BOATS WERE FILLED WITH MEN WHOSE ONLY THOUGHT WAS TO SAVE THEIR SKINS
not even decked over, twisting and working to the motion of the waves which slapped over it or splashed between the timbers when the ocean was smooth. As soon as it floated alongside the frigate, one hundred and fifty persons wildly jammed themselves upon it, standing in water to their waists and in danger of slipping between the spars and planks. The only part of the raft which was unsubmerged when laden had room for no more than fifteen men to lie down upon it. ”

“ The emperor was not too busy with his new castle to attend to matters of state, such as punishing the disgraced governor of Tangier and sundry other subjects who had misbehaved themselves in one way or another. Sailormen were accustomed to strange sights and wonderful experiences in that age of sea-faring, but few of them beheld such a drama as was enacted before the eyes of the survivors of the Inspector as they glanced up from their sweating toil amid the stones and mortar. ”

“ The French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian governments, it is said, seldom ransom their unfortunate shipwrecked subjects, and they are thus doomed to perpetual slavery and misery,—no friendly hand is ever stretched forth to relieve their distresses and to heal their bleeding wounds, nor any voice of humanity to soothe their bitter pangs,—till worn out with sufferings indescribable they resign their souls to the God who gave them, and launch into the eternal world with pleasure, as death is the only relief from their miseries. ”

“ Midshipman Byron found the company uncongenial, to put it mildly, and the venture seemed so confused and hazardous that he shifted into the barge to return to the island and resume existence in his little hut. The crew of the barge were of the same opinion and so they announced to Captain Cheap that they would take chances with him. Eight deserters came straggling out of the woods to join the party and there were, in all, twenty men to contrive a voyage of their own. The most unruly lot had departed in the long-boat and the cutter, and mutiny no longer kept the island in a turmoil. ”

“ Admiral Graves had no intention of losing his flag-ship and his life without fighting in the last ditch. Long lines of sailors passed buckets to assist the laboring pumps, and storm-sails were rigged upon the jagged stumps of the masts. The sturdy old Ramillies, with six feet of water in the hold, was somehow brought around before the wind, and ran as fast as the merchant vessels that fled on each side of her. ”

“ The old sea-chronicles of New England are filled with episodes of these misfortunes, encounters, and escapes until the marvel grows that the seamen of those quaint brigs, ketches, and scows could be persuaded to set out from port at all. The appalling risk became a habit, no doubt, just as the people of to-day dare to use the modern highway on which automobiles slay many more victims than ever the pirates made to walk the plank. ”